What are the followers (al-tawabi')?
In one line
Definition
Key words in the Arabic
Understand it
Every role you have met so far earns its state from the job it is doing. A تَابِع does not. It simply copies whatever the word in front of it is wearing.
جَاءَ الرَّجُلُ الطَّوِيلُ — both marfu'. رَأَيْتُ الرَّجُلَ الطَّوِيلَ — both mansub. مَرَرْتُ بِالرَّجُلِ الطَّوِيلِ — both majrur. الطَّوِيل never chose; it followed.
The word being followed is the مَتْبُوع (matbu'); the one following is the تَابِع.
The followers
A follower has no i'rab of its own. It copies the word before it — which is why the followers sit outside the twenty-two roles.
Whatever governs the matbu' governs the tabi' too.1 That is the whole rule, and it is why a follower can turn up in any of the three states without belonging to any of the three lists.
How to spot it
Related terms
Common questions
What do the followers have in common?
That none of them earns a case. Each takes its i'rab from the word before it, so knowing that something is a follower tells you nothing about which case it is in — you have to look back at what it is following.
Next in the guideاَلنَّعْتWhat is the adjective (na't)? →Notes
- The books count the followers as either five or four. The five are نَعْت، تَوْكِيد، بَدَل، عَطْف بَيَان، عَطْف نَسَق, and that is what this guide uses. The four-count drops عَطْف بَيَان, treating what it covers as a kind of بَدَل. ↩
- اَلْآجُرُّومِيَّة goes further and folds the whole set into each case-list as one item — which is exactly why its totals come to seven, fifteen and three where this guide gives eight, twelve and two. ↩
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