The Arabic Language

ʿaql
‘logical reasoning’ is always carefully distinguished 
from 
naql
‘transmitted knowledge’. In this way, a separation was realised between 
the study of attested forms and the theories of the grammarians, and without 
being prescriptive the grammarians could still impose a canonical norm of the 
language.

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The Development of Classical Arabic 
67
The codification of grammatical structure went hand in hand with the explora-
tion of the lexicon and its necessary expansion. These two aspects of the process 
of standardisation are connected. Just as the grammarians were needed because 
of the perceived ‘corruption’ of the language, the first aim of the lexicographers 
seems to have been the preservation of the old Bedouin lexicon, which was at risk. 
There are several reasons for the lexicographers’ worries. In the first place, the 
sedentary civilisation of early Islam was markedly different from that of the desert 
tribes, who had been the guardians of the special vocabulary of the pre-Islamic 
poems. No city-dweller could be expected to know all the subtle nuances of a 
vocabulary connected with camels, animal wildlife and tents. There are several 
anecdotes about grammarians that stress this component of a grammarian’s activ
-
ities. Thus, the grammarian ʾAbū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154/770), when he started 
lecturing about language and poetry, was confronted by a real Bedouin, who 
interrogated him about the explanation of obscure words. When the grammarian 
passed the test, the Bedouin said 
ḫuḏū ʿanhu fa-ʾinnahu dābba munkara
‘transmit 
from him, because he is an extraordinary beast of burden!’ (i.e., a depository of 
knowledge) (az-Zajjājī, 
Majālis al-ʿulamāʾ
, ed. Hārūn, Kuwait, 1962, p. 262). This 
anecdote shows how grammarians had to prove their worth by their knowledge 
of the Bedouin lexicon.
For the ordinary speaker, who had grown up in an Islamic city and knew nothing 
about the Bedouin milieu, even ordinary Arabic words had become unfamiliar. 
From one of the earliest commentaries on the 
Qurʾān
, we can get an idea about 
which words had fallen into disuse. Muqātil ibn Sulaymān’s (d. 150/767) 
Tafsīr
contains a large number of paraphrases of Qurʾānic words that he felt to be in 
need of explanation, for example, 
ʾalīm
‘painful’ (replaced by 
wajīʿ
), 
mubīn
‘clear’ 
(replaced by 
bayyin
), 
nabaʾun
‘news’ (replaced by 
ḥadīṯun
), 
nasīb
‘share’ (replaced 
by 
ḥaḏ̣ḏ̣
), the verb 
ʾātā
‘to give’ (replaced by 
ʾaʿṭā
) and the interrogative adverb 
ʾayyān
‘when?’ (replaced by 
matā
).
The second threat to the lexicon had to do with contact with other languages. 
When the Arabs became acquainted with the sedentary culture of the conquered 
territories, they encountered new things and notions for which Arabic words did 
not yet exist. The most obvious sources for terms to indicate the new notions 
were, of course, the languages spoken in the new Islamic empire. And this was 
precisely what some of the Arab scholars feared. They were convinced that the 
influx of words from other cultures would corrupt the Arabic language, which had 
been chosen by God for His last revelation to mankind.
In the first century of the Hijra, this attitude had not yet made itself felt, as 
the comments by the earliest exegetes on the vocabulary of the 
Qurʾān
demon
-
strate. In pre-Islamic times, the Arabs had taken over a considerable number of 
words from surrounding cultures. Most of them were borrowed either through 
the Jewish/Aramaic language of Syria, or through the Christian/Syriac language 
in Mesopotamia, where al-Ḥīra was the most important centre for cultural and 

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68
The Arabic Language
linguistic contacts. Examples of early borrowings that occur both in pre-Islamic 
poetry and in the