A Dictionary of Islam Being a cyclopedia of the...

This kind of rhetorical style, the peculiarity of which Professor Palmer, in the passage quoted, p. 523, aptly explains from the etymological structure of Arabic, has become the favourite model of oratorical and ornate language with the later Arabs. It is frequently employed in ordinary narratives, such as the tales of the Arabian Nights, whenever the occasion requires a more elevated form of speech; it is the usual garb of that class of compositions, which is known by the name of Maqāmāt, and even extensive historical works, as the Life of Timur, by ʿArab Shāh, are written in it throughout.

But Muḥammad made a still greater and more decisive step towards creating a literature for his people. In those Sūrahs, in which he regulated the private and public life of the Muslim, he originated a prose, which has remained the standard of classical purity ever since.

With regard to this point, however, it has been stated, seemingly in disparagement of the later Arabic authors, that their accepting Muḥammad’s language as a perfect standard, from which no deviation is admissible, has led them to adopt an artificial style, as unnatural “as though Englishmen should still continue to follow Chaucer as their model, in spite of the changes which their language has undergone.” But is such a parallel justified in facts? In English, as amongst modern nations in general, the written language has always kept in close contact with the spoken language; the changes which the former has undergone are simply the registration and legalisation of the changes which in course of time had taken place in the latter. Not so in Arabic. From the moment when, at the epoch of its fullest and richest growth, it was, through the composition of the Qurʾān, invested with the dignity of a literary language, it was, by its very nature, for many centuries to come, precluded from any essential change, whether this be considered as an advantage or not.

The reason for this lies in the first instance in the triliteral character of the Semitic roots, referred to by Professor Palmer, which allows such a root to form one, two, or three syllables, according to the pronunciation of each letter, with or without a vowel. Let us take as an example once more the root ẓ-r-b (ضرب), which conveys the idea of “beating,” and serves in Arabic grammars, like the Greek τυπτω, to form paradigms, by way of a wholesome admonition, I suppose, to the youthful student. The first of these three consonants can only remain quiescent, i.e. vowel-less, if it is preceded by a vowel, as in the Imperative i-ẓrib (اِضْرِبْ), “beat thou,” where the root appears as a monosyllable, or in the aorist ya-ẓribu (يَضْرِبُ), “he beats or will beat,” where it takes together with the final u a disyllabic form. If we leave the second consonant quiescent and pronounce the first with a, we have ẓarb, with the nominative termination ẓarbun (ضَرْبٌ), the verbal noun “beating” or infinitive “to beat.” Vocalising both the first letters, we may obtain ẓārib, the active participle “beating,” or ẓurūb, plural of the last mentioned ẓarb, with the nominative termination ẓāribun (ضَارِبٌ) and ẓurūbun (ضُرُوبٌ). If we read all three consonants with vowels, it may be ẓaraba (ضَرَبَ), “he did beat,” or ẓarabū (ضَرَبُوا), “they did beat.”

Taking, again, the two forms ẓaraba, “he did beat,” and yaẓribu, “he beats or will beat,” a simple change of vowels suffices to transform the active into the passive: ẓuriba (ضُرِبَ), “he was beaten,” and yuẓrabu (يُضْرَبُ), “he is beaten or will be beaten.” Lastly, it must be noticed, that the distinction between the two fundamental tenses of the Arabic verb rests on the principle that the affixes, representing the personal pronouns, are in the preterite placed at the end, in the aorist at the beginning of the root: ẓarab-nā, “we did beat,” but na-ẓribu, “we beat or will beat.”

From all this it will be easily understood that any essential change in the written language must deeply affect the whole system of Arabic accidence, and that this language will, therefore, naturally be averse to such changes. But, moreover, this system stands in closest connection with and dependence on the syntactical structure of the language, which is equally “conservative,” if I may use this expression, in its fundamental principles. The Arabic syntax knows only two kinds of sentences (jumlah), one called nominal (ismīyah), because it begins with a noun, the other verbal (fiʿlīyah), because it begins with a verb. Reduced to their shortest expression, an example of the first would be: Zaidun ẓāribun (زَيْدٌ ضَارِبٌ), “Zaid (is) beating”; of the second: ẓaraba zaidun (ضَرَبَ زَيْدٌ), “(there) did beat Zaid.” The constituent parts of the nominal sentence, which we would call subject and predicate, are termed mubtadaʾ, “incipient,” and k͟habar, “report,” meaning that which is enounced or stated of the subject. The k͟habar need not be an attributive, as in the sentence given above, but it may be another clause, either nominal or verbal, and if it is the former, its own mubtadaʾ admits even of a third clause as a second k͟habar for its complement. The subject of the verbal sentence is called agent, or fāʿil, and, as mentioned before, follows the verb, fiʿl, in the nominative.

The verb with its agent (fiʿl and fāʿil), or the subject with its predicate (mubtadaʾ and k͟habar), form the essential elements of the Arabic sentence. But there are a great many accidental elements, called faẓlah, “what is superabundant or in excess,” which may enter into the composition of a clause, and expand it to considerable length. Such are additional parts of speech expressing the various objective relations (mafʿūl) in which a noun may stand to an active verb, or the condition (ḥāl) of the agent at the moment when the action occurred, or circumstances of time and place (z̤arf) accompanying the action, or specificative distinctions (tamyīz) in explanation of what may be vague in a noun, or the dependence of one noun upon another (iẓāfah) or upon a preposition (k͟hafẓ), or the different kinds of apposition (tawābiʿ) in which a noun may be joined to another, either in the subject or the predicate, and so on.

All these numerous component parts of a fully-developed sentence are influenced by certain ruling principles (ʿawāmil, or “regents”), some merely logical, but most of them expressed in words and particles, which determine the iʿrāb, that is, the grammatical inflection of nouns and verbs, and bring into play those various vowel-changes, of which we have above given examples with regard to the interior of roots, and which, we must now add, apply equally to the terminations employed in declension and conjugation.

The subject and predicate, for instance, of the nominal sentence stand originally, as it is natural, both in the nominative. There are, however, certain regents called nawāsik͟h, “effacing ones,” which, like the particle inna, “behold,” change the nominative of the subject into the accusative, while others, like the verb kāna, “he was,” leave the subject unaltered, but place the predicate in the objective case: zaid-un ẓārib-un becomes thus either inna zaid-an ẓārib-un, or kāna zaid-un ẓārib-an.

Again, we have seen that the aorist proper of the third person singular terminates in u (yaẓrib-u). But under the influence of one class of regents this vowel changes into a (yaẓrib-a); under that of others it is dropped altogether, and in both cases the meaning and grammatical status of the verb is thereby considerably modified. If we consider the large number of these governing parts of speech—a well-known book treats of the “hundred regents,” but other grammarians count a hundred and fifteen and more—it will be seen what delicate and careful handling the Arabic syntax requires, and how little scope there is left for the experiments of wilful innovators.

At the time of Muḥammad this then was, apart from some slight dialectical differences, the spoken language of his people. He took it, so to say, from the mouth of his interlocutors, but, wielding it with the power of a master-mind, he made in the Qurʾān such a complete and perfect use of all its resources as to create a work that, in the estimation of his hearers, appeared worthy to be thought the word of God Himself.

When a long period of conquests scattered the Arabs to the farthest East and to the farthest West, their spoken language might deviate from its pristine purity, slurring over unaccented syllables and dropping terminations. But the fine idiom of their fore-fathers, as deposited in the Qurʾān, remained the language of their prayer and their pious meditation, and thus lived on with them, as a bond of unity, an object of national love and admiration, and a source of literary development for all times.