History of Arabic Language

English Translation of "Arabe préislamique, arabe coranique, arabe classique : un continuum ?", dans Karl-Heinz Ohlig & Gerd-Rüdiger Puin (Hrsg) Die dunklen Anfänge. Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam, p. 248-265. Berlin : Verlag Hans Schiler, 2005.

Title in English: "Studies on the the historical and doctrinal genesis of Islam - Bruno Bonnet-Eymard and the French school of scholarly skepticism"

ENG. The article presents briefly the scholarly theory on the historical and dogmatic origins of Islam by the modern French researcher Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, with an attempt to classify its place in the modern field of Islamic studies. The result of over thirty years of Bonnet-Eymard’s work is his translation of the first five Qur’anic suras into French, with their comprehensive critical edition, prepared on the basis of his own philological, historical and theological exegesis. Bonnet-Eymard, belonging to the Islamicist skeptical school, attempts to read the Arabic Qur’anic text also from the perspective of other Semitic languages - mainly Hebrew and Syriac. Regardless of the flaws and merits of Bonnet-Eymard’s exegesis it surely is a valuable source of scholarly insights, conclusions and linguistic remarks that cannot be overestimated for modern critical studies of the Qur’anic text.

PL. Artykuł przedstawia pokrótce teorię naukową współczesnego francuskiego badacza Bruno Bonnet-Eymard dotyczącą historyczno-dogmatycznej genezy islamu, wraz z jej miejscem we współczesnej islamistyce. Owocem trzydziestu lat jego pracy jest tłumaczenie kilku pierwszych sur Koranu na język francuski, wraz z ich obszernym wydaniem krytycznym, opracowanym na podstawie własnej egzegezy filologicznej, historycznej i teologicznej. Bonnet-Eymard, należący do szkoły islamistów-sceptyków, odczytuje arabski tekst koraniczny również przez pryzmat innych języków semickich – głównie hebrajskiego i syryjskiego. Niezależnie od meritum wysnutych wniosków, egzegeza Bonnet-Eymard stanowi kopalnię wartościowych spostrzeżeń, wniosków i skojarzeń językowych nie do przecenienia dla krytyczno-naukowych studiów nad tekstem koranicznym.

The clash of Islamic civilization and the Western world has led to the transfer of Islamic sciences by Western orientalists. The sciences have been translated by orientalists into various languages such as Spanish, Latin, Italian and German. Among the sciences that have been translated is the knowledge of Arabic grammar. This knowledge of Arabic grammar is not only translated but also processed and adapted to the society in the Western world by seven orientalists of Arabic grammar. Accordingly, this writing aims to describe the history of the development of Arabic grammar in the Western world by seven orientalists in the period 16M-19M. The methodology of this study is qualitative which focuses on the framework of historical research methodology that is through the process of heuristics, criticism, interpretation and synthesis of sources. The results of the study found that the emergence of the discipline of Arabic grammar in the West began in the 16th century and was developed by seven orientalists in stages through their work.

Ce volume rassemble des textes, les uns connus, les autres méconnus, d’auteurs médiévaux (du IIe/VIIIe siècle au VIIe/XIIIe siècle) sur l’arabe : philologues (al-Farrā’, al-Zaǧǧāǧī, Ibn Fāris, Ibn Ǧinnī), mais aussi un philosophe (al-Fārābī), un géographe (al-Muqaddasī) et un voyageur (al-‘Abdarī). Il en propose une relecture critique, montrant comment philologie, théologie et philosophie interagissent dans l’« invention » de la luġa al-fuṣḥā (« la manière de parler la plus châtiée »), expression qui n’apparaît qu’au IVe/Xe siècle siècle et désigne aujourd’hui ce que les arabisants appellent l’arabe classique. Au-delà des renseignements qu’ils nous apportent sur l’histoire et la sociolinguistique de l’arabe (états, variétés, registres et statuts ; parlers nomades et sédentaires, diglossie, contact des langues), ils nous renseignent plus encore sur les représentations que l’on s’en fait ou que l’on doit s’en faire. Ils constituent ainsi une histoire moins linguistique qu’épilinguistique de la langue.

To comprehend how Arabic became a pluricentric language, we need to navigate through its rich history. In this paper, I focus on three stages in the development of Arabic: Classical Arabic, Middle Arabic and Modern Arabic. I explain how the fate of Arabic was permanently sealed in the Classical period with the emergence of Islam and the subsequent Islamic conquests. At the peak of the Islamic empire, the codification of Arabic preserved it as a dominant written language. However, the indigenous languages which Arabic had displaced in new regions gave way to non-dominant regional varieties. These varieties continued to diverge from the codified variety during the Middle period, giving rise to diglossia in Arabic. I conclude with a review of the modern period and the Arabic revival efforts which marked the creation of Modern Standard Arabic while the colonially influenced non-dominant varieties drifted further still.

Note liminaire : l'auteur de ces lignes ne prétend être en aucune manière un spécialiste du "moyen arabe", mais simplement un linguiste, qui, chargé d'un cours de linguistique arabe comprenant une partie "histoire de la langue", a été amené à lire, d'abord d'un oeil naïf, puis bientôt critique, la littérature sur le sujet, aussi profuse que confuse, notamment sur le plan terminologique.

يهدف هذا البحث إلى إعادة مراجعة إلى تاريخ وضع النحو العربي وأصولها. وليس السؤال المطروح هل القواعد العربية تعدّ نظاما نحويا معينا تم الاستيلاء عليه، بل السؤال هل وصل العرب إلى المفاهيم اللغوية الأساسية بناءً على أسس التفكير التي اتبعتها الأمم في تأمل طبيعة لغاتها من تحليل لأجزاء الجمل والكلمات، واستنباط الاستخدام الصحيح من البيانات في شكل قواعد في غياب أي تأثير خارجي؟ وأما قول المستشرقين أنها اللغة العربية كانت موجودة بعد بعثة رسول الله  فهو قول منقوضٌ بل هذه اللغة كانت موجودة قبل فجر الإسلام بشكل اللهجات التي مستخدمة منذ قدم في وادي الرافدين. إن تكون هذه الأدلة إسهاما في مجال النقد في الدراسة التارخية للغة العربية وقواعدها، إذ اكتشف البحث بعض الأدلة على إستثناء من تأثرها بالثقافات الأخرى، ومنها: القياس في آيات القرآن الكريم والنثر والشعر العربي وبعض الأمثلة من بعض كتب المترجمين مع استدلال من بعض النماذج اللغة النبطية القديمة لتكون دليلا على أن ما وضع من اللغة العربية وقواعدها من ابتكار العرب وليس من غيرهم.
الكلمات المفتاحية: الأصول، المنقوش القديم، اللغة العربية، القواعد، النحاة.

This volume contains a detailed grammatical description of the dialects of Old Arabic attested in the Safaitic script, an Ancient North Arabian alphabet used mainly in the deserts of southern Syria and north-eastern Jordan in the pre-Islamic period. It is the first complete grammar of any Ancient North Arabian corpus, making it an important contribution to the fields of Arabic and Semitic studies. The volume covers topics in script and orthography, phonology, morphology, and syntax, and contains an appendix of over 500 inscriptions and an annotated dictionary. The grammar is based on a corpus of 33,000 Safaitic inscriptions.

To tell you the truth, there's something strange in coming to a conference about Arab-Jews in Cambridge. We, my generation, were born in Israel, descendants of parents who were born in the Middle East under the colonial powers—Britain, in the case of Iraq, France and Italy in other cases. We come to England to speak about our Arab-Jewish past, its present, and perhaps the possibility of its future: we come to speak in English about the Arab-Jew who was torn between Hebrew and Arabic, and England is not a neutral place in the twentieth-century history of the Arab-Jew. In the context of the Arab-Jewish community of Iraq, it was a place to oppose, as a colonial power, but also a place to look up to, to aspire to, even to imagine oneself as its descendant in a dream, for example in one of the poems by Amira Hess, the Iraqi-born Jerusalemite poet: " I am the daughter of Baghdad / I'm ready to swear / I was born in London. " 1 Our photo albums are filled with photographs of our grandfathers in British suits; some of our grandparents had British names. The colonial phase in Iraqi Jewish history is the main phase of the modern, secular, national Arab-Jew after the years of Ottoman rule, with its multinational character that stressed religious and communal identities. This modern " project " of the Arab-Jew (which can be seen in literature and politics, for example in the works of Anwar Shaul) was one in which the Arab-Jew was supposed to take part, in the design and building of a modern Iraqi nation having secular and liberal concepts. Some of the Arab-Jews participated in the growing Arab national movement, in particular the local national movements in various countries, and in the resistance to colonial rule.

In the Islamic tradition, the language of the Koran is the “language of Qurayš”, and the “language of Qurayš” is the luġa al-fuṣḥā. Until recently, it has been mainly the poetic Koinè, for most Arabists, with the exception of some “hejazisms”, and the poetic Koinè is the basis for the so-called Classical Arabic. This article proposes a return to the oldest Arab grammatical sources, more specifically the Kitāb of Sībawayhi (d. 179/795?). Sībawayhi never speaks of al-luġa al-fuṣḥā, nor does he speak of the “language of Qurayš”. On the contrary, he refers more generally to “the language of the Hejaz” (or “of the people of the Hejaz”). He often sets it against the language (of the people) of Tamīm. Nevertheless, there is a double asymmetry. Whereas Sībawayhi sometimes says “we heard people from Tamīm say [...]”, he mentions the “language of the Hejaz” only from hearsay. More importantly, while “tamimisms” are often features that can still be found in modern Arabic dialects, the “hejazisms” are illustrated by Quranic examples: we conclude that the “language of the Hejaz” is but the Islamic name for the language of the Quran. Many of these “hejazisms” (phonological, morphological, syntactic) were not kept by the Classical language, which is to be understood as the product of the grammarians’ standardization work. Thus, it is not the language of the Quran that had influenced Arabic grammar: it is rather the Arabic grammar that has led to the “classicisation” of the language of the Quran via the qirā’āt ("readings").

This paper examines tenses in Saadya Gaon's translation of the Pentateuch from two viewpoints: the reflection of Biblical Hebrew tenses in Saadya's Post-Classical Arabic, and how much of the whole range of Arabic tenses, especially complex tenses, is manifested in this language. These two aspects are examined according to four versions of the translation: Ms. St. Petersburg, Derenbourg edition, Îasid edition, and the London Polyglot. Alongside the more obvious translations of past and future Saadya Gaon's translation reveals sensitivity to aspectual nuances like past perfect, present perfect, or continuous past, and inasmuch as can be observed in the translation, also to certain modal nuances. Attuned as he is to the great range of the Biblical Hebrew tenses, including their special nuances, Saadya exploits surprisingly little the variety of complex tenses involving an auxiliary verb available in Classical, Post Classical, and Middle Arabic for expressing broader nuances of time and aspect.* * This article is a combined, enlarged and revised version of two papers presented at the 2 nd International Conference of the Center for the Study of Jewish Languages held at the

This thesis investigates the Arabic grammatical terms that belong to the classes of noun, verb and particle. In order to propose a harmonization of these Arabic terms in Portuguese, we have tried to find equivalent terms in both languages and for this, three different possibilities have been generated: a) direct equivalence, which occurs when the terminological definition characteristics of the Arabic and Portuguese grammatical terms were coincidental; b) very nearly equivalence, that happens when not every characteristics were coincidental, in this case, we have investigated the description of use of more than one Portuguese grammatical term as an attempt to find a most appropriate equivalent to the Arabic term; c) non-equivalence, when a Portuguese equivalent has not been verified for the Arabic grammatical term, so we propose a terminological neologism or a paraphrase. The aim of this research is to set up the theoretical and methodological basis for the elaboration of an Arabic grammatical terms bilingual dictionary (Arabic-Portuguese).

The presence of Aramaic substrate elements in Palestinian colloquial Arabic, the supplanting language of Palestinian Aramaic dialects, is widely agreed upon and is especially evident in the lexical component. Yet detection, identification and – ultimately – analysis of those elements are still far from complete. This article presents several general methodological guidelines for this purpose and demonstrates them with a number of detailed case studies.

Die Frage ist für uns nicht : was ist das reinste, correcteste und schönste, sondern was ist überhaupt Arabisch ? Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer, 1854. L'arabe préislamique Avant l'islam, l'arabe n'est connu que par des inscriptions et graffites. C'est pourquoi on peut l'appeler arabe épigraphique préislamique. Cet arabe se laisse classer en trois groupes, selon un double critère de langue et d'écriture. seul et même) du wādī Ramm (300 ap. JC ?) et l'inscription d'Umm al-Ǧimāl (V e ou VI e siècle ap. JC ?) et deux inscriptions datées, celle de Zabad, près d'Alep (512 ap. JC) et celle de Ḥarrān (568 ap. JC). A ce groupe est venue s'ajouter, en 1964, une inscription, restée longtemps méconnue, celle du Ǧabal Usays (Sês en dialecte syrien), que je prendrai comme exemple de l'arabe épigraphique préislamique. Cette inscription a d'abord été publiée (dessin sans photo) par Muḥammad Abū l-Faraǧ al-'Ušš dans la revue al-Abḥāṯ à Beyrouth en 1964. Elle a été republiée (dessin + photo) par

Maltese is one of the so-called 'peripheral' dialects of Arabic, language varieties that are descended from Arabic but that have for various reasons become isolated from contact with its mainland. These are situated around the edges of the Arab world in southern Turkey, along the Iraqi and Syrian borders, in sub-Saharan Africa, Iran and central Asia, and in two Mediterranean Sea islands: Cyprus, where a peripheral Arabic variety is a minority language; and Malta, where it is the language of the majority of the population (Grigore 2019). All of these are of importance to an understanding of the history of Arabic and to the reconstruction of its prehistory. Yet, amongst them, Maltese offers a uniquely resource-rich field for historical linguistic study, owing to its long-documented history and literary tradition, with belletrists, historians, and language advocates promoting the language since medieval times. It is the only peripheral dialect of Arabic with a language academy, numerous published reference grammars and dictionaries, an active mass media and press, a robust online presence, an ever-increasing battery of digital tools, and an international society dedicated to its linguistics, as well as several cohorts of trained linguists who are native speakers of the language, whose work and that of non-native-speaker linguists has found an outlet in dedicated journals and other venues (Fabri 2010: 805-10 and 812). In this chapter, after briefly considering how Arabic came to be spoken on Malta, with some conclusions about the source dialects that went into the composition of the language, we shall examine Maltese in light of current linguistic thinking about peripheral (or remnant, or enclave) dialects, specifically with respect to their contact with other languages, their independent internal changes, and their preservation of features imparted to them by their donor populations. In so doing, we will mount a reconstruction of a grammatical feature of the Arabic dialects that

Semantic analysis has been a major method of interpretation in the Islamic intellectual tradition. It has its basic foundation in the Quran and Hadīth which emphasize on the application of correct linguistic symbols to arrive at the correct meanings. This paper attempts to briefly examine the question of language in the Islamic intellectual tradition and how it affects the development of Islamic sciences beginning from the 7 th century C.E. up to the 16 th century C.E.. Field of Research: Linguistics, origin of language, semantic analysis, Islamic sciences.

A summarizing essay of what old and new researchs allow us to say on the history of Arabic in Italian milieux after the end of the great season of the Norman and post-Norman Sicilian trilingual cultures. The essay shows that there are more traces (bilingual manuscripts, secondhand testimonies) of a serious knowledge of and on Arabic in Italy and Italian milieux that one would think between 1250 and 1500, an that Latin-Arabic material related with Italian milieux ist still understudied. The problem must be reevalued in a threefold perpective : merchant milieu : Italian Jewish communities : Italian courts.

In his Ḫaṣā’iṣ, Ibn Ǧinnī (d. 392/1002) refers, incidentally, to a differentiation between bedouin and sedentary Arabic dialects, the latter being characterized by a partial loss of the case and mood endings (’i‘rāb). In so far as Ibn Ǧinnī refers on this point to an earlier source of nearly two centuries, on the one hand, and indicates that there was hardly any Bedouin at the time to speak “correct” Arabic (faṣīḥ, that is to say, inflected mu‘rab) on the other hand, we can see in his remarks an implicit recognition of a situation of diglossia, the Bedouin dialects being at the origin of the high variety (al-luġa al-‘arabiyya al-faṣīḥa). This situation is also revealed by an anecdote, where we see a speaker of Bedouin origin alternating between what Ibn Ǧinnī calls “the two ways of speaking” (ǧihatā al-kalām), with and without case and mood endings. Despite appearances, it is not about sociolinguistics and history of language. It is about language theory, with the hypothesis of a phenomenon of entropy, linked to the use of the language,in which the speaker gets rid of case and mood endings, a source of difficulty and errors. It is also and above all an epilinguistic discourse, consistent with the linguistic ideology (thesis of the Bedouin faṣāḥa) and with theology (thesis of the “language of Ḥiǧāz” as al-luġa al-fuṣḥā), two theses difficult to reconcile.

Arabists and Arabic speakers seem to agree upon the duality of the Arabic language. Arabists identify as separate and distinct Literary Arabic and Colloquial Arabic, Arabic speakers identify as separate and distinct al-luġa al-fuṣḥā and al-luġa al-ʿāmmiyya. The present article argues that:
1) Arabists have come very gradually to the idea of the duality of Arabic and such a duality has been given a name only very recently (the concept of diglossia, borrowed from Greek linguistics, was introduced in Arabic linguistics in 1930);
2) the distinction introduced by Arabic speakers represents a hybridization between the traditional terminology and the Arabists’ conception: Arabic is thought of in terms of "purity" (faṣāḥa) and "corruption" (fasād), due to "common people" (‘āmma), but such a corruption, with some exceptions (Ibn Ḫaldūn), does not lead to autonomous varieties. Arabic speakers today seem to have rejoined the concept of diglossia, whilst Arabists have abandoned it in favour of that of a continuum.

A categorical initial Vsg (verb in singular) in Classical Arabic ('verbal sentence') is unique among the Semitic languages, and can therefore be postulated to be innovative in it. This paper situates this phenomenon in the larger context of the development of so-called deflected agreement (FSG agreement with a plural subject). A three-stage historical model is developed whereby stage 2 in particular saw an explosion of FSG agreement among almost all categories of plural subject nouns. It is during this phase that categorical initial Vsg is argued to have emerged. However, the origin of the characteristic Arabic deflected agreement rule is tentatively suggested to have begun not among plural nouns but among collectives, comparable phenomena in Hebrew and Syriac indicating a West Semitic origin. The three stages are to be understood as being each associated with different speech communities, which explains why each of the stages is still attested in different parts of the Arabic-speaking world today.

This paper discusses the feminine nominal suffixes -at and plural -āt in the Shammari Arabic dialect. It will show that its pausal allomorphs are best understood as the result of a pausal rule *t > y. The Shammari dialect must therefore go back to a dialect that had *-at in all environments and not -ah word-finally and -at in construct, as is often taken to be the original situation in all modern Arabic dialects. After this discussion, several other dialects that appear to point to feminine ending systems which deviate from the general modern Arabic trend will be discussed. A tentative suggestion is given that the Dōsiri dialect of Kuwait goes back to a dialect with a Classical Arabic distribution for the feminine singular ending: -a in pause, -at everywhere else.

Kahve, modern dünyanın en tercih edilen sıcak içeceklerinden biridir. Bünyesinde barındırdığı kafeinin insan vücudunda meydana getirdiği reaksiyonun dikkati arttırması ve uyanıklık hissiyatı sağlaması, keşfedildiği ilk günden bu yana entelektüel camianın ilgisinden kaçmamıştır. Geçmişi çok eskiye dayandığından, günümüz insanı, kahve fincanından aldığı her yudumda, büyük ve köklü bir kültür tarihine de iştirak ettiğinin bilincinde olmalıdır. Kahvenin kökeninin Afrika’ya dayandığı ve bir içecek olarak kullanımının ilk kez Güney Arabistan’da gerçekleştiği düşünülmektedir. Dolayısıyla günümüzde tüm dünyaya yayılmış olan kahve kültürünün başlangıcına inmek için, Arap edebiyatına göz atılması lüzumu doğmaktadır. Bugün pek çok dünya dilinde, o veya bu şekilde, benzer bir sesletim ile ifade edilen “kahve”, esasen Arapça kökenli bir sözcüktür. Muhtemelen kahve kelimesi, ilk olarak Arapça ḳ-h-y (قهي) kökünden türetilmiştir. Arap dilinde ḳahiye (قَهِيَ) fiili, “iştahı kesildi” anlamına gelmektedir. Bu anlam, ilk başlarda ḳahve (قَهْوَة) sözcüğünün, içenlerin iştahını kesen bir şarap cinsinin tanımlanması için kullanılmasıyla ilişkilidir. Arapçadaki bu kök, İbranicede “zayıf”, “yılgın”, “dumansı” ve “mat” gibi anlamlarla ilişkili olan k-h-h (כהה) köküyle de kökteştir. Kahvenin ne zaman ve hangi şartlar altında keşfedildiği kesin olarak bilinmemektedir. Kahve bitkisinin, Madagaskar’dan Sierra Leone’ye, Kongo’dan Etiyopya dağlarına kadar, Afrika’nın dağlık alanlarında yabani olarak yetişebildiği, hatta bu bitkinin Arap Yarımadası’na has olabileceği bir gerçektir. Mamafih kahvenin Antik Yunan, Roma, Orta Doğu ve Afrika halkları tarafından bilindiğine ve kullanıldığına dair somut bir veri bulunmamaktadır. Öte yandan Arap ve Avrupalı tarihçiler tarafından, bazı efsanevi Afrika anlatılarının aktarıldığı yahut altıncı yüzyıldan kalma bazı kayıp yazmalara atıfların yapıldığı gözlemlenmektedir. Ancak elimizdeki mevcut kayıtlar dikkate alındığında, kahve kültürünün on beşinci yüzyılın ortalarında, Güney Arabistan’da yer alan Yemen’in Sufi dergâhlarında ortaya çıktığını söylemek icap eder. Buna karşın Arap literatüründe kahve olgusunun etrafında şekillenen efsanelerin, kültürün ve şiirlerin yadsınamaz bir edebî değeri bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, kahvenin etimolojisinin ve Arap edebiyatındaki yansımalarının, bilimsel bir metotla araştırılması hedeflenmektedir.

Coffee is one of the most preferred hot beverages in the modern world. Because the caffeine in it increases the attention of the person and provides a feeling of alertness, it has attracted the attention of the intellectual community since the first day it was discovered. Due to its historical background, today’s people should be aware that with every sip they take from a cup of coffee, they also participate in a great and long-established cultural history. Coffee has its origins in Africa. But its use as a beverage is thought to have occurred for the first time in Southern Arabia. Therefore, to understand the beginning of the coffee culture, which has spread all over the world today, it is necessary to look at Arabic literature. Today, in many world languages, “coffee”, which is expressed with a similar pronunciation in one way or another, is a word of Arabic origin. Probably the word “qahwa” was originally derived from the Arabic root q-h-y (قهي). The verb qahiye (قَهِيَ) in Arabic means “he has lost his appetite”. This meaning is related to the use of the word qahwa (قَهْوَة) at first to describe a type of wine that makes its drinkers lose their appetite. This Arabic root is also cognate with the Hebrew root k-h-h (כהה), which is associated with the meanings such as “weak”, “dim”, “smoky” and “dull”. It is not known exactly when and under what conditions coffee was discovered. It is a fact that the coffee plant can grow wild in the highlands of Africa, from Madagascar to Sierra Leone, from Congo to the Ethiopian mountains, and that this plant may even be indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula. However, there is no satisfying data, which proves that the coffee was known and used by the peoples of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Middle East, and Africa. On the other hand, some Arab and European historians recorded some legendary African narratives or cited some lost manuscripts from the sixth century. However, considering the available records, it is necessary to say that the coffee culture emerged in the Sufi lodges of Yemen, located in South Arabia, in the middle of the fifteenth century. On the other hand, there is an undeniable literary value of the legends, culture, and poems, which were shaped around the phenomenon of coffee in Arabic literature. This study is aimed to investigate the etymology of coffee and its reflections in Arabic literature with a scientific method.

Vahşi doğada kendisini savunmasız vaziyette bulan insanoğlu, tabiatla mücadele etmek için etkili bir yol keşfetmeliydi. Kendisinden daha güçlü olan hayvanlardan korunmak ve zorlu çevresel şartlarla mücadele etmek için başvurabileceği yegâne çözüm, genlerinde saklanmış durumdaydı: bilgeliğe ve dayanışmaya güvenmek. İlk insanlardan günümüze bazı duvar resimleri ve ilkel aletlerin haricinde herhangi bir somut eser kalmamıştır. Buna karşın onların düşüncelerinin izlerine modern dillerde rastlamak mümkündür. Kimler tarafından söylendiği belli olmayan atasözleri, bizleri çetin doğa şartlarına ve muhtemel tehlikelere karşı hazırlamak isteyen kadim atalarımızın artlarında bıraktıkları en önemli kültürel mirastır. Modern araştırmacılar, insanoğlunun tek bir atadan geldiğini öne sürmektedir. Bu durum göz önünde bulundurulduğunda, farklı dillerdeki ortak atasözlerinin oldukça erken bir tarihte ortaya çıkmış olduğunu düşünmek mümkündür. Bu çalışma, bilimsel bir metotla, Arap, Türk ve Kazak dillerindeki ortak atasözleri üzerinde karşılaştırmalı bir inceleme yapılmasını hedeflemektedir. Dolayısıyla bu çalışmada, yalnızca üç dilde de anlamsal açıdan benzer olan atasözleri ele alınacaktır. Arap, Türk ve Kazak dilleri, birbirlerine çok uzak olmayan bir bölgede gelişim gösterdiği için, göz ardı edilemeyecek miktarda benzerlikler ihtiva etmektedir. Öte yandan İslam öncesinde, Arapların Türk halklarıyla dikkat çekici bir yakın temas kurmadıkları bir gerçektir. Ayrıca Arapça, Sâmî bir dil olması hasebiyle, Türk dillerine benzememektedir. Ne var ki kültürel farklılıklara karşın, insan aklı benzer bir metotla çalışmaktadır. Bu nedenle söz konusu ortak atasözleri, kültürel bir aktarımın ispat edilemeyecek bir örneği olabileceği gibi, ortak düşünce metotlarının bir sonucu da olabilir.

Mankind, finding himself defenseless in the wild, had to find an effective way to fight against nature. The solution he could apply to protect himself from stronger animals and fight against the harsh environmental conditions was hidden in his genes: relying on wisdom and solidarity. Other than some wall paintings and primitive tools, nothing has survived from early humans. On the other hand, it is possible to find traces of their thoughts in modern languages. Proverbs, whose origin is unknown, are the most important cultural heritage left behind by our ancient ancestors who wanted to prepare us for harsh natural conditions and possible dangers. Modern researchers suggest that humankind descended from a single ancestor. Considering this situation, it is possible to think that the common proverbs in different languages were shaped at a very early date. This study aims to make a comparative study on the common proverbs in Arabic, Turkish and Kazakh languages with a scientific method. Therefore, in this study, only the proverbs that are semantically similar in all three languages will be discussed. On the other hand, it is true that before Islam, the Arabs did not have a remarkable close contact with the Turkic peoples. In addition, since Arabic is a Semitic language, it is not similar to Turkic languages. However, despite cultural differences, the human mind works in a similar way. For this reason, the common proverbs in question may be an unprovable example of a cultural transfer, or they may be the result of common thought methods.

In the seventeenth chapter (or chapter XVII) of the ’Īḍāḥ, al-Zaǧǧāǧī distinguishes between two types of Arabic: inflected and non-inflected. Non-inflected Arabic is that of the majority or “masses” (‘āmma), whereas inflected Arabic is that of the minority or “elite” (ḫāṣṣa). But al-Zaǧǧāǧī limits the use of inflected Arabic to reference texts (Quran, hadith and poetry) and to a role, namely disambiguation, only conceivable with regard to the reading of a text written in scriptio defectiva. Consequently, it is not certain that this chapter offers an image of diglossia as the coexistence of two varieties, high and low. Rather, it may convey an image of diglossia within diglossia, to be understood as the coexistence of two registers, elevated and relaxed, within the high variety. It will be remembered that al-Ǧaḥiẓ does not oppose ‘āmma to ḫāṣṣa as the illiterate masses vs the literate elite, but only as the “ordinary” literate people to the happy few, i.e. those having perfect mastery of grammar. This chapter also arouses interest for its restriction of laḥn to an error against meaning (as opposed to ḫaṭa’, an error against expression) and, in connection with chapter XIV on the origin of grammar, for its enlargement of the concept of ’i‘rāb  from the sense of “desinential inflection” (i.e. case and mood endings) to that of inflection in general.

The incredible diversity of Arabic dialects makes it difficult to find linguistic isoglosses that can adequately differentiate between dialects across the Arabic-speaking world. This article proposes a diachronically situated classification of the Arabic dialects according to the form of their demonstrative pronouns, illustrated with a sample of over sixty dialects. Four major dialect groups are classified based on the form of their plural demonstratives: Dialects with (1) taː feminine singular, called consonant-alternating dialects; (2) reflexes of plural *haːʔula, called hawla dialects; (3) reflexes of masculine plural *ðaːʔula, often with feminine plurals derived from *ðaːʔila and possibly *ðaːʔala, referred to as ðawla dialects; and (4) Dialects with reflexes of plural *ðuː, called haːðuː dialects. The article compares these groups to established dialect classifications, finding that they reinforce some while calling the validity of others into question.

This article is an edition of an inscription in a variety of Thamudic that contains several glyph shapes that have not been found together in the same inscription, and are typical of inscriptions from central and southern Arabia. Interesting glyph shapes include the glyph shapes for ', w, and g. A personal name formed on a morphological H-Causative verb, familiar from the South Arabian, as well as Dadanitic inscriptions, is attested in this inscription. The formula found in the inscription is paralleled most closely by those typical of Thamudic C inscriptions. Finally, the article discusses the implications of the combination of these features, typically associated with different scripts and geographic distribution, for the field of ANA epigraphy.

Η παρούσα ανακοίνωση σκιαγραφεί τις διαδρομές της αραβικής γλώσσας στον χώρο
και τον χρόνο. Και όταν λέμε αραβική γλώσσα εννοούμε την κλασική αραβική, που
σήμερα αποδίδεται τόσο γραπτώς, όσο και προφορικώς και αποτελεί μια επίσημη,
παγκόσμια γλώσσα. Η παρακολούθηση της ιστορικής της πορείας βέβαια είναι
αδιανόητη, χωρίς την παρακολούθηση της ιστορίας των Αράβων. Μέσω της
ανακάλυψης του ρόλου που έπαιξαν στον κόσμο που βρήκαν, φωτίζονται και οι
διάφορες φάσεις από τις οποίες διήλθε η γλώσσα τους.

In a famous chapter of the Ṣāḥibī, Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004) elaborates what can be defined as the theological thesis of the Qur’anic language. This thesis can be summed up with a double equation : Qur’anic language = luġat Qurayš = al-luġa al-fuṣḥā. The latter expression is the Arabic equivalent of what Arabic scholars call Classical Arabic; in fact it is a rewriting of ’afṣaḥ al-luġāt al-‘arabiyya (« the most refined of Arabic idioms »), itself being a rewriting from ’afṣaḥ al-‘Arab lisānan (« the most refined among the Arabs, as far as language is concerned »), as it appears in Ibn Fāris’ text. The first equation is based on the Qur’anic text (14, 4), whereas the second has an exclusively dogmatic justification. However, Ibn Fāris enriches the latter with a sociolinguistic hypothesis: Mecca is the centre of an intertribal Arab pilgrimage; as a result the Qurayš have been able to draw from the best of each Arabic language variety. This hypothesis comes from an earlier text, dating nearly two-centuries before and attributed to al-Farrā’ (d. 207/822), which was published, translated into English and commented by Paul Kahle (1875-1964) in The Cairo Geniza. Al-Farrā’ situates this hypothesis in its own context, a quite polemic one, which sees the opposition of two groups: those who detect the luġa al-fuṣḥā in the language of the Qur’an and the Sunna, and those who see it in the language of the Bedouin poetry and ’ayyām (« days »). Al-Farrā’’s hypothesis, reproposed by Ibn Fāris, has then the sole aim of reconciling theological truth (i.e. Qur’anic language = luġat Qurayš = al-luġa al-fuṣḥā) and philological truth (i.e. the fact that some features referred to in the luġa al-ḥiǧāziyya, to which the luġat Qurayš belongs, are not those of the luġa al-fuṣḥā).

The geographer Muqaddasī is reputed to have provided in his Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī ma‘rifat al-’aqālīm a considerable amount of information on the linguistic situation of the Muslim world during the IVth/Xth century. A meticulous analysis of the data concerning Arabic language leads us to a double conclusion : 1) Muqaddasī distinguishes between two statuses of Arabic, which can be assimilated to two main varieties : on the one hand, Arabic as a vehicular language, to which he gives the same name of ‘arabiyya as to the whole of it; on the other hand Arabic as a vernacular language, which he calls lisān al-qawm (« language of the people ») and which he considers as being made up of luġāt muḫtalifa (« different ways of speech »). As a vehicle of the learned culture, the ‘arabiyya is better mastered by non arabophones, i.e. those whose native language is not Arabic and for whom Arabic does not constitute a vernacular language. A remarkable example is represented by the educated men of letters of Nishapur, capital of the Iranian state of the Samanids. On the contrary Muqaddasī deplores the mistakes (especially as far as declension endings are concerned) of the Great Qadi of Baghdad in his maǧlis; 2) The information given by Muqaddasī is more of an epilinguistic than of a linguistic nature. As a matter of fact, he mentions but two features, a phonological and a morphological one, of a same Arabic speech (that of Aden). On the contrary, it is extremely important to recognise in his representations the direct echo of the different theses concerning the Arabic language at that time, namely the « theological » and the « philosophical » one.

The following English text (with Dutch translation following) on "Arabicization, Islamization, and the Colonies of the Conquerors" is a full version of a paper I delivered in abbreviated fashion for the Zenobia Foundation on November 14, 2015. The Dutch version has appeared before the English publication. I know that many of my colleagues do not read Dutch, so I am posting the English original final draft along with the published Dutch, which occupies the second part of this pdf file. I have indicated the page numbers of the Dutch version in the English text to facilitate cross-reference; of course, the published Dutch version should be cited, at least until the English version appears in print (expected 2019).

A comparative essay on the Medieval longue durée history of  Arabic and Latin as world languages. The essay focuses on some counterintuitive sociolinguistic comparative issues : we can alter the vision of a progressive disappearance of Latin toward progressive triumph of Arabic in their respective areas during the Middle Ages by refining our picture of the links between these languages and the other languages that lived in symbiosis with them. We can also use some special features well studied in Latin or in Arabic (lexicography,  art of sophisticated political prose are two examples) and develop some new comparative approaches between the two fields. We must reintroduce at least a partly comparative approach if we do not want to get entrapped into distortions and mirror-effects (examples of unreliable theories of genetic links between some Latin and Arabic cultural devices).

This article proposes to reinterpret a famous text by Ibn Fâris (d. 395/1004), a watered-down version of a text by al-Farrâ' (d. 207/822), as an attempt to reconcile two truths, a theological truth and a philological truth, in matters of Quranic language.

The history of Arabic was recently the subject of a monograph-length study by M. al-Sharkawi. This review uses the work to outline some common methodological pitfalls in studying the history of Arabic, while highlighting recent advances in archaeology and epigraphy to challenge some long held assumptions about Arabic's past.

In the last sections of the Muqaddima, Ibn Ḫaldūn deals with some general issues related to
languages, then he focuses on the Arabic language by writing a different outline from the one grammarians
usually give. As a matter of fact, they are bound to a static representation of the linguistic reality, which
ultimately includes only one language, that of the origins, harmonious and perfect, whose distinctive feature is
the ’i‘rāb. Anything else is considered by them just as a corrupt form, a barbarization of this one language. The
attention to historical and social changes, instead, allowed Ibn Ḫaldūn to elaborate a more dynamic model
which embraces the idea of variation, not only synchronically, as it is for grammarians, also diachronically.
Within this model the idea of corruption is just the beginning of a process of linguistic transformation that led
to the appearance of at least three independent varieties of Arabic, each one with its own features.
Keywords: Ibn Ḫaldūn’s Muqaddima; Arabic language; linguistic variation; contact of languages; Bedouin
and sedentary Arabic; linguistic habit, ’i‘rāb, corruption (fasād), lisān, luġa.

The purpose of this paper is a case study. The editors of Šarḥ al-Šāfiya, written by Raḍī al-dīn al-Astarābāḏī (died in 688/1289), found in his text an occurrence of the word ’ayš, that they spelled ’ayšin. A lengthy footnote was added, but the footnote is, in fact, for the most part, a quotation from another book, the Šifā’ al-ġalīl, written by Šihāb al-dīn al-Ḫafāǧī (died in 1069/1659). Three opinions are examined in this footonote : 1) ’ayšin is an ancient and perfectly correct variant of ’ayyu šay’in ; 2) it is a so-called muwallada expression, i.e. not pure Arabic ; 3) it is an expression that has the same meaning as ’ayy šay’ without being a simplified form of it. The first opinion conforms to Arabic linguistic ideology and it is prefered by the editors, like, before them, Šihāb al-dīn al-Ḫafāǧī. The second, by the use of the term muwallada, may be interpreted as the appearance of a Middle Arabic form, between Old Arabic ’ayyu šay’in and New Arabic ’ēš. The third may reflect a situation of diglossia. In this situation ’ayšin may be a simple classicization of the colloquial form ’ēš and it belongs to the mixed Arabic (neither Classical nor Colloquial). Finally, this text presents us with the problem that one finds in understanding Arabic : should we interpret the available data historically and/or sociolinguistically ?

For a long time, the prolific scholar of Andalusi Arabic, F. Corriente has alluded to a Yemenite connection of Andalusi Arabic. This paper aims to show that there is no convincing evidence to assume a large Yemeni presence in Andalusia based on linguistic grounds.