The Arabic Language

Qurʾān
was revealed in Mecca. In this view, the adjective 
ʿarabiyyun 
is the name 
for the type of language that was used for poetic production in the eastern part 
of the peninsula.
 
The term 
ʿArab 
received a new prestige when it began to be used as a self-desig-
nation for the tribal aristocracy of the early Islamic period. According to Retsö, 
it was used at first specifically for the early Islamic fighters, the 
muhājirūna 
and 
the 
ʾanṣār
,
 
and their Yemenite allies. By extension, the 
ʿArab 
were the sedentary 
Arabs in cities such as Mecca and Medina. They were the ones who became known 
as the ‘real’ Arabs, the 
ʿArab al-ʿāriba
,
 
whereas the name 
ʾAʿrāb
‘Bedouin’ carried a 
negative connotation because of its use in the 
Qurʾān
.
After the period of the conquests, a new re-evaluation took place, when the 
sedentary population began to regard the free-roaming Bedouin, whose language 
preserved the purity of pre-Islamic times, as the ideal type of Arab. The term 
kalām 
al-ʿArab
‘language of the Arabs’ came to denote the pure, unaffected language of the 
Bedouin. In line with this development the pre-history of the name was rewritten 
and the genealogy of the tribes was systematised. According to this genealogy the 
peninsula had been inhabited from time immemorial by the ‘lost Arabs’ (
al-ʿArab 
al-bāʾida
), that is, those tribes that are mentioned in the 
Qurʾān
as having been 
punished for their disbelief, for instance, the tribes of ʿĀd, Ṯamūd and Jurhum. In 
this view, the later Arabs all descended from two ancestors, Qaḥṭān and ʿAdnān. 
Qaḥṭān was related to the ‘lost Arabs’, and his descendants were identified as 
the southern Arabs who were regarded as the ‘real Arabs’ (
al-ʿArab al-ʿāriba
). The 
descendants of ʿAdnān were the northern Arabs, who were said to have been 
Arabicised at a later period (
al-ʿArab al-mutaʿarriba
or 
al-mustaʿriba
). In the post-

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44
The Arabic Language
Islamic tradition, the descent of the northern Arabs was traced back through their 
ancestor ʿAdnān to ʾIsmāʿīl, the son of Abraham. Among the tribes descending 
from ʿAdnān were Huḏayl, Tamīm, Qays, Rabīʿa and the Qurayš of Mecca. Among 
the offspring of Qaḥṭān were the inhabitants of the South Arabian states, who 
were said to have descended from Ḥimyar, one of Qaḥṭān’s descendants. Some of 
the tribes in the northern part of the peninsula were of southern provenance, for 
instance, the ʾAws and Ḫazraj of Medina and the tribe Ṭayyiʾ.
It is difficult to say to what degree this distinction between southern and 
northern Arabs goes back to any real memory of a difference between two groups, 
but it is clear that in Islamic times they were perceived as distinct; a distinction that 
continued to be felt strongly even as far as Islamic Spain, where enmity between 
representatives of the two groups under the names of Qays for the northern 
and Kalb for the southern group persisted. Linguistically speaking, however, the 
language of poets from both groups was accepted by the grammarians, and the 
poems of both groups were used indiscriminately as linguistic primary sources. 
The language of the southern Arabs was usually labelled 
luġa ʾahl al-Yaman
; one of 
its best-known features was the use of the definite article 
ʾam-
.
A special case is that of the so-called Ḥimyaritic language, about which we 
have some information from al-Hamdānī’s (d. 334/946) description of the Arabian 
peninsula (