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This introductory chapter situates the study in two contexts. First, the two kinds of sources used for the interpretation of Arabic are described. On the one hand are the written Arabic sources which become available in a significant volume towards the end of the 2nd/8th centuries; particularly important are the early Arabic grammars. On the other are reconstructions using the comparative method derived from the contemporary Arabic dialects. These lead to a reconstruction of what is termed, pre-diasporic Arabic, an Arabic reconstructible to the 7th century, i.e., the era before Arabic spread outside of its Arabian borders. The second context is an overview of western approaches to the study of the history of Arabic. It is suggested that these rarely have applied the comparative method systematically, but rather have been developed on the basis of non-historical dichotomies, such as ‘analytic vs. synthetic’, or have assumed that Classical Arabic may be regarded as a proto-language.

The Islamic Empire conquered peoples as far north as Syria and Iraq, as far east as the Indus River, as far west as Morocco and Spain, and southward to Chad and Sudan. This spread was quite rapid, and in each new location, Arabs encountered speakers of other languages, many of whom had urgent reason to acquire the conquering language quickly, especially since it was the means to understand a successfully imposed religion. These events indicate that a millennium and a half later, the Arabic spoken natively in these locations would turn out to be markedly streamlined compared to the language spoken by the nomads of the 7th century. This chapter argues that this is exactly what happened to Arabic across the Islamic Empire.

This chapter recapitulates the main findings of the book. It is emphasized that interpreting Arabic language history requires many more detailed, case studies, models of which are presented in the preceding chapters. It is suggested that taken as a whole, contemporary Arabic, the dialects, are historically conservative in the sense that they exhibit relatively little change from a reconstructed pre-diasporic Arabic. This implicates a major re-thinking not only of Arabic language history, but also of Semitic in general, which has conventionally assumed the Old Arabic, Neo-Arabic dichotomy. It is further noted that besides a linguistic history, a sociolinguistic history of Arabic is needed to describe and explain the emergence of Classical Arabic.

This chapter examines the essential elements that produced a full scientific culture in Western Europe by comparing the constituent elements in the one culture in which it developed with other cultures that had the same constitutive elements but did not develop science. These are the control cases, which include India, Tibet, China, and the Byzantine Empire. The first civilization in the world to develop a full scientific culture was medieval Western Europe. It led directly to the scientific revolution—during which some changes to the details of the constituent elements took place—and continued on down to modern science. The essential elements of medieval science were introduced to Western Europe via Classical Arabic civilization. The chapter describes the appearance of science in Medieval Latin Europe and the decline of science in the medieval Islamic world.

This chapter examines Islamization in Classical Arabic Central Asia. The Arab Empire founded by the prophet Muhammad expanded rapidly, defeating the Byzantine Empire and capturing Syria (637) and Egypt (640). At the same time, the Arabs defeated the Sasanid Persian Empire (637) and raced across Persia into Central Asia. Within a very short time, early Arab Islamic culture came into direct, intimate contact with several major civilized areas, including the Graeco-Roman-influenced cultures of the Levant and North Africa, Persian culture, and the Buddhist cultures of Central Asia. From them the Muslims adopted various cultural elements. This chapter considers when, where, and how the Muslims acquired the recursive argument method and the Islamic college or madrasa. It shows that the recursive argument method is used in Arabic works by the Central Asian scientist and philosopher Avicenna.

This book investigates how the recursive argument method, the actual medieval “scientific method,” was transmitted along with the college to medieval Western Europe from Classical Arabic civilization, and how the Muslims of Central Asia had earlier adopted both from Buddhist Central Asian civilization. It analyzes the recursive argument method and gives examples showing its formation and development at each stage and in each of the relevant languages. This chapter considers the recursive argument method and related issues, especially the colleges, in the context of the full scientific culture that developed in medieval Western Europe in connection with the transmission of these two cultural elements.

This chapter raises three objections about the development of a full scientific culture and examines the modern descendants of the recursive argument method. It suggests that colleges and the recursive argument method, though they had developed together in Buddhist Central Asia, and continued to develop in Islamic guise when that region converted to Islam, seem to have been focused mainly on theology and religious jurisprudence in Classical Arabic civilization. It also discusses the difference between a civilization that has a few scientists and some science, and a civilization that has a full scientific culture. Finally, it considers the scientific method, the use of the recursive scientific method in modern science, experimental psychology, and the ideal structure of a modern humanities dissertation.

This presents some concluding thoughts from the author. It identifies two facts that render Arabic inclusive in many respects. The first is the non-distinction between Classic Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and the colloquials by the mass of native speakers who may think they speak Arabic, perhaps bad Arabic, but still perceived by many as a corrupted version of the same language as that of the Qur'an. An aggregate picture of Arabic is prevalent. The second fact that this book has tried to capture is the diversity of the Arab world, whether religious, historical, political, ethnic, social, or economic. This diversity in itself renders Arabic an inclusive, common component of different communities. Tribes, religious groups, upheavals, rapid urbanisation, wars, civil wars, social and political changes, dislocation of large groups, ethnic minorities, varied ethno-geographic, and historical backgrounds are all characteristics of the Arab world that are reflected directly or indirectly through language.

This chapter presents a bird's-eye view of the linguistic status quo of the Arab world. The first part deals with issues relating to the vertical (diglossia) and the second deals with issues related to the horizontal (national varieties/groups of dialects). The chapter is organized as follows. Section 1.1 discusses the concept of diglossia as analysed by Charles Ferguson and others, and the developments that have occurred in the evolution of this concept until the present day. It also differentiates between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic. Section 1.2 discusses the growing realisation by a number of linguists that the ‘standard’ variety is not necessarily the same as the ‘prestige’ variety in Arab speech communities. Finally, the chapter presents concrete examples of different dialects in the Arab world and compares and contrasts them in real contexts.

Chapter 1 begins with a study of the most evidently literal, translational rewriting of a classical Arabic literary corpus. It analyses in depth Habib Tengour’s chapbook Césure (2006). I read Tengour’s literal translations of images and metaphors culled from the archive of the classical Arabic odes, alongside his American translator Pierre Joris’s rendering of his translations of translations. The juxtaposition of the old Arabic texts, the history of their English translations, and Tengour’s original French language poems, which are then cut through with Joris’s American translational idiom, produces a four- sided linguistic refraction that unravels how Tengour unwrites the Arabic, so as to rewrite it forward into a falsely, seemingly monolingual French. I situate the poetics of translation and intertextuality in relation to Tengour and Joris’s respective, trans-Atlantic editorial and publishing worlds. I pay particular attention to how they capture and maintain the ‘pseudo-opacity’ of an original translingual, translational poetics, which they premise on the multicultural plurilingualism of the Maghreb. In so doing, we revisit translation theory from Joris’s perspective as an active contemporary American translator, theoretician, essayist, poetician and poet, with a particular focus accorded to a consideration of the formative, vagrant structure and thematics of the classical Arabic odes. Together, Tengour and Joris point to a twentieth- and twenty-first-century tradition of trans-Atlantic Franco-American translations, which undercuts the place afforded to the French language. I conclude with the assertion that Tengour and Joris render the French language an effaceable, hopelessly transparent mode of translation between two series of opacities: classical, high literary Arabic on the one hand, American English on the other.

This chapter deals primarily with two kinds of stories about bandits (in Arabic, anyone of whom it is said kāna yaqṭa‘u al-ṭarīq). In stories of the first kind, bandits explain why they rob travellers. In stories of the second kind, biographers claim that various ʿAbbāsid figures spent some of their lives as highwaymen. I will argue that the two kinds of reports may productively be read together. Admittedly, this material is too limited in quantity and too self-consciously literary to permit a reliable characterisation of rural unrest during the early ʿAbbāsid period. Even so, a close reading of these reports will allow us to offer some tentative proposals about how banditry was imagined and, more generally, how the various genres of Classical Arabic narrative responded to the legal, ethical and moral questions raised by highway robbery.

This chapter focuses on Alf Layla, with particular emphasis on Naḥda's interest in this work. To many educated Arabs, Alf Layla was the exact opposite of literary classics which are often cited and read. The component tales of Alf Layla were common knowledge but they were seen as at best ‘idle stories’ that fell under Qur'anic condemnation. However, when placed within the rudiments of classical Arabic literature, Alf Layla does not conform to the high style which Tāhā Husayn himself once declared a sine qua non of the literary canon. So far, no interest had been shown in the narrative techniques that are so engaging a feature of Alf Layla. The elite that had set out not to be elitist continued to dedicate itself to serving the masses without seeking any input from them.