Islamic Civilization

The Place of Arabic

‘Islam, and also the Arabic language,’ [Jurji insists,] ‘are the two ostensible factors in the creation of that gigantic melting pot in the centre of whose orbit rose the scientific leaders of the Arabic speaking world.’[1]

This international community of letters was made possible, indeed, by the fact that throughout the Islamic world-whatever its diversity of peoples-the language of learning and literature was Arabic.[2] Arabic, the language of Revelation, of diplomacy and polite intercourse, thus becoming that of science.[3] From the end of the 8^th century to the end of the 11^th the intellectual leaders had been mostly Muslims, according to Sarton, and the most progressive works had been written in Arabic: during these three centuries the Arabic language was the main vehicle of culture.[4] As Von Ranke observes, leaving Latin  aside, Arabic is the most important of all the languages of the world for universal history.[5]  The language that ranks so high ‘for purposes of eloquence and poetic flight’ lent itself to the demands of exact and positive expression.[6] Sapir, in his Language, lists it as the third among those which have had an overwhelming significance as carriers of culture. English and French are conspicuous by their absence from this list. Montgomery, in the Haverford Symposium, also asserts that Arabic has had the most unique development and spread of all the tongues of the earth and that only within the last two centuries has English come to rival it.[7] Archer,[8] goes further, asserting that Arabic is a richer and more flexible tongue than Latin or Greek, no Western tongue equalling it in the variety of its forms and verbal nouns.[9]

A great number of scholars contributed to the emergence of Arabic as a powerful tool of communication, and one of them was Ibn Sidah.  Ibn Sidah was one of the prominent philologists of the 11^th century, and he had a great influence on Arabic lexicography.[10] He was born blind in Murcia, and received his early education from his father. He developed a fantastic memory, which aided him in compiling voluminous lexicons.[11] His lexicon, al-Muhkam,[12] was arranged alphabetically, each letter constituting a section divided into chapters, each entry explained, giving, for instance, the verb, its imperfect, verbal nouns, and derivatives.[13] Al-Muhkam was followed by a larger work, al-Mukhassas.[14] In this, Ibn Sidah provides a long discussion of various aspects of the language, mainly the excellence  and the origin of language.[15] He takes a middle position between those who advocate divine origin of language and those who held that language resulted form human convention. He maintained that he had pondered this question for a long time and found that each of the opposing views had some convincing arguments, but he concluded that Arabic is so noble, perfect, and elegant that God must have helped to make it so through His teaching and inspiration.[16]

The evolution and development of Arabic into a language of religion, state and culture constitutes the most fascinating chapter of Arab history.[17] During the rise of Islam in the 7^th century, Arabic was basically a tribal language lacking a written grammar, lexicon and the terms of the sciences as they were known in the great urban centres of the Near East.[18] However, soon after the expansion of Islam over a wide territory, including the area from the Indus River to the Atlantic Ocean,  special care was taken to study the language in which the Qur’an was revealed and to preserve its purity in conformity with the Holy Book, pre-Islamic poetry and Bedouin speech as it was known in and around the city of Makkah .[19] This interest in the language eventually led to intensive linguistic studies, which comprised not only grammar and lexicography but every aspect of the language.[20]

There were positive factors which helped to give impetus to Arabisation, and which are outlined by Chejne.[21] Although the newcomers (the Arabs) were the minority, their numbers increased through marriage, principally, and their offspring became Muslims and learned the languages of both father and mother. As the numbers of converts to Islam increased, the Arabic language came to have a wider significance and served as the medium of unity among Muslims, first, and among these and non-Muslims afterward. The Umayyad, who were proud of their Arab ancestry, and who came to rule the land of Islam after the first four caliphs (from roughly 661 to 750),  also made Arabic the official language. Their rule over Muslim Spain from roughly the 750s to 976, also played a part in spreading the language there. From the 9^th century onward, Arabic increasingly became the language of daily communication and the instrument of literary expression for Muslims and non Muslims.[22]  

How Arabic rose to a prominent role so as to become the vehicle of science and culture is elaborated upon by Sarton:

‘The vehicle of the new Muslim civilisation was a language that had never been used for any scientific purpose. Almost every bit of knowledge had to be translated either from Greek or from Sanskrit, or from Pahlawi before it could be assimilated. And not only that, but these interpretations necessitated the creation of a philosophic and scientific terminology, which did not exist. When one takes all this into consideration, instead of being surprised at the relative smallness of the first harvest, one cannot help admiring the immensity of the effort. This effort was of such a nature that no people could have endured it for a long time, but only during a period of exaltation and youthful optimism.’[23]

Hence a double accomplishment, not just in turning a non scientific language into one upon which modern science was built but also in acting as the crucial unifying element of so many disparate nations and groups. Without such a language, uniform through a vast land, little progress in science would have happened, except in insignificant pockets. This is also the first instance of universality of the language of science, and it was possible thanks to the Arabic language itself. The primary role of Arabic is its semantics, its flexibility enabling the scholar to coin exact scientific and technological vocabularies ‘capable of expressing the most complicated scientific and technical ideas.’[24] Arabic is also exceedingly rich, and it can be increased almost indefinitely, because a very complex and elegant morphology makes it easy to create new derivatives.[25] Reflecting this dominance of Arabic in the scientific field, words of Arabic origin are very numerous in the scientific sphere: almost all the names of constellations and the basic terms of astronomy, for instance, come from Arabic, as Erbstosser notes.[26] Much the same is the case for other sciences, as the next part highlights, and such was the place of Arabic in the scientific-cultural medieval outburst, that not just the translators of sciences (Gerard of Cremona, Robert of Chester, John of Seville …), but every single man of learning of Western Christendom had to be knowledgeable in it. Arnold of Villanova (d.1311), for instance, mastered Arabic, and in his enthusiasm for Islamic medicine translated a series of its important works into Latin .[27] The role of Arabic reached even further, Arabic symbolising all that was sophisticated, and superior; ‘material wealth and comfort for Western Europeans, must have at times appeared to go hand in hand ‘with the ability to read Arabic,’ Menocal points out.[28] Thus, with great bitterness, the Christian figure, Alvarus (9^th century), conceded:

‘Who is there among the faithful laity sufficiently learned to understand the Holy Scriptures, or what our doctors have written in Latin ? Who is there fired with love of the Gospels, the Prophets, the Apostles? All our young Christians… are learned in infidel erudition and perfected in Arabic eloquence. They assiduously study, intently read and ardently discuss Arabic books…. The Christians are ignorant of their own tongue; the Latin race does not understand its own language. Not one in a thousand of the Christian communion can write an intelligent letter to a brother. On the other hand there are great numbers of them who expound the Arabic splendour of language, and metrically adorn, by mono-rhyme, the final clauses of songs, better more sublimely than other peoples.’[29]

‘We can only express our wonder and ‘say mashallah’ (God willed it),’ [comments Sarton,] ‘how it so happened (and this the Prophet could not foresee unless he had some divine insight) that the only language he knew was one of the most beautiful languages in existence.’[30]