What is a fully declining ism (munsarif)?
In one line
Definition
Key words in the Arabic
Understand it
This is the ordinary ism, and there are far more of these than of anything else.
مُسْلِمٌ / مُسْلِمًا / مُسْلِمٍ — damma, fatha, kasra, each with tanwin. Add الـ and the tanwin goes, leaving the bare vowel: الْمُسْلِمُ / الْمُسْلِمَ / الْمُسْلِمِ.
The three primary categories
Every ism falls into one of three: fully declining, partly declining, or non-declining. The category decides how the i'rab is expressed — not what the i'rab is.
One writing rule comes with it. When a munsarif ism is indefinite and in nasab, an alif is written after it — كِتَابًا, رَجُلًا — with two exceptions: a word ending in ة takes none (جَنَّةً), and a word ending in اء takes none (سَمَاءً).
Two warnings. Tanwin does not mean singular — a broken plural takes it too: كُتُبٌ. And a word is munsarif by default: it takes only one thing to stop it, which is the subject of the next page.
How to spot it
In the Qur'an
In the language — فِي اللُّغَة
The word صَرْف (sarf) in everyday Arabic means turning or changing a thing about.
صَرَفَ النَّظَرَ (sarafa al-nazara) — “he turned his gaze away”
As a grammatical term it means the free turning of an ism through all three endings with tanwin. An ism that has it is munsarif; one prevented from it is mamnu' min al-sarf.
Related terms
Common questions
Why name the ordinary case at all?
So that the exception can be defined against it. A munsarif ism behaves as expected: it takes tanwin and shows all three cases normally. Naming it lets the diptote be described as a departure rather than as a rule of its own.
Next in the guideاَلْمَمْنُوع مِنَ الصَّرْفWhat is a partly declining ism (mamnu' min al-sarf)? →Updated