The Arabic Language

12.3 The reform of the lexicon
The nineteenth century witnessed the development of a periodical press in Arabic. 
The first Arabic periodical was the Egyptian government newspaper 
al-Waqāʾiʿ 
al-Miṣriyya
(1828), established by Muḥammad ʿAlī. Other newspapers followed, in 
Egypt and in other countries. The involvement of Arab Christians in the publica
-
tion of private newspapers ensured the emphasis on its Arabic character. The 
activities of language reformers in Syria, such as Fāris aš-Šidyāq (1804–87) and 
Buṭrus al-Bustānī (1819–83), gave an impetus to the much-needed modernisation 
of the lexicon. Al-Bustānī, for instance, published the first modern large-scale 
dictionary of Arabic, 
al-Muḥīṭ
, which borrowed heavily from the Classical diction
-
aries, to be sure, but nevertheless aimed at the incorporation of all exciting new 
ideas and concepts in an Arabic garb.
This is not to say that there was a consensus among Arab linguists about the 
best way to deal with the influx of Western notions into the Arabic language. 
Just as political thinkers differed in their ideas about Islam and Islamic civilisa-
tion and its relationship to Western/Christian culture, the language reformers 
ranged from those who believed that in itself the Arabic lexicon was sufficient 
to express anything needed in this modern age, to those who strongly advocated 
the wholesale adoption of Western words and a complete revision of the lexicon. 
The more careful approach of the moderates mirrored the ideas of some of the 
political thinkers of this period. They maintained that in itself Arabic was the 
perfect language, but people had started to corrupt it. What was needed was a 
return to the purity of the Classical language.
In the process of modernisation of the language at the beginning of the 
twentieth century, the Arab academies played a central part. Modelled after 
the great language academies of Europe – both the Academy of Damascus and 
the Academy of Cairo, for instance, were founded with explicit reference to 
the example of the Académie française – their aim was to implement the ideas 
about the place of Arabic in the modern world that had become commonplace in 
the 
Nahḍa
. During his short-lived reign in Syria, King Fayṣal expressed concern 
about the quality of the educational system and the preservation of the cultural 

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The Emergence of Modern Standard Arabic 
227
heritage in the form of libraries, manuscript collections and museums. The 
Dīwān 
al-maʿārif
that was installed for this purpose came under the presidency of Kurd 
ʿAlī (1876–1953), who had been the founder of the National Library (
Dār al-Kutub 
aẓ-Ẓāhiriyya
). In 1919, the second task of the council, the cultivation of the Arabic 
language, was entrusted to what became the first language academy in the Arab 
world, 
al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī
, nowadays called 
Majmaʿ al-Luġa al-ʿArabiyya 
bi-Dimašq
‘The Academy of the Arabic Language in Damascus’.
From the start, the goal of the academy was twofold: to guard the integrity 
of the Arabic language and preserve it from dialectal and foreign influence, on 
the one hand, and to adapt the Arabic language to the needs of modern times, 
on the other. The same two functions appear in the charter of the Academy of 
Cairo (
Majmaʿ al-Luġa al-ʿArabiyya al-Malikī
, since 1955 called the 
Majmaʿ al-Luġa 
al-ʿArabiyya
), founded in 1932 by Fuʾād I. In practice, the main function of the 
Cairene academy since 1960 has been the creation of new Arabic terminology, as 
well as the reform of both Arabic script and grammar. New terms are introduced 
through a complicated process of consultation and deliberation: they are proposed 
in the many subcommittees of the academy, each responsible for a specific field 
of knowledge, and after approval by the general assembly of the academy they 
are published in its journal. Usually the introduction of a new term leads to long 
and sometimes heated discussions in the proceedings of the academy, and it may 
take years before a proposed term finally finds its way into the dictionaries and 
technical vocabularies.
The academies of Iraq (