Arabic

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Arabic, al-ʿArabiyya, or lisan al-ʿArab, is the language spoken by 200 million people in twenty-one countries from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic. As the liturgical language of Muslims, it is the medium for a billion people all over the globe. It is a Semitic language, and its early extant script dates back to about 300 CE at Temple of Ramm in Sinai and about 328 CE at Nemara, in the Syrian desert. Early Arabic evolved from a number of dialects between the third and the sixth centuries, leading to the classical language, which received its full expansion between 632 and 710, when the message of Islam reached many lands east and west.

As the language of the Qurʾan, the revealed word of God to all Muslims, it is inimitable. Taken as the standard for excellence, classical Arabic, the written language, has survived the ravages of time. Codification and standardization of Arabic began in the eighth century, following early Islamic expansion and the growth of urban centers, especially in Basrah, Baghdad, and Damascus. It was carried out not only to counteract solecism and corruption concomitant with intercultural and ethnic mixing but also to sustain its lexical and grammatical models, taking the Qurʾan, pre-Islamic poetry, the Prophet's sayings, and early Islamic orations, poems, and speeches as the standard. The effort between the eighth and tenth centuries to collect and verify poetry, speech, and proverbs as carried out by Arab and non-Arab scholars proved to be of great value, both in explaining Qurʾanic word usages and meanings, and in ensuring the survival of Islamic and Arabic tradition and culture.

The written grammatical standards as set by al-Khalil (d. 791) and carried out by his student Sibawayhi (d. 804) made use both of attested data, such as the Qurʾan, poetry, and elicited material from the Prophet's tribe (Quraysh), and of analogy, or the use of explanation to rationalize speech that deviated from the norm.

The basis for Arabic morphology lies in the distinction between aplastic, or simple and unanalyzable words, and the complex, analyzable ones. Complex or analyzable words build on a trilateral root for further enriching the derivative process that gives Arabic its distinguishable life and richness.

Syntax, in Arabic grammar, is governed by the two formidable notions of ellipsis and conjecture, or paraphrase, which simultaneously sustain compression and enforce attention. Arabic rhetoric grew out of the study of the stylistic inimitable Qurʾan, burgeoning into treatises on linguistics, literature, law, jurisprudence, philology, theology, and the art of prose. Of relevance in this context is Arabic lexicography, beginning with al-Khalil's lexicon al-ʿAyn with its phonetic and phonological ordering, to be followed by the works of Ibn Duraid (d. 933), al-Jawhari (d. 1003), Ibn Sidah (d. 1066), and many others before reaching Dawud al-Antaki (d. 1405) and al-Bustani (d. 1883).

While the term classical Arabic applies to writing at large, based on standardized norms since the classical period (that is, from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries), we must understand it in relation to its descendants, early Middle Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Insofar as MSA is concerned, the syntactic and morphological standards are there, largely sustained through education and cultivated media programs. Despite geographical and cultural obstacles and barriers among Arab lands, the classical norm in writing and public speeches is respected. It is a sign of cultivation and genuine belonging and is sought after by politicians and public figures. Spoken Arabic, on the other hand, varies, and vernaculars abound.

Dialects remain outside the domain of the classical. Islamic expansion since 632 CE entailed the leveling of dialects, but it also brought some interdialectal habits and forms. A makeshift practice could easily emerge among newly converted people, freedmen, and indigenous non-Muslim tribes and inhabitants. Although aspirants to high position needed a polished style and lucid expression to fit into the ruling discourse, artisans, laborers, and businessmen could survive with this or that Arabic dialect or with the remnants of indigenous languages and dialects.

From the start of the decline of the Abbasid caliphate in the late tenth century, and well before the fall of Baghdad in 1258, there was a decline in the use of classical Arabic outside formal or solemn occasions. Arabic language of the Seljuk period (1038–1157), for instance, demonstrates a mixture of the classical and the colloquial. Aside from the Andalusian practice of using local dialects in strophic street songs (zajal) like Ibn Quzman's (d. 1160), writers like Ibn Danyal (d. 1294) show a similar bent. Conversely, epistolographers since the fifteenth century insisted on writing in a polished style. The fact remains, however, that historians, scientists, and philosophers since the fifteenth century have resorted to the use of Middle Arabic, which largely kept to standards without meticulously following classical expression and usage. The descendant of this Middle Arabic can be traced in the present-day language of the media and official reports.

Arab philologists of the nineteenth century were aware of the increasing impact of the media, and the Lebanese Ibrahim al-Jazidji (1847–1906) wrote his book Lughat al-Sahafah (The Language of Dailies) to draw attention to faultiness and deviations from classical norms. Many royal academies were established to curb the impact of the media on Arabic classical usage. Purists like the Iraqi Christian cleric P. Anstanse al-Karmali issued in 1911–1931 Lughat al-Arab (The Language of the Arabs), to consolidate the classical against both the media Middle Arabic and the vernaculars that were beginning to appear in writing. While the purists put up a fight, they recognized the need to cope with modernization processes through appropriation of scientific words, adaptation of others, and expansion of vocabulary through derivation. At present, the classical in its middle usage is largely used in writing, ceremonies, and solemn occasions. In its standard form it provides the written medium throughout the Arab world, and among devout Muslims. Vernaculars and dialects are there in spoken Arabic, oral communications, and daily transactions.

Al-Musawi, Muhsin J. (2001) "Arabic Rhetoric." In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, ed. by Thomas O. Sloane. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 29–33.

Cowan, Milton J. A. (1979) Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. Wiesbaden, Germany: O.Harrassowitz.

Stetkevych, Yaroslav. (1970) The Modern Arabic Literary Language: Lexical and Stylistic Developments. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Versteegh, Kees. (1997) The Arabic Language. New York: Columbia University Press.

This is the complete article, containing 1,044 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).