What is the object of time or place (maf'ūl fīhi / ẓarf)?
English says in the morning, behind the house. Arabic often needs no preposition at all: the ism itself carries the “in”, and takes nasab to show it.
سَافَرْتُ صَبَاحًا (sāfartu ṣabāḥan), I travelled in the morning. جَلَسْتُ أَمَامَ الْبَابِ (jalastu amāma al-bābi), I sat in front of the door.
Five roles share the word مَفْعُول, and each answers a different question about the action: what it fell upon, how much of it there was, why it happened, who it happened alongside, and when or where.
It comes in two kinds — ظَرْف زَمَان (ẓarf zamān), of time, and ظَرْف مَكَان (ẓarf makān), of place.
| Kind | Meaning | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| of time | صَبَاحًا | ṣabāḥan | in the morning |
| لَيْلًا | laylan | at night | |
| يَوْمَ | yawma | on the day of | |
| حِينَ | ḥīna | at the time when | |
| of place | أَمَامَ | amāma | in front of |
| خَلْفَ | khalfa | behind | |
| فَوْقَ | fawqa | above | |
| تَحْتَ | taḥta | below | |
| عِنْدَ | 'inda | at — in the presence of |
Every one of them answers when? or where? — and every one of them is manṣūb. The test the books give is finer than that: the word must carry the meaning of فِي, *in*. A word of time or place that does not carry it is not a ẓarf at all, and is parsed by whatever role it is actually filling.1
The condition is the buried “in”. A word of time or place that does not carry that meaning is not a ẓarf at all — it is parsed by whatever role it is actually filling. الْيَوْمُ جَمِيلٌ (al-yawmu jamīlun), the day is beautiful: يَوْم here is the mubtada', marfū', not a ẓarf.
Not every word of time or place is a ẓarf.
The test is the hidden فِي. If you can read the word as “in that time” or “in that place”, it is a ẓarf and takes nasab.
If you cannot, the word is simply doing some other job and takes whatever i'rab that job requires — الْيَوْمُ جَمِيلٌ, where يَوْم is the mubtada' and marfū'.
And when a real preposition is written in front of it — فِي الصَّبَاحِ — the word is majrūr after the ḥarf jarr, not manṣūb as a ẓarf.
- The definition — an ism in nasab indicating the time or place of the action while containing the meaning of فِي — is اَلنَّحْو التَّطْبِيقِي's (an-Naḥw at-Taṭbīqī). ↩