by the citizen-folk (e.g. of Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad) at whose gates they tent; and a few classes like the Banu Fahim of Al-Hijaz still converse sub-classically, ever and anon using the terminal vowels and the nunnation elsewhere obsolete.  These wildlings, whose evening camp-fires are still their schools for eloquence and whose improvisations are still their unwritten laws, divide speech into three degrees, Al-’Ali the lofty addressed to the great, Al-Wasat used for daily converse and Al-Dun the lowly or broken “loghat” (jargon) belonging to most tribes save their own.  In Egypt the purest speakers are those of the Sa’id—­the upper Nile-region—­differing greatly from the two main dialects of the Delta; in Syria, where the older Aramean is still current amongst sundry of the villagers outlying Damascus, the best Arabists are the Druzes, a heterogeneous of Arabs and Curds who cultivate language with uncommon care.  Of the dialectic families which subtend the Mediterranean’s southern sea-board, the Maroccan and the Algerine are barbarised by Berber, by Spanish and by Italian words and are roughened by the inordinate use of the Sukun (quiescence or conjoining of consonants), while the Tunisian approaches nearer to the Syrian and the Maltese was originally Punic.  The jargon of Meccah is confessedly of all the worst.  But the wide field has been scratched not worked out, and the greater part of it, especially the Mesopotamian and the Himyaritic of Mahrahland, still remains fallow and the reverse of sterile.

Materials for the study of Arabic in general and of its dialects in particular are still deficient, and the dictionaries mostly content themselves with pouring old stuff from flask to flask, instead of collecting fresh and unknown material.  Such are recueils of prayers and proverbs, folk-songs and stories, riddles and satires, not forgetting those polyglot vocabularies so common in many parts of the Eastern world, notably in Sind and Afghanistan; and the departmental glossaries such as the many dealing with “Tasawwuf”—­the Moslem form of Gnosticism.  The excellent lexicon of the late Professor Dozy, Supplement aux Dictionnaires Arabes, par R. Dozy, Leyde:  E. J. Brill, 1881, was a step in advance, but we still lack additions like Baron Adolph Von Kremer’s Beitrage zur Arabischen Lexicographie (In commission bei Carl Gerold’s Sohn, Wien, 1884).  The French, as might be expected, began early, e.g.  M. Ruphy’s Dictionnaire abrege francais-arabe, Paris, Imprimerie de la Republique, 1810; they have done good work in Algiers and are now carrying it on in Tunis.  Of these we have Marcel, Vocabulaire, etc. (Paris, 1837), Bled de Braine (Paris, 1846), who to his Cours Synthetique adds a study of Maroccan and Egyptian, Professor Cherbonneau (Paris, 1854), Precis Historique, and Dialogues, etc. (Alger, 1858); M. Gasselin (Paris, 1866), Dictionnaire francais-arabe, M. Brassier (Algiers, 1871), Dictionnaire pratique, also containing Algerine and Tunisian terms;