The Arabic Language

banafsaj
‘violet’, 
ʾasfarāj 
‘asparagus’, 
bāḏinjān
‘eggplant’, 
bābūnij
‘camomile’, 
banj
‘henbane’, 
fustuq
‘pistachio’, 
ḫašḫāš
‘poppy’, 
narjis
‘narcissus’.
In the earliest translations of Greek logical, medical and philosophical writings, 
some of the technical terms are simply transliterations of a Greek word for which 
the translators were unable to find an Arabic equivalent. Thus we have, for 
instance, 
hayūlā
‘substance’ (< Greek 
húlē
), 
bulġum
‘phlegm’ (< Greek 
phlégma
) and 
ʾuṣṭuquss
‘element’ (< Greek 
stoicheĩon
). The next best solution was to create a new 
word on the basis of an existing root by the application of one of the numerous 
morphological patterns of Arabic. In the beginning, each translator created in 
this way his own set of terms. The ensuing confusion was more or less ended 
with the establishment of the 
Bayt al-Ḥikma
‘House of Wisdom’, founded by Caliph 
al-Maʾmūn in 215/830. This was probably not a school or academy in the modern 
sense of the word, but rather a book repository where scholars cooperated in the 
translation of Greek manuscripts (Gutas 1998) and, one assumes, consulted each 
other on matters relating to terminology. The Greek term 
katēgoroúmenon
‘predi
-
cate’, for instance, had been variably translated as 
maḥmūl
, 
maqūl
, 
ṣifa
or 
naʿt
, until 
it was standardised as 
maḥmūl
. The Greek term 
apóphansis
‘proposition’ had been 
translated by as many as five different terms (
ḥukm
, 
ḫabar
, 
qawl jāzim
, 
qawl qāṭiʿ
, 
qaḍiyya
), until 
qaḍiyya
became the usual term.
The use of patterns to create neologisms from existing roots was particularly 
useful in the translation of Greek medical terminology. A few examples may suffice 
to illustrate this method of inventing new vocabulary items. In his terminology 
for the different parts of the eye, Ḥunayn ibn ʾIsḥāq translated Greek words in 
-eidēs
‘-like’ with abstract adjectives, for example, 
qarniyya
(Greek 
keratoeidēs
) 
‘cornea’, 
zujājiyya
(Greek 
hualoeidēs
) ‘corpus vitreum’, 
ʿinabiyya
(Greek 
rhagoeidēs
) 
‘uvea’, 
šabakiyya
(Greek 
amphiblēstroeidēs
) ‘retina’. The pattern 
fuʿāl
was used to 
systematise the names of illnesses, for example, 
zukām
‘catarrh’, 
ṣudāʿ
‘headache’, 
ṣufār
‘jaundice’, 
duwār
‘dizziness’, 
ṭuḥāl
‘infection of the spleen’ and even 
ḫumār
‘hangover’. 
A prerequisite for the creative use of the existing lexicon was its codification. 
The first complete dictionary of the Arabic language was composed by Sībawayhi’s 
teacher, al-Ḫalīl ibn ʾAḥmad, who had also been involved in the reform of the 
Arabic script (cf. above, p. 64) and who is generally acclaimed as the inventor of 

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The Development of Classical Arabic 
71
Arabic metrical theory. The professed aim of the 
Kitāb al-ʿayn
, which goes under 
his name, was the inclusion of all Arabic roots. In the introduction, a sketch 
is given of the phonetic structure of Arabic, and the dictionary fully uses the 
available corpus of Arabic by including quotations from the 
Qurʾān
and from the 
numerous pre-Islamic poems, which had both undergone a process of codification 
and written transmission at the hands of grammarians (see Chapter 7).
In the