# Arabic: Where did فصحى (fuSHa) come from?



## Aydintashar

Are there any Arabs, who really speak فصحة as their native tongue? We know that, it is the language of Quran. Quran declares that it was written in a language understandable for the general folk. It follows that the eloquent (standard) Arabic language existed as the native tongue of certain folks in the peninsula at least as early as the 7th century. But, such native folks could not have any application for a language of such complexity in grammar and such lexical capacity.
We really face a difficult question. All standard languages have evolved out of native dialects in the course of centuries, due to cultural activities. In case of Arabic, however, we encounter a "truly" standard language at a very early date, without being able to trace the cultural path, which led to its formation. 
Everybody knows that this is a complicated question, but I think we should really look at the matter, in the first step, by making sure whether there are still people who really speak in the standard Arabic language, which is truly their native tongue, and is not acquired from television!


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## linguist786

There have been many threads on فصحى (notice spelling) which you can search for. Your questions will be answered there!


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## WadiH

If I've understood you correctly, you are basically doubtful that anyone ever spoke a Fus7a-type language historically and the reason  for your doubts is that you feel that Classical Arabic is too complex grammatically and lexically to have ever possibly been anyone's native language.

I believe your assumption about Classical Arabic's "complexity" is wrong to begin with.  Let's start with grammar, which we can further subdivide into morphology and syntax:

1) Morphology: the morphological system of Classical Arabic remains substantially intact in modern, spoken Arabic dialects today.  In fact, the morphology of my grandparents' native dialect is arguably richer than that of MSA.  So, we can't say that Classical Arabic morphology is too complex to be anyone's native language.

2) Syntax: although many modern-day Arabic-speakers are mystified by the case/mood system of Classical Arabic and don't even bother to try to learn it, objectively speaking, it is not a terribly difficult system.  Many modern-day languages with tens of millions of speakers employ similar systems.  Heck, even English has some vestiges of a case system ("I" v. "me," "us" v. "we," etc.).  Now add to this that ancient Semitic tongues such as Akkadian did employ similar systems, it makes sense for ancient Arabic to have possessed one as well.  So, in conclusion, there is nothing extraordinary about Classical Arabic syntax either (as much as Arabs like to think otherwise).

As for lexicon, if you were to study the traditional dialects of Najd, Hejaz and Yemen you will find them no less rich in vocabulary than Classical Arabic (though you should also bear in mind that the CA lexicon does draw on various regional dialects, which accounts to some extent for its vastness).

So, as you can see from the above, there is nothing about CA grammar or lexicon that would prevent it from being anyone's native tongue (or a composite of several native tongues).

You posed another question about whether CA is still spoken as a native language today. Obviously, like all languages from 1400 years ago, Arabic has evolved into something different from what it was 1400 years ago, so, no, nobody speaks the 7th century stage of Arabic as his or her native tongue.  I fail to see how this is relevant to the question of whether FuS7a-type dialects ever existed in the past.


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## Tracer

This is a tricky question. It is also a “dangerous” question because inevitably, toes are going to be stepped on. 


Let me explain myself.


Any discussion of “origins” with regard to Arabic language and Arab culture and history is a very sensitive subject because there are 2 camps, so to speak, on these subjects. 



One camp views the traditional “narrative” (of whatever subject you’re talking about) as rock solid factual, without any variation allowed. Period.

The other camp, usually populated by “foreigners” or specifically “westerners”, takes a more critical view of the “traditional” narrative, asks embarrassing questions and often comes to diametrically opposed conclusions than those held by the “traditionalists”. 

The juxtaposition of “Classical” Arabic vis a vis the Dialects is one such subject. 

The traditional view is that originally, there was a “Classical” language spoken by the “original” Arabs (who knows how long ago). And……that the modern-day dialects are ultimately derived from this Ur-language and that these dialects are a sort of “debased” form of the pure FusHa, the language of Imru’ Al Qais, Ta'abbata Sharran, al-Nabighah and so on, and even before that.

This view, though interesting and romantic, is pure fiction and goes against every known contemporary linguistic principle, historical, theoretical and factual.

What really happened is this: 

There was ALWAYS a Dialect and a FusHa. 

No one ever spoke “classical” Arabic as an “everyday” language, in the same way that no one ever spoke “classical” Latin even in the most ancient of Roman times. 
Both FusHa and classical Latin were used for “formal” occasions and when writing was developed, these formal “varieties” became the medium of expression for the written word. But for everyday use, a “simplified” variety of the language was used.

When the Romans “conquered the world”, I assure you they were not speaking “classical” Latin as they overran region after region. In the same way, when the Arabs began their conquests, they were not using fusHa to communicate with each other – no way.

In fact, I will go further than that. I am convinced that “classical” Arabic (and “classical” Latin) came FROM the spoken languages, not the other way around. Both “classical” forms were in a sense contrived, invented, constructed, as an ideal language…..one that everyone “aspired” to speak, but which no one could ever really reach.

To believe that thousands of years ago some Bedu was speaking FusHa in his everyday conversations means that Arabic was first a written, formal language and only later did it become a spoken language. In other words, it was written before it was spoken.

If you want to believe that, go right ahead. But I can’t. All languages were first spoken and only later….much later…… did they become formalized and written. Even Arabic.


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## Xence

Tracer said:
			
		

> I am convinced that “classical” Arabic (and “classical” Latin) came FROM the spoken languages, not the other way around. Both “classical” forms were in a sense contrived, invented, constructed, as an ideal language…



That's what I beleive, too.




			
				Tracer said:
			
		

> To believe that thousands of years ago some Bedu was speaking FusHa in his everyday conversations means that Arabic was first a written, formal language and only later did it become a spoken language.



Good point also here.


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## WadiH

Tracer said:


> One camp views the traditional “narrative” (of whatever subject you’re talking about) as rock solid factual, without any variation allowed. Period.
> 
> The other camp, usually populated by “foreigners” or specifically “westerners”, takes a more critical view of the “traditional” narrative, asks embarrassing questions and often comes to diametrically opposed conclusions than those held by the “traditionalists”.



This description is simply a caricature.  There are many shades of opinion on these issues and, in any case, there are many (probably a majority) of "Western" scholars today who accept some version or variation on what you call the "traditional" narrative.



> The juxtaposition of “Classical” Arabic vis a vis the Dialects is one such subject.
> 
> The traditional view is that originally, there was a “Classical” language spoken by the “original” Arabs (who knows how long ago). And……that the modern-day dialects are ultimately derived from this Ur-language and that these dialects are a sort of “debased” form of the pure FusHa, the language of Imru’ Al Qais, Ta'abbata Sharran, al-Nabighah and so on, and even before that.
> 
> This view, though interesting and romantic, is pure fiction and goes against every known contemporary linguistic principle, historical, theoretical and factual.



Which principles are these?  I'm very interested in knowing what they are.



> What really happened is this:
> 
> There was ALWAYS a Dialect and a FusHa.



The Classical Arabic scholars already knew and acknowledged that the Arabs spoke many dialects.  There is nothing new or controversial about that.



> No one ever spoke “classical” Arabic as an “everyday” language,



That is true in some sense, but not in the sense that you're arguing for.



> in the same way that no one ever spoke “classical” Latin even in the most ancient of Roman times.
> Both FusHa and classical Latin were used for “formal” occasions and when writing was developed, these formal “varieties” became the medium of expression for the written word. But for everyday use, a “simplified” variety of the language was used.



And where did this "formal variety" come from?  What caused it to emerge?  What was the point of the "simplified" variety?

(Of course, implicit in your narrative is the assumption that the distance between these "everyday varieties" and the "formal variety" is analogous to the difference between today's dialects and MSA.  But there is no evidence that this was the case.  In fact, there isn't even a good reason to believe that this was the case)



> In fact, I will go further than that. I am convinced that “classical” Arabic (and “classical” Latin) came FROM the spoken languages, not the other way around. Both “classical” forms were in a sense contrived, invented, constructed, as an ideal language…..one that everyone “aspired” to speak, but which no one could ever really reach.



Again, this has an element of truth to it (at least the "ideal" part, probably not the "invented" part*), but you vastly overstate the case.  The differences between the "classical" form and the everyday form (at least in the heartland of Arabia) appear to have been quite minor and in no way comparable to the difference between today's dialects and MSA, for example.  In other words, the idea that modern dialects descend from CA, though not strictly accurate, is not that far off the mark either.  Think of a modern-day Khaliji soap opera: no one in the Khalij speaks quite the same way as the actors in the soap opera, but actors' speech is nonetheless based on how everyday people speak and cannot be deemed to be a separate language simply because certain localisms and phonological features are eschewed or that the actors pick and choose their words and vocabularies from several closely-related dialects.



> To believe that thousands of years ago some Bedu was speaking FusHa in his everyday conversations means that Arabic was first a written, formal language and only later did it become a spoken language. In other words, it was written before it was spoken.



No it doesn't mean that at all.  This statement simply assumes that Classical Arabic began as a written language, but you haven't given any reason to start from this assumption to begin with.  Besides, this statement contradicts your earlier statement that the "formal variety" (as you called it) predated the development of Arabic writing.

To put it briefly, yes there were dialects in those times, but they were for the most part simply variations or varieties of FuS7a (notice that in my earlier post I referred to them as FuS7a-type dialects).  FuS7a simply refers to the common features of these dialects plus certain prestige usages and expressions.  So, yes, I think there were indeed many Bedu who spoke something very similar to FuS7a, and it is quite clear and obvious that the current dialects descend from these FuS7a-type dialects.  All you need to do is read a 19th century bedouin poem and compare it to a pre-Islamic or early-Islamic poem to see this.  In a strict sense, I suppose, we can say that none of these ancient dialects was identical to Classical Arabic, but given the nature of the differences here that would just be pedantic.

* The one element of today's FuS7a that I would agree is contrived would be the phonology, but we know this from the testimonies of the Classical scholars themselves, not from mere guesswork.


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## Tracer

To: Wadi Hanifa Thank you kindly for your very informative comment to my post.

It is true I tend to exaggerate and to “vastly overstate” my case, but I do this more to make or clarify or exemplify a point rather than to convince. (By the way, I do this everywhere, not just on this Forum).

To fully address the issues and to answer you completely, I’d have to write at least one PhD dissertation and I can’t do that. I’ll simply cede to most of your arguments and only comment briefly on some, always keeping in mind that whatever statements are made cannot be “proved” in the sense that no written records exist for most of the points raised here. It is all pure conjecture and “educated” guesses.

In fact, I sort of feel like his eminence Taha Hussein who, as you are aware, questioned the very authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry and even of the Hadith (but that’s another issue).

1. You asked about the origin and the cause for the emergence of the fusHa. In my view, the “origin” was the spoken dialects extant in Arabia. That’s where it came from. 

That is to say, a “lingua franca” was needed among the various tribes, both for communication and for solidifying the “oral traditions” handed down from generation to generation. 

The “dialects” were felt to be insufficiently “stable” for these purposes. A formalized, unchanging “variety” of Arabic was needed and so it developed little by little until at some point, it was “formalized” into the fusHa.

*I think this is a perfectly plausible explanation as to why and how the fusHa developed. Many languages, perhaps most, have had similar developments.*

In fact, the fusHa pretty much serves similar purposes in modern times. It’s used in the written and media forms of communication and as a lingua franca throughout the Arabic speaking world. (But no one speaks it at home).

2. You asked “what was the point of the “simplified” variety?” Well, that’s assuming the “simplified” variety developed from a “foundational” variety. My view is it didn’t. *A “simplified” variety was always in use – in fact, a "simplified" Arabic was the original Arabic.* 

I will admit that there must have been an original language somewhere, sometime, from which all the dialects eventually emerged, *but that original dialect or “speech form” or whatever you want to call it* *wasn’t the fusHa. The fusHa came much later.*

*That’s where we differ. That’s the crux of the matter. Unless I’m reading you wrong, you believe that the fusHa predated the dialects whether they were “fusHa like” or not.*

*I say it was the other way around.* 

Some of your statements actually prove my point. You say, for example:

*“…yes there were dialects in those times, but they were for the most part simply variations or varieties of FuS7a…”*

Well, yes, I agree. But that’s because the fusHa was constructed from several prominent dialects already spoken in Arabia and therefore, almost by default, they were close to the fusHa. But…..that doesn’t mean that the dialects CAME from the fusHa….it proves just the opposite. *The fusHa came from or was constructed from the dialects.*

So one should really state: *“The fusHa was a variation (or combination) of many dialects” and not “the dialects were variations of the fusHa.” *


(By the way, “simplified” is a bad term. In my opinion, the dialects are vastly more difficult to “get right” and to learn than is MSA. It is MSA that’s “simplified”, not the other way around).


That’s all I have time for.


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## Aydintashar

Wadi Hanifa said:


> 1) Morphology: the morphological system of Classical Arabic remains substantially intact in modern, spoken Arabic dialects today. In fact, the morphology of my grandparents' native dialect is arguably richer than that of MSA. So, we can't say that Classical Arabic morphology is too complex to be anyone's native language.



It is difficult to accept your argument. In fact, we notice considerably large variations in morphology, and differences are sometimes large enough to justify considering some of the dialects as independent languages. But, this is natural for any language, and is not critical for our discussion.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> 2) Syntax: although many modern-day Arabic-speakers are mystified by the case/mood system of Classical Arabic and don't even bother to try to learn it, objectively speaking, it is not a terribly difficult system. Many modern-day languages with tens of millions of speakers employ similar systems. Heck, even English has some vestiges of a case system ("I" v. "me," "us" v. "we," etc.). Now add to this that ancient Semitic tongues such as Akkadian did employ similar systems, it makes sense for ancient Arabic to have possessed one as well. So, in conclusion, there is nothing extraordinary about Classical Arabic syntax either (as much as Arabs like to think otherwise).



Again difficult to accept your argument. None of the ancient Semitic (and even non-Semitic) languages seem to be as complex as classical Arabic as far as syntax is concerned. Syntax is not merely case and mood.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> You posed another question about whether CA is still spoken as a native language today. Obviously, like all languages from 1400 years ago, Arabic has evolved into something different from what it was 1400 years ago, so, no, nobody speaks the 7th century stage of Arabic as his or her native tongue. I fail to see how this is relevant to the question of whether FuS7a-type dialects ever existed in the past.



If there are people speaking FuSHa at home, as native language, most probably they inherited it from their forefathers, rather than learning it at school, or from the mass media. This would strongly support the idea that rhetorical Arabic was a native language in the past, rather than being invented by high society as lingua franca.
This is in sharp contrast to classical Latin. It is obvious that, classical Latin was intended to satisfy the linguistic needs of high society in the Roman Empire. I am very much in favour of the theory that classical Latin was an invented language. Latin languages are not descendants of classical Latin. They are more similar to each other than they are to classical Latin. The opposite would have been true, if they had descended from classical Latin. Thus, classical Latin was invented on the basis of vulgar Latin dialects by men of letters supported by the authorities of the Roman Empire.
In case of Araboc, we cannot depict any such empire, who would have possibly campaigned the invention of a literary language, all the more so since there is no appreciable written records from pre-Islamic times, and the alphabet was obviously undeveloped. Therefore, classical Arabic must have existed as oral tradition, prior to being written. This is where we encounter the critical question: While the standard dialect evolves from local dialects for all languages, Arabic seems to demonstrate the reverse scenario.


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## suma

Tracer, you make some provacative assurtions (tho you're certainly not the first to do so.)
But if you would, please state your credentials and level of scholarship in Arabic and/or linguistics.


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## Abu Rashid

Tracer,



			
				Tracer said:
			
		

> In fact, I will go further than that. I am convinced that “classical”  Arabic (and “classical” Latin) came FROM the spoken languages, not the  other way around. Both “classical” forms were in a sense contrived,  invented, constructed, as an ideal language…..one that everyone  “aspired” to speak, but which no one could ever really reach.



For this to be even remotely plausible, then those Arabs who 'contrived' Fus7a from the spoken dialects must've been the greatest linguists to have ever existed. Many of the archaic Semitic features that are found in fus7a are not found in the spoken dialects (although bits of it may be found in various different dialects, not in the one dialect). So for it to have been contrived from the spoken dialects, the contrivers must've re-constructed many of the proto-Semitic features that exist in Fus7a, but don't exist in the spoken dialects.

I don't think anyone doubts that spoken dialects may have had some influence on the standardisation of fus7a, but to say it's contrived from them is just completely illogical.


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## linguist786

I was always under the impression that "once upon a time", fus7a was spoken by the Arabs in the Arabian peninsula (with some variation, but not as hugely as we have today), but as Islam spread further and further (like many parts of Africa for example) then the language had such an influence on them that they adopted it as their own language, but the local languages at the time will have influenced the Arabic - which caused a sort of evolution of that particular dialect.


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## Tracer

To: Abu Rashid (et al) -

I am aware that 250 million native Arabic speakers will disagree with my statements on the “origins” of CA. Just like I am aware that each of those speakers will tell me in no uncertain terms that HIS dialect is the “closest” to the FusHa. In both cases, I will simply shake my head in despair and walk away.

Let me just say the following here:

1. I consider myself a reasonable and rational person. It is impossible for me to believe that when Arabic finally evolved and emerged as a distinct language from some Semitic ancestor in remote antiquity, that that language was the FusHa and everybody was speaking it on a daily basis and that the “dialects” eventually evolved from that original Arabic. That is what everyone wants me to believe and that’s what I consider not just illogical, but irrational. 

2. Further, if this were the case….if FusHa were indeed the “first” Arabic….why bother with the dialects? What was the purpose of breaking up the language into distinct varieties instead of just keeping the FusHa? 

The only logical explanation would be that the FusHa no longer served a vital function of some kind……and……if this was the case, if the FusHa was becoming useless, it would have disappeared long before the first Moallaqa was “posted” in some remote Hijazi market square. 

Obviously, the FusHa didn’t disappear. On the contrary, its importance kept increasing. 

Therefore, one can only conclude that the FusHa came much later in the historical development of Arabic that did the dialects. It served a purpose no longer being provided by the dialects.

3. Indeed, it was the DIALECTS that were becoming “useless”, useless in the sense that they could not longer provide an unchanging linguistic tool to preserve the oral traditions of the tribes from one generation to the next, useless in that communication between tribes was becoming increasingly problematic as the dialects began to really diverge, useless in the sense that communication between the “settled” and “desert” peoples was also becoming difficult.

Therefore, a FusHa, a pan-Arab linguistic tool, or lingua franca or KOINE (a linguistic term) *became absolutely necessary not only to preserve the living memory of the Arabs, but to actually survive.*

To me, this development is as clear as if I had been there myself to witness these momentous events.

4. Obviously, this structuring of the FusHa didn’t happen over a weekend when all the tribes gathered in some camp to hash all this out. It developed over generations and probably was done, at least at the beginning, somewhat unconsciously. Precisely when and how this occurred and when exactly the FusHa emerged as fully developed, we’ll never know. Probably a generation or two before the emergence of the Jahiliyya poets.

5. I’ll trust you when you say that the FusHa has retained some archaic Semitic features not found in the dialects, therefore implying that the FusHa was older than the dialects. But even if true, this can not only be explained away, *it proves once again that my thesis is correct.*

Let’s take the Jahiliyya period as our benchmark, just for convenience’s sake. Clearly, the dialects used during that period were probably very different from today’s dialects, probably hugely different. It is a little less clear, but still quite probable, that these antique dialects themselves *retained some of these “archaic Semitic features”.*

Therefore, as the FusHa was being developed (from the dialects), these archaic features were hoisted onto the FusHa (for a variety of reasons, such as prestige). *After all, the purpose of the FusHa was to preserve.* Each major dialect most likely wanted its features to be preserved and considered authentic in the long run and these archaic features thus became an integral part of the unchanging FusHa. 

The dialects, of course, went their separate ways “developing” into the modern dialects and they long ago lost these archaic Semitic features which were still preserved in the FusHa.

That is to say, these archaic Semitic features found in the FusHa but not in the modern dialects, *were a reflection of the living dialectical usage in Arabia at that time*. They were not a reflection *of the FusHa's close proximity to the ancient Semitic ancestor*.

Again, all this is so clear and logical to me.

Even the history of Arabic literature proves me correct. Look at what happened to *al-Mutanabbi*. In his youth, he was sent to live in the desert with the Bedouins for several years precisely because these tribes retained some of those archaic Semitic features we’ve been talking about. In his time, the desert dialects still had not lost their “archaic” character. He was sent into the tribes not because the tribal speech had developed: *he was sent there precisely because they had not developed.*

Bottom line: the original Arabic was not the FusHa. It was also not a “dialect” (dialect of what?). It was a newly emerged *oral* language from which the dialects eventually emerged and, for historical reasons as I’ve outlined above, from which the FusHa emerged most logically out of the extant divergent dialects of the spoken language. 

*The FusHa emerged as the answer to a critical and existential need of the Arab desert nation.* Without it, the modern Middle East would be vastly different than what we have today, probably unrecognizable. There would have been no Jahiliyya, no Arab Conquests and no Mutanabbi.

The Arabs didn't have to be the “greatest linguists to have ever existed” in order to develop and establish a FusHa, as Abu Rashid stated. They simply had to survive.


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## Abu Rashid

linguist said:
			
		

> I was always under the impression that "once upon a time", fus7a was  spoken by the Arabs in the Arabian peninsula (with some variation, but  not as hugely as we have today)



My theory is this. At any given time in the history of a language, there are always people who are more eloquent than others. Each and every individual speaker exists on a scale of eloquence of the language. As the word fus7a means eloquent, then it would make sense that it was merely the most eloquent form of the language. Sure there were regional variations in the pre-Islamic Arabic world (ie. the peninsula) but I think the tended to 'gravitate' around what we know as fus7a, and to use it as a standard on which to converge. Whether or not people actually spoke fus7a purely in their everyday speech is not certain. But I think some people at least 'approached' speaking fus7a.



			
				linguist said:
			
		

> but as Islam spread further and further  (like many parts of Africa for example) then the language had such an  influence on them that they adopted it as their own language, but the  local languages at the time will have influenced the Arabic - which  caused a sort of evolution of that particular dialect.



I think this definitely accounts for the disparity between the modern peninsula dialects, and the dialects in the Arabicised lands. For instance ash-Shaam used to be an Aramaic & Hebrew speaking area, and we find that the dialects of ash-Shaam make many of the same simplifications to the language that were made in Aramaic & Hebrew long ago.



			
				Tracer said:
			
		

> To: Abu Rashid (et al) -
> 
> I am aware that 250 million  native Arabic speakers will disagree with my statements on the “origins”  of CA. Just like I am aware that each of those speakers will tell me in  no uncertain terms that HIS dialect is the “closest” to the FusHa. In  both cases, I will simply shake my head in despair and walk away



You've invented all of these arguments yourself. Nobody here has even argued any of the things you claim to be refuting.

How about sticking with what's been discussed? Surely it makes more sense than inventing arguments you predict will be made?


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## Aydintashar

Abu Rashid said:


> Tracer,
> 
> For this to be even remotely plausible, then those Arabs who 'contrived' Fus7a from the spoken dialects must've been the greatest linguists to have ever existed.




They were, and there is nothing strange about it. All the languages have been ultimately invented by archaic people. There are a lot of native languages, which have not been written yet, but which also have a high degree of complexity in grammar.
But, what concerns our discussion, is the fact that lingua franca are usually invented by men of letters backed by political authorities to satisfy the cultural and linguistic needs of an empire (e.g. Classical Latin), or borrowed readily from developed societies to satisfy the same needs (e.g. spreading of Greek in the ancient world, or use of French in the English Court). In both cases, we should be able to trace a period of political and cultural flourishment, which paves the way for development of the eloquent language. And in both cases, the raw material is provided by the native dialects. 
In case of Arabic, I fail to trace this period of political and cultural flourishment prior to onset of Islam, while  the degree of eloquency of FusHa at the onset of Islam seems to be several orders of magnitude higher than any conceivable language at that time.

To account for the existence of classical Arabic at the onset of Islam, we need something at least similar to the ancient Mesopotamian civilisation, in which the language could have possibly developed. Such a civilisation would have left plenty of written records. This situation leads us to presume a "lost civilisation", completely destroyed by an unknown catastrophe, having left behind nothing, save for a few Bedouins, who continued the language tradition in an oral manner.
Though the theory may sound a little romantic, but may carry elements of truth.


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## Abu Rashid

Aydintashar said:
			
		

> They were, and there is nothing strange about it.



Actually I don't think this is the case. Re-constructing Fus7a out of spoken Arabic dialects would've been impossible. This is not merely a matter complexity, it's a matter of the right complexity.

Imagine for instance if you had a pure sound file in wave format, and you compress it with mp3. You lose a lot of the information that's in the original sound file, to get a smaller size, and it is not overly noticeable when listening to it. However, to go from this compressed version of the file back to the original is almost impossible. Once that information is lost, it's pretty much unrecoverable.

Now I could "pad" the mp3 file to make it same size as the wave file, but the original complexity would not be what makes it up. That is lost.

Fus7a contains proto-Semitic features, that do not exist in spoken dialects, which simply could not have been extracted or contrived from them.

Does that mean the spoken dialects came from Fus7a as Tracer's strawman argument would have it? No. But they probably have always existed side by side.


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## WadiH

Aydintashar said:


> It is difficult to accept your argument. In fact, we notice considerably large variations in morphology, and differences are sometimes large enough to justify considering some of the dialects as independent languages. But, this is natural for any language, and is not critical for our discussion.



The idea that Arabic has split into separate languages does not depend solely on differences in morphology.  The morphology of Arabid dialects today is not identical with that of FuS7a, but the root-pattern system upon which these morphologies are based remains substantially the same and there is no significant difference in "complexity" between them.  In fact, one can argue that there is even more complexity in the modern Arabic dialects (e.g. many modern dialects have added prefixes to imperfect verbs to signify progressiveness like the Egyptian/Levantine "b-" prefix).  Unless you can prove to us that FuS7a morphology is more complex than the morphology of all of the modern dialects, then this remains nothing but an unfounded assertion.




> Again difficult to accept your argument. None of the ancient Semitic (and even non-Semitic) languages seem to be as complex as classical Arabic as far as syntax is concerned. Syntax is not merely case and mood.



So I take it you agree that the "i3raab" system which the classical Muslim grammarians focused so much attention on, is not by itself uniquely complex or impossible for ordinary people to master natively?

Most learners of CA/MSA will tell you that the syntax is probably the easiest part of learning Arabic.  Once you get past the case/mood markings, the syntax of FuS7a is generally considered to be relatively straightforward and many people find modern dialect syntax to be more difficult.  Again, the onus is on _you_ to show that there is something uniquely complex or impossible about FuS7a syntax or even that it is any more complex than a modern bedouin dialect.



> If there are people speaking FuSHa at home, as native language, most probably they inherited it from their forefathers, rather than learning it at school, or from the mass media. This would strongly support the idea that rhetorical Arabic was a native language in the past, rather than being invented by high society as lingua franca.



It would be impossible for any language to remain at the same stage of development for 1400 years.  However, if you were to comparatively study the modern dialects, with a serious focus on traditional dialects _inside_ of Arabia itself, you will find plenty of traces of FuS7a features, meaning that these features, although rare or even extinct in spoken Arabic today, were once part of people's speech.



> This is in sharp contrast to classical Latin. It is obvious that, classical Latin was intended to satisfy the linguistic needs of high society in the Roman Empire. I am very much in favour of the theory that classical Latin was an invented language. Latin languages are not descendants of classical Latin. They are more similar to each other than they are to classical Latin. The opposite would have been true, if they had descended from classical Latin. Thus, classical Latin was invented on the basis of vulgar Latin dialects by men of letters supported by the authorities of the Roman Empire.
> In case of Araboc, we cannot depict any such empire, who would have possibly campaigned the invention of a literary language, all the more so since there is no appreciable written records from pre-Islamic times, and the alphabet was obviously undeveloped. Therefore, classical Arabic must have existed as oral tradition, prior to being written. This is where we encounter the critical question: While the standard dialect evolves from local dialects for all languages, Arabic seems to demonstrate the reverse scenario.



The problem here is that you assume that FuS7a is a "standard dialect" or even a "lingua franca."  But there's no evidence that FuS7a was either of those in pre-Islamic times.  If there was any standardization, it occurred after Islam in literate societies.  This gave us what I will call Classical Arabic, the ancestor of MSA.  I will go into this in more detail in my response to Tracer.


----------



## Abu Rashid

Wadi Hanifa said:
			
		

> The problem here is that you assume that FuS7a is a "standard dialect" or even a "lingua franca."



What else could it possibly have existed for, if not as a Lingua Franca? What other purpose would a standard version of the language, which retains so many archaic features that all dialects lost, be maintained for?


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## Milad__7

It's very tempting - and this has always been the case with westerns - to try downgrade anything relates to Arabs, don't get me wrong here but we cannot always dis-attach our actions from our beliefs... for Arabs; questioning their language is kinda meaningless craziness. now you put up your point and still receive rational responses... I wonder what responses would you receive if you put smth similar in a Persian forum... Nevertheless and regardless of your true intentions, Arabic is absolutely the most prefect and precise language ever... even its sister Hebrew hasn't got a chance... how did that manage to happened; no one can really tell... but we sure know about the post Islam era; Makka was the centre of the small Arabic world by then, It's Arabic language - plus the very near surrounding tribes - was the agreed on Fos7a... the prophet Mohammad himself was sent as a child to a nearby bedu tribe to get the purest Arabic tong, he was sent - by default - as many others and this was the case at that time... now the reason why not take that in Makka is that bedu language was pure and as you may know Makka was a place for trade and Hajj and mixing, not the best place for teaching your son the Fos7a... this implies that Fos7a was spoken in that region, as you go further from Makka, Fos7a becmes "less" fos7a, now which was the first Fos7a or others - here we have to differentiate between 2 things; the language that Fos7a descanted from and the languages that descented from Fos7a... Fos7a is a result of historical transformation of old Semitic language - or so - . by the time of Jahiliya Arabic reached its best case in Makka and its surrounding, all other Arabians knew that Quraish tong has the strongest language they can hear (we don't expect all ppl to have same advanced Arabic as well, this is against nature! as Quraish was the central tribe in the central religious capital Makka). The big-bang of the Arabic language was the arrival of Islam, Quran came in Quraish's tong, Quran in grammar and expressions is undefeatable, all other dialects became less important and has been always looked at as erroneous. you may not feel it, you apparently not native, even some Arabs don't feel that, but dialects are really awful and if you try writing anything in dialect it will look very low although some Arabs like insisting on the beauty of their dialects, something the trained ear can only reject... they simply full of errors and misleading expressions, they are the result of many many moons of foreign conquer and mixing with Turkish, Europeans... yet, the old non Fos7a dialects were nearer to Fos7a than modern dialects due to obvious reasons... but, sure Arabic Fos7a was spoken by Quraish tribe and its surrounding for long time before and after Islam, and saying anything else will be considered against a historical fact... thanks god the Arabic legacy was very well written down,though many westerns like to question even a very Arabic thing such as Fos7a... but hey ! that's the beauty of it, we have a wonderful thing that everyone envy us for. Alfos7a !


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## i_guess_i_am_a_genius

My knowledge in Fo97a is limited because I grew up in America to Coptic parents, who never saw a need for me nor my brothers to learn it.  My knowledge of it is based on what I have heard from TV, however As far as the case system is concerned, I can say that I believe it was an original feature of the Classical Arabic Tongue, because it shows up in Ugaritic, which is one of the languages that preceded Arabic.  In addition it's system on verb derivation is extremely similar to Arabic, even in the areas of conjugation.

My theory would be, since written arabic, through laziness usually didn't include vowelling, so as the conquered peoples were learning arabic, it was easier to leave out nunnation, and vowelled parts in verb conjugations unless it vastly differentiated something from another (ex Enta Vs Enti Vs Ento) which there is only a difference in vowelling.  This would explain the loss of case, as far as the word "logha, loghatu, loghati, and loghata" all being written the same way "لغة" with the exception of the vowelling which showed the case. 

The lack of formal education, and the need to adapt to a common and simplified medium of speech would explain this phenomena, which also happened in Rome and Byzantium. 

For maghrebian "n-" conjugations, it would be easy to say that it began out of simplification...
example.. Ta3raf and ta3rafo both are 2nd person, but differ in number.  The same would go for Ya3raf and Ya3rafo.  I would assume that the change from A3raf to na3raf would be easily explained by relating the "o" at the end as an indication of number. and was applied to the first person.


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## Abu Rashid

i_guess_i_am_a_genius said:
			
		

> however As far as the case system is concerned, I can say that I believe  it was an original feature of the Classical Arabic Tongue, because it  shows up in Ugaritic, which is one of the languages that preceded  Arabic.



By preceded I hope you mean written records, because Ugaritic most certainly did not precede Arabic as a language, especially given that Arabic is more archaic in it's features than Ugaritic.



> My theory would be, since written arabic, through laziness usually didn't include vowelling



I don't think it's through laziness, Semitic languages were just never, or very rarely, written with any vowels. Arabic was in fact the language, that when it began to be written, changed this dramatically.


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## i_guess_i_am_a_genius

Abu Rashid said:


> By preceded I hope you mean written records, because Ugaritic most certainly did not precede Arabic as a language, especially given that Arabic is more archaic in it's features than Ugaritic.



Yes I meant older in writing.


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## Aydintashar

Wadi Hanifa said:


> The problem here is that you assume that FuS7a is a "standard dialect" or even a "lingua franca."  But there's no evidence that FuS7a was either of those in pre-Islamic times.  If there was any standardization, it occurred after Islam in literate societies.  This gave us what I will call Classical Arabic, the ancestor of MSA.  I will go into this in more detail in my response to Tracer.




I take permission to strongly dis-agree with your assertion. Quran is a unique text demonstrating almost all the grammatical features of FusHa. And it must have been understandable for the folk at the time of The Prophet. The post-Islamic standardization activities you are referring to, were only limited to inventing ortographical rules, which were urgently needed to help non-Arabic muslims avoid mis-spelling the holy verses. No grammatical features were neither introduced into FusHa, nor standardized at post-Islamic periods. The post-Islamic grammar books so abundantly available were simply intended to discovering the inherent grammatical features of FusHa and writing them down.
On the other hand, there are clear references in Quran, which convince us that the society was quite conscious about the difference between the Quranic text and native dialects:

قُرآنًا عَرَبِيًّا غَيْرَ ذِي عِوَجٍ لَّعَلَّهُمْ يَتَّقُونَ(28:39)
وَهَذَا لِسَانٌ عَرَبِيٌّ مُّبِينٌ (103:16)

Specially important is the context the 2nd verse is linked to:

_We know indeed that they say, "It is a man that teaches him." The tongue of him they wickedly point to is notably foreign, while this is Arabic, pure and clear (16:103)._​
As you can see, here the emphasis lies on "pure and clear" Arabic, which had the ability to function as a lingua franca. We have therefore, no other option, but to accept the co-existence of FusHa alongside the native dialects at least as early as the beginning of the 7th century. 
Now, such a language definitely descended from something and would have needed several thousand years to evolve to such a qualified level in a "generic" way, and several hundred years under the influence of an Empire interested in a lingua franca. Since no such empire has been detected, we are forced to believe that the proto-FusHa had existed thousands of years before the onset of Islam in an inexplicably oral way. 
Add to this the fact that a language of such complexity would have been almost useless for any tribe living a simple life at the desert circumstances. Take for example, the rules for expressing numbers in rhetorical Arabic. They are so complex that, a non-Arab will really never develop a full command of them and use them in a fluent way, and even all Arabs are apt to make mistakes from time to time. Any language with a simple number category is equally capable of using numbers in all kinds of texts from everyday life to professional mathematics. So, what was the function of such a complex system at pre-Islamic period? 
Again, I am approaching my Theory of Lost Civilisation!


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## WadiH

Evidently, WordReference thinks I type too much so I'm forced to split this post in two:



Tracer said:


> It is all pure conjecture and “educated” guesses.



There is enough evidence available so that our conclusions can be much stronger than mere conjecture or educated guesses.  We have the vast literature of Arabic linguistic and grammatical observations from the classical era, much of it the result of field study (i.e. travelling to where the Arabs lived and studying their speech), we have the Quran, we have pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry, we have inscriptions from the pre-Islamic and early Islamic eras, we have papyri from the early Islamic era, etc.  We are also fortunate to be able to observe the twilight of Arabic's existence in its native enviornment in the Peninsula in circumstances very similar to what was present in the 7th century, and can thus test many of our theories about 7th century Arabic against the situation in Arabia in the early 20th century (pre-oil).  So, there is in fact a lot more to go by than you think.



> In fact, I sort of feel like his eminence Taha Hussein who, as you are aware, questioned the very authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry and even of the Hadith (but that’s another issue).



I don't want to go off on tangents here, but suffice it to say that the state of the art has moved on considerably since 1926 and thus most of Taha Hussein's theories in that book are now obsolete.



> 1. You asked about the origin and the cause for the emergence of the fusHa. In my view, the “origin” was the spoken dialects extant in Arabia. That’s where it came from.



So far so good ...



> That is to say, a “lingua franca” was needed among the various tribes, both for communication and for solidifying the “oral traditions” handed down from generation to generation.



There is no evidence that such a lingua franca existed among the Arabs at that time or even that such a lingua franca was needed.  Plus, if you look at the modern Arabian dialects (particularly in what is now Saudi Arabia and the GCC states, i.e. the area most associated with Al-FuS7a), the diversity of dialects was as great as, if not greater than, the diversity that is reported for 7th century Arabia.  Yet, despite all this variation, the 19th century Arabs did not have a lingua franca nor did they have a need for one (nor could Classical Arabic serve this function as almost everyone outside of Mecca and Medina was illiterate).  In fact, if you think a little bit about how life was like in our country back then, you'll understand that teaching people a second language on a widescale (to be used as a lingua franca or otherwise) would have been almost impossible anyway.

Most dialects in modern Arabia, despite all of the diversity, belonged to the same linguistic type.  Traditionally, the grammar in Riyadh was substantially the same as the grammar in Al-Tayef.  There were of course differences in grammar, but they were quite minor and did not impede communication.  Most of the differences were in phonology first and lexicon second, and that is where most impediments to mutual intelligibility lay.  

Now, when people composed poetry, the language in the poetry was not the same as that of everyday life.  But that's not necessarily because the poetry belonged to a different dialect (though that occurred in some cases) or a different language -- the poetry is simply composed in a different _*register*_.  The dialectal differences are not necessarily ignored; rather, each person will adapt the poem to his own dialect because the dialectal differences are typically not of the type that would affect the metre, rhyme and meaning of the poem.  So, a poem composed in Qatar would spread far and wide and be known all the way in Taif or Mecca, but would sound differently when read aloud, depending on dialect.

When a person from Riyadh meets a person from Hayel or from Al-Taif, they won't simply abandon their dialects and start speaking some separate "lingua franca," and they won't simply switch to the poetic register.  What they'll do is iron out the differences and adapt their speech to each other just enough so that they can understand each other (which, in fact, is not a whole lot and mainly involves adapting the vocabulary ... certainly not enough to need a lingua franca).  Of course, it helped that people were familiar with many words from many regions even if they did not use those words themselves.  Some words did not even belong to a particular dialect per se but rather belonged to the linguistic heritage of the country.  This is because oral poetry served the function that literature served in literate societies.  Think of English: English-speakers use only a small fraction of the vocabulary that the language makes available to them, but they are always free to draw upon the language's vast vocabulary in their writing and they are exposed to far more words than they actually use in everyday speech.

The situation with FuS7a in the 7th century was largely the same.  Most dialects in 7th century Arabia (apart from outlying dialects like those in upper Yemen) were sufficiently similar that people could communicate by making a few adjustments or adaptations to their speech (which people still do today), without the need for using a whole new third language (a lingua franca).  When a poem is composed, or a speech is to be given for a solemn occasion, the poet or orator switches to the poetic register, which can contain prestigious features, words or expressions from other dialects but still does not reach the level of a new language or even a new dialect.  The dialectal features were such that many simply do not appear on the written page, their presence or absence often did not affect metre or rhyme.  So, a poem by Imrul Al-Qays can "scan" onto multiple dialects (e.g. a dialect that says "yaf3alu" or a taltalah dialect that says "yif3alu," etc.).

Now, I'll respond to some specific points you made:



> The “dialects” were felt to be insufficiently “stable” for these purposes. A formalized, unchanging “variety” of Arabic was needed and so it developed little by little until at some point, it was “formalized” into the fusHa.



I'm sorry, I couldn't really get what you're trying to say here.  Was this before or after Islam?



> In fact, the fusHa pretty much serves similar purposes in modern times. It’s used in the written and media forms of communication and as a lingua franca throughout the Arabic speaking world. (But no one speaks it at home).



Assuming I understood you correctly, you're imposing a paradigm you're familiar with (the modern situation of Arabic in literate, urban societies) on 7th century Arabia.  You can't just assume that there must have been something like MSA in 7th century Arabia just because that's all you are familiar with, nor can you assume that FuS7a in the 7th century served the same function as MSA does in the 21st.



> 2. You asked “what was the point of the “simplified” variety?” Well, that’s assuming the “simplified” variety developed from a “foundational” variety. My view is it didn’t. *A “simplified” variety was always in use – in fact, a "simplified" Arabic was the original Arabic.*



So, they synthesized a "complex" Arabic from original "simple" Arabics? That would not only have been pointless (it certainly wouldn't have helped communication!); it would have probably been impossible (how would it occur to people to simply create a more complex version of their language out of thin air?  Where would they get those new complex features from?).

Or are you saying that they created FuS7a to preserve an earlier stage of the language and prevent their dialects from moving away from that archaic form?  This doesn't help your theory because it does no more than push FuS7a back a little in time.


----------



## WadiH

> I will admit that there must have been an original language somewhere, sometime, from which all the dialects eventually emerged, *but that original dialect or “speech form” or whatever you want to call it* *wasn’t the fusHa. The fusHa came much later.*
> 
> *That’s where we differ. That’s the crux of the matter. Unless I’m reading you wrong, you believe that the fusHa predated the dialects whether they were “fusHa like” or not.*
> 
> *I say it was the other way around.*



What I'm saying is that FuS7a is a snapshot of the state of Arabic in the 7th/8th centuries.  Obviously, there were previous stages of Arabic (with their own dialects) from which FuS7a evolved.

I think there is a problem of nomenclature here (and this is in response to you as well Aydintashar).  FuS7a can be used in different ways by different people, but the most common among Arabs is that FuS7a encompasses all of the dialects of 7th/8th century Arabia, or at least in the regions that were considered linguistically prestigeous (Najd, Hejaz, Bahrayn, the non-Himyartic parts of Yemen ... all excluding the urban areas).  As I explained earlier, all these dialects, despite their differences, belonged to the same linguistic type.  Most of the differences were of the type that did not appear on the written page (due to the nature of Arabic orthography) or were differences in vocabulary (nearly all such vocabulary was accepted as FuS7a and incorporated into Classical Arabic).  Most of our current dialects (except for some special cases) are descendents of these dialects, which are all covered by the rubric of FuS7a.  Before Islam, there was no other language.  It is NOT true what you said that "*there was ALWAYS a dialect and FuS7a.*"  The dialects WERE FuS7a.

I know this is rather wordy so I'll cut to the chase: there were definitely people whose native language was the language that you read in the Quran or of the Muallaqat.  It may have been pronounced a bit differently from how we do it today, and the everyday speech may have been at a different register from these literary texts, but it is the same language.  Thus, when people say that the dialects came from FuS7a, they are essentially correct.

Classical Arabic, as I use it, is the written standard that was later adopted in the Islamic period.  It is simply a codification of FuS7a.  It may not be identical to any one dialect, but it is very close to many of them.  Close enough that it does not radically impact what you call the "traditional" narrative.  Anyway, even the grammarians of Classical Arabic themselves accepted many dialectal features even if they were not much used.



> *“…yes there were dialects in those times, but they were for the most part simply variations or varieties of FuS7a…”*
> 
> Well, yes, I agree. But that’s because the fusHa was constructed from several prominent dialects already spoken in Arabia and therefore, almost by default, they were close to the fusHa. But…..that doesn’t mean that the dialects CAME from the fusHa[/B]



Okay, this is a matter of nomenclature or terminology.  What you call FuS7a, I call Classical Arabic.  As I explained earlier, what you say is technically true, but it does not significantly change the view that dialects descend from FuS7a.  It's like someone coming 1,000 years from now and saying "nobody every spoke the language of the New York Times or Citizen Kane as a native language!"  Well, yeah, on a very technical and literal level that may be true, but it's really just pedantry.  It's certainly not the sort of earth-shattering iconoclasm you seem to think it is (unless I misunderstood?).


----------



## WadiH

> Therefore, one can only conclude that the FusHa came much later in the historical development of Arabic that did the dialects. It served a purpose no longer being provided by the dialects.
> 
> 3. Indeed, it was the DIALECTS that were becoming “useless”, useless in the sense that they could not longer provide an unchanging linguistic tool to preserve the oral traditions of the tribes from one generation to the next, useless in that communication between tribes was becoming increasingly problematic as the dialects began to really diverge, useless in the sense that communication between the “settled” and “desert” peoples was also becoming difficult.
> 
> Therefore, a FusHa, a pan-Arab linguistic tool, or lingua franca or KOINE (a linguistic term) *became absolutely necessary not only to preserve the living memory of the Arabs, but to actually survive.*
> 
> To me, this development is as clear as if I had been there myself to witness these momentous events.
> 
> 4. Obviously, this structuring of the FusHa didn’t happen over a weekend when all the tribes gathered in some camp to hash all this out. It developed over generations and probably was done, at least at the beginning, somewhat unconsciously. Precisely when and how this occurred and when exactly the FusHa emerged as fully developed, we’ll never know. Probably a generation or two before the emergence of the Jahiliyya poets.



If anyone was trying to do this in Arabia before Islam, then FuS7a would have lasted much longer in Arabia than it did.  What would have prevented the Arabs from continuing to preserve FuS7a in Arabia to this very day (if it was so "necessary" for their survival as you say)??  But history tells us that Arabic inside Arabia simply continued to evolve on its merry way like every other language, and the poetry and oral tradition simply evolved with it, and FuS7a seems to have simply disappeared.  This is because there was no separate "standard language" or "lingua franca" called FuS7a that people were trying to preserve alongside their dialects.  Their dialects WERE FuS7a.  This FuS7a continued to evolve until we got the modern dialects inside Arabia (again my discussion is limited to Arabia itself).

What studying the Arabian dialects of pre-oil Arabia tells us is that the way of life in Arabia, along with its poetic and oral tradition, are what stabilized Arabic, not some separately-existing "lingua franca."   So, most dialects continued to evolve together inside Arabia and remain within the same linguistic type.  As the dialects evolved, so did the poetry, so we went from the Muallaqat to the Nabati poetry we have now.  There was never a need nor an attempt to freeze Arabic at any one stage of its development.  This only happened _outside_ of Arabia after Islam.


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## WadiH

Aydintashar said:


> But, what concerns our discussion, is the fact that lingua franca are usually invented by men of letters backed by political authorities to satisfy the cultural and linguistic needs of an empire (e.g. Classical Latin), or borrowed readily from developed societies to satisfy the same needs (e.g. spreading of Greek in the ancient world, or use of French in the English Court).



Right off the bat, you've started with an unfounded assumption, that FuS7a was some sort of lingua franca, cleanly separated from the existing language.  Actually, you're whole theory is a string of unfounded assumptions and logical leaps.




> In both cases, we should be able to trace a period of political and cultural flourishment, which paves the way for development of the eloquent language. And in both cases, the raw material is provided by the native dialects.
> In case of Arabic, I fail to trace this period of political and cultural flourishment prior to onset of Islam, while  the degree of eloquency of FusHa at the onset of Islam seems to be several orders of magnitude higher than any conceivable language at that time.
> 
> To account for the existence of classical Arabic at the onset of Islam, we need something at least similar to the ancient Mesopotamian civilisation, in which the language could have possibly developed. Such a civilisation would have left plenty of written records.



Later you say:



> Add to this the fact that a language of such complexity would have been almost useless for any tribe living a simple life at the desert circumstances.



Here you've made two assumptions.  First, that FuS7a is simply "too eloquent" for mere mortals.  Second, that eloquence has some sort of relationship with "civilization" or that the less sophisticated a nation is, the less eloquent its language will be.

Eloquence between languages is subjective, so I'll leave it aside for now.  Your second assumption is simply incorrect and goes against all evidence.  I think this assumption (and indeed your entire theory) is rooted in a certain prejudice and lack of understanding of how Bedouin society works and what function language plays in such a society.  Fortunately, we still have Bedouins today and we still have access to a decent-sized sample of their linguistic tradition, so we have don't have to rely on mere guesswork.  It is precisely in such materially impoverished societies as the Arabian deserts that such a high value is placed on oration, rhetoric and eloquence.  These are non-literate societies where writing is almost unknown outside of a few cities.  There are no books, no philosophers, no mathematicisns, no painters, no architects, no playwrights, etc.  The main avenue for artistic expressions is language.  That's why even in modern times the bedouin and bedouin-based dialects have remained more complex grammatically and richer in vocabulary and possess a much older and stronger poetic tradition.  Powerful, memorable and eloquent language was useful as a repository of the peoples' values, history, traditions and knowledge because these people could not simply write things down (it would have been highly impractical for them to do so if you think about it).  They needed something that people would remember for a long time.  The effect of this oral tradition that everyone takes part in on a daily basis (not just an elite or an educated class) is that the a conservative influence is constantly exerted on people's speech.  That and the physical and social isolation from other languages help make their dialects more conservative (and hence "more complex"), though it does not stop them from evolving and changing over the centuries.

If you look at Arabic dialects today (and I suspect this is true in other languages too), the more urbanized a population is and the more sophisticated its lifestyle, the more features are dropped from its language (i.e. the less complex its dialect) and the less "eloquent" its speakers become.  Not only are bedouin and rural dialects more complex grammatically and lexically than the dialects of big cities like Jeddah or Makkah, but people who grew up in villages in Saudi Arabia always seem to know exactly the right thing to say in every situation and the right way to say it in ways that urban people like me can never achieve.  But a person like me may be better at expressing abstract ideas and concepts  (which is not as pretty or eloquent).  The function of language in an urban society is simply different.  Even non-bedouins (people from cities and towns) sounded more "eloquent" 100 years ago than they do today.

The situation of course was similar in the past.  That is why noble families sent their children to the desert (a practice which survived to modern times): to be immersed in the culture of the desert, which included "good" Arabic.  In a Hadith attributed to Muhammad, it is claimed that he owed his eloquence to being from Quraysh yet being reared among the Bani Saad tribe.  Al-Mutanabbi (as Tracer mentioned) spent years in the deserts of Iraq to learn "eloquence" from the bedouins.  When the Classical grammarians decided to codify Arabic grammar, their criteria was essentially "the more bedouin the better," and they deliberately avoided linguistic data from Arabian cities such as Mecca, Yamamah (today's Riyadh), Medina, Hajr, Qatif, etc. even though some of these cities were in the heart of Arabia far from any non-Arab influence.



> This situation leads us to presume a "lost civilisation", completely destroyed by an unknown catastrophe, having left behind nothing, save for a few Bedouins, who continued the language tradition in an oral manner.
> Though the theory may sound a little romantic, but may carry elements of truth.



I was actually expecting "handed down by God" or "brought by Aliens!"


----------



## WadiH

Aydintashar said:


> I take permission to strongly dis-agree with your assertion. Quran is a unique text demonstrating almost all the grammatical features of FusHa. And it must have been understandable for the folk at the time of The Prophet.



Of course it was.  It was in their native language.



> The post-Islamic standardization activities you are referring to, were only limited to inventing ortographical rules, which were urgently needed to help non-Arabic muslims avoid mis-spelling the holy verses. No grammatical features were neither introduced into FusHa, nor standardized at post-Islamic periods. The post-Islamic grammar books so abundantly available were simply intended to discovering the inherent grammatical features of FusHa and writing them down.



I don't disagree with this.  But why do we, in MSA, use ذهب instead of راح, for example?  Why do we retain all the glottal stops?  This is standardization.  No grammatical rules were introduced, but there were grammatical rules that differed between dialects (e.g. ما التميمية v ما الحجازية) and the grammarians made conscious choices as to what should be used from now on.  That is standardization.  But I agree that the resulting language was very similar to how people spoke in the Prophet's time.



> On the other hand, there are clear references in Quran, which convince us that the society was quite conscious about the difference between the Quranic text and native dialects:
> 
> قُرآنًا عَرَبِيًّا غَيْرَ ذِي عِوَجٍ لَّعَلَّهُمْ يَتَّقُونَ(28:39)
> وَهَذَا لِسَانٌ عَرَبِيٌّ مُّبِينٌ (103:16)
> 
> Specially important is the context the 2nd verse is linked to:
> 
> _We know indeed that they say, "It is a man that teaches him." The tongue of him they wickedly point to is notably foreign, while this is Arabic, pure and clear (16:103)._​
> As you can see, here the emphasis lies on "pure and clear" Arabic, which had the ability to function as a lingua franca.



You are reading too much into this verse.  There's nothing in there about a lingua franca or about dialects.  The verse is in response to an accusation that the Prophet was learning his new religion from a foreign Jew or Christian and so it is contrasting the alleged foreigner's language with the pure Arabic of the Quran.  The most it can serve to do is to distinguish between "good" or "pure" Arabic and "not so good" Arabic.  A language can be spoken well or spoken poorly -- that doesn't make the "good" version a "lingua franca."  Like I said above, the Quran was in the native language of the Prophet.  It may have been in a higher register and it may have used prestige words and expressions to elevate the language over everyday speech, but that does not mean it was composed in a lingua franca.


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## Tracer

To:  Wadi Hanifa
 
Thank you so much for your detailed analyses of my postings on this very interesting subject.  I actually read them several times, not because I couldn’t understand them, but because they were so instructive.  I’ve learned a lot from them and from your other postings. It must have taken you a while to write. It’s obviously a subject close to your heart.
 
I actually agree with most of what you say, not because I’ve made an in-depth study of the subject and have come to the same conclusions, but because I yield to your superior knowledge.  As simple as that.
 
And, I agree that a lot of the misunderstandings here are caused by a lack of a common terminology and nomenclature, but as an amateur, I do the best I can.
 
By the way, in case you’re unfamiliar with it, a scholarly, definitive and quite famous study on this subject has been made by C.A. Ferguson.  Fortunately, it is online (for free !) but you’ll need a telescope or microscope to read it (at least I did).  It can be found at:
 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/410601
 
If I’m reading him right, he says that in pre-Islamic Arabia, there were actually 3 (!) varieties of Arabic:  the 3arabiyya, the dialects and a “koine”. 
 
Anyway, you might want to take a look at it in case you already haven’t.
 
Thanks again for your efforts.


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## Cilquiestsuens

Was just following this interesting discussion and I wanted to post the correct link to the complete article mentioned above. Quite interesting by the way. That's here.


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## Aydintashar

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Eloquence between languages is subjective, so I'll leave it aside for now.



In relation to the question of "language and dialect", there are, of course, two approaches. According to one, it is only subjective, and that, any dialect could easily be considered a language, and a language rendered to  a dialect.  It only depends on the political situation. A dialect is a language if supported by the institutions. In other words, "any dialect with an army and navy is a language", a saying apparently due to Max Weinreich.
According to the other approach, which I favour, there are distinct linguistic criteria, which determine whether a language is a language, or merely a dialect. There is a huge number of facts, confirming this approach. You have the Hochdeutsch, and you have plenty of dialects in Germany. You have also plenty of German dialects outside Germany, as for example in France, Switzerland, Austria etc. Some of these countries are independent countries owning army and navy (in addition to the air force!), but tend to use Hochdeutsch in official correspondence and in academic literature. This can only be due to the linguistic factor.
The same is true of Arabic and its dialects. All countries with a native Arabic dialect, which may somehow be considered "Arabic", resort to FusHa in journalistic activity, official correspondence, and academic literature.
It is worthwhile asking: what are those linguistic features that make a language a language rather than a mere dialect? Well, it is an extended question, but I may express my brief opinion on it. A language is the centre of gravity of all its dialects. It is like the sun, around which the planets rotate. The centre of rotation is clearly located in the sun, not in any of the planets. You cannot say that it is subjective. The grammatical features and lexical content of all dialects converge on the "standard" language, which is why, it is understood by all, whereas a dialect is understood by only a minority. Notice that, I do not completely rule out the role of the political factor. But, I just insist that, authorities and institutions cannot and will not assign the status of a standard language to a dialect for a long time. It will fall out. They will almost always discover the right language to identify as "standard".
It is true that languages may exist, which, despite being very efficient and eloquent, are not selected by any influencial force as a "standard" language. But, watch out, its dialects are even less discovered and more ignored.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> It is precisely in such materially impoverished societies as the Arabian deserts that such a high value is placed on oration, rhetoric and eloquence.  These are non-literate societies where writing is almost unknown outside of a few cities.  There are no books, no philosophers, no mathematicisns, no painters, no architects, no playwrights, etc.  The main avenue for artistic expressions is language.  That's why even in modern times the bedouin and bedouin-based dialects have remained more complex grammatically and richer in vocabulary and possess a much older and stronger poetic tradition.



Part of your argument is correct. Languages are better retained in rural and isolalated areas. But, you are over-exaggerating. The Bedouin had only the language as its artistic interface with the world. But, this language should correspond to society's historical facts and current mode of living. If we consider Quran as the native language of at least some Arabs in the Peninsula at the time of The Prophet, it follows that they had very complex grammar and very extensive vocabulary, which could by no means correspond to their lifestyle.

For example, a brief review of the concept of "time" in Quran:
زمن
وقت
دهر
عصر
عهد
حین
لحظة
أجل
ساعة

This is in addition to words indirectly linked to "time" or verbs expressing the passing of time, or the concept of eternity etc.:

خالد
موعد
مرّة
دام
طال
مرَّ
إستأخر
إستقدم
سبق
لبث
امهل

The list is much longer. But, the question is, why did the Bedouins needs all this vocabulary? Most powerful, contemporary languages have, at best, only one native word for "time", and a lot of loanwords. This is the curious point in case of Arabic, if you don't mind.


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## Serafín33

> By the way, in case you’re  unfamiliar with it, a scholarly, definitive and quite famous study on  this subject has been made by C.A. Ferguson. Fortunately, it is online (for free !)


It's not free, being hosted at the JSTOR database. Universities and colleges in North America generally have access to it through a proxy on campus, so that may be why you can access it for free.


Aydintashar said:


> Part of your argument is correct. Languages are better retained in rural and isolated areas.


Nope, but they usually retain features lost in urban dialects. For example, in Spanish, certain rural dialects of Spain and the Andean countries are the only ones that retain the distinction between /ʎ/ and /ʝ/ (still distinguished in orthography as "ll" and "y"), but at the same time present many innovative developments of their own, where urban language turns out more conservative. What may rather happen is that to urban speakers the presence these older features call their attention more, which makes them feel as if rural speech were "more conservative" overall.





> But, you are over-exaggerating. The Bedouin had only the language as its artistic interface with the world.


...? Wouldn't they retain it because it's their everyday language? 





> But, this language should correspond to society's historical facts and current mode of living. If we consider Quran as the native language of at least some Arabs in the Peninsula at the time of The Prophet, it follows that they had very complex grammar and very extensive vocabulary, which could by no means correspond to their lifestyle.


Calling a grammar complex and a vocabulary extensive is something completely subjective. How is it possible to assess the complexity of grammar? At least in linguistics the general assumption is that all non-pidgin languages have equally complex grammar. How does one assess the "extension" of a language's vocabulary? Dictionaries? They generally can only represent a portion of the real corpus of words used currently and used up to a point in the past.


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## Aydintashar

Neqitan said:


> Calling a grammar complex and a vocabulary extensive is something completely subjective. How is it possible to assess the complexity of grammar? At least in linguistics the general assumption is that all non-pidgin languages have equally complex grammar. How does one assess the "extension" of a language's vocabulary? Dictionaries? They generally can only represent a portion of the real corpus of words used currently and used up to a point in the past.




I am unfortunately against this pseudo-linguistic assumption, that all languages are equally efficient, and that their grammars are equally complex. It has been asserted by some linguists, who were either unaware of great differences in the world languages, or wished to underevaluate some languages to the benefit of their own languages. This point is well attested by those, who attempted some translations, specially in the scientific field. My own experience has bitterly taught to me, that languages are not equal, this is only a slogan. There is no racism and no egoism in this. It can be discussed, but I think it will fit an independent thread.


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## Abu Rashid

Neqitan said:
			
		

> Calling a grammar complex and a vocabulary extensive is something  completely subjective. How is it possible to assess the complexity of  grammar? At least in linguistics the general assumption is that all  non-pidgin languages have equally complex grammar.



This just doesn't make sense at all. Why would all languages have equally complex grammar? Sounds more like political correctness 101, than linguistics 101.

The simple fact is that the grammar of fus7a is much more complex than most, if not all, spoken colloquial dialects.

Just as an example, in fus7a, the word for "not" (laysa) is conjugated for gender, person & number. This means that one has to master at least 8 different permutations of the word, just to use it. When we compare this with most, if not all, colloquial dialects, there is merely 1 form of the word. The exact same situation exists for the word "still" (ma zaala), and many other words that are used almost everywhere in the language. To say this is not a far greater amount of complexity would be merely denying facts.


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## outo_otus

Just because a certain dialects has lost some features of a previous state of a language does not make it more or less 'complex'.

Fus7a grammar is no more or less 'complex' that any of the dialects, although dialects may have lost certain features, new ones have been gained. 

When speaking of 'dialects' one is usually referring to informal registers speech which make use of many complex linguistic processes - language is not just grammar or morphology which you seem to be talking about.  Yes most modern Arabic dialects have lost the case markings and certain verb forms, but colloquial speech is equally as hard to master. 

An example I've heard a lot is that Chinese 'has no grammar' or 'has a very easy grammar'; from what you've said Chinese would seem to be a very 'simple' language, as verbs and nouns do not change form at all. However in reality, in order to construct a complete and correct sentence you have to understand the complex and strict syntax of Chinese which Arabic of most European languages do not possess. 

Languages may not have equally developed MORPHOLOGY (i.e. how the word changes depending on its function) but every language is equally as complex in ways which may not be obvious to you.


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## clevermizo

Moderator's Note:


This thread is about the origin of Fuṣħa. It is not about how to judge whether or not one language or what variety of language is more eloquent, efficient, complex, simple, etc than another - not unless such definitions are pertinent to establishing the origin of Fuṣħa.

If you wish to debate "language complexity" I would ask that you add your comments to a thread such as this one.

Regards,

clevermizo.


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## Abu Rashid

otus otus said:
			
		

> An example I've heard a lot is that Chinese 'has no grammar' or 'has a  very easy grammar'; from what you've said Chinese would seem to be a  very 'simple' language, as verbs and nouns do not change form at all.  However in reality, in order to construct a complete and correct  sentence you have to understand the complex and strict syntax of Chinese  which Arabic of most European languages do not possess.



As mentioned this thread is not about complexity of languages, it's about the origin of fus7a, and complexity of Arabic dialects compared to fus7a is merely relevant to that, since the claim was made that fus7a was a product of the colloquial dialects. You're mixing apples and oranges with this one, please try to stay on topic.


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## Mahaodeh

Aydintashar said:


> The Bedouin had only the language as its artistic interface with the world. But, this language should correspond to society's historical facts and current mode of living. If we consider Quran as the native language of at least some Arabs in the Peninsula at the time of The Prophet, it follows that they had very complex grammar and very extensive vocabulary, which could by no means correspond to their lifestyle.



Let me see if I understand correctly: you are saying that if they have a simple lifestyle (in terms of technology, which is the most obvious here), it means that they MUST have everything simple: they can not have a complex language, they can not have a complex social life, they can not have eloquent literature ....etc.

Are you implying that a simple lifestyle = a simple mind? Why can't they have a vast vocabulary despite the simple lifestyle? Why do you think that the grammar is "too complex" for them? Why can't it be the other way round: they have a simple lifestyle, hence, they can focus more time, energy and thought into language - even if it was not written.


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## Aydintashar

Mahaodeh said:


> Let me see if I understand correctly: you are saying that if they have a simple lifestyle (in terms of technology, which is the most obvious here), it means that they MUST have everything simple: they can not have a complex language, they can not have a complex social life, they can not have eloquent literature ....etc.
> 
> Are you implying that a simple lifestyle = a simple mind?



The first part is correct: simple life=simple language. But, you are overdriving this obvious fact into something else (simple life=simple mind), and assigning it to me, whereas I have made no such claims. Language is the mind's tool for thinking and expressing, but it is not identical to language. 
The mind of a person living in a primitive society has the same capacity as that of a person living in a developed society to grasp a complex language and use it as a tool for philosophical and scientific thinking.
An analysis of all the simple societies leads to the  conclusion that language evolution has a strong relationship to the lifestyle. The language of primitive societies is rich in everyday concepts, animal names, elementary tools for production, etc., each according to its environment. But, theylack any words suitable for expressing philosophical concepts, scientific criteria etc. It is only very natural. 
The scientific concepts in European languages are mostly either Greek or Latin. There are very few native English words for example, expressing scientific concepts. In the Moslem world, there are dozens of languages, including my mother tongue, which are not able to enter the realm of science, philosophy, law etc., except by depending on Arabic at least by a measure of 80%. It follows that, these languages were only as developed as the lifestyle could allow, until the onset of Islam which brought Arabic. It doesn't follow that the minds were simple. The fact that they can express complex ideas by using loanwords from Arabic obviously indicates that they have the same mental capacity as anybody else. So, there is no reason to be surprised by my assertion.
Now, since FusHa of 1400 years ago does not correspond to the Bedouin lifestyle, there is  a missing link in its history of evolution, in my opinion.


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## Abu Rashid

Wadi Hanifa,



			
				Wadi Hanifa said:
			
		

> I don't disagree with this.  But why do we, in MSA, use ذهب instead of راح, for example?



Can you think of an example in a hadith or ayah where راح is used instead of ذهب?

Same question could be asked of all the other words which one finds different in fus7a compared to colloquial. 

Also I'd like to hear your explanation of why there is no colloquial dialect that preserves all of the archaic Semitic features that fus7a has retained, yet which the dialects all lost. The case system, the dual number, and the simplifcations I mentioned above like laysa->mish/mu, ma zaala->lissa etc.

My assumption is that these simplifcations existed alongside fus7a, which leads us to the conclusion that fus7a was a lingua franca, or at least a much better preserved version of the language that was set aside from normal use, so that it's features did not get worn down as easily as did the colloquial dialects.


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## Aydintashar

Abu Rashid said:


> This just doesn't make sense at all. Why would all languages have equally complex grammar?



No, they don't have to. Language consists of rules and meanings, in other words lexical material, and grammatical rules. The degree of evolution of different languages in each of these areas is not the same. Even in grammar, the degree of evolution of different languages in morphology and syntax is not the same. Comparative analysis of languages results in the fact that, when a language is not sufficiently efficient in one of these areas, it utilises its capabilities in other areas to compensate for the shortage. In many languages a lot of functions fall on the shoulders of morphology, which are carried out by syntactical tools in other languages. Examples are numerous. For examples, one language may have a diminutive suffix, which may be missing in another language, but it will use a syntactical method to compensate for it. In Turkish, there is a sympathetic suffix (_kadıncığaz_), which may be translated into English as _the poor woman_.
There is almost no morphological functionality, that cannot be compensated for by syntax. But, there is a difference. Certain languages concentrate a lot on morphology, and resort to syntax only when the function really fails in the morphological area. I think, this is one (but not all) of the basic criteria of rhetoricity. In FusHa, either contemporary or of the past, we have a high degree of morphological intensification combined with unprecedented lexical richness, which as I have stressed several times, did not correspond to the lifestyle, and which lies at the root of the topic of this thread: where did FusHa come from?


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## ayed

> Abu Rashid
> Can you think of an example in a hadith or ayah where راح is used instead of ذهب?


 
*حدثني يحيى عن مالك عن **سمي **مولى **أبي بكر بن عبد الرحمن **عن **أبي صالح السمان **عن **أبي هريرة **أن رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم قال من اغتسل يوم الجمعة غسل الجنابة ثم راح في الساعة الأولى فكأنما قرب بدنة ومن راح في الساعة الثانية فكأنما قرب بقرة ومن راح في الساعة الثالثة فكأنما قرب كبشا أقرن ومن راح في الساعة الرابعة فكأنما قرب دجاجة ومن راح في الساعة الخامسة فكأنما قرب بيضة فإذا خرج الإمام حضرت الملائكة يستمعون الذكر *​


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## Abu Rashid

Jazak'allah khyr akh ayed.

But I think ذهب is a lot more common yes?


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## ayed

Abu Rashid said:


> Jazak'allah khyr akh ayed.
> 
> But I think ذهب is a lot more common yes?


 Well, it is commonly used as yet.


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## WadiH

I'll be back later when I have more time to answer Aydntashar's points, but I just wanted to quickly respond to this point from Abu Rashid:



Abu Rashid said:


> Wadi Hanifa,
> 
> Can you think of an example in a hadith or ayah where راح is used instead of ذهب?


 
I don't have the hadith corpus or the Quraan memorised, but we do know from Clasccial lexicons that the Arabs used راح as a synonym for ذهب. The fact that ذهب was preferred in Classical Arabic is probably because that is the dialect used in the Quraan, but that does not negate the fact that choices/preferences were made, regardless of the criteria or motivation behind such choices.



> Same question could be asked of all the other words which one finds different in fus7a compared to colloquial.


 
With a little research, you'll find that many (if not most) of such "colloquial" words are acceptable in Classical Arabic, while many (if not most) of such "FuS7a" words have reflexes in one or more modern dialects.



> Also I'd like to hear your explanation of why there is no colloquial dialect that preserves all of the archaic Semitic features that fus7a has retained, yet which the dialects all lost.


 
Because languages evolve over the course of the centuries and as they evolve certain features are lost and new features appear.



> The case system, the dual number, and the simplifcations I mentioned above like laysa->mish/mu, ma zaala->lissa etc.


 

- there are reflexes of "laysa" today in southwestern Arabia, and there was also a reflex of "laysa" in Bahrain until a couple of generations ago.-
- We have evidence from Nabati poetry that verbal duals existed in Arabia until around the 13th century.
- Reflexes of "maa zaala" exist in Arabia and North Africa, and reflexes of a CA synonym of "maa zaala" (namely, "maa bari7a") exists in Arabia today.
- We have evidence of traces of the case system in the use of "Aba" instead of "Abu" in place names, family names and even vernacular sayings (من شاهدك يا با الحصين قال ذنبي) and the bedouins seemed to have retained this usage of "Aba" after the particle "yaa" in certain contexts. We also have evidence of the adverbial "-an" in bedouin dialects (e.g. abdan أبْداً, لزْماً). Though I admit these are not entirely conclusive.

These are just examples restricted to the features that you mentioned. The point I'm trying to make here is that you'll find traces and reflexes of many such features in one dialect or another, which shows that they were once part of people's speech.



> My assumption is that these simplifcations existed alongside fus7a, which leads us to the conclusion that fus7a was a lingua franca, or at least a much better preserved version of the language that was set aside from normal use, so that it's features did not get worn down as easily as did the colloquial dialects.


 
You're falling into the same trap many others have fallen into on this thread: projecting a paradigm that you are familiar with from the present onto a situation in the past. In other words, because these FuS7a features are absent from current dialects, you find it hard to believe that they were present in 7th century dialects. Because FuS7a is a standard language (or a lingua franca) today, you feel it must have been so in the 7th century as well.

The only reason FuS7a has not "worn out" like the dialects is that it was set down in writing at an early date.


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## Aydintashar

Wadi Hanifa said:


> The only reason FuS7a has not "worn out" like the dialects is that it was set down in writing at an early date.



Well, I think the opposite is true. FusHa was written down much earlier, because it deserved to be written. It produced literary works, and was already a means of communication for all natives before the dialects could possibly reach such a status.


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## Mahaodeh

Aydintashar said:


> The first part is correct: simple life=simple language.



But why?



Aydintashar said:


> But, you are overdriving this obvious fact into something else (simple life=simple mind), and assigning it to me, whereas I have made no such claims. Language is the mind's tool for thinking and expressing, but it is not identical to language. The mind of a person living in a primitive society has the same capacity as that of a person living in a developed society to grasp a complex language and use it as a tool for philosophical and scientific thinking..



OK, then let me rephrase: are you trying to say that language reflects the development of thought (as opposed to mind)?

Keep in mind that they lived a simple life, not a primitive one. They were not stone age hunter gatherers living in the edge of the known world or on a secluded island in the middle of nowhere - they were actually living in the heart of the (then) modern world. They had direct contacts with the major civilizations of their time and one of the routs of ancient silk road passed through Mecca and Medina. Simple life, yes; primitive life, not by a long-shot.



Aydintashar said:


> An analysis of all the simple societies leads to the conclusion that language evolution has a strong relationship to the lifestyle.



What are "all the simple societies" that you are you referring to (an example would be useful)? And why do you assume that the Arabs are comparable to them? 



Aydintashar said:


> Now, since FusHa of 1400 years ago does not correspond to the Bedouin lifestyle, there is  a missing link in its history of evolution, in my opinion.



Why and how does it not correspond to the bedouin lifestyle?

---------

I have no problem with your main premise if I find it logical, I'm not clinging on to a romantic idea that I want to protect; it's just that I fail to see the logic in saying that Classical Arabic was too complex for the Arabs.

If we look at it from another angle, and assume that what you say is true and that Arabic is too sophisticated to have been their native tong; then don't you think that it is also too sophisticated for them to develop as a "higher level language" for the elite or for formal use? As for developing it to be a lingua franka, that is even more illogical, it seems to me that a simpler one would have been more logical, don't you think?


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## Interprete

Hello,

I am no expert but I just wanted to say a couple of things:
-From what I've read (and if my memory serves me well, no guarantee), Sumerian/Akkadian has a lot of similarities with Arabic (and other semitic languages anyway) and was insanely complex, which is one of the reasons why it fell out of favour at some point in time.
Having said that, Sumerian/Akkadian were highly *artificial *languages and were not spoken by the masses.

-I do agree with Aydintashar in that is is very strange that bedouins living in the desert would need AND use 40 words to describe the concept of time, with shades of meaning that would escape even the most learned in today's most educated societies. 

-Another thing that never ceases to amaze me is the specificity and precision of many roots. In most languages, roots carry simple basic meanings (to go, to eat, to live, although English may not be the best example!) which are then refined into more specific ideas through derivations.
Yet in Arabic you find:
ثار to be blown and dispersed into the air (said of dust, locusts, etc)
جأب to draw profits from one's asset / to sell red earth (!)
جأث to carry a heavy load and walking with difficulty under its weight
جبه to hit someone on the forehead
And this could go on and on, I just randomly opened my dictionary and flipped through about 10 pages of it or less...

So, why would they have made up ROOTS (not even derivatives, ROOTS) for such really specific stuff, instead of using sentences just like in most other languages? Doesn't it look weird (I'm itching to say, _artificial_)?


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## clevermizo

Interprete said:


> -Another thing that never ceases to amaze me is the specificity and precision of many roots. In most languages, roots carry simple basic meanings (to go, to eat, to live, although English may not be the best example!) which are then refined into more specific ideas through derivations.
> Yet in Arabic you find:
> ثار to be blown and dispersed into the air (said of dust, locusts, etc)
> جأب to draw profits from one's asset / to sell red earth (!)
> جأث to carry a heavy load and walking with difficulty under its weight
> جبه to hit someone on the forehead
> And this could go on and on, I just randomly opened my dictionary and flipped through about 10 pages of it or less...
> 
> So, why would they have made up ROOTS (not even derivatives, ROOTS) for such really specific stuff, instead of using sentences just like in most other languages? Doesn't it look weird (I'm itching to say, _artificial_)?




I don't really see this as being exemplary of anything. I know you said English may not be the best example, but then you've already countered your own argument by having a counterexample! English has all kinds of specific words, some more common, some less common. So do other languages. It would be hard to know the circumstance behind the origin of a lot of those words you cite, as that's anthropological data we probably don't have from certain time periods.

ahull -      a ship with sails furled and helm lashed to the lee-side 
arras    - a tapestry that covers a wall 
to birl   - to make a log spin by walking on it 
buhl       - the inlaying of precious material onto furniture
to taw -   to prepare skins by soaking, salting, stretching and paring 


All you've shown is that languages have weird words. I don't know how common جأب or جأث are. None of those English words I listed are common. But if you want a common word, I mean in Spanish _asomarse_ means you lean your head out of something like a door or a window and look around. That these very specific weird words manifest themselves as simple roots is not surprising, given that Arabic has a root-and-pattern style of morphology rather than a tack-a-bunch-of-endings-to-the-end-of-a-word-morphology. 

I see no reason whatsoever to think that Fuṣħa couldn't be someone's native language. Whether it was or it wasn't I'm not knowledgeable enough to say, but I'm fairly convinced by Wadi Hanifa's arguments above in this thread. You don't have to know every root in the book to be a native speaker of Fuṣħa if you were a native speaker of Fuṣħa anymore than I don't know the verb "birl" in English and I'm a native speaker of English. English isn't anymore artificial and than any other standard language. The language of writing is always a little bit more artificial than the language of speech, but I still speak the same language as the _New York Times_, as was brought up before.


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## Interprete

Thanks for the list!
I'm not convinced though:

-first because you're using English for most of your examples - it may be due to my lack of knowledge, but I can't seem to identify roots and their derivatives in English unless we're talking about a latin borrowing (like liberty, liberation, liberalize, libertarian, which all refer back to the idea of freedom from the root liber- or like progress, regress, transgress, digress which all refer to an abstract 'motion' forward/backward/beyond etc.)

-second, because Arras and Buhl are actually proper names, birl is a mix of two other words, ahull comes from hull and hence is already a derivative, and only taw could be a good example if, as I'm saying, English was really based on a root/derivations system as heavily as latin or semitic languages, which does not seem to be the case at all.

Now if you take examples from languages with a more comparable root system, such as Spanish for example, well you can see for example that the seemingly specific asomarse is already a derivative (from somo).

What I am saying here would be completely nullified if we could find a good number of naked roots in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or any language with such a system, and which would have a highly specific meaning (and I'm not saying technical, because this is different - the examples I gave in Arabic are very specific but not technical at all except maybe ja'aba). 
The problem is, I cannot find any! And you haven't either so far, though this may change 

PS: I'm not trying to 'prove' anything, I'm just kind of thinking aloud so please do not see any 'challenges' in whatever I wrote.


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## Abu Rashid

Interprete said:
			
		

> Sumerian/Akkadian has a lot of similarities with Arabic (and other semitic languages anyway)



Sumerian & Akkadian are two completely separate languages. Yes they did affect one another a lot, but they're very different languages. Akkadian was Semitic, Sumerian was not.



			
				Interprete said:
			
		

> Having said that, Sumerian/Akkadian were highly *artificial *languages and were not spoken by the masses.



They were both originally languages of the masses. Each was adopted as a lingua franca, by non-native speakers, just as Aramaic was, and also as Arabic later was.


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## Interprete

Abu Rashid said:


> Sumerian & Akkadian are two completely separate languages. Yes they did affect one another a lot, but they're very different languages. Akkadian was Semitic, Sumerian was not.


Indeed, thanks for correcting.


> They were both originally languages of the masses. Each was adopted as a lingua franca, by non-native speakers, just as Aramaic was, and also as Arabic later was.


Aren't all languages originally languages of the masses? In Akkadian though you do find 'litterary Akkadian' with its own grammatical/morphological fatures, and even 'standard Akkadian', just like Classical Arabic, MSA and the dialects.

By the way, my point (which I realise was not explicit) was that Arabic could have followed the same pattern.

I raised two other points that would suggest the contrary because, as I said, I'm only thinking aloud here, and I'm not favouring any conclusion because there is nothing 'at stake' for me...


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## clevermizo

Interprete said:


> Thanks for the list!
> I'm not convinced though:
> 
> -second, because Arras and Buhl are actually proper names, birl is a mix of two other words, ahull comes from hull and hence is already a derivative, and only taw could be a good example if, as I'm saying, English was really based on a root/derivations system as heavily as latin or semitic languages, which does not seem to be the case at all.



Right, but we're talking about the origin of words here. How do you know what the ultimate origin of words like جأث or جأب is? It may be lost to the sands of time! Maybe those too were names, or mixtures of other words. They are apparently triliteral roots in Arabic because this best fits the Arabic morphological system. But unless you know the PS root of those Arabic roots, you can't really say what their origin is. One can't assume that they are the ultimate roots and at the top of the food chain, in my opinion. Without knowing specific anecdotes of history, one also can't assume that some highly literate person just "made them up" to be artificial, either. 

My point is just that there is a tendency to think that a three-letter Semitic root is irreducible to other origins or derivations, just because those derivations are not obvious to us, and I don't know if that's the case. Arabic just naturally best accommodates three-letter and four-letter roots, so despite the ultimate origin of a word, it may be patterned as a three-letter root anyway. Especially if you're talking about words that have ancient history, it may be difficult to know for sure. For the last thousand years or so when we see derived patterns they usually fit a quadriliteral root, but we don't necessarily know about earlier stages of the language.

For example, you know that "birl" is a mixture of two words. I didn't know that. Because of my ignorance about that, I just assumed it was a Germanic root in English. Its small size fooled me. 



> What I am saying here would be completely nullified if we could find a good number of naked roots in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or any language with such a system, and which would have a highly specific meaning (and I'm not saying technical, because this is different - the examples I gave in Arabic are very specific but not technical at all except maybe ja'aba).
> The problem is, I cannot find any! And you haven't either so far, though this may change


That's because Romance languages are reducible to Latin for most words. What is Arabic reducible too? Unfortunately, mostly just Arabic! There's no conclusive work of the etymology of the Arabic roots themselves, to my knowledge, unless by the comparative method with other Semitic languages.

I guess my ultimate point is how do you know for certain that the words in your list are not derivative or evolved out of other words? Maybe they're derived from stories or ancient anecdotes? Maybe the roots originally meant different, more general things, but came to mean what they mean through natural evolution and usage, even if they are rare or seem "too specific" today?

I just don't like saying "Well, I don't know where the heck this word came from, so someone must have just made it up to make things complicated."


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## Interprete

Thanks clevermizo, I feel like I'm slowly starting to understand 

I'm still puzzled by these super-specific roots though. I've learned about a dozen languages in my life and none of them contains such a wealth of highly defined words. Such a level of definition is only attained by building up the meaning through affixes or other words - so why is Arabic this way? I guess this is my main problem.

Is there any other language you can think of that has such clearly defined words as its very building blocks?


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## clevermizo

Interprete said:


> Is there any other language you can think of that has such clearly defined words as its very building blocks?



I don't know, but would you really call the verb جأث a building block? My point is that it may have been derived from something else but ultimate came _to fit_ the more normative building blocks, because that better accomodates the logic of the language. Maybe its meaning simply drifted over time to mean something specific, where it used to be more general.

I think instead you should ask - can you think of another language that tries to fit most meaningful words to three and four letter root patterns, regardless of ultimate origin?


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## Ghabi

Interprete said:


> I'm still puzzled by these super-specific roots though. I've learned about a dozen languages in my life and none of them contains such a wealth of highly defined words. Such a level of definition is only attained by building up the meaning through affixes or other words - so why is Arabic this way? I guess this is my main problem.


What you call a "root" is only a product of abstraction, a mere lexicographical device. In reality there're only words, not roots. What does the root _f-3-l_ mean? I don't know, because how can a root meaning anything? Call me ghabi, but to my little brain only a word can mean somthing. And of course I haven't studied a dozen languages in my life, but I'd guess that in every human language there're words that _have come to_ acquire very specific meanings.


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## Aydintashar

Mahaodeh said:


> (Simple life=simple language) But why?


In my opinion, it is only very obvious. We are already observing the evolution of language to fit the needs of our society in front of our eyes. Go into a shopping mal for electronic products anywhere in the world, and you will notice that people use many words and grammar not understandable to anybody 50 years ago. Language hardly goes beyond the society's demands for everyday life and for industrial/cultural activity at each period. 
_
"The main difference between Early Modern_ _English and Late Modern English is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries". _(excerpt from_ The English Club_). 


> OK, then let me rephrase: are you trying to say that language reflects the development of thought (as opposed to mind)?


There is a bilateral relationship. Language reflects the development of thought, and the cultural elite usually push languages to higher levels, even to its extremities, but always pertinent to the degree of evolution of the language at each period.



> They were actually living in the heart of the (then) modern world. They had direct contacts with the major civilizations of their time and one of the routs of ancient silk road passed through Mecca and Medina. Simple life, yes; primitive life, not by a long-shot.


None of the civilsations you are referring to, had apparently a language as developed as the FusHa. FusHa was actually in a position to promote those languages rather than being promoted by them. There is no way to prove that the driving force for the evolution of Arabic was provided by a culturally developed society in the past, as in that case, you have to prove the existence of a language at a much higher level of evolution, which was missing. On the other hand, we can easily verify that Arabic has influenced dozens of languages, specially at post-Islamic period, and enabled them to function more efficiently in philosophical and scientific realms.



> What are "all the simple societies" that you are you referring to (an example would be useful)? And why do you assume that the Arabs are comparable to them?



The vocabulary of all past societies engaged in simple subsistence economy such as agriculture, animal raising, etc., reflects perfect harmony of the language with the social life. This is true of the contemporary, simple, isolated societies. I don't intend to humiliate any nation at all. Nobody relates language to superior/inferior race in this discussion. To say that Arabs had a simple subsistence in the Peninsula 1400 years ago, while speaking a language out of proportion to their lifestyle is simply an effort to solve the riddle of FusHa.


----------



## clevermizo

Ghabi said:


> What you call a "root" is only a product of abstraction, a mere lexicographical device. In reality there're only words, not roots. What does the root _f-3-l_ mean? I don't know, because how can a root meaning anything? Call me ghabi, but to my little brain only a word can mean somthing. And of course I haven't studied a dozen languages in my life, but I'd guess that in every human language there're words that _have come to_ acquire very specific meanings.



I agree, and I won't call you _ghabi_. I think there's some confusion here because we call the content morphemes of Arabic "roots" by tradition, which is different of course from a Proto-Semitic "root" which is the ultimate, irreducible hypothetical source of a word in the daughter language. Maybe we should call them "basic content morphemes" instead of "roots" but that sounds like a mouthful. 



Aydintashar said:


> To say that Arabs had a simple subsistence in the Peninsula 1400 years ago, while speaking a language out of proportion to their lifestyle is simply an effort to solve the riddle of FusHa.



A simple illiterate peasant in Poland a hundred years ago or longer spoke a language that has seven cases for noun and adjective declension (fourteen if you double it for singular and plural), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), bi-aspectual verb categories with three moods, voices and tenses, so what on earth are you on about? How can you judge that their language is out of proportion with their lifestyle? Are you puzzled because you presume they should have run around saying "Me eat - you give food - where sheep? where wife? Ugh!". I think that's just offensive. You can't correlate complexity in language with what you perceive as a simple lifestyle. I live in a modern city and because of that life, I really can't view 1400 year old Arabian life as "simple" at all. There are all sorts of complicated issues about that lifestyle I'm sure that I don't know about and I'm sure I would fail at trying to live in that traditional way. It's simpler in some ways and more complicated in others. I buy milk at a store, for example. Simple. Someone 1400 years ago would have had to milk a goat. In fact, many places, someone _ still _ has to milk a goat. To me, that's quite complicated.


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## Josh_

Interprete said:


> Thanks clevermizo, I feel like I'm slowly starting to understand
> 
> I'm still puzzled by these super-specific roots though. I've learned  about a dozen languages in my life and none of them contains such a  wealth of highly defined words. Such a level of definition is only  attained by building up the meaning through affixes or other words - so  why is Arabic this way? I guess this is my main problem.
> 
> Is there any other language you can think of that has such clearly defined words as its very building blocks?


I think what you are talking about it "semantic complexity." 

Mona Baker, in her book "In Other Words" briefly touches on that (you can read it here;  it's only about a page long). In essense, what she says is that in a  culture, if a complex concept becomes important enough to be talked  about often, a concise way of refering to it will develop. She then  gives the example of the Brazilian Portuguese word '_arruação_'  which means "clearing the ground under coffee trees of rubbish and  piling it in the middle of the row in order to aid in the recovery of  beans dropped during harvesting" -- quite a mouthful.

As far as Arabic having (seemingly) complex ideas as building blocks, I  do no think that is the case. These concepts obviously developed over  time as the need to have a concise way to refer to them developed.
 ----------------


As far as the question in the OP -- where did الفصحى come from? -- first of all, I think we must understand that الفصحى is merely a label, it means the most eloquent (of the language). Now, where did it come from?

To put it simply, it arose largely by way of analysis of the language of the Quran, and the   pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry, which were thought to contain the most eloquent and pure Arabic. And also, in this quest to find الفصحى في اللغة the Bedouins were often consulted, who were traditionally thought of as speaking the most eloquent and pure Arabic. The ancient Arab philologists, grammarians, and lexicographers, based on the corpus of data they collected, set out to explain what they found, i.e. they explained the rules of grammar, pronunciation, syntax, orthography, vocabulary, etc. In essence, they were engaging in  codification of the language. Out of this was born الفصحى.

Arabic has a rich history of lexicography and grammar. These Arabic sciences arose out of this idea to better understand "the language of God."


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## Interprete

Thanks all for these explanations.
It makes more sense indeed if you say that 'roots' are not the original basic ideas of their derivatives. I was confused because one has to acknowledge that whenever you learn a new verb in a form other than 'fa3ala', your teacher will invariably will refer you to the 'original' meaning of the root in order to better understand it.



> A simple illiterate peasant in Poland a hundred years ago or longer spoke a language that has seven cases


This is true, and the more you go back in time, the more complex many languages get grammatically. However no one has questioned this, because you're only talking about grammar here.
I think Aydintashar's point was about the vocabulary.
I just happen to have read this morning a Wikipedia article on the Yaghan language. I believe this small exceprt is a clear illustration of what Aydin explains about the ancient Arab lifestyle :


> The physical environment in which the Yahgan people lived was relatively poor in land resources, and historically they spent little time in the interior. It is understandable, then, that the vocabulary reflects this. There are many fewer names for land animals and plants than one might expect based on what is found in other languages from other, richer natural environments. The sea coast was a different matter, and the language had many terms for sea birds and ocean life.


The idea being that you have names for things you need to name. Which is why I still find the Arabic glossary to be out of proportion to what Arabs at the time wanted to name on a daily basis.
This makes me think of Allah's name 'al samad'. In light of Mona Baker's explanation, is this such a common concept that it would warrant the creation of a name for it?


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## Aydintashar

clevermizo said:


> A simple illiterate peasant in Poland a hundred years ago or longer spoke a language that has seven cases for noun and adjective declension (fourteen if you double it for singular and plural), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), bi-aspectual verb categories with three moods, voices and tenses, so what on earth are you on about? How can you judge that their language is out of proportion with their lifestyle? Are you puzzled because you presume they should have run around saying "Me eat - you give food - where sheep? where wife? Ugh!". I think that's just offensive. You can't correlate complexity in language with what you perceive as a simple lifestyle. I live in a modern city and because of that life, I really can't view 1400 year old Arabian life as "simple" at all. There are all sorts of complicated issues about that lifestyle I'm sure that I don't know about and I'm sure I would fail at trying to live in that traditional way. It's simpler in some ways and more complicated in others. I buy milk at a store, for example. Simple. Someone 1400 years ago would have had to milk a goat. In fact, many places, someone _ still _ has to milk a goat. To me, that's quite complicated.



Of course, the kind of grammar you mention, was and is common to all languages, and the illiterate are equally capable of using the grammar as efficiently as the educated, if not better. In fact, since grammar is usually refined through out the centuries, chances are that the illiterate peasants of Poland were using even a more complicated grammar in the early Christian era.
But, remember that Poland was in close contact with Latin, and the literary activity, including the composition of Christian texts was being conducted in Latin, which prevented Polish from producing literary works of its own, which is maybe the reason why, Polish had to wait more than a millennium to produce literary works in the native language around the 15th century, which were miscellaneous translations of Christian texts.
This is true of most European languages, which started their literary activity by producing a translation of Bible in the 13th-14th centuries. In fact, the only European languages owning some literary tradition and containing philosophical works of some antiquity are Greek (until about the onset of Christianity) and Latin (after the onset of Christianity). For all the other languages of Europe, the history of literature starts at around the 14th century, the works produced being often not original works, but translations of sacred Christian texts. These languages had even to wait a few centuries more for their literature to ripen.
OK, we accept that Latin and the power of the Roman Empire was a retarding factor preventing the native languages from developing their own national literature. The linguistic capacities of Greek corresponded to Greek civilisation, and that of Latin, to the cultural activity during the Roman Empire. Wherever we turn, we face the obvious correspondence between language and social development. 
Now, this cannot be summarized merely in terms of buying milk, or milking the goat. Fusha of 1400 years ago was capable of expressing philosophical thoughts more perfectly than Greek and Latin without apparently relying on a history of such a cultural activity. I sometimes wonder why some people take this for granted. It is as strange and as abnormal as your illiterate Polish peasants of 100 years ago starting to talk suddenly about  quantum mechanics! 

When the translation activity started in the 8th century, Moslems faced no difficulty in translating all the ancient Greek culture into Arabic. Suddenly, they noticed that Arabic was even more convenient for expressing Euclidean geometry than Greek itself. The ancient Greek wisdom and knowledge found a new media, and was preserved more effectively in Arabic, until the necessity arose for re-translating it into Latin starting the 16th century. A lot of other languages, specially in the Moslem 
world have tried ever since to act in the same philosophical way, but wherever they have succeeded to a certain degree, it has been uneceptionally due to using Arabic loanwords at a rate of no less than 90%! I can't help but consider this unique capacity as an unresolved puzzle.


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## clevermizo

Aydintashar said:


> Now, this cannot be summarized merely in terms of buying milk, or milking the goat. Fusha of 1400 years ago was capable of expressing philosophical thoughts more perfectly than Greek and Latin without apparently relying on a history of such a cultural activity.



I respectfully disagree that Arabic is anymore capable of expressing philosophical concepts than Greek or Latin. Perhaps certain philosophical matters were preserved in Arabic but that is just a matter of history, not because Arabic is linguistically more capable of preserving it. I apologize; I thought you were talking about grammatical matters alone. It appears you think that Classical Arabic is a perfect, ideal language and that it amazes you that such a language could have been cultivated by people living a "simple" lifestyle. Well if that is the case, then perhaps we can admire it for being amazing.  There are all sorts of amazing phenomena in the world. 




> It is as strange and as abnormal as your illiterate Polish peasants of 100 years ago starting to talk suddenly about  quantum mechanics!


I would happily teach an illiterate Polish peasant the basics of quantum mechanics in a language he understands and he would be able to relay it to others in Polish (although, I don't speak Polish. I'd have to learn). But these matters hadn't been fully discovered, so it's not really a good analogy. Unless you mean that speaking a certain language predisposes you to making a certain scientific discovery, which I fundamentally disagree with. Perhaps I'm just being "politically correct" but I don't see this as a linguistic issue. It's a cultural one. For example, you could argue that speaking English makes it easier for you to discover something scientifically because nowadays most scientific literature is in English. This is just a product of history! Speaking English just gives you access to the greater body of literature, so that you can learn it and have it inform your own work. A century ago you would have to know German and also French. It could just as well have been Igbo or Armenian.


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## Aydintashar

clevermizo said:


> It's a cultural one. For example, you could argue that speaking English makes it easier for you to discover something scientifically because nowadays most scientific literature is in English. This is just a product of history! Speaking English just gives you access to the greater body of literature, so that you can learn it and have it inform your own work. A century ago you would have to know German and also French. It could just as well have been Igbo or Armenian.


I agree that it is a product of history, even in case of Arabic, and I am trying to find out the historical event(s) that caused the upheaval. All of us know the historical conditions that made English the universal language of science and technology: the industrial revolution and the British colonial expansion. Now, if somebody can show me similar historical events, that caused FusHa of 1400 years ago to own that capacity, while leaving dozens of other language uneffected, I think the puzzle would have been resolved. So, as you can see, although I love Arabic, I am not a pure admirer, I am eager to discover the historical event that caused a language to develop to a higher rank.


----------



## Ghabi

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I was actually expecting "handed down by God" or "brought by Aliens!"


I'd wholeheartedly accept either of these, seeing that the thread has become an exercise of creative history, _ad nauseam_.


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## rayloom

I'm not a specialist in these things, so be warned that what I'm saying is just my opinion:

I think that the premise that Arabs lived a simple life is a false one.

The Arabian Peninsula was inhabited for thousands of years, many civilizations rose and fell. There was a trade route connecting Southern Arabia to the world, passing through the entire length of the peninsula. The trade route itself lasted a few thousand years.
The Arabs had contact with the Egyptians, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Arameans, Persians...etc. 
By the beginning of the Christian Era, large parts of the Levant and Mesopotamia were already starting to speak Arabic. There were the Nabateans, the Lakhmids, Ghassanids already starting to establish their kingdoms in the North.
There were other kingdoms and civilizations more ancient in Central Arabia (I mean by central, the whole inlands of the Arabian Peninsula).
The history of Ancient North Arabian writing dates back to at least the 6th century BC.
There were also the nomads, whose language was probably more preserved than the rest. 
The civilized areas with their North Arabian language developing to suit their needs and lifestyles, while the nomads Arabian languages developing to reflect their life.
There was always a continuum of North Arabian languages, and because of contact between the tribes, the languages affected and were affected by each other.

Classical Arabic represents the literary language used by the those Arabian tribes and groups of the region during the few centuries surrounding the rise of Islam.
The diversity of their life have cause the literary Arabic of the time to be that way. Also don't forget that Arabic is an old language, the rift between the Central Semitic languages happened at least 4000 years ago, that's a pretty long time for a language to develop and for meanings to be acquired or to be more refined.

It's not just a matter of some people living in some tents and their language just happened.

والله أعلم


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## Mahaodeh

rayloom said:


> I think that the premise that Arabs lived a simple life is a false one.



Thank you, that's what I've been trying to say. The only simple thing about their life is technology and even that was not really too far behind the rest of the world at the time.


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## clevermizo

rayloom said:


> It's not just a matter of some people living in some tents and their language just happened.
> 
> والله أعلم



 That's exactly the sentence I was looking for!


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## Aydintashar

I feel that some of us are tired of these discussions, and the topic is still open for some others. I strongly and politely suggest that, those who are tired may retreat from the thread without offending others. Offending others has never been considered a sign of knowledge.



rayloom said:


> The Arabs had contact with the Egyptians, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Arameans, Persians...etc.




To be very specific, I think this is the typical mistake that all of us may fall into. Rayloom is right in many aspects, but he refers to the fact that Arabs had contact with various civilised peoples, including Persians, without taking due note of the fact, that Persian actually rose to the status of a literary language, after extensive contact with Arabic, and at the cost of large-scale borrowing of Arabic words, now forming no less than 80% of its vocabulary, where cultural activity is concerned. This is not creative history, this is a fact recognised by everybody. 
None of the other civilisations that Rayloom refers to, had a language of the same capacity of FusHa of 1400 years ago.

I may have been mis-understood, but I never focused my arguments on grammar alone. Grammars of all languages would really suffice for all cultural purposes, unless we are really facing a pidgin language. The real capacity of Fusha of 1400 years ago and later, in my opinion, lay in its lexical treasures, which turned it into a lingua franca in the Islamic  world, and unilaterally revolutionised dozens of languages.


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## Tracer

Aydintashar said: *When the translation activity started in the 8th century, Moslems faced no difficulty in translating all the ancient Greek culture into Arabic. Suddenly, they noticed that Arabic was even more convenient for expressing Euclidean geometry than Greek itself.*
 
*This is the complete opposite of what really happened and the full statement, which I haven’t quoted here,  is peppered with ahistorical jingoism.*
 
*1.  Arabic translators faced monumental linguistic problems.*  Arabic, just to cite 2 tiny examples, didn’t even have a word for “philosopy”, so guess what they did.  Yep, they took the Greek word and made up a new word:  falsafa. Arabic had no word for “chemistry”, so guess what they did.  Same thing. (The widespread “belief” that “chemistry” is an Arabic-origin word is completely false.  It’s Greek).
 
*2.  “All of ancient Greek culture”:*  what was translated was largely the philosophical and scientifc works.  A vast corpus of “literary” Greek works, such as the Illiad and the Odyssey were ignored.  The vast majority of the translators, especially the early ones, were not “Arabs”, they werebilingual Greek/Arabic “pagans”, especially from the area around Harran (modern Turkey).  
 
3.  Although the translation movement was a cultural event of the 1st order of magnitude, the reasons why it occurred had nothing to do with the “intellectual curiosity” of the conquerors.  It had to do with the survival of the regime in an unfriendly, largely Greek speaking environment.
 
*4.  Basing arguments on romantic, nostalgic "facts" is a sure way to intellectual incoherence and perdition*.  The problem is, once they take hold, they're almost impossible to "correct" as witness here the argument vis a vis the origins of the FusHa.  The vast (I like that word) majority of "facts" presented to support the presence and usage of the FusHa in pre-Islamic times are laughably bogus and are based on the notion (found in many cultures) that the "first", the "beginnings" were always the best and purest.  Pure fiction.


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## Ghabi

Interprete said:


> The idea being that you have names for things you need to name. Which is why I still find the Arabic glossary to be out of proportion to what Arabs at the time wanted to name on a daily basis.


First of all, as Ray suggests above, the Arabs at the time probably didn't live such a simple life as some want them to have lived, so they probably did have the need to name many many things. Secondly, I want to quote Wadi's Post#25:



Wadi Hanifa said:


> FuS7a can be used in different ways by different people, but the most common among Arabs is that FuS7a encompasses all of the dialects of 7th/8th century Arabia, or at least in the regions that were considered linguistically prestigeous (Najd, Hejaz, Bahrayn, the non-Himyartic parts of Yemen ... all excluding the urban areas). As I explained earlier, all these dialects, despite their differences, belonged to the same linguistic type. Most of the differences were of the type that did not appear on the written page (due to the nature of Arabic orthography) or were differences in vocabulary (nearly all such vocabulary was accepted as FuS7a and incorporated into Classical Arabic).


What we call fuS7a doesn't represent the lexicon of a single community of a single generation. Words used by different tribes, different generations all went into the lexicon. Small wonder it is vast, like an ocean.


----------



## Cilquiestsuens

Two points I would like to mention concerning the origin of fus7a...

1. I think the influence of Old South Arabian (Sabaic language) on North Arabian (therefore Fus7a) has been much underestimated although a huge number of migrations from the Sabaic speaking areas to the North are recorded in Pre-Islamic history. If Aydintashar was looking for a 'lost civilization' he may have a look in that direction, because I think the relation between Sabaic and North Arabian has not well been studied.

2. The irritating assumption that : ''simple people such as the Pre-Islamic tribals of Nejd and Hijaz can't have possibly spoken a complex language like fus7a'' is quite a materialistic one. 

I know that nowadays a civilization is only judged on the size of the buildings it had built and its advance in technology. No doubt, Pre-Islamic Arabs or many other societies throughout the world were never able to build skyscrapers or mass produce i-pads. There is no doubt however for those who take a genuine interest in those civilizations that some aspects of their culture were far more complex than our present-day globalized one(s). Each culture would have its own specific fields of excellence *both material and intellectual*. Arabs were masters of desert life, knowledgeable of camels / horses and had a complex vocabulary in the field of social interactions in general and regarding their tribal system. If there was one intellectual field in which Bedouins excelled and that they cultivated, it was the eloquence of language, mainly through poetry. This is a known fact. They didn't study mathematics, astronomy, didn't excel in metallurgy or embroidery or whatever. That didn't prevent them from being masters of rhetoric and eloquence in their own language.

Shakespeare, I've been told, was a simple man and didn't know much about sciences, some even say he believed that Earth was flat. and that he was never able to produce anything with his hands except writing... But if you ask me, I've never read anything so eloquent and well said in English....


N.B. : A last thing I wanted to mention, its about Old North Arabian language. What M.C.A. Mac Donald has to say about it is quite interesting and runs contrary to the popular belief that North Arabs were mostly illiterate before Islam:



> Literacy seems to have been extraordinarily widespread, not only among the settled populations but also among the nomads. Indeed, the *scores of thousands of graffiti *on the rocks of the Syro-Arabian desert suggest that it must have been almost universal among the latter (see Macdonald 1993:382–388). By the Roman period, it is probable that a higher proportion of the population in this region was functionally literate than in any other area of the ancient world.


Quote from The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia Edited by Roger D. Woodard, Cambridge; pg. 179


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## Aydintashar

Tracer said:


> *1.  Arabic translators faced monumental linguistic problems.*  Arabic, just to cite 2 tiny examples, didn’t even have a word for “philosopy”, so guess what they did.  Yep, they took the Greek word and made up a new word:  falsafa. Arabic had no word for “chemistry”, so guess what they did.  Same thing. (The widespread “belief” that “chemistry” is an Arabic-origin word is completely false.  It’s Greek).



Nobody denies the existence of Greek words in Arabic, mainly introduced into Arabic during the translation activity. It is only very normal to have traces of the source language in the target language. In this sense, English has more traces of Latin, than Arabic of Greek. But, it is a big mistake to believe that, Arabic didn't have a suitable word for "philosophy". The fact that most European languages use the Turkish word "yogurt" does not lead to the conclusion that they are unable to produce their own word for _yogurt_. In fact, the compound word _"philosophy" _(literally: _love of knowledge_) describes _philosophy _much less efficiently than "yogurt" does _yogurt_. Muslims could employ at least one of the following compound words or phrases in place of "philosophy" with much better results:
بحث الحقیقة
فحص الیقین
تعقل
مباحثة
تفهیم الحقیقة
تفحّص
تقریر الحقیقة
التحقیق
کشف الحقیقة
دراسة الحقیقة
الدراسات
The list is very long, and very creative. But, I think the reason why they kept the word "philosophy" was because it was already well-known in the Greek world and Latin, and they respected its historicity.




> *2.  “All of ancient Greek culture”:*  what was translated was largely the philosophical and scientifc works.  A vast corpus of “literary” Greek works, such as the Illiad and the Odyssey were ignored.  The vast majority of the translators, especially the early ones, were not “Arabs”, they were bilingual Greek/Arabic “pagans”, especially from the area around Harran (modern Turkey).


The fact that they concentrated mainly on science and philosophy, and ignored mythology indicates the young society's internal dynamism, and it does not make any difference who did the translation. The important thing is that Arabic immediately proved to be a language of science and philosophy.


> 3.  Although the translation movement was a cultural event of the 1st order of magnitude, the reasons why it occurred had nothing to do with the “intellectual curiosity” of the conquerors.  It had to do with the survival of the regime in an unfriendly, largely Greek speaking environment.


Why the translation activity started does not concern our discussion. It is a historical, rather than a linguistic topic, although I wish to express my strict disagreement with your hypothesis.


> *4.  Basing arguments on romantic, nostalgic "facts" is a sure way to intellectual incoherence and perdition*.  The problem is, once they take hold, they're almost impossible to "correct" as witness here the argument vis a vis the origins of the FusHa.  The vast (I like that word) majority of "facts" presented to support the presence and usage of the FusHa in pre-Islamic times are laughably bogus and are based on the notion (found in many cultures) that the "first", the "beginnings" were always the best and purest.  Pure fiction.



I did not find any "laughable bogus" in the discussions, and I personally wouldn't use that expression in a linguistic thread.


----------



## Abu Rashid

Aydintashar said:
			
		

> In fact, the compound word _"philosophy" _(literally: _love of knowledge_) describes _philosophy _much less efficiently than "yogurt" does _yogurt_.  Muslims could employ at least one of the following compound words or  phrases in place of "philosophy" with much better results:



This is something I've noticed with English, is that it tends to prefer compounds from foreign languages like Latin or Greek. Probably because it gives them an air of mystery and makes them sound aloof and sophisticated.

It sort of acts as a second layer of the language, so that if I hear for instance the word "television", then I would know it means to "view from a distance" even though I don't speak the source language of the new compound word. Whilst television or philosophy sound technical and sophisticated, "knowledge-love" or "distant-viewer" does not.

-----



			
				Cilq said:
			
		

> I think the influence of Old South Arabian (Sabaic language) on North  Arabian (therefore Fus7a) has been much underestimated although a huge  number of migrations from the Sabaic speaking areas to the North are  recorded in Pre-Islamic history.



On what basis do you think OSA influenced ONA more than is supposedly considered at present? I think they share a lot of commonalities, both being extremely conservative Semitic languages from the Arabian peninsula, but I don't see how OSA was that influential over ONA.



			
				Cilq said:
			
		

> If Aydintashar was looking for a 'lost  civilization' he may have a look in that direction, because I think the  relation between Sabaic and North Arabian has not well been studied.



Actually I think if one wanted to find evidence of a great pre-Islamic Arabian civilisation, then the perfect candidate would have to be Iram dhaat al-3imaad. This was the city mentioned in the Qur'an, but dismissed by archaeologists as a myth, until the translation of the Ebla tablets in the late 20th. century which mention the city by name. The location of the ancient civilisation was then discovered using satellite imagery and laser technology to trace the central point to which ancient trade routes all met up, and that's where they found the city of Iram.


----------



## DenisBiH

Tracer said:


> 3.  Although the translation movement was a cultural event of the 1st order of magnitude, the reasons why it occurred had nothing to do with the “intellectual curiosity” of the conquerors.  It had to do with the survival of the regime in an unfriendly, largely Greek speaking environment.




So if Martians ever decide to come and conquer Germany, they will start translating scientific works in English in scientific journals etc., in order to ensure Martian supremacy in the conquered and hostile German lands? Because that would enable them to understand and discuss (in Martian) the theory of relativity (translated to Martian) with their unhappy German subjects  (in cities, towns and villages) and thus ensure the survival of the Martian regime? 

But wouldn't it be easier for Martians to simply learn German and discuss Oktoberfest, something that (presumably) more people can and want to discuss much more than the theory of relativity?




> *2.  “All of ancient Greek culture”:*   what was translated was largely the philosophical and scientifc works.   A vast corpus of “literary” Greek works, such as the Illiad and the  Odyssey were ignored.  The vast majority of the translators, especially  the early ones, were not “Arabs”, they were bilingual Greek/Arabic “pagans”, especially from the area around Harran (modern Turkey).


So if Martians ever decide to come and conquer Germany, a large number of bilingual English/Martian German Christians (so, trilingual actually), especially from the area around Hamburg, will translate philosophical and scientific works in English (the dominant language of science today) to Martian, of their own free will, in order to ensure...



> the survival of the regime in an unfriendly


...environment? Why would they do that?


----------



## Mahaodeh

Tracer said:


> *2.  “All of ancient Greek culture”:*  what was translated was largely the philosophical and scientifc works.  A vast corpus of “literary” Greek works, such as the Illiad and the Odyssey were ignored.  The vast majority of the translators, especially the early ones, were not “Arabs”, they werebilingual Greek/Arabic “pagans”, especially from the area around Harran (modern Turkey).
> .
> .
> .
> 3.  Although the translation movement was a cultural event of the 1st order of magnitude, the reasons why it occurred had nothing to do with the “intellectual curiosity” of the conquerors.  It had to do with the survival of the regime in an unfriendly, largely Greek speaking environment.



Let me see if I get you right, are you saying that the vast majority of the population was Greek speaking, they were unfriendly to the Arabs, and they translated their best scientific and philosophical works to Arabic because they wanted the Arabs to survive in that region.

Does that make any sense to you? Because I'll be darned if I find any sense in it.


What actually seems to make sense is that the majority in that region after Islam were Arabic speaking, the Greek translators were not unfriendly (even less likely to be pagans, they actually where Christians), and they translated it to Arabic because, well, the Arabs were curious or needed the knowledge and were willing to read the translated work.



Tracer said:


> *4.  Basing arguments on romantic, nostalgic "facts" is a sure way to intellectual incoherence and perdition*.  The problem is, once they take hold, they're almost impossible to "correct" as witness here the argument vis a vis the origins of the FusHa.  The vast (I like that word) majority of "facts" presented to support the presence and usage of the FusHa in pre-Islamic times are laughably bogus and are based on the notion (found in many cultures) that the "first", the "beginnings" were always the best and purest.  Pure fiction.



Again, most of us (if not all) have no problem with Classical Arabic not being anyone's native language. It's true that many, if not most Arabs believe it to be better than the modern colloquial dialects or at least better than MSA. The reason has little to do with it being the "original" language and has more to do with it being the language of the Quran. This fact is not going to change if you were able to prove that it was never a native language.

It's a shame that you feel that the "facts" presented here are laughably bogus, but you should look at your own argument first. You want us to replace what we think is more likely to be real with this:

The Arabs before Islam were so primitive and backward that they could not have possibly been able to speak this language as a native tong. However, they were capable of constructing this "highly complex and sophisticated" language, despite their primitiveness and backwardness, and then learn it and use it as a lingua franka.

My problem with your argument is:
1. If they can't speak it, how on earth were they able to construct it then use it, not as a native tong but as a second language?

2. If they can construct it, then learn it and become fluent in it, don't you think that this means that they were capable of speaking it to start with. And if they were, why does it seem to you so laughable that they did actually speak it?

I'm sorry but you are contradicting yourself. If I misunderstood what you were saying, then please, excuse my ignorance and bestow upon me the honor of explaining it in layman's terms so that I might understand your logic.


----------



## Tracer

TRANSLATION
 
The translators were hired by the Umayyads and the Abbasids to do the translating work.  Like today, no one did this kind of labor without pay. Arabic translations were carried out not only from Greek, but from several languages, including and especially Persian.  *Alf Leila wa Leila and Kalila wa Dimma* were among the many products that were eventually produced during this period.
 
Why they wanted translations done in the first place are many and varied.  There was no one single reason.  No doubt,  some of the work was done out of “intellectual curiosity”, but the record shows that that was not the original or basic reason why it was done.  (Eventually, having translations done was seen as a mark of distinction, and all manner of people among the elites, including members of the military, commissioned translations to be carried out.  In other words, translation transformed itself from a survival tactic to one of snobbery).
 
Arabic was spoken in the “Fertile Crescent” for generations before the “Arab Conquests”, but it was not the major language. It was the language of the unfederated Arab tribes living in that area.  Aramaic and Syriac were also widespread, but it was Greek that was the “official” language of industry, commerce and administration. Early Umayyad coinage was struck in both Arabic and Greek.  (Of course, eventually Arabic became dominant and all other languages, except Persian, disappeared from common usage).
---------------------------
 
FusHa
 
My position on this subject has been and continues to be that I believe the “first” Arabic used in everyday life was not the FusHa. It was also not a “dialect” (dialect of what?).  
 
I contend it was a new language which had evolved from some Semitic ancestor and which at some point, was called “Arabic”.  When exactly that occurred, I don’t know.   As someone mentioned in this thread, the “first” Arabic may have been, or rather, must have been a “FusHa-like” spoken speech and I have no problem with that.  
 
What exactly happened after that, again, I don’t know (and nobody else knows either).   But there is no doubt that just before Islam appeared, there was already a FusHa and several dialects.
 
As I said, my only interest in this thread (which is really by now a rope or a chain, not a thread) is to determine in what form Arabic first appeared (which was the original question of this “thread).  What happened after that is really another subject.
 
If I upset some readers with my rhetorical style and some of my wording, be assured that I meant no offense.  So I apologize, not for what I said, but how I said it. At the same time, I totally disagree with some of the statements made and presented as factual evidence.
=============
 
One final note:  The “Translation Movement” has long been wrongly ignored and passed over for what it really was.  In fact, it was an astonishing world-historical event with implications and influences that can still be felt to this day.  As a cultural development, it has had no peers anywhere else either before or since those amazing days when it was in full flower.
===========


----------



## DenisBiH

In other words, members criticizing your arguments are children whose feelings you think you've hurt, and you're sorry about that, but you don't see any need to either defend or amend some of your points that have been criticized here? 

While I appreciate your cultural sensitivity, I assure you there is no need to care about, at least, my own feelings. Just respond to the questions raised.

To make it easier - I'm an Umayyad caliph. How does translating high-culture, philosophical and scientific works, some dating thousand years back into pre-Christian period, from a language that is mostly confined to the educated elite (Greek), and only in the western part of my caliphate at that, to a language that no-one yet knows (Arabic), except my soldiers and settlers and a few natives in the beginning, help me secure my regime? Am I going to have my governor of Egypt go around Egypt and discuss Aristotle, either in Greek or in Arabic translation, with Egyptian people most of which know neither of those two languages, but rather speak and write their own, nor does Aristotle interest them that much?


----------



## Tracer

To:  DenisBiH


لا</SPAN> تعليق يا عزيزي، لا تعليق خصوصا لك</SPAN>​


----------



## DenisBiH

Lingua Arabica non loquor.


----------



## Tracer

To:  DenisBiH

Get ahold of the book "*Greek Thought, Arabic Culture"* by *Dimitri Gutas*, the foremost specialist on this subject.  It'll answer all your questions.


----------



## DenisBiH

Tracer said:


> To:  DenisBiH
> 
> Get ahold of the book "*Greek Thought, Arabic Culture"* by *Dimitri Gutas*, the foremost specialist on this subject.  It'll answer all your questions.




I'm sure it's a wonderful book, but the thing is, I love reading books so much that there's already a backlog. So why don't we save some time and have you describe, in a few paragraphs, this process of securing a regime in a hostile environment by translating Aristotle, so that if some of us ever decide to try conquering the world we would know what to do, because it was obviously quite successful.


----------



## Aydintashar

Tracer said:


> TRANSLATION
> 
> Arabic translations were carried out not only from Greek, but from several languages, including and especially Persian.  *Alf Leila wa Leila and Kalila wa Dimma* were among the many products that were eventually produced during this period.



As I have mentioned on several occasions, contemporary Persian is hardly able to produce any work of a scientific or cultural value whatsoever, without using at least 80% Arabic loanwords. There is no record of a pre-Islamic Persian with any rhetorical abilities and scientific/philosophical vocabulary.How can we conclude that, Muslims needed translating from Persian. What had Persian to offer to Muslims extensively and energetically engaged in translating Greek works of scientific/philosophical context? You already mentioned that Muslims ignored Greek mythological and theatrical works, but concentrated on science and philosophy. So, what did they seek in *Alf Leila wa Leila and Kalila wa Dimma?*



> In other words, translation transformed itself from a survival tactic to one of snobbery).



I think this theory fails to explain the actual state of affairs. Muslims got involved in the translation activity at a time when the Roman Empire and the Christian authorities forbade Greek science and culture strictly, fearing that it may spread pagan ideas. On the other hand, it is very clear from historical evidence that sciences like geometry were needed in the Muslim society for practical purposes. For example, Al-kharazmi's incentive for composing the treatise on algebra was to solve problems posed by the Islamic rule of inheritance. Geography was needed to identify the extents of the Empire, etc. So, there remains no room neither for survival, nor for snobbery. But, once again we should keep in mind that we are not discussing the incentives, but the fact that Arabic immediately proved adequate as a language of science and philosophy. There is no other example in the world, of a nomadic people readily prepared to use their language for science and philosophy in such an efficient way.
 


> Of course, eventually Arabic became dominant and all other languages, except Persian, disappeared from common usage.



Well, there are dozens of non-Arabic languages in the moselem world, which apparently remain from pre-Islamic times, such as Turkish. How do you conclude that all languages except Persian disappeared?


----------



## Abu Rashid

Tracer said:
			
		

> Aramaic and Syriac were also widespread..




You do realise Syriac is just a dialect of Aramaic right?




			
				Tracer said:
			
		

> My position on  this subject has been and continues to be that I believe the “first”  Arabic used in everyday life was not the FusHa. It was also not a  “dialect” (dialect of what?).
> 
> I contend it was  a new language which had evolved from some Semitic ancestor and which  at some point, was called “Arabic”.  When exactly that occurred, I don’t  know.   As someone mentioned in this thread, the “first” Arabic may  have been, or rather, must have been a “FusHa-like” spoken speech and I  have no problem with that.




The problem with this claim is that Fus7a seems to contain the most archaic features of any strain of Arabic (and of any surviving Semitic language actually). I think it's a foregone conclusion that it preceded the other dialects, because it's retained far more of the original Semitic features than they have. Reconstructing fus7a from the dialects would've just been impossible. It'd be like trying to reconstruct proto-Canaanite from modern Hebrew, a daunting task even for the greatest linguists of today, with full knowledge of all the other Semitic languages.


----------



## Tracer

Aydintashar and Abu Rashid

You guys really still want to continue this?  We’re just going around in circles.  You’re just going to end up getting more and more exasperated at me.  But….have it your way.  I’m just going to have to call in “sick” tomorrow at work.

Aydin: 
 
_*1. …..contemporary Persian is hardly able to produce any work of a scientific or cultural value whatsoever, without using at least 80% Arabic loanwords…..*_
_**_ 
 
I don’t see this as having anything to do with your original posting.  In any case, you could just as easily say:  *“Contemporary English is hardly able to produce any work of a scientific or cultural value whatsoever, without using at least 80% Latin/Greek loanwords.”*  And the point is….??
 
 
A great deal of the Greek heritage actually came through Persian, since Iran (I mean Persia) had long had a “relationship” with Greece since time immemorial and more specifically since the time of Alexander. This was recognized and so Persian works were translated into Arabic to acquire this knowledge.
 
Remember, I’m talking about what you might call “beginnings”. How things later developed I’m not concerned about.  Undoubtedly, the “literary” works, like Alf Leila wa Leila etc. were a by-product of this search for scientific knowledge but they were not the CAUSE of the translations, rather they were one of the BY-PRODUCTS of this translation.
 
_*2. “*__*So, there remains no room neither for survival, nor for snobbery.”*_  Well, we differ here. Our 2 views on what was going on in this respect couldn’t be further apart.  And it would take me forever to explain, so I won’t.  _*The very first translations were a result of an existential need.  Without them, Arabic might not have survived.*_
 
*3.  “Well, there are dozens of non-Arabic languages in the moslem world, which apparently remain from pre-Islamic times, such as Turkish. How do you conclude that all languages except Persian disappeared?”*
 
Gee, do I really have to explain this?  We, or at least I, are talking about the 8th/9th century Fertile Crescent area, aren’t we?  I agree with your premise:  there were dozens of…….  But I disagree with your conclusion.  
 
Urdu, Malay, Indonesian, Turkish etc etc may have existed long before Islam, but they certainly didn’t exist in the area we’re talking about.  My point is whatever languages Arabic came in contact with in the Fertile Crescent after the Conquests eventually disappeared or at least became less important than Arabic, except for Persian. 
 
*…..here I wrote something in Farsi but decided to erase it.*
 
 
Abu Rashid:
 
1. No, I didn’t realize Syriac was a dialect of Aramaic. My knowledge of “Semitics” is quite superficial actually.  But dialect or full-fledged language, Syriac was extensively used in the Fertile Crescent at the time of the Conquests.  I quote from my source:
 
_*"Syriac* is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared around the 1st century C.E., *Classical Syriac* became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from the 4th to the 8th centuries_
_It became the vehicle of __Syriac Orthodox__Christianity__ and culture, spreading throughout __Asia__ as far as the Indian __Malabar__ coast and __Eastern __China_ *and was the medium of communication and cultural dissemination for Arabs and, to a lesser extent, Persians*_. _*Primarily a Christian medium of expression, Syriac had a fundamental cultural and literary influence on the development of Arabic which replaced it towards the end of the 8th century. "   *(Wow….all the way to China!)

_*2.  The problem with this claim is that Fus7a seems to contain the most archaic features of any strain of Arabic (and of any surviving Semitic language actually). I think it's a foregone conclusion that it preceded the other dialects, because it's retained far more of the original Semitic features than they have.*_
 
We’ve discussed this before. The fact that the FusHa contains archaic features _(which other posters to this thread have hotly contested)_ as opposed to the dialects is not evidence or proof that it preceded the dialects.  
 
I claim that the FusHa was largely constructed FROM the prestige dialects with the purpose of preserving the “best” Arabic.  
 
Since the dialects of that time were undoubtedly close to the FusHa (after all, a child often resembles its parents), there is no basis for argument here.
 
 
The dialects developed into modern dialects while the FusHa remained pretty much the same.  *But that was the purpose of the FusHa….to preserve.* Therefore, it should be no surprise if the FusHa contains items not found in the dialecs. The FusHa, as I said before, is a reflection of the dialects of the Jahiliyya which at that time preserved those archaic features you mentioned.  The fact that the modern dialects have lost those features is a natural and expected development.
 
I don’t know how else to put it.  This is what I believe and I know I’m not going to convince you otherwise.
* *


----------



## origumi

Tracer said:


> This is what I believe and I know I’m not going to convince you otherwise.


Maybe it's because you remain on a vague philosophical plain while most other participants look for arguments of tangible linguistic value, such as a possible mechanisms for the "creation" of Fus7a, demonstrating how language elements have evolved and mutated, historical facts about the people who wrote down or passed early Islamic knowledge (Quran, Hadith) and mainly their geographical-cultural-social-lingual background, relation to specific early dialects, comparision to medieval Arabic, etc.


----------



## Aydintashar

Tracer said:


> I don’t see this as having anything to do with your original posting.  In any case, you could just as easily say:  *“Contemporary English is hardly able to produce any work of a scientific or cultural value whatsoever, without using at least 80% Latin/Greek loanwords.”*  And the point is….??



I think the point is clear. Translation of scientific/philosophical texts from middle Persian into Arabic, as you claim, would look like translating similar texts from old English into Greek! Is it really feasible in your opinion? Did old English have the capacity to produce scientific/philosophical texts in such scale and quality that made it a necessity to be translated into Greek?




> A great deal of the Greek heritage actually came through Persian, since Iran (I mean Persia) had long had a “relationship” with Greece since time immemorial and more specifically since the time of Alexander. This was recognized and so Persian works were translated into Arabic to acquire this knowledge.



I am really astonished, how easily you accept this kind of claims and take them for granted. Can you provide real evidence for just one Greek text that came into Arabic through Persian, in order to regain the Greek knowledge? The book of Dimitri Gutas is following the same line of thought, claiming Persian texts being translated into Arabic, without being able to show a single evidence. I think nobody can and will ever provide such evidence, because it is only a fable.




> Urdu, Malay, Indonesian, Turkish etc etc may have existed long before Islam, but they certainly didn’t exist in the area we’re talking about.


Well, was Persian a native language in the Fertile Crescent?
I stressed on these points, because they are in close relationship with the topic of this thread. In my opinion, fables like old Persian scientific/philosophical texts being translated into Arabic "to recover knowledge" have been created in order to under-evaluate the significance of Arabic. I know no other languages, in which true scientific/philosophical texts really existed, except ancient Greek and post-Islamic Arabic. All other languages, if any, have gradually started to appear on the cultural/scientific arena after being heavily enriched by those two languages, in the West by Greek, and in the Islamic world by Arabic. The former no surprise, the latter a big surprise!


----------



## DenisBiH

> Did old English have the  capacity to produce scientific/philosophical texts in such scale and  quality that made it a necessity to be translated into Greek?


Languages being imbued with magical properties that make them especially conducive to production of works of high-culture seems kinda 19th century-ish to me.

Btw, where can one find information, in English preferably, on earliest works in classical Arabic and their surviving copies? The list would go like:

1) Qur'an - Presumed to date to the 7th century. Actual oldest surviving copy dated to ..., kept in ... museum.
2) Bukhari hadith collection - Presumed to date to the 9th (?) century. Actual oldest surviving copy dated to ..., kept in ... museum.
3) ...


----------



## Aydintashar

DenisBiH said:


> Languages being imbued with magical properties that make them especially conducive to production of works of high-culture seems kinda 19th century-ish to me.
> 
> Btw, where can one find information, in English preferably, on earliest works in classical Arabic and their surviving copies?


ّForgive me, honestly, I think I have not made myself sufficiently understood so far. We are not talking about magical properties. All languages have the capacity to be used as language of science and culture. The grammar of almost all languages is sufficient for this purpose. But, no language with limited vocabulary is able to qualify as such. Old English was no exception. English rose to the status of a world lingua franca, only after large scale borrowing from Latin. Its progress was also largely due to the requirements of the colonial age. You can under no circumstances prove that something in old English was worth translating into Greek to satisfy some scientific curiosity. By the same token, nobody will ever be able to prove that something from middle Persian was translated into Arabic during the early Islamic centuries, that satisfied some scientific/philosophical need. It simply does not exist. It is a myth. Persian began to act gradually as a language of culture, only after being intensively enriched by Arabic vocabulary. Even the majority of Persian scholars continued to write their treatise in Arabic until very recently. So, I think we are being misled by the idea of Greek culture going into Arabic through Persian. It is simply a fantasy. If somebody can prove the opposite, I will be really indebted, because my whole system of beliefs will undergo a great change.
Concerning Arabic, this is the topic we have been busy with in this thread. Its capacity to communicate scientific/philosophical concepts without relying on a known past history of intensive cultural activity is curious, isn't it?


----------



## DenisBiH

ّ





> Forgive me, honestly, I think I have not made myself sufficiently understood so far. We are not talking about magical properties. All languages have the capacity to be used as language of science and culture. The grammar of almost all languages is sufficient for this purpose. But, no language with limited vocabulary is able to qualify as such.


Ok, so? Once the need arises to produce works of increasing complexity, due to economic, political, societal, technological and other changes that lead to greater prominence of that language and its greater use in high-culture spheres, it will tend to develop vocabulary that it needs. Take a look at language standardizations done as a result of European nationalism.

When that happens, there is no particular need for direct borrowing, there are other methods of enrichment, calques, creating brand new words etc. Take a look at German.




> Old English was no exception. English rose to the status of a world lingua franca, only after large scale borrowing from Latin.


Was it the borrowing from French and Latin that made English prominent or was it historical/political,economic and other factors?




> You can under no circumstances prove that something in old English was worth translating into Greek to satisfy some scientific curiosity.


Why should I try to prove such a thing? It's your hypothesis, you're the one who is supposed to prove stuff. I can certainly prove that in modern times Old English works have been translated into other languages in order to satisfy scientific curiosity. 

Not Old English, but to illustrate further - I spent a good part of a semester reading analyses of Old Icelandic sagas. It turned out I wasn't learning only about Nordic history, but also about the structure of their society, some of which turns out is applicable to earlier stages of development of other societies, part of which I found very useful applied to modern Balkans, such as the analysis of gender roles. Actually, I've already recommended reading this article below to several people:



> Carol J. Clover, "_Regardless of Sex_: _Men_, _Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe_,"


So I'm very grateful for the translations of Icelandic sagas that led to them being analyzed and the above article, and books, produced from there.



> Persian began to act gradually as a language of culture, only after being intensively enriched by Arabic vocabulary.


My understanding is that Persian was a language of culture and a large empire much before Arabic came onto the world scene as a language of a great civilization.




> Concerning Arabic, this is the topic we have been busy with in this thread. Its capacity to communicate scientific/philosophical concepts without relying on a known past history of intensive cultural activity is curious, isn't it?


I'd be more interested in the actual history of Classical Arabic. I haven't had the time to go through this entire discussion in detail, but it seems to me that centuries are skipped or ignored as if we were talking about days. I've noticed this habit some Muslims have of conflating the 7th, 8th and even the 9th century into some vague whole and disregarding that it's actually 3 centuries we're talking about. 

Therefore my question about earliest works in Classical Arabic and their oldest surviving copies. I'd like to get an idea of the chronology not relying solely on later histories but on what we can actually prove from material evidence. This has to exist, I'd just like to know the names of books / articles that have dealt with this. 

Or to simplify, why should I trust a work written in the 12th century dealing with the history of Islam and Arabic in the 7th century? Why should I even trust a work written in the 9th century when it's dealing with the 7th century? Because of super-human memories of early Muslims?


----------



## Aydintashar

DenisBiH said:


> ّOk, so? Once the need arises to produce works of increasing complexity, due to economic, political, societal, technological and other changes that lead to greater prominence of that language and its greater use in high-culture spheres, it will tend to develop vocabulary that it needs. Take a look at language standardizations done as a result of European nationalism.


This is an excellent clue in approaching the problem. Since FusHa was definitely existent at least immediately before the onset of Islam, let's just try to find out what made FusHa FusHa, which is the topic of this thread. In other words, to use your own words, from where came "the need to produce works of increasing complexity, due to economic, political, societal, technological and other changes that led to greater prominence of that language and its greater use in high-culture spheres"?



> Was it the borrowing from French and Latin that made English prominent or was it historical/political,economic and other factors?


Both. And I think we should find the same dual forces, which made FusHa FusHa prior to the onset of Islam.



> My understanding is that Persian was a language of culture and a large empire much before Arabic came onto the world scene as a language of a great civilization.


In that case, we should be able to notice material evidences on the existence of scholarly literature in old and middle Persian, at least comparable to what happened to Arabic after the onset of Islam. I have never seen any traces of such heritage, and additionally, I am convinced that, whatever Persian has succeeded to become in the centuries following Islam, was predominantly at the cost of Arabic vocabulary. If you refer to Persian as "a language of culture and a large empire much before Arabic", then kindly help us notice the scholarly heritage in the ancient Persian language. If you cannot show such a heritage in the ancient Persian language, you should at least be able to show a modern Persian, capable of acting as a language of science and culture, without such a heavy dependence on Arabic.

Now, since this thread is not dedicated to the comparison of different languages, we cannot go much further in this way, but, by bringing Persian into the agendum, we have reached a very interesting point. We now face 2 languages with very strange features. Old and Middle Persian, claimed to be a language of culture  and empire, apparently having left no literary/scholarly heritage, and FusHa, a product of desert, apparently with no history of cultural/political involvements, having left a voluminous literary/scholarly heritage. Unless I am dreaming, we face a real problem, and we need some powerful explanation to solve this paradox.


----------



## Tracer

Aydintashar said:  _*So, I think we are being misled by the idea of Greek culture going into Arabic through Persian. It is simply a fantasy. If somebody can prove the opposite, I will be really indebted, because my whole system of beliefs will undergo a great change*._
 
 
 As for “evidence” that Greek science passed into Arabic through Persian, see (for example):
 
1.  P. Kunirzsch:  "Uber das Fruhstadium der arabischen Aneigung antiken Gutes"
Saeculum 1975 vol 26
 
2.  JF Duneau “Quelques aspects de la penetration de l’hellenisme dans l’empire perse sassanide"
 
3.  Nallino  “Tracce di opera Greche giunte agli Arabi per trafiola pehlevica"
 
4. for Pahlavi sources, see GAS VI,115 (astronomy)   GAS V,203-14 (mathematics)   GAS IV, 172-86 (medicine)    GAS = Geheimwissenschaften  (Ullmann)
 
5.  Ibn-an-Nadim (!!!)  (F 242, 12ff)  (F = Fihrist)
 
6.  M. Sprengling   "From Persian to Arabic"
 
The list goes on and on…it’s almost endless.  Prepare thyself for a fundamental change in your beliefs.


----------



## Aydintashar

Tracer said:


> As for “evidence” that Greek science passed into Arabic through Persian, see (for example):
> 
> 1.  P. Kunirzsch:  "Uber das Fruhstadium der arabischen Aneigung antiken Gutes"
> Saeculum 1975 vol 26
> 
> 2.  JF Duneau “Quelques aspects de la penetration de l’hellenisme dans l’empire perse sassanide"
> 
> 3.  Nallino  “Tracce di opera Greche giunte agli Arabi per trafiola pehlevica"
> 
> 4. for Pahlavi sources, see GAS VI,115 (astronomy)   GAS V,203-14 (mathematics)   GAS IV, 172-86 (medicine)    GAS = Geheimwissenschaften  (Ullmann)
> 
> 5.  Ibn-an-Nadim (!!!)  (F 242, 12ff)  (F = Fihrist)
> 
> 6.  M. Sprengling   "From Persian to Arabic"
> 
> The list goes on and on…it’s almost endless.  Prepare thyself for a fundamental change in your beliefs.



Many thanks for the bibliography. I have read none of the books mentioned, except one, Al-fehrist of Ibn-Nadim. And since there appear 3 exclamation marks in front of the name Ibn-Nadim, I guess it is the strongest and the richest source of evidence in favour of the idea you support.
In the past, when two common people argued about something, each of them tried to make reference to some book. They would usually say: "_it is in the books, why don't you accept it?_". Also, the fact that something was mentioned by someone on the TV was considered a sufficient reason to defend and idea. 
In recent years, a new consciousness took shape, and people started to doubt the validity of at least some ideas expressed in the books or other media. The fact is that, all sorts of arguments and their contraries are mentioned in the books, and specially for academic people, the fact that something is mentioned by some author in his book is by no means sufficient anymore. One needs material evidence. For example, Ibn-Nadim mentions hundreds of thousands of pages of scholarly works of pre-Islamic Persian origin, of which no single paragraph can be verified in the form of a manuscript or a papyrus etc. There are hundreds of modern Ibn-Nadims, Dimitri Gutas being only one of them, who follow the same tactics. The net result is tons of claims, and no single material evidence. You yourself are a good example. Have you ever seen a single page of a manuscript evidencing a pre-Islamic Persian scholarly work? Instead of introducing this single page of manuscript, you usually provide bibliographies! How come, the ancient Egyptian wisdom and science of mathematics, medicine etc. are so abundantly documented, and that of Persia are simply "reported" in the books? Greece, Mesopotamia, are equally abundantly documented. I wonder why, a nation so extensively engaged in science and cultural activity, left no single manuscript? Therefore, I re-iterate my humble request. If you know a single material document in the form of papyrus, stone tablet, etc., evidencing Persian pre-Islamic scholarly activity, please do me a favour by providing me the address, so as I may rid myself of my ignorance.


----------



## Tracer

Aydintashar said: _* If you know a single material document in the form of papyrus, stone tablet, etc., evidencing Persian pre-Islamic scholarly activity, please do me a favour by providing me the address, so as I may rid myself of my ignorance.*_ 

Ok, I'll do that.  But it may take me a while....months, in fact, because I'm currently fighting in Afghanistan and my sources are limited.  However, in the meantime, I'll give you some contemporary Iranian sources that may satisfy you for a while.  Here's an abstract of one of them:

*Abstract: *_The Avesta divided medical sciences into the following five disciplines, as mentioned in some chapters of the Ordibehesht Yasht:_




_1) 'Asho Pezeshk' (health sciences);_ 



_2) 'Daad Pezeshk' (medical examination);_ 



_3) 'Kard Pezeshk' (surgery);_ 



_4) 'Gyâh Pezeshk' (herbal medicine);_ 

This is from *"THE MEDICAL SCIENCES IN THE AVESTA"*  by Ahmad Noori

------------------------------------------------------

"There is not much information about the evolution of science in Iran in ancient times. It is however, established that science and knowledge was a progress during the Sassanid period (226-652 AD.) when great attention was given to mathematics and astronomy."

This is from *"IRAN, THE CRADLE OF SCIENCE"*by R. Behrouz and M. Ourmazdi and P. Rezai
============

"*Health and Medicine in Ancient Iran*"
by Phillipe Gignoux

=============
All of the above can be *googled* for further clarification  (I hope you can at least read French).
=========================

One source that is readily available is:

*"How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs"* by De Lacy O'leary

In it he shows how Persians were trained in Edessa and how they then went to the Persian school of Nisibis taking a lot of Arsitotle with them and then how they passed that knowledge to the Arabs.

It's all very clear and convincing.
=============
But as I said, I'll find an exact text, or document or papyrus or stone tablet so that you can see it with your own eyes.

Vale


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## Aydintashar

Tracer said:


> Ok, I'll do that.  But it may take me a while....months, in fact, because I'm currently fighting in Afghanistan and my sources are limited.



Thank you for the new bibliography. I am quite familiar with the Iranian authors on the subject, and I assure you that, none of them are better than Dimitri Gutas, who has claimed a lot, and has not submitted a single evidence. I assure you that, no matter how hard you try and how dynamically you investigate, you will never see an artefact or a material evidence confirming pre-Islamic Persian science, even remotely similar to the ones of Egypt or Greece. The best you will achieve, will be a quotation from this or that author, who claims the existence of such a science. The breath taking fact confirming my viewpoint is you yourself, who made so many claims, while you have never seen a material evidence or its picture, and ask us to wait until the war in Afghanistan comes to end! Yet, you you seem very convinced.
As for Avesta, you cannot imagine how many different versions of Avesta and its interpretations have been "fabricated" in recent years in Iran and outside. But, this is not very important. The important thing is that, you as "The Tracer of Tracers", will never succeed to trace a single page of manuscript of Avesta from pre-Islamic period.


----------



## berndf

Interesting as this discussion undoubtedly is, does it really matter for understanding the genesis of literary Arabic?

I would guess (or hope), it is undisputed that academic traditions of the Sassanid empire, in Babylon, Gundishapur and elsewhere, was one of the if not the most important source of early Islamic scholarly tradition. This includes Greek science and philosophy as these traditions were already largely disrupted in the Byzantine empire because of the lamentable influence of totalitarian Christianity (or maybe we should call it _Christianism_) there.

Is it so important, how big a role Pahlavi really played in the learned world of the Sassanid empire or whether this was dominated by Aramaic and Greek?


----------



## WadiH

Aydintashar said:


> Part of your argument is correct. Languages are better retained in rural and isolalated areas. But, you are over-exaggerating. The Bedouin had only the language as its artistic interface with the world. But, this language should correspond to society's historical facts and current mode of living.  If we consider Quran as the native language of at least some Arabs in the Peninsula at the time of The Prophet, it follows that they had very complex grammar and very extensive vocabulary, which could by no means correspond to their lifestyle.



Don't you see the logical inconsistency you're falling into?

Hypothesis: Arabic is too complicated for Bedouins
Fact: Bedouins speak Arabic

You conclusion should be:

"THEREFORE: Hypothesis is wrong.  End of story."



> For example, a brief review of the concept of "time" in Quran:
> زمن
> وقت
> دهر
> عصر
> عهد
> حین
> لحظة
> أجل
> ساعة
> 
> This is in addition to words indirectly linked to "time" or verbs expressing the passing of time, or the concept of eternity etc.:
> 
> خالد
> موعد
> مرّة
> دام
> طال
> مرَّ
> إستأخر
> إستقدم
> سبق
> لبث
> امهل
> 
> The list is much longer. But, the question is, why did the Bedouins needs all this vocabulary?



Who knows.  The important thing is that they did (and still do) have these words.  An illiterate Bedouin today would still know most of these words (and additional ones) natively.  If you find this to be "strange" or inconsistent with how you view their lifestyle and history, then it is your view of their lifestyle and history that needs revision in light of the facts.  That would be the scientific way of doing it, rather than inventing new facts (e.g. postulating lost civilizations) to re-enforce a theory that has been proven false.


----------



## WadiH

Tracer said:


> _*2.  The problem with this claim is that Fus7a seems to contain the most archaic features of any strain of Arabic (and of any surviving Semitic language actually). I think it's a foregone conclusion that it preceded the other dialects, because it's retained far more of the original Semitic features than they have.*_
> 
> We’ve discussed this before. The fact that the FusHa contains archaic features _(which other posters to this thread have hotly contested)_ as opposed to the dialects is not evidence or proof that it preceded the dialects.
> 
> I claim that the FusHa was largely constructed FROM the prestige dialects with the purpose of preserving the “best” Arabic.
> 
> Since the dialects of that time were undoubtedly close to the FusHa (after all, a child often resembles its parents), there is no basis for argument here.
> 
> 
> The dialects developed into modern dialects while the FusHa remained pretty much the same.  *But that was the purpose of the FusHa….to preserve.* Therefore, it should be no surprise if the FusHa contains items not found in the dialecs. The FusHa, as I said before, is a reflection of the dialects of the Jahiliyya which at that time preserved those archaic features you mentioned.  The fact that the modern dialects have lost those features is a natural and expected development.
> 
> I don’t know how else to put it.  This is what I believe and I know I’m not going to convince you otherwise.
> * *


[/quote]

Tracer and Abu Rashid are comparing apples and oranges.  Tracer is talking about ancient dialects while Abu Rashid is talking about modern dialects.

Tracer,

Obviously, Classical Arabic is based on ancient Arabic dialects.  I've said before that nobody on this forum (as far as I can tell) believes that FuSHa or Classical Arabic appeared from thin air and become dialects.  As I mentioned earlier,  FuSHa is a snapshot of the state of Arabic in the 7th-9th centuries.  Obviously, there were previous stages of Arabic that predated FuSHa and from which FuSHa evolved.  That's not controversial.


----------



## berndf

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Don't you see the logical inconsistency you're falling into?


Honestly, I don't.


Wadi Hanifa said:


> Hypothesis: Arabic is too complicated for Bedouins


That wasn't his hypothesis. The hypothesis is that Classical Arabic contains concepts which are to sophisticated to have been created by Bedouins alone without influence from more advanced civilizations. I am not saying I necessarily agree with Aydintashar; but his argument cannot be dismissed purely by observing that there are Arabic speaking Bedouins.


----------



## WadiH

Interprete said:


> I just happen to have read this morning a Wikipedia article on the Yaghan language. I believe this small exceprt is a clear illustration of what Aydin explains about the ancient Arab lifestyle :
> 
> The idea being that you have names for things you need to name. Which is why I still find the Arabic glossary to be out of proportion to what Arabs at the time wanted to name on a daily basis.
> This makes me think of Allah's name 'al samad'. In light of Mona Baker's explanation, is this such a common concept that it would warrant the creation of a name for it?



There is no comparison in any way, shape or form between Arabic and the Yaghan language.  There are barely 1600 Yahgans; there are some 30-40 million Arabians.  The Yahgans live on a small number of tiny islands that can barely be seen on the map; Arabia is nearly a continent.  Yaghans were isolated for thousands of years; Arabia was near the center of the ancient world and in contact for thousands of years with all the surrounding peoples and civilizations of the Middle East.  Yaghan is a language isolate; Arabia is a Semitic language with many relatives.  The Yaghans are hunter-gatherers; Arabia was populated with cities and villages as well as pastoral tribes (what we now call "bedouins") with diverse lifestyles and modes of existence.

Contrary to popular belief, nomadic pastoralism is not some primitive mode of existence that preceded agriculture or civilization; nomadic pastoralism only became possible *after* civilization and agriculture and arose as a form of specialization.  It is how humans applied their knowledge and technology to tame the desert and maximize the use of its resources.  At the time of Islam, Arabic already had a history spanning many centuries and a wide geographic area.  So, the size of Arabic's vocabulary is not the incredible and inexplicable phenomenon that some people here seem to believe.


----------



## WadiH

berndf said:


> Honestly, I don't.
> That wasn't his hypothesis. The hypothesis is that Classical Arabic contains concepts which are to sophisticated to have been created by Bedouins alone without influence from more advanced civilizations. I am not saying I necessarily agree with Aydintashar; but his argument cannot be dismissed purely by observing that there are Arabic speaking Bedouins.



That's not what he said.  He never talked about Bedouins "creating" Arabic under outside "influence."  Here is what he said:



Aydintashar said:


> To account for the existence of classical Arabic at the onset of Islam, we need something at least similar to the ancient Mesopotamian civilisation, in which the language could have possibly developed. Such a civilisation would have left plenty of written records. This situation leads us to presume a "lost civilisation", completely destroyed by an unknown catastrophe, having left behind nothing, save for a few Bedouins, who continued the language tradition in an oral manner.
> Though the theory may sound a little romantic, but may carry elements of truth.



So, Arabic was created entirely by a Lost Civilization, and was inherited by Bedouins after the Lost Civilization was destroyed.  The implication, of course, being that Bedouins basically learned Arabic as a foreign language from this "Lost Civilization" because they were too simple to come up with it themselves.  (I can't believe you're treating this as some credible "theory").

Anyway, I can revise my post whichever way we like and the result would be the same:

HYPOTHESIS:  Arabic is too complicated to have been created by Arabs.  It must have been created by a Lost Civilization and taught to Arabs.
FACTS: Arabic originated with the Arabs.  There is no evidence of a Lost Civilization that invented Arabic.

CONCLUSION: HYPOTHESIS is false.

Or, to use your own (inaccurate) interpretation of his theory:

HYPOTHESIS: Arabic was created by Arabs, but they must have been under the guiding "influence" of a Lost Civilization because it has too many words damn it!
FACTS:  There is no evidence of a Lost Civilization that "influenced" the creation of Arabic or accounts for the size of its vocabulary.

CONCLUSION: HYPOTHESIS is false.


----------



## DenisBiH

@Aydintashar



> This is an excellent clue in approaching the problem. Since FusHa was definitely existent at least immediately before the onset of Islam,


How do we know that? Since you are basing yourself on the richness of vocabulary, and not the grammar, could we compare vocabulary used in the Qur'an with that of some early classical Arabic dictionaries? 

Note also that, strictly scientifically speaking (as in not based on one being Muslim and thus accepting certain orthodoxies of the faith, which may or may not be based on the Qur'an itself) one can also question the dating and the authenticity of the Qur'an itself in its modern version(s). Muslims certainly like to do that with the Bible, at great length, so it would be nice to apply similar scientific method to the Qur'an and everything else in early Islamic history. Who, what, where, when, why, how much, for how long, black on white with actual evidence, no detail skipped.

Take this dictionary for example, seemingly the earliest classical Arabic dictionary. However, it seems it's not sure:

a) Who is the actual author or authors
b) When exactly was it completed
c) That the version we have today is faithful to the original




> In other words, to use your own words, from where came "the need to produce works of increasing complexity, due to economic, political, societal, technological and other changes that led to greater prominence of that language and its greater use in high-culture spheres"?


The rise of Islam and the Islamic caliphate comes to mind.


----------



## Aydintashar

berndf said:


> I would guess (or hope), it is undisputed that academic traditions of the Sassanid empire, in Babylon, Gundishapur and elsewhere, was one of the if not the most important source of early Islamic scholarly tradition.


Look, all I am pressing for, is that the history of scholarly activities of pre-Islamic Persia is only based on "guess" and "hope", to use your own words. I don't see anybody, even the professional academics, producing any sound evidence, similar to the ones we have of Babylon, Egypt, Greece etc, at least capable of throwing some light on the theory. I see nothing in the academic literature, except pure speculations.



> Is it so important, how big a role Pahlavi really played in the learned world of the Sassanid empire or whether this was dominated by Aramaic and Greek?



I hope I am not being rude, but have you ever seen a page of pre-Islamic scholarly work in Pahlavi, or do you know the address of any such thing in a museum?


----------



## WadiH

Cilquiestsuens said:


> N.B. : A last thing I wanted to mention, its about Old North Arabian language. What M.C.A. Mac Donald has to say about it is quite interesting and runs contrary to the popular belief that North Arabs were mostly illiterate before Islam:
> 
> Quote from The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia Edited by Roger D. Woodard, Cambridge; pg. 179



MacDonald distinguishes between two concepts: "illiteracy" and "non-literacy."  The North Arabians who made those inscriptions were literate, but they lived in a non-literate society because the inscriptions did not appear to fulfill any real purpose for their socieites (and we notice that they disappear a few centuries before Islam).  They were simply a pastime.

The neighboring regions that relied heavily on writing were literate societies, but the vast majority of their populations were probably illiterate.  In fact, as MacDonald says, until a couple of centuries ago, most people in literate societies (such as Europe) were illiterate, meaning that the government, the church, the elites, the scholars, etc. relied on writing rather than oral transmission or memory, yet most of the population remained illiterate.

The point here is that the fact that many people at that time were able to make inscriptions on rocks does not have any relation to the nature of Arabic or its vocabulary.


----------



## WadiH

DenisB,

Three books you can start with:

Kees Versteegh, _The Arabic Language_
(The relevant chapters can be read here and here -- not a particularly long read)
Clive Holes, _Modern Arabic_
Robert Hoyland, _Islam as Others Saw It_

Information on Quranic manuscripts:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/radio.html
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/earlyquran.html

Information on Arabic inscriptions (pre-Islamic and early Islamic):
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Dome_Of_The_Rock/

Information on Arabic papyri:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Papyri/

Information on early Islamic coinage:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Coins/


----------



## DenisBiH

Wadi Hanifa said:


> DenisB,
> 
> Three books you can start with:
> ...




Thanks. An immediate question from the first article:



> The plural noun  'A'rab  indicates the Bedouin tribes who lived in the desert and resisted the message of the Prophet, as for instance in  Q 9/97    al-'A'rabu 'ashaddu kufran wanifaqan  'the Bedouin are the worst in disbelief and hypocrisy'.


How do I know that this was the case in the 7th century?


----------



## berndf

Wadi Hanifa said:


> So, Arabic was created entirely by a Lost Civilization, and was inherited by Bedouins after the Lost Civilization was destroyed.


I agree with you that there is no compelling argument for that. A civilization based on nomadic lifestyle can very well be able to create an intellectually sophisticated culture.

I should argue though, that this can only happen if such nomadic civilizations interact with societies based on an urban and agricultural lifestyle from which more abstract intellectual concepts are borrowed which can than be integrated into the Nomads' language without necessarily borrowing foreign words. We know this phenomenon in every language that they import concepts but construct expressions from within their own linguistic wealth to express such concepts.


----------



## Aydintashar

DenisBiH said:


> How do we know that? Since you are basing yourself on the richness of vocabulary, and not the grammar, could we compare vocabulary used in the Qur'an with that of some early classical Arabic dictionaries?
> 
> Note also that, strictly scientifically speaking (as in not based on one being Muslim and thus accepting certain orthodoxies of the faith, which may or may not be based on the Qur'an itself) one can also question the dating and the authenticity of the Qur'an itself in its modern version(s).



Of course, Quran does not contain all the vocabulary of the 7th century FusHa, though it covers almost all grammar. But, the text already indicates that the vocabulary must have been very vast, as it uses rich vocabulary and state-of-the-art methods in describing the concepts being discussed (we can go into detail, maybe in another thread). Even if we reduce the vocabulary of FusHa of the 7th century to the vocabulary of Quran, the basic question of this thread still holds.
Concerning the authenticity of the text of Quran, of course we should not approach the problem from an orthodox Muslim viewpoint. Our approach is only linguistic. First of all, there is no book in the world, whose text is so completely unanimously agreed upon by all scholars of the topic, and confirmed by all existing manuscripts, whatever their age. There is even no dispute among different moselem sects (such as Shiia and Sunna) over its text, even though they have great disputes over a multitude of  religious canons. 
There is another reason which leads us to believe in the authenticity of Quran's text. There is a verse in Quran (2:282) which orders Muslims to have their transactions converted to writing by a scribe and testified by two witnesses. This verse has caused a lot of transactions to be recorded on papyrus and other material. For sake of blessing the transactions, such papyrii invariably beging with بسم الله الرحمن الرحیم and are usually ornamented by various verses of Quran. Almost 50,000 papyrii of this kind remain from different Islamic centuries (starting from the 2nd Islamic century), which reconfirm beyond all ambiguity, the authenticity of existing manuscripts and that of the contemporary editions of Quran.


----------



## berndf

Aydintashar said:


> I hope I am not being rude, but have you ever seen a page of pre-Islamic scholarly work in Pahlavi, or do you know the address of any such thing in a museum?


My question was: Does it matter, if there wasn't any intellectual tradition in Pahlavi. Aramaic had been the administrative and intellectual language of various Persian empires for more than a millennium at the time of the Islamic conquest. My question was whether is really mattered, if Persian cultural influence in Arabic was via Pahlavi or Aramaic, or Greek for that matter.


----------



## DenisBiH

> Concerning the authenticity of the text of Quran, of course we should  not approach the problem from an orthodox Muslim viewpoint. Our approach  is only linguistic. First of all, there is no book in the world, whose  text is so completely unanimously agreed upon by all scholars of the  topic, and confirmed by all existing manuscripts, whatever their age.  There is even no dispute among different moselem sects (such as Shiia  and Sunna) over its text, even though they have great disputes over a  multitude of  religious canons.


Perhaps someone would then like to briefly describe the main differences between Hafs and Warsh varieties of the Qur'an. I'm particularly interested in opinions regarding the changes to the word root, which I believe exist.



> 2:259 in Hafs “NunshiZuha” (We grow them) / In Warsh it is “NunshiRuha” (We spread them).


One of the articles Wadi Hanifa pointed to mentioned the Sana'a manuscripts.



> Carbon-14 tests date some of the parchments to 645-690 AD.[3]  Their real age may be somewhat younger, since C-14 estimates the year  of the death of an organism, and the process from that to the final  writing on the parchment involves an unknown amount of time. This period  may be quite long, especially if the parchment is re-used, a common  practice in ancient times. Calligraphic datings have pointed to 710-715 AD.[4]  Generally, it is accepted that *"no extant manuscript has been  unequivocally dated to a period before the ninth century on the basis of  firm external evidence."*


Now, do we have tens of thousands of papyri from which we can verify the Qur'an in its entirety from the 7th century onwards, or do we have bits and pieces before the 9th century and actual full manuscripts dating beginning with that century?


----------



## WadiH

DenisBiH said:


> Now, do we have tens of thousands of papyri from which we can verify the Qur'an in its entirety from the 7th century onwards, or do we have bits and pieces before the 9th century and actual full manuscripts dating beginning with that century?



I don't think the purpose here is to verify every word of the Quran.  That's a religious/historical issue, not a linguistic one.  The difference between "nunshiruha" and "nunshizuha" is that there is a dot above the ر, so it's a matter of orthography, not linguistic and has little bearing on the main topic of this thread.


----------



## DenisBiH

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I don't think the purpose here is to verify every word of the Quran.  That's a religious/historical issue, not a linguistic one.  The difference between "nunshiruha" and "nunshizuha" is that there is a dot above the ر, so it's a matter of orthography, not linguistic and has little bearing on the main topic of this thread.




Let me see if I get this straight. Multiple versions of the first and chief work written in Classical Arabic, with variations in word roots, thus casting doubts on its authenticity and dating, is irrelevant for the discussion of Classical Arabic, because it's just a matter of a dot more or less.

What is important to the discussion however are wild speculations on various ways in which pre-Islamic Arabs liked to party?


----------



## WadiH

DenisBiH said:


> Let me see if I get this straight. Multiple versions of the first and chief work written in Classical Arabic, with variations in word roots, thus casting doubts on its authenticity and dating, is irrelevant for the discussion of Classical Arabic, because it's just a matter of a dot more or less.



Unless you can show that the "multiple versions" were written in different languages, then, yes, it is irrelevant from a linguistic point of view.


----------



## DenisBiH

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Unless you can show that the "multiple versions" were written in different languages, then, yes, it is irrelevant from a linguistic point of view.




And why so, pray tell? Your limitation seems pretty arbitrary. We're not talking about multiple languages in this thread, but about Classical Arabic. Which includes its literary history, its attested stages, its dialects etc. Or was this thread about Arabic vs Mongolian?

What's with the quotes in "multiple versions"? Are there multiple versions of the Qur'an or aren't there? Or should we start with analyzing the "7 letters" story and go from there?


----------



## WadiH

DenisBiH said:


> And why so, pray tell? Your limitation seems pretty arbitrary. We're not talking about multiple languages in this thread, but about Classical Arabic. Which includes its literary history, its attested stages, its dialects etc. Or was this thread about Arabic vs Mongolian?



Okay, you tell us then: what is the point you're trying to make from all this?  Are you trying to argue for something here, or are you just asking for information?



> What's with the quotes in "multiple versions"? Are there multiple versions of the Qur'an or aren't there? Or should we start with analyzing the "7 letters" story and go from there?



"Multiple versions" in the context of the Quraan can mean different things.  It can mean multiple readings (based on multiple dialects), which I think is what the "7 letters" story is about (I'm not much into Quranic studies to be honest).  It can also mean variations in the actual text or multiple recensions (which the Sanaa MS's are alleged to be, though I don't think they have been made available to the public?).


----------



## Aydintashar

berndf said:


> My question was: Does it matter, if there wasn't any intellectual tradition in Pahlavi. Aramaic had been the administrative and intellectual language of various Persian empires for more than a millennium at the time of the Islamic conquest. My question was whether is really mattered, if Persian cultural influence in Arabic was via Pahlavi or Aramaic, or Greek for that matter.


This discussion was triggered, initially because some readers (I think principally Tracy) claimed that a lot of scholarly works had been translated into Arabic from Persian, during the well-known post-Islamic translation era. They also made reference to various books, including  the classical al-Fehrist, and modern Dimitri Gutas, who claim that voluminous scholarly works existed in Persian, and a large number of them were translated into Arabic. I have been mainly busy with this question so far.
Concerning Aramaic and Greek, being languages adopted by the ruling circles in pre-Islamic Persia, since you propose the possibility of pre-Islamic scholarly works created (in Persia) in these languages, and translated into Arabic after the onset of Islam, I think it is your duty to prove the existence of such works. As far as I know, Aramaic was used only for administrative purposes, and some religious texts, and no sign of scholarly activity in Greek can be traced in Persia. So far, I have never seen a true evidence of some scholarly activity in pre-Islamic Persia similar to the ones that we have of Egypt, Greece, Babylon etc. If you encounter any such evidence in a convincing shape, I would be grateful and would gladly correct my opinion.
But, in any case, it will not effect the path of current discussion. If a scholarly work is found in Aramic and within the geography of ancient Persia, it will be in Aramaic, whose home was Mesopotamia. It evolved in just about the right circumstances to become a language of science and philosophy. So far everything seems normal for Aramaic. What is abnormal, and we are trying to clarify in this thread is Arabic FusHa, whose home is apparently the deserts of the Arabic Peninsula, with no appreciable position in the ancient civilization, which suddenly appears to be acting as a powerful language of scholarly activities, far beyond the lifestyle of the people whose native language it was.
Some of the readers of this thread assigned this anomaly to the fact that Arabia was geographically located in a favorable area, at the edge of the civilized world, from which it could have gained the linguistic richness. I am strongly against this theory for some reasons:
1 - Contacts with other civilizations bring about both linguistic richness and scientific upheaval. We observe the unusual richness of Fusha at the onset of Islam, without any effects of the scholarly activities of Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia among the bedouins, who spoke either that language or a dialect of it. Compare this to the post-Islamic situation in non-Arabic moselem countries, who were effected both by the Arabic language, and the Islamic thought. It is hard to imagine one of them without the other.
2 - If contacts with other civilizations brings about some linguistic richness, it should be accompanied by the inflow of a large number of loanwords. We do not see any appreciable number of Greek, nor Latin loanwords in Arabic at the onset of Islam. Majority of the Greek loanwords came after Islam, due to the translation activity.
How can we, then, assign the unusual richness of FusHa to contact with neighboring civilizations?


----------



## Frank06

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Information on Quranic manuscripts:
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/radio.html
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/earlyquran.html


An apologetic website with the name "islamic awareness" doesn't strike me as incredibly academic, to put it very mildy.
Is there also a webiste on Arabic called "academic awareness"?

Thank you.

Frank


----------



## WadiH

Frank06 said:


> An apologetic website with the name "islamic awareness" doesn't strike me as incredibly academic, to put it very mildy.
> Is there also a webiste on Arabic called "academic awareness"?
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Frank



Dear Frank,

The website conveniently catalogs many documents (manuscripts, papyri, inscriptions, etc.) with impeccable citations to academic sources.  All of these documents are well-known in the academic world.  All this website does is collect them in one convenient place, with neat pictures and references for those who wish to investigate further.  It is true that this is ultimately done for religious reasons, but that need not concern us.  I'm not going to reject useful information because the person providing the information plans to use that information for his own purposes.  That would be throwing the baby with the bath water.

I had no problem separating the facts from the apologia.  I'm sure Denis won't have any problem either.

Thank you.

Wadi Hanifa


----------



## DenisBiH

> Okay, you tell us then: what is the point you're trying to make from all this?  Are you trying to argue for something here, or are you just asking for information?





> O ye who believe! stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah,  even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it  be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. Follow not  the lusts (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice)  or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well- acquainted with all that  ye do. (4:135)


For the time being we're here. When we move to another ayah I'll make sure to inform you. 




> "Multiple versions" in the context of the Quraan can mean different things.  It can mean multiple readings (based on multiple dialects)


"Multiple readings" suggests different accents/pronunciations. The differences are bigger than that.




> , which I think is what the "7 letters" story is about (I'm not much into Quranic studies to be honest).  It can also mean variations in the actual text or multiple recensions (which the Sanaa MS's are alleged to be, though I don't think they have been made available to the public?).


The moment you break the "immutability" of Qur'an, we're no longer dealing just with a dot less or more. As much of early Islamic history is based on us trusting oral transmissions going for several centuries (I'm thinking mr Bukhari), that oral transmission failed at even identifying these, most probably, scribal errors in the most important work of all, is quite problematic.

Second of all, the fact that Sana'a manuscripts have not been made available to the public entirely (which is my understanding also) given some claims that they contain deviant parts is also worrying. What's even more worrying is that this is not the only case of early Qur'an manuscript with deviations. This guy could be called a "sectarian" (though today all Muslims are sectarians in one way or another) but according to him, talking about the Tashkent Qur'an, supposedely the second oldest Qur'an in the world (albeit only containing a third of what we know as Qur'an) he says:




> Tashkent Quran.
> This Quran, written in Arabic Kufi script is (according to ‘Rasm Al-Mushaf – by Ghanim Al-Hameed), believed to be from the 2nd century After Hijra. Access to this Quran is limited to black/white photocopied pages of an incomplete Quran while the original resides in a museum in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. These copies make the research on the verse numbers/stops impossible as the original marks them in a lighter color which does not appear on the photocopy… More importantly, the general study of this text reveals that in addition to it missing many Chapters, it also appears to be a deviant text missing complete words in some places and even dropping letters in mid-sentence.


----------



## WadiH

Denis,

If a text is orally transmitted for a century or two, it's only natural that distortions and variations will occur.  But don't you think that is more an issue of CONTENT than language per se?  That's why I thought it was irrelevant.  If the Sanaa manuscripts date from the late 7th century and they are substantially similar to the Quraan we have now, then the fact that there are a few deviations, distortions or changes to the text won't really matter too much linguistically (even though it would matter greatly religiously and historically).

Also, you're focusing on manuscripts, but there are isolated fragments of the Quraan dating from the 7th century as well, such as the inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock.  Again, linguistically, this shows that the language of the Quraan was in use in the 7th century.

Again, I'm struggling to see where you're going with all of this.


----------



## DenisBiH

> Denis,
> 
> If a text is orally transmitted for a century or two, it's only natural that distortions and variations will occur.  But don't you think that is more an issue of CONTENT than language per se?


How on Earth can you guarantee that the language won't change if you can't guarantee the content? How can you guarantee that one word won't be replaced by another of a similar meaning? How can you guarantee that the understanding of the meaning won't change even if the words don't? How am I to be sure that in the 7th century they understood a certain ayah the same as we do today? Which dictionaries do we use? When were they compiled?




> That's why I thought it was irrelevant.  If the Sanaa manuscripts date from the late 7th century and they are substantially similar to the Quraan we have now, then the fact that there are a few deviations, distortions or changes to the text won't really matter too much linguistically (even though it would matter greatly religiously and historically).


That's a big if. If they date from the late 7th century. If they are substantially similar. If scholars can gain access to all the material found. If we can explain what was actually deleted from those pages mentioned below. Those contracts Aydintashar spoke about?




> Restoration of the manuscript has been organized and overseen by Arabic calligraphy and Koranic paleography specialist Gerd R. Puin of Saarland University, in Saarbrücken,  Germany. Puin has extensively examined the parchment fragments found in  this collection. It reveals unconventional verse orderings, minor  textual variations, and rare styles of orthography and artistic  embellishment. Some of the manuscripts are rare examples of those  written in early Hijazi Arabic script. *Although these pieces are from the earliest Qur'an known to exist, they are also palimpsests -- versions written over even earlier, scraped-off versions.**[2]*





> Also, you're focusing on manuscripts, but there are isolated fragments of the Quraan dating from the 7th century as well, such as the inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock.  Again, linguistically, this shows that the language of the Quraan was in use in the 7th century.


Aydintashar's argument rests on a full-fledged Classical Arabic suddenly emerging in the 7th century from a supposedly backward place and he asks how come. But, unless I'm mistaken, neither can we equate the Qur'an with the entirety of Classical Arabic (that was mentioned earlier today), and furthermore, even when speaking about the Qur'an, fragments and inscriptions are even less than that.





> Again, I'm struggling to see where you're going with all of this.



Never mind, we're talking. If Persian tablets, Aristotle and bilingual Greek-Arabic coins deserve to be mentioned in the discussion of Classical Arabic, I'd say early fragments and manuscripts of the Qur'an and their development does too.


----------



## DenisBiH

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Information on Quranic manuscripts:
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/radio.html
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/earlyquran.html
> 
> Information on Arabic inscriptions (pre-Islamic and early Islamic):
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Dome_Of_The_Rock/
> 
> Information on Arabic papyri:
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Papyri/
> 
> Information on early Islamic coinage:
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Coins/




These links are first class content- and classification-wise (apologia, suspect logic and the patronizing tone in some articles aside), still studying them. I can't see some images for some reason, though.


----------



## Abu Rashid

Frank said:
			
		

> An apologetic website with the name "islamic awareness" doesn't strike me as incredibly academic, to put it very mildy.
> Is there also a webiste on Arabic called "academic awareness"?



Did you even investigate the website? OR are you just ignorantly dismissing it instantly because its domain name contains the word Islamic?

The website is a very well organised catalog of early Arabic texts, and the author of the site has gone to great lengths to present them in a very objective manner. I'd suggest reading it before dismissing it.


----------



## Aydintashar

DenisBiH said:


> Now, do we have tens of thousands of papyri from which we can verify the Qur'an in its entirety from the 7th century onwards, or do we have bits and pieces before the 9th century and actual full manuscripts dating beginning with that century?



I meant to say that, none of the numerous parchments contradicted each other and the Quran manuscripts so far. This already means a high degree of authenticity. Also bear in mind that almost all the parchments include the date of transactions, inscribed in words rather than numerals, ruling out any possibility of mis-reading. But, even if we consider certain variations or deviations in the text, either in the size of dots or even chapters, does it make any difference in the current discussion? The text still remains the representative of the 7th century FusHa, which must have needed between several hundred and several thousand years of evolution, in order to reach that level of rhetoricity and richness in vocabulary.


----------



## berndf

Aydintashar said:


> So far, I have never seen a true evidence of some scholarly activity in pre-Islamic Persia similar to the ones that we have of Egypt, Greece, Babylon etc. If you encounter any such evidence in a convincing shape, I would be grateful and would gladly correct my opinion.


We have been talkin cross-purposes then. I did mean Babylon and other Mesopotamian cities which were _part_ of various Persian empires since the 6th c. BC.


Aydintashar said:


> We do not see any appreciable number of Greek, nor Latin loanwords in Arabic at the onset of Islam. Majority of the Greek loanwords came after Islam, due to the translation activity.
> How can we, then, assign the unusual richness of FusHa to contact with neighboring civilizations?


If then the main influence in pre-Islamic time was through Aramaic (rather than Greek), it would be much harder to identify this influence through obvious loans. Because of the genetic closeness of the languages, it would be much harder to distinguish native words from assimilated loans, because they would be etymologically plausible. To be able to make such a distinction we would need to have more knowledge of pre-Islamic Northern Arabian languages than we do.


----------



## Frank06

Abu Rashid said:


> Did you even investigate the website? OR are you just ignorantly dismissing it instantly because its domain name contains the word Islamic?


Yes, I did investigate it and no I am not dismissing it because the domain name contains Islamic. I mean, I would react the same way on a domain name 'answers in genesis', 'hindutva awareness' etc.

I'm sorry that in all my ignorance I prefer to stick to purely academic texts  stripped from any kind of apologetics which have the tendency to make me think that we're not dealing with linguistics anymore, nor with an academic discussion, but with a description of a game of theological armwrestling between "christian missionaries" or "western orientalists" (end quote) and the author of the site. Or do I interpret the appeal to a deity on almost every single page the wrong way?

But please carry on: I don't want to hiijack this thread. We can always ask to re-open this thread.


----------



## DenisBiH

Aydintashar said:


> I meant to say that, none of the numerous parchments contradicted each other and the Quran manuscripts so far. This already means a high degree of authenticity. Also bear in mind that almost all the parchments include the date of transactions, inscribed in words rather than numerals, ruling out any possibility of mis-reading. But, even if we consider certain variations or deviations in the text, either in the size of dots or even chapters, does it make any difference in the current discussion? The text still remains the representative of the 7th century FusHa, which must have needed between several hundred and several thousand years of evolution, in order to reach that level of rhetoricity and richness in vocabulary.




Aydintashar (is Aydin your name? I have a little cousin called Ajdin),

let's stop for a moment and discuss the richness in vocabulary part. The entire Qur'an has actually been discussed here on WordReference in terms of the size of vocabulary. Here's the thread and here's a post in that thread giving some numbers.

We have this:

Unique words: 12183 (low figure, by stem) - 14717 (high figure)
Unique roots: 1685

According to this guy, at least 10,000 roots can be found in Ibn Manzur's Lisan al-Arab, a late 13th century dictionary. 



> The list of roots extracted from Lisan Al-Arab contains about 10,000 roots.


Does anyone have any additional information regarding the number of roots and number of unique words in Classical Arabic dictionaries?


----------



## Aydintashar

berndf said:


> We have been talking cross-purposes then. I did mean Babylon and other Mesopotamian cities which were _part_ of various Persian empires since the 6th c. BC.


In my opinion, we can talk about this kind of influence in Arabic, provided that we take great care not to confuse the concepts involved. If Babylonian or Aramaic cultures had any influence in Arabic, either during the Persian reign of Mesopotamia or after the onset of Islam, is it logical to describe it as "Persian cultural influence in Arabic"? If this was justifiable, then we could assign all the Egyptian culture to the Roman Empire, because Egypt was some day subject to that Empire. Or we could assign all Persian and Egyptian cultures to Greece (actually to Macedonia), because both of them some day fell to Alexandre. If the Persian Empire some day adopted Aramaic as an administrative and cultural language, it is more righteous to interpret it as Semitic influence in Persian, not vice versa.


----------



## Faylasoof

DenisBiH said:


> ....
> According to this guy, at least 10,000 roots can be found in Ibn Manzur's Lisan al-Arab, a late 13th century dictionary.
> 
> Does anyone have any additional information regarding the number of roots and number of unique words in Classical Arabic dictionaries?




Lisan al-Arab lists  9393  “number of items عدد المواد”  (I assume this represents جذر الكلمة = word roots); 158149 “derivatives المشتقات” and 4493934 “number of words عدد الكلمات”.

Similar data for two other classical Arabic dictionaries are as follows:

Qamus al-Muheet by Firozabadi (died 1414 AD) has 11000 roots; 70000 derivatives and 733000 number of words.
(You can see the list of most of the common roots here)

Taj ul Uroos by Murtadha al-Zubaidi (died 1790 AD) has 11645 roots; and 3948160 number of words.

More data tabulated here.


----------



## DenisBiH

Thank you very much Faylasoof! 

I wonder what is exactly a derivative vs a word?


----------



## Abu Rashid

Frank said:
			
		

> Yes, I did investigate it and no I am not dismissing it because the domain name contains Islamic. I mean, I would react the same way on a domain name 'answers in genesis', 'hindutva awareness' etc.



You investigaterd the site and still you are casting aspersions over its content..

I am just as astounded that you'd instantly dismiss information from a site with genesis or hindutva in the domain name.

Talk about judging a book by its cover.


----------



## Frank06

This is getting boring once again, Abu Rashid. 
First of: which word in the phrase "purely academic texts stripped from any kind of apologetics" do you not understand?
Secondly: I only wondered aloud about the sources posted. For somebody like me, who doesn't know a lot about the topic, but who is interested in it, decent sources (and by decent I mean "academic") are quite important. 
But if one is presented with a site which claims, for example, that there are no grammatical errors in the Qu'ran because ultimately  "And Allah knows best!", then the arguments, how strong they orignally may seem to a layperson as me, are seriously devaluated. 
And this is my impression, to put it mildly, throughout this website, page by page: linguistics is used here to make a theological case.



Abu Rashid said:


> *You investigated* the site and still you are casting aspersions over its content. I am just as astounded that you'd instantly dismiss information from a site with genesis or hindutva in the domain name. Talk about *judging a book by its cover*.


I hope you notice the blatant but rather funny contradiction between 'you investigated' and 'you judge the book by the cover'. 
But as said before, there is an EHL thread about how religion can be used and is used to justify claims in the field of linguistics, or rather pseudo-linguistics (which is one of my more kinky hobbies). Let's carry on this particular sub-discussion there.


----------



## WadiH

Frank06 said:


> This is getting boring once again, Abu Rashid.
> First of: which word in the phrase "purely academic texts stripped from any kind of apologetics" do you not understand?
> Secondly: I only wondered aloud about the sources posted. For somebody like me, who doesn't know a lot about the topic, but who is interested in it, decent sources (and by decent I mean "academic") are quite important.
> But if one is presented with a site which claims, for example, that there are no grammatical errors in the Qu'ran because ultimately  "And Allah knows best!", then the arguments, how strong they may seem to a layperson as me, are seriously devaluated.



Just for the record, I did not provide those links because I endorsed (or even read!) the arguments made there.  Those have no interest for me whatsoever.  I was only interested in the categorized listings of (well-known) inscriptions and documents, with citations to the academic works that presented or discussed these documents.  These are simple facts that can very easily be separated from the articles that sometimes accompany them.  The service itself is a convenient one that can't be discredited simply because it is being used to advance apologetic arguments (which I haven't read).  If there were a good academic webiste that provided such a service, I would have posted it, but since none exists as far as I know, I think these links are perfectly valid _for the specific purpose_ for which I posted them.


----------



## Abu Rashid

Frank,

Thanks, but I'm not particularly interested in "sun language" theories and the like.

Just like to point out that the pages Wadi Hanifa linked to were purely academic pages. What's on the rest of the site is irrelevant, and should not detract from the usefulness of those pages.

Let's leave it at that.


----------



## DenisBiH

Regarding Islamic Awareness:

1) If we want to discuss, we should discuss specific articles. I don't generally reject the scientific content of a library because it also has Tom Sawyer in it.
2) I personally approach every single article I read with suspicion by default, In this case it's easier because the author made sure to identify the direction from which the bias may be coming.
3) In my opinion inscriptions/text fragments etc. themselves should have been separated from commentaries of those inscriptions, but this is a minor point of convenience. As long as someone doesn't link to a better collection.
4) It's the methodology that I find problematic in some articles. Yes, the methodological issue may be related to apologia being the focus/aim, but strictly speaking any article could suffer from this. Bias, and plain incompetence, can be found, and very much so, in many "purely academic articles" as well.
5) Moreover, since this is at the same time linguistic material, archaeological material, art history material and historical material (historical documents) I wonder which methodology is actually to be used?

For example, from the viewpoint of the historical method, according to Wiki (yes, I'm ashamed of myself, but to save some time) these are the core principles of source criticism.


----------



## Faylasoof

DenisBiH said:


> Thank you very much Faylasoof!
> 
> I wonder what is exactly a derivative vs a word?


 My  understanding was that "derivative" here might refer to the number of  derived verbal forms. The most common verbal form being the triliteral  root which can take up to 15 forms by a number of means, including both  internal vowel changes as well as duplication of a base letter or the  addition of a letter or loss of a base letter (e.g. weak verbs) etc.  etc. While “words” may refer to everything else too, meaning active  participles, passive past participles, pronouns, adverbs, particles,  adjectives, nouns (including mu3rab - Arabicized nouns) etc. 

Having said  this, the figure of 4 million words for Lisan seems high! Not sure if  the claim here is that this refers to the number of _unique _words! 



DenisBiH said:


> ....
> 5) Moreover, since this is at the same time linguistic material,  archaeological material, art history material and historical material  (historical documents) I wonder which methodology is actually to be  used?
> ....


 _If _the authenticity of the material is already established (say by C14 dating _and_ script) then should one not proceed along a method dictated by Arabic syntax, morphology and orthography? 

Incidentally,  the issue of variant readings of the Quran is a bit of a red herring as  far as the topic of this thread is concerned given that these too were  written in fuSHa anyway. Aydintashar is asking where did fuSHa come from and  by the time of the advent of the Quran it was already a well developed  mature language, as we all know. 

Many have  made valuable contributions to the thread but I admit I didn't have the time to wade through _all_ the posts so I apologize if I am repeating what some of you may have said already. Other than that, I might just add that apart from a modern expert like Versteegh, whom  Wadi Hanifa mentioned above, there are some older scholars too who might be  worth a read (unfortunately all the links below have a limited preview!):

*The Beginnings of Classical Arabic by C. Rabin* 
 Studia Islamica
No. 4 (1955), pp. 19-37  

*A linguistic history of Arabic By Jonathan Owens* 

*The Arabic Koine by Charles Ferguson *
Language
Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1959), pp. 616-630
Published by: Linguistic Society of America

 (He  suggests that Arabic dialects are descendents from an Arabic Koine that  existed in parallel with the Classical Language. There were great many  dialectics in Pre-Islamic times.)

*
The Role of the Bedouins as Arbiters in Linguistic Questions by Joshua Blau* 
Journal of Semitic Studies
Volume 8, Issue 1, Pp. 42-51


For an academic discussion about early Quranic manuscripts, perhaps this is worth looking at:

*The Rise of the North Arabic script and its Qur'anic developmen­t by Nabia Abbott*

She discusses  some of the Quranic manuscript­s dating from the second half of the 1st  century Hijra onwards at the Oriental Institute, University of  Chicago

_BTW, I haven't read the book! No idea how good or poor it is but it is well known! _


----------



## DenisBiH

> _If _the authenticity of the material is already established (say by C14 dating _and_ script) then should one not proceed along a method dictated by Arabic syntax, morphology and orthography?


Not just the authenticity, but rather *dating*. 

Let's use one of the articles Wadi Hanifa posted.




> In terms of the literary identification of the earliest Arabic  script, scholars *have had to make do with the slender description*  provided by the Baghdadi Shi’ite bookseller and bibliographer Abū  l-Faraj Muḥammad bin Isḥāq Ibn al-Nadīm (_d_. 380 AH / *990 CE*). He said,Thus saith Muḥammad ibn Ishaq [al-_Nadīm_]: The first of the Arabic scripts was the script of Makkah, the next of al-Madīnah, then of al-Baṣrah, and then of al-Kūfah. For the _alifs_  of the scripts of Makkah and al-Madīnah there is a turning of the hand  to the right and lengthening of the strokes, one form having a slight  slant.[8]​


Then the author gives another source:



> However there is at least one additional description of the early  Qur'anic manuscripts in the literary sources that when probed provides  some solid chronological data. Abū Naṣr Yaḥya ibn Abī Kathīr al-Yamāmī  (_d_. 132 AH / 749 CE) a traditionalist and narrator of _ḥadīth_  from several of the Prophet's companions, provides a very important  piece of chronological data specifically with regard to the earliest  Qur'anic manuscripts.


This, in my opinion, is indeed very slender, and it also requires full analysis of these sources. This is where, in my opinion, the historical method should come in.

Furthermore, as this kind of literary evidence is not the only one used, which can also be seen from the article above, and we also have other methods, such as C-14, let's see what has been dated by this method and how much of it. It's this article, again thanks to Wadi Hanifa.

One example:



> The _E20_ manuscript, housed in the St. Petersburg branch of the    Institute of Oriental Studies
> ...
> In the case of the E 20 manuscript from St. Petersburg, the 68.3% confidence level    (1σ) yields the ranges, *781–791 CE, 825–843 CE, 859–903 CE and 915–977 CE*. The 95.4 % confidence level    (2σ) yields *775–995 CE*. *A palaeographic    analysis of this manuscript proposed a date around    the final quarter of the 8th century CE.*[17]  This dating was also agreed by François Déroche.[18]  However, *Alain George believes *this to be an instance where the radio  carbon dating does not closely match the features of the manuscript.  Commenting on the script and decoration, *he suggests a date nearer the  turn of the 1st century AH (late 7th, early 8th century CE)*.[19]


We could go on and interpret other parts of this article, but judging by this one, we can say

a) C-14 gives us pretty imprecise data
b) Even with this C-14 people disagree based on paleography. The  difference is not to be ignored, late 7th vs late 8th century is a  period in which a lot could happen, and we know that a lot did happen  historically (or at least we think we know based on what sources tell  us)




> Incidentally,  the issue of variant readings of the Quran is a bit of a red herring as  far as the topic of this thread is concerned given that these too were  written in fuSHa anyway.


It's an issue of variant readings about as much as the difference between "pack" and "back" _(I "just" invert the p to get the "variant reading" of b, just as someone "just" put a dot that turned r to z in Arabic script)_ or "hot" and "not" in English is issue of variant readings.

It is however important for readers not well acquainted with Islam to point out that Muslims, when discussing authenticity of Qur'an, place much emphasis on oral transmission. Let me quote:



> The Islamic prophet Muhammad  lived in the 7th century CE, in Arabia in a time when many people were  not literate. The Arabs preserved their histories, genealogies, and  poetry by memory alone. When Muhammad proclaimed the verses later  collected as the Qur'an, his followers naturally preserved the words by  memorizing them. Early accounts say that the literate Muslims also wrote down such  verses as they heard them. However, the Arabic writing of the time was a  _scripta defectiva_,  an incomplete script, that did not include vowel markings or other  diacritics needed to distinguish between words. Hence if there was any  question as to the pronunciation of a verse, the memorized verses were a  better source than the written ones.


However, since we do have these "variant readings", or let rather be honest, variant versions, that means that that whole system discussed in the paragraph quoted above *failed*. What does that practically mean for our discussion? It severely weakens the oral transmission argument.

To simplify:

a) It could mean that the entirety of Qur'an available today indeed dates from the early seventh century, and is thus representative of early seventh century Arabic, and the "variant readings" are simply later tiny deviations, perhaps done by scribes and then picked up by those that memorized the Qur'an.
b) It could also mean, however, that someone meddled with the Qur'an after the prophet's death, and the final version, and thus the language in it, is a product of the age in which Islam had already expanded to Persia, Levant, Egypt etc. That all happened in the first 100 years AH. No, I'm sorry,  according to this the caliphate already included all of this in the time of caliph Umar (634-644 CE), so it means that all happened in the first 23 years AH.

A Muslim could traditionally respond to the point b) by saying - ah, no Denis, but you know, early Muslims placed much more emphasis on oral transmission than actually writing the Qur'an down (as is argued in the paragraph I posted above). And as any hafiz, up to the modern age, in order to become a hafiz, must prove he has memorized the entire Qur'an in front of a committee of other hafiz's (huffadh) _(at least it is like this in Bosnia)_ we actually have an unbroken chain of transmission largely or even entirely independent of written Qur'an manuscripts.

Well, guess what - variant "readings" that look more like scribal errors (a dot or two more or less, above or below, here or there) learned once and then repeated for 1400+ years, pretty much either erase completely or very severely weaken this oral transmission argument and dating the Qur'an precisely comes back to rest on - paleography, C-14 etc, some of which I've started this post by discussing. 

So we come back to - *dating*. If the Qur'an is the prime example of a full-fledged Classical Arabic (though judged by the dictionaries it need not be, but let's say it is), then it is quite important for the discussion of Classical Arabic if we can indeed date it to early 7th century (the prophet died in 632 CE), or only to late 7th century (by 644 CE Muslims hold Persia, Levant and Egypt, and have plenty of time by 680s or 690s to expand and enrich their language and culture in contact with the nations they conquered), or even into the 8th century.

Now this *is* important to what Aydintashar is saying.


----------



## DenisBiH

A very interesting part from Wadi Hanifa's C-14 article.

Analyzing...



> SOTHEBY'S 1993, LOT 31 / STANFORD ’07 - A PALIMPSEST MANUSCRIPT OF THE QUR'ĀN
> 
> A folio believed to be part of the manuscript *DAM 01-27.1* was auctioned by Sotheby's (London) in the year 1993 (Lot 31) [Figure 6(a)].[47] Recently, radiocarbon dating was performed on this folio and the analysis was done at the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) Laboratory at the University of Arizona.[48]


...we get very promising C-14 results.



> According to Sadeghi and Bergmann, the results indicate that the  parchment has a 68% (1σ) probability of belonging to the period between   614 CE to  656 CE. It has a 95% (2σ) probability of belonging to the  period between  578 CE and  669 CE


But then comes the oopsie part:



> The carbon dating is applicable to the _scriptio inferior_ text.[49] The date which the _scriptio superior_  text was written could be the first or second half of the 7th century  or even the early 8th century (more generally the 1st century _hijra_).


So what do we have?



> Sadeghi and Bergmann point out that for historical reasons, however,  what is of greater interest is the probability that the parchment is  older than a certain date. The probability that the parchment is older  than  646 CE is 75.1%, or a three-to-one likelihood. On this basis,  therefore, they suggest that it is highly probable that this manuscript  was produced no more than 15 years after the death of Muhammad (_d_. June, 632 CE).[51] They conclude that the  _scriptio inferior_ text belonged to the codex of a companion of Prophet Muhammad, whilst the  _scriptio superior_ text belongs to the ʿUthmānic tradition, and using stemmatics, it is shown as the prototype  to be identified with the Prophet.[52]


So we have an earlier text written most probably right after the prophet's death, being deleted and then replaced by another text. 

The scriptio inferior if it can be gleaned at, of this and similarly dated manuscripts is the Classical Arabic at the time of the emergence of Islam. This should be discussed when talking about what CA looked like at that age (richness in vocabulary etc). Any chance we can get it?

Perhaps.



> In 2008 and 2009 Dr Elisabeth Puin published detailed results of the  analysis of *Sanaa manuscript DAM (dar al-makhtutat) 01.27-1* proving that  the text was still in flux in the time span between the scriptio  inferior and the scriptio superior of the palimpsest (Ein Frueher  Koranpalimpsest aus San'a', part 1 in Schlaglichter 2008, part 2 in Vom  Koran zum Islam 2009, both ed. Markus Gross and Karl-Heinz Ohlig, Verlag  Hans Schiler Berlin).


Could some of our German speaking friends with access to good libraries help us out with this?


----------



## Abu Rashid

DenisBih said:
			
		

> It's an issue of variant readings about as much as the difference between "pack" and "back" _(I "just" invert the p to get the "variant reading" of b, just as someone "just" put a dot that turned r to z in Arabic script)_ or "hot" and "not" in English is issue of variant readings.



I think you're a little mixed up there Denis. The back/pack example is just way out there, and does not relate to anything I can imagine in Arabic. The various readings of the Qur'an, are for instance related to whether an alef would be read long or short. That's not even remotely like your example.

As for the dot on the r to become z, I think you misunderstand the way alphabets work. Z was not related in sound to R, it's just that the letter served a dual purpose. People reading the texts would know whether the letter was r or z. These are nothing to do with variant readings. Of course there could be ambiguity in a word if it didn't have enough context, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish altogether.


----------



## Aydintashar

Abu Rashid said:


> As for the dot on the r to become z, I think you misunderstand the way alphabets work. Z was not related in sound to R, it's just that the letter served a dual purpose. People reading the texts would know whether the letter was r or z. These are nothing to do with variant readings. Of course there could be ambiguity in a word if it didn't have enough context, but that's a whole 'nothing kettle of fish altogether.



I think those who are familiar with Quran merely as linguists or historians do not fully appreciate the accuracy of oral transmission tradition. I have several different editions of Quran and a number of computerized texts, together with translations into a number of languages. I have been busy with all of them through years. once it happened that an ordinary, almost illiterate person corrected me when I was insisting on the order of the verses in the Surah:
الم نشرح لک صدرک
I had displaced two verses. We argued a lot and he insisted that I was reading the verses displaced. Thus, we had to refer to the text, which immediately confirmed that he was right.
I think, this process had been in force more strongly in the early Islamic ages, when the believers had considered it a big sin to recite the verses inaccurately or in a displaced manner.
Also, every linguist knows very well, how lexical context rules out orthographic errors and mis-spellings. Apart from the fact the context will always help distinguish between نشر and نشز (assuming that a dot is overlooked), far bigger distortions are detected and rectified thanks to the contextual integrity. Consider that the vowel signs are seldom employed in modern Arabic, yet the probability of confusions are completely ruled out, even in judicial texts, where a small confusion can lead to catastrophic results such as executing an innocent man.
Differences arising from ortographic styles are common and harmless, such as اسمعیل and اسماعیل, but I have never encountered real deviations in Quranic texts, either contemporary or historical.
Finally, I insist that research on the authenticity of the text of Quran, though interesting, is more of a religious issue than a linguistic one. We are only concerned with the fact that, Quranic text is a good representative of the FusHa of the 7th and earlier centuries, and we are (at least myself) interested in finding the answer to these questions:

1 - Did FusHa result from convergence of dialects, or did dialects result from divergence of FusHa.
2 - Which were the social and political conditions that forced the creation of such a powerful lingua franca, out of proportion to Bedouin lifestyle.


----------



## DenisBiH

Abu Rashid, please look here, pages 4-6. That is way more than a difference in how an alif is pronounced. 

If you claim the author is misrepresenting facts/lying, please provide additional evidence.

Some additional examples, also awaiting your confirmation:



> In the third category, the forms are the same but the meanings differ as a result of using different letters: for example, _*nunshizuha*, _with the letter _za, _and _*nunshiruha*, _with the letter ra.33
> In the fourth category, the forms are different but the meanings are the same. Thus, for instance, _*kal-"ihni al-manfush* _[Q. 101_:5-_like colored corded wool] was also read as _*kal-sufi al-manfush* _[like corded wool].
> In the fifth, both the form and meaning are different. For example, _*talhin mandud* _[Q. 56:29-clustered plantains] has also been read as _*tal'in mandud* _[ranged clusters].
> In the sixth category, the order of the words in the phrase is  different. For example, *"And the agony of death comes in truth"* [Q.  50:19] has been read as *"and the agony of truth comes with death."*
> In the seventh category, the difference consists of the addition and omission of words...


_For full disclosure: the first article is by a Code 19 Qur'anist. The second seemingly written by a Shi'a. _


----------



## Abu Rashid

Denis said:
			
		

> Abu Rashid, please look here, pages 4-6. That is way more than a difference in how an alif is pronounced.



This document is dealing with religious refutations and debunkings, it's not really appropriate in this discussion. Perhaps you could try a religious forum.

With regards to the issue of ra and za, what you must keep in mind is that languages are preserved in their oral form for millenia usually before they ever become written down. When they are written, an extra measure of authentication now exists, but it is not the sole measure, nor even a crucial one, since the language survived for thousands of years without it.

Pre-Islamic fus7a was almost purely an oral language, and its preservation of the distinctive Semitic sounds is unparalleled. Whilst most of its sister languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Ge'ez, Akkadian etc) were all written down far earlier, they had already merged many of the "similar sounds" long before that time, whilst fus7a managed to preserve all of them except 1 (s1 & s3 merged in fus7a). I am not aware of any Semitic language that merges ra and za, some colloquial Arabic dialects merge dhal and za (as Hebrew did completely, prior to even adopting writing), but not ra and za.


----------



## DenisBiH

> This document is dealing with religious refutations and debunkings, it's not really appropriate in this discussion. Perhaps you could try a religious forum.


Didn't you have an argument with Frank along those same lines about Islamic Awareness? The article I linked to, at pages I indicated, cites examples as well as verses from the Qur'an where they can be found. Those examples are either correct or incorrect. What the author's religious views are is beside the point, and so is his commentary of those variations. 

Regarding ra and za, it isn't the matter of a merger, it's a matter of a scribal error, learned once and then repeated over, and over and over again...it's been more than a millennium, certainly.


----------



## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> Pre-Islamic fus7a was almost purely an oral language, and its preservation of the distinctive Semitic sounds is unparalleled.


Denis is obviously doubting that such a thing as pre- or even early-Islamic fuS7a exists. This argument therefore wouldn't convince him.

I am not sure I understand the relation of preservation of PS consonants with our question here. Even if fuS7a were a completely artificial language (don't get me wrong; I am not saying it is) it could still be based on the phonology of an archaic dialect.


----------



## berndf

DenisBiH said:


> Regarding ra and za, it isn't the matter of a merger, it's a matter of a scribal error, learned once and then repeated over, and over and over again...it's been more than a millennium, certainly.


I don't quite understand, whose scribal error you are referring to. Let's recapitulate the history of the Arabic script: It originated as a simplification of only 15 letters of the Nabatean alphabet which like all other alphabets used to write Canaanite languages and Aramaic had 22 letters. These 15 letters were too few to represent all Arabic consonants and many letters represent different phonemes, like /r/ and /z/ are represented by the same letter. But this has nothing to do with "scribal errors"; it was simply an ambiguous letter. The "dots" were a later addition to the alphabet (after the 7th century) to overcome these ambiguities.


----------



## DenisBiH

berndf said:


> ... The "dots" were a later addition to the alphabet (after the 7th century) to overcome these ambiguities.



And some guy either put a dot where he shouldn't have, or alternatively omitted a dot where he should have put it. And no one corrected him in time, so we ended up with having both as officially accepted as correct.


----------



## Faylasoof

> Not just the authenticity, but rather *dating*.



Hmmm… I know what you mean! But, what I said was:



> _If _the authenticity of the material   is already established(say by C14* dating *_and_   script)….


 Of course I realise the problems of C14 dating but I mentioned it as one of the ways to date. The point is that an inauthentic text is either one that cannot be dated or provides the wrong date as determined by _various_ means! Hence my above remark about *authenticity*. Authenticity and dating go together, at least in my book.  

Anyway, thanks for reviewing the articles from the website which, btw, is not new. I remember going through a number of articles there with some colleagues years back when Christian Luxenburg (the supposedly “German scholar” of Syriac – he is actually Lebanese, I hear, who knows enough Syriac to handle texts) came out with his highly entertaining thesis that the language of the Quran is not fuSHa, not even Arabic but Syriac!



> Incidentally, the issue of variant readings of the Quran   is a bit of a red herring as far as the topic of this thread is concerned   given that these too were written in fuSHa anyway.
> 
> 
> 
> It's an issue of variant readings about as much as the difference between "pack" and "back" _(I "just" invert the p to get the "variant reading" of b, just as someone "just" put a dot that turned r to z in Arabic script)_ or "hot" and "not" in English is issue of variant readings.
Click to expand...

Perhaps this is so if one presumes that fuSHa was a novelty – a constructed language at the dawn of Islam and hence subject to these pitfalls. In other words there were no speakers / users (in poetry, for example) of this language or there were some but not enough to make sure the correct pronunciation of a _scripta defectiva_ is maintained. 

This too is not a new argument and similar to what many Biblical scholars said when dealing with the Old Testament, given that Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language before diacritics were introduced. 



> It is however important for readers not well acquainted with Islam to point out that Muslims, when discussing authenticity of Qur'an, place much emphasis on oral transmission. …


   It is true that there has been a reliance on oral transmission in Muslim tradition when talking about the Quran’s authenticity but this very point obscures the role of written transmission of the text which, incidentally, was earlier than what is generally believed. Unfortunately, to quite an extent the latter (i.e. written transmission) has fallen victim to a sectarian debate, and that in turn is different from the sectarian milieu that John Wansbrough had in mind!  According to him Islam was a variation of a Judeo-Christian sect trying to spread amongst the Arabs and the text of the Quran kept evolving for centuries before stabilising, and of course after a good deal of input from various tribal sources! Here too there seems to be a supposition that fuSHa as the language of the Quran took a long time to develop.


Aydintashar said:


> ….
> Finally, I insist that research on the authenticity of the text of Quran, though interesting, is more of a religious issue than a linguistic one. We are only concerned with the fact that, Quranic text is a good representative of the FusHa of the 7th and earlier centuries, and we are (at least myself) interested in finding the answer to these questions:
> 
> 1 - Did FusHa result from convergence of dialects, or did dialects result from divergence of FusHa.
> 2 - Which were the social and political conditions that forced the creation of such a powerful lingua franca, out of proportion to Bedouin lifestyle.


 In a sense I agree with your first point! But precisely because fuSHa, as many of us understand, _is_ the language of the Quran which is why the intense interest! 

In all these discussions we are ignoring _jahiliyyah_ (Pre-Islamic) poetry. For many of us that too is fuSHa but some have gone on to declare it a fabrication. It is true that that were later poets who did “forge” _jahiliyyah_ poetry but that has been determined and to invalidate Pre-Islamic poetry wholesale sounds extreme.

Some of your questions may be answered to some extent by the kind of references I mention above! … and I’m sure there are more! Still chasing!


----------



## Faylasoof

DenisBiH said:


> Originally Posted by *berndf*
> ... The "dots" were a later addition to the   alphabet (after the 7th century) to overcome these ambiguities.
> 
> 
> 
> And some guy either put a dot where he shouldn't have, or alternatively omitted a dot where he should have put it. And no one corrected him in time, so we ended up with having both as officially accepted as correct.
Click to expand...

 Whoever controlled the transmission of the text exercised enormous power!... and the converse too!


----------



## Abu Rashid

DenisBih said:
			
		

> Didn't you have an argument with Frank along those same lines about Islamic Awareness?



No I did not. I merely pointed out that the website contained some purely academic pages which document ancient Arabic inscriptions. You on the other hand posted a link to a document that is aimed at debunking and refuting the authenticity of the Qur'an. Chalk & cheese.

------



			
				berndf said:
			
		

> I am not sure I understand the relation of preservation of PS consonants with our question here



The preservation of the PS-phonemes by Arabic, whilst pretty much all sister languages merged many of them, indicates Arabic had a very strong ability to maintain that separation even before writing. If we look at Biblical Hebrew for instance, we know they also used 1 letter for 2 phonemes in at least a few cases (perhaps more than we know of), but that eventually they ended up merging. For some reason, there were factors which prevented this occurring in Arabic, this demonstrates that the fact each letter in early Arabic alphabet represented 2 or more phonemes does not indicate that they would be confused.



			
				berndf said:
			
		

> The "dots" were a later addition to the alphabet (after the 7th century) to overcome these ambiguities.



Diacritics were used in Arabic texts prior to this time, although there was no formally established and universal system for them until the Islamic period. The website Wadi Hanifa linked to contains quite a few pre-Islamic inscriptions which use dots on several of the Arabic letters.


----------



## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> The preservation of the PS-phonemes by Arabic, whilst pretty much all sister languages merged many of them, indicates Arabic had a very strong ability to maintain that separation even before writing. If we look at Biblical Hebrew for instance, we know they also used 1 letter for 2 phonemes in at least a few cases (perhaps more than we know of), but that eventually they ended up merging. For some reason, there were factors which prevented this occurring in Arabic, this demonstrates that the fact each letter in early Arabic alphabet represented 2 or more phonemes does not indicate that they would be confused.


It still doesn't help us to determine if classical Arabic is a naturally developed language or an artificially constructed one based on the phonology and vocabulary of a set of archaic Bedouin dialects.

Let's take an Analogy: Esperanto is based on Spanish phonology and on Romance vocabulary, yet a constructed language. Imagine now that  our 5th millennium successors discuss the origin of Esperanto the various 5th millennium dialects of which is the native language of a sizable part of the human population. We have records of this language dating back to the 24th century when it became the sacred language of a major religion. Records of Latin and of some 3rd millennium Romance languages are also preserved while any knowledge of Spanish is lost except for a few scattered inscriptions. The 5th millennium linguists couldn't determine, if Esperanto were a naturally developed language and these scattered Spanish inscriptions represent an early development stage of Esperanto or if Esperanto is a constructed language and these inscriptions belong to a different language which only provided the base for Esperanto. This is roughly the situation we are in. We know many Semitic language and have enough evidence to be able to have a decent idea of the phonology on Proto-Semitic its etymological base. But we can't tell if classical Arabic naturally developed out of PS or whether it is a constructed language based on a language or a set of dialects of which we have only limited information.


----------



## Mahaodeh

Hold on a moment, are we now claiming that Arabic was as artificially constructed as Esperanto? Isn't that a little extreme? I mean, the rules of grammar were only laid down after Islam, is it really possible to artificially construct a language without laying down some grammatical rules first?


----------



## berndf

Mahaodeh said:


> Isn't that a little  extreme?


Of course. My point was  just that an archaic phonology in itself doesn't prove much.


----------



## Faylasoof

I agree that archaic phonology alone may not prove a whole lot. However, the use of the term “artificially constructed” perhaps seems a little unfortunate here. I guess a better term might be to call it a “cultivated language” and may be in the context of the pre-Islamic era we could even term it a “supra-tribal cultivated language” i.e. no particular tribe “owned” it as such but all understood it. Well, at least the northern tribes. In other words an Arabic _koine_ (common) language that came to be used for a specific purpose which probably was not daily communication but just poetry. 

I base this argument on the earliest examples we have of this language being in the form of pre-Islamic poetry, and that too quite sophisticated in form when it comes to the rules of prosody. One has to concede that this must have been a result of a long period of development. You can’t get that level of sophistication of meter, rhyme and vocabulary overnight! Borrowing of words from various dialects seems eminently plausible and may actually account for the large number of synonyms we see ending up in the classical language. 

Something of a parallel for all this can be found in Ancient Greek. The Epic or Homeric dialect of Greek was also a cultivated language with its well-defined rules of grammar, phonology and morphology which were quite distinct from other Greek dialects, like Attic, Ionic, Doric etc that were spoken forms, and in the case of Attic the basis of nearly all of later (i.e. post-Homeric) Classical Greek literature. There is, bye the way, quite an overlap between the Homeric and Attic dialects although both are distinct forms of dialects. 

The Epic dialect however had a very specific purpose and was heard only in recitation form and that too for a specific kind of poetry as the name suggests. So, for example, in Attic plays the poetry we see used in choral songs is Doric and not Epic. The point I’m making is that Epic / Homeric Greek was a “recited dialect”.

Early Classical Arabic language and literature also seems to have taken the form of a “recited dialect” and used only in poetry, from the examples we have. Only in the post-Islamic era do we see the use of fuSHa for sermons, letters and other forms of communications and eventually a flowering of prose literature.


----------



## Tracer

Faylasoof said:


> I guess a better term might be to call it a “cultivated language” and may be in the context of the pre-Islamic era we could even term it a *“supra-tribal cultivated language”* i.e. no particular tribe “owned” it as such but all understood it. Well, at least the northern tribes. In other words an Arabic _koine_ (common) language that came to be used for a specific purpose which probably was not daily communication but just poetry.
> 
> The point I’m making is that Epic / Homeric Greek was a *“recited dialect”.*
> 
> Early Classical Arabic language and literature also seems to have taken the form of a *“recited dialect”* and used only in poetry, from the examples we have. Only in the post-Islamic era do we see the use of fuSHa for sermons, letters and other forms of communications and eventually a flowering of prose literature.


 

This was precisely the point, _mutatis mutandis_, that I made dozens of posting before in this thread although I used different terms.  *"Recited Dialect" or "Recited Variety"* are excellent terms.  In other words, what came to be called "Classical Arabic" was originally a _jahiliyyah_ poetic or a prestige form of the language, understood by most tribes in Arabia, but was never spoken on a daily basis.

If this is the case, the question remains:  *where did this "recited variety" originate from?*  I continue to believe that it must have come from an amalgamation of the dialects themselves, for reasons I've previously mentioned, namely "survival" and "intra-tribal communication needs" to put it perhaps too simply. In addition, one of its main functions was to *"preserve" *what was considered the "best" of the spoken dialects, which, at that time, were most probably very close to this "recited" variety in any case.

_*In other words, the "dialects" must have preceded the "recited variety".  Nothing else makes sense to me.  To believe otherwise means that the "recited variety" came first and then the dialects developed from it which to my way of thinking is illogical.  I think it's got to be one or the other.  Any other possibility is entering a world of make-believe.*_

I don't want to get into a Qur'anic discussion here because I don't presume to know enough to get involved in any kind of debate, but it's interesting to note that one of the  English translations for the word "Qur'an" is precisely, *recitation:  The Recitation.*


----------



## Abu Rashid

berndf said:
			
		

> It still doesn't help us to determine if classical Arabic is a naturally  developed language or an artificially constructed one based on the  phonology and vocabulary of a set of archaic Bedouin dialects.



Good, because that was not my point in posting that.

The point was that there's little chance ra and za would've been mixed up prior to using dots, just because they happened to use the same letter.

It then became apparent he was only speaking about one particular instance, and the idea that two different people interpreted it to use either ra or za.


----------



## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> Good, because that was not my point in posting that.
> 
> The point was that there's little chance ra and za would've been mixed up prior to using dots, just because they happened to use the same letter.
> 
> It then became apparent he was only speaking about one particular instance, and the idea that two different people interpreted it to use either ra or za.


I see.


----------



## Aydintashar

Tracer said:


> If this is the case, the question remains:  *where did this "recited variety" originate from?*  I continue to believe that it must have come from an amalgamation of the dialects themselves, for reasons I've previously mentioned, namely "survival" and "intra-tribal communication needs" to put it perhaps too simply.



Whatever the name, either "recited variety" or "cultivated language", we have already discussed in detail, and nobody seems to be convinced of the survival theory, specially if it is meant in the sense of "survival in a Greek environment". As regards "intra-tribal communication needs", nobody is able to demonstrate a second example of a rhetoric lingua franca, synthesized by some tribes through combining a large number of dialects, to provide a means of large-scale communication. If anybody knows any example, we would gladly learn from it. Did the numerous American-Indian languages/dialects converge into a lingua franca?  Such a process is impossible without the intervention of a big empire with political/economic ambitions and a great social upheaval, which urgently calls for a lingua franca.
Our problem would have been considered resolved, if we located the origination of FusHa after the onset of Islam, because we could then assign it to the "linguistic needs" of a great empire and an expanding religious ideology. However, we (or at least myself) face a linguistic paradox, as the language was readily available for extensive professional use in scholarly activities in a bedouin society, before the onset of Islam.


----------



## Abu Rashid

berndf said:
			
		

> Of course. My point was  just that an archaic phonology in itself doesn't prove much.



If the phonology is more archaic than the dialects it's supposedly synthesised from, then yes it means a lot.

Going back to your analogy with Latin & Esperanto. Can you imagine someone, with no knowledge of Latin, re-producing Latin phonology for a synthetic language from French? With the limited knowledge people had of linguistics 1400 years ago?

I think the idea that fus7a is contrived in any way shape or form from the dialects back then is just not taking many factors into consideration, not just fus7a's archaic phonology, but grammar too. Fus7a is archaic, in pretty much every aspect, as compared to any known dialects of Arabic.


----------



## Tracer

Abu Rashid said:


> I think the idea that fus7a is contrived in any way shape or form from the dialects back then is just not taking many factors into consideration, not just fus7a's archaic phonology, but grammar too. Fus7a is archaic, in pretty much every aspect, as compared to any known dialects of Arabic.


 
Well, I've been waiting for weeks (it seems like years, actually) for you to say it.  But you still haven't said it !  It's like you almost get there, but can't quite make yourself say it.

Are you thereby saying, Ya Abu Rashid, from your above quote, that the fus7a preceded, came before, antedated the colloquials?

Or are you saying something else?  What is your "bottom line"?  You know what mine is.  What's yours?


----------



## Aydintashar

Abu Rashid said:


> I think the idea that fus7a is contrived in any way shape or form from the dialects back then is just not taking many factors into consideration, not just fus7a's archaic phonology, but grammar too. Fus7a is archaic, in pretty much every aspect, as compared to any known dialects of Arabic.


FusHa grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax) has been almost frozen for the last 14 centuries, while its vocabulary has been expanding. Its contemporary grammar is, therefore, almost the same as it was 14 centuries ago. This is due to its being the language of Quran, and also the lingua franca of an empire. The dialects, on the other hand, have been subjected to free evolution, and might have really changed a lot and drastically simplified. If you compare, you should compare FusHa with the dialects of 14 centuries ago. Now, I think nobody knows the real situation concerning the dialects at that time. Therefore, which of them is grammatically more archaic, simply cannot be determined.


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## berndf

Aydintashar said:


> If you compare, you should compare FusHa with the dialects of 14 centuries ago. Now, I think nobody knows the real situation concerning the dialects at that time. Therefore, which of them is grammatically more archaic, simply cannot be determined.


Exactly.


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## Abu Rashid

Tracer said:
			
		

> Well, I've been waiting for weeks (it seems like years, actually) for  you to say it.  But you still haven't said it !  It's like you almost  get there, but can't quite make yourself say it.
> Are you thereby saying, Ya Abu Rashid, from your above quote, that the fus7a preceded, came before, antedated the colloquials?
> Or are you saying something else?  What is your "bottom line"?  You know what mine is.  What's yours?



As i was not around 1400+ years ago, I have no more concrete knowledge about the situation than you do. Hence I err on the side of caution and do not take any particularly strong position on it, although I do lean towards Fus7a being a lingua franca that pre-dated Islam alongside various localised dialects. I do not think fus7a was merely one of many dialects existing at the onset of the Islamic period, that just happened to get preserved because it was the lucky one. I think fus7a was already being artificially preserved (if you will) well before then. Doesn't mean it's an artificial language, it's just a pristine form of the language which was well guarded.

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				Aydintashar said:
			
		

> The dialects, on the other hand, have been subjected to free evolution,  and might have really changed a lot and drastically simplified. If you  compare, you should compare FusHa with the dialects of 14 centuries ago.  Now, I think nobody knows the real situation concerning the dialects at  that time. Therefore, which of them is grammatically more archaic,  simply cannot be determined.



Well we don't have a dialect frozen from 1400 years ago, but we do have one frozen from about 1000+ years ago (which is close enough in my book), and it tends to suggest that the dialects of today are not that much different to the dialects of that time. They were about as distant from fus7a as they are today. This example is of course Maltese, a dialect which was isolated from mainstream Arabic evolution at least 1000 years ago, if not more.

Maltese shares too many features and innovations with the other Arabic dialects of today for them to have all developed independantly, which leads us to the conclusion that the current dialects have had most of these features for over 1000 years.


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## Aydintashar

Abu Rashid said:


> Maltese shares too many features and innovations with the other Arabic dialects of today for them to have all developed independantly, which leads us to the conclusion that the current dialects have had most of these features for over 1000 years.


Since I am not a specialist on Maltese, I cannot object to your argument full-heartedly. But, why do you believe that Maltese has been a frozen language in the past 1000 years. I am generally convinced that all languages have undergone great changes in the past 1000 years, and it is hard to believe in the existence of a frozen language, unless it is considered the language of God by large masses, and it must also be a written language. Actually, in the past 1000 years some languages have changed so much as they are no longer understandable to the native speakers. Therefore, it is hard to accept that the dialects of today are the same as 1400 years ago.


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## Abu Rashid

Aydintashar said:
			
		

> I am generally convinced that all languages have undergone great changes  in the past 1000 years, and it is hard to believe in the existence of a  frozen language



Perhaps frozen was not the most precise word. what I mean is that it was severed from the main body of Arabic, and therefore its development has been completely separate from Arabic since that time. Therefore it's logical to conclude that the shared colloquial characteristics of Maltese and other modern dialects today were existent at the time they split, no?

Of course there is some room for similar innovations to occur as coincidence, or because they began at a common origin anyway, but the similarities with other colloquial dialects are quite striking.


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## clevermizo

Abu Rashid said:


> Perhaps frozen was not the most precise word. what I mean is that it was severed from the main body of Arabic, and therefore its development has been completely separate from Arabic since that time. Therefore it's logical to conclude that the shared colloquial characteristics of Maltese and other modern dialects today were existent at the time they split, no?
> 
> Of course there is some room for similar innovations to occur as coincidence, or because they began at a common origin anyway, but the similarities with other colloquial dialects are quite striking.



I do like the appeal to your point about Maltese sharing many many similar features with other dialects, but some of those are actually unrelated historically. For example, the fact that modern Maltese [q] is pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ], just like in the Levant is actually coincidental, and the pronunciation [q] was used right up until the 20th century until it began to change in certain cities like Valletta, and we know this from descriptions about Maltese pronunciation written before the 20th century which describe the sound of ق. 

The only other point I'd like to contend is that Malta was completely severed. I used to think the same way actually, but the more I learn about Maltese the more I'm sure there was lots of cross-communication between the Arabic spoken on Sicily and Malta after the Norman conquest and the Arabic spoken in the close parts of North Africa like in Tunisia. I knew a Tunisian guy once who said he visited Malta and could essentially have fluent conversation with people there without changing his dialect too much. I think there must have been influence back and forth - although the Maltese became Christianized and did not preserve Classical Arabic culturally, they must have had contact with other Arabic speakers in nearby areas just through trading and travel routes.


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## Abu Rashid

clevermizo said:
			
		

> For example, the fact that modern Maltese [q] is pronounced as a glottal  stop [ʔ], just like in the Levant is actually coincidental, and the  pronunciation [q] was used right up until the 20th century until it  began to change in certain cities like Valletta, and we know this from  descriptions about Maltese pronunciation written before the 20th century  which describe the sound of ق.



Well I don't know enough about Maltese to dispute that, but it sounds extremely co-incidental to me, especially given that [q]->[ʔ] does not seem like a very likely event to occur (don't think it occurs in any other Semitic languages, [q]->[k] yes I can understand or [q]->[g]). Was there no formal/informal varieties of Maltese during that time? Or perhaps a city/village split like in Arabic, and the village dialect was what was documented as having the [q]?



> I knew a Tunisian guy once who said he visited Malta and could  essentially have fluent conversation with people there without changing  his dialect too much.



I have a tunisian friend who lived for about 10 years in Italy, and about 10 years here in Australia, so he speaks Tunisian Arabic, Italian & English, ie. all the main languages that have influenced Maltese, and he understands it pretty much perfectly. That still doesn't mean it continued to be influenced after the severance. Because Malta was colonised by Arabs from North Africa anyway, so they probably already had a similar dialect back then.



> I think there must have been influence back and forth - although the  Maltese became Christianized and did not preserve Classical Arabic  culturally, they must have had contact with other Arabic speakers in  nearby areas just through trading and travel routes.



It would've been fairly minimal I think. The Crusaders did not allow much interaction, and also how much language transfer is really going to take place through trade anyway? Sure a new word here and there, but not complex grammatical changes.


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## Abu Rashid

There was a link earlier in this thread to a book called Structuralist studies in Arabic linguistics: Charles A. Ferguson's papers which raises some very good points. Some of the common features of the dialects that he describes suggests they must all be quite closely related, more so than any of them is to fus7a, which indicates they've probably always been there alongside fus7a. One example is the verb jaaba (to bring), which he states is a fusion of ja'a + bi (came with), and which exists in pretty much every single dialect, indicating it was part of a common dialect that was spoken before the spread of Islam, since such a fusion could never have developed independently in so many different locations.


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## Faylasoof

Thanks Abu Rashid!  This was the very reference I mentioned in one of my earlier posts above *(#135) *but as that was from an academic journal allowing only a limited preview [ here it is again: *The Arabic Koine by Charles Ferguson *, Language Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1959), pp. 616-630Published by: Linguistic Society of America] I couldn’t get to the rest of the article despite my best attempts, which included help from my institutes main library!


In short, Ferguson considered an Arabic Koine to co-exist with fuSHa in the early Islamic era, and it was this _koine_ language ( = _common_ language) that forms the basis of the dialects we see now. Furthermore, according to him, this _koine_ was not based on any one dialect. This stands to reason and the point has been made before here (e.g. my post # 152: “supra-tribal cultivated language” i.e. no particular tribe “owned” it as such but all understood it”) but the way he is using the word _koine_ (as a spoken dialect) is different to the way I was using it, viz. as the _commonly understood_ language of pre-Islamic poetry. 

Ferguson’s usage of the word _koine _is indeed better as it distinguishes formal _Arabiyyah _(fuSHa) from the more informal version that would have been used for conversational purposes much the same way that a highly ornate, formal Latin as, say, in the orations of Cicero is unlikely to have been used as a spoken language in Ancient Rome. Instead, as all scholars agree, a vernacular form would have been the norm for daily use and it was this that gave rise to the various romance languages.    

As has been said many times, fuSHa arose from an earlier stage of Arabic. If _this _was due to a fusion of _even earlier forms of dialects_ then the process would quite obviously have to be very long since such a fusion of dialects would result in a syntactically unstable product. This is believed to have happened in the case of Elamite – another language which, like Sumeric, has obscure origins. 

All this still leaves open the question of the exact development and origins of fuSHa, given the paucity of material available for the (long) period we are interested in. In pre-Islamic poetry and the Quran we only have the end result of a very long period of development. Any speculation of exactly how fuSHa arose would mean we should look to other ancient languages for some answers …. and speculate!


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## Aydintashar

In the foregoing posts, I made reference on more than one occasion, to the issue of Arabic having enriched local languages in the Islamic geography in a drastic scale. I also stressed that languages like Persian and Turkish would not have been able to address any audience in scholarly fields, unless at the cost of heavy borrowing from Arabic.
Now a similar, but very delicate point remains to be clarified. If you look at the different dialects in the Arabic geography itself, you will notice that all those dialects are similarly heavily influenced and drastically enriched by FusHa, in such a manner, that none of them would be able to express itself in journalistic and scholarly fields without the FusHa influence. If you follow a film in, for example, Lebanese dialect, or watch a doctor or lawyer addressing common people in the same dialect, you will notice that a heavy proportion of the vocabulary comes from FusHa. It is the main tool. The speakers of those native dialects learn FusHa words and enrich their native language more or less in the same manner that we non-Arabs do.  If we take this point into consideration, it will be difficult to believe that FusHa and the dialects coexisted, more or less as similarly developed languages,  at a certain time prior to Islam, and all of them evolved into their present status. It will also be difficult to accept that FusHa was synthesized from a combination of dialects to make a lingua franca. The only remaining option would be to accept that FusHa had an independent and much more archaic existence than is usually conceived, and had always played a hegemonic role on regional languages.


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