Arabic script

“ Of the Badí’a or euphuistic style, “Parleying euphuism,” and of AI Saj’a, the prose rhyme, I shall speak in a future page.
The characteristics of the whole are naïveté and simplicity, clearness and a singular concision. The gorgeousness is in the imagery not in the language; the words are weak while the sense, as in the classical Scandinavian books, is strong; and here the Arabic differs diametrically from the florid exuberance and turgid amplifications of the Persian story-teller, which sound so hollow and unreal by the side of a chaster model. ”

“ Imperfect translations, and type which seemed to caricature their alphabet, had done much to prejudice Arabic scholars against the Christian Scriptures. By the labors of the mission, these objections were now removed. The educated Arab finds a book printed in characters modeled after the most approved specimens of Arab caligraphy. He soon perceives the style to be that of a man who is master of this wonderful language in all its grammatical and idiomatic niceties and rich resources. As a literary work it secures his respect, and thus invites a candid perusal. ”

“ Classical Arabic is rich not only in words but in grammatical forms. The wanton development of the broken plurals, and sometimes of Grammatical forms and rules. the verbal nouns, must be regarded as an excess of wealth. The sparing use of the ancient terminations which mark the plural has somewhat obscured the distinction between plurals, collectives, abstract nouns, and feminines in general. In its manner of employing the verbal tenses genuine Arabic still exhibits traces of that poetical freedom which we see in Hebrew; this characteristic disappears in the later literary language. ”

“ Later he went to Bagdad, but soon left, owing to a dispute with the Kufan grammarian Kisā‛ī, and returned to Persia, where he died at the age of about forty. His great grammar of Arabic, known simply as The Book, is not only the earliest systematic presentation of Arabic grammar, but is recognized among Arabs as the most perfect. ”

“ It is true that in Arabic very many features are preserved more faithfully than in the cognate languages,—for instance, nearly all the original abundance of consonants, the short vowels in open syllables, particularly in the interior of words, and many grammatical distinctions which in the other languages are more or less obscured. On the other hand, Arabic has coined, simply from analogy, a great number of forms which, owing to their extreme simplicity, seem at the first glance to be primitive, but which nevertheless are only modifications of the primitive forms ”

“ So large in fact is the vocabulary of Arabic writers that the classics require copious explanatory notes for the Arabs themselves and some of them have written notes on the notes, to explain the difficult words used in explaining others more difficult. Moreover Arabic literature is so vast in its extent that acquaintance with the vocabulary of a dozen authors in one line of literature does not yet enable the student to appreciate the language of other works. ”

“ The genius of the two languages (Arabic and English) belonging, as they do, to opposite groups of speech-form, presents no point of union; and it seems to me, therefore, that the only satisfactory way of rendering Arabic poetry in English verse is to content oneself generally with observing the exterior form of the stanza, the movement of the rhyme and (as far as possible) the identity in number of the syllables composing the beits.
The principal Arabic metres are sixteen in number, each subdivided by numerous variations ”

“ By the early twentieth century a new crop of writers, authors, poets, littèrateurs and scientific workers had been raised and was beginning to inch its way slowly to the front, receiving its stimulation from the living present rather than the dead past. Through their pens the Arabic language, rusty with age and given to the expression of traditional unprogressive thought, received a fresh polish and an injection of new life which started it on its way to becoming a vehicle capable of expressing the finest shades of scientific thought and the most delicate sentiments of the human heart. ”

“ Fortunately for the common needs of life, Arabic-speaking people are content with an ordinary vocabulary, and even the educated reserve the richness of their mother-tongue for special occasions. The appalling thirteen forms of the verb of grammarians dwindle in practice to the intransitive, transitive, and an impersonal form, with occasionally a passive form, and prepositions are considered sufficient without the inflection of the various cases. ”

“ Algebra and Astronomy are specially indebted to the Arabs; all the sciences received attention and some of them addition from the Arabian mind.
The Arabic tongue is not only beautiful but it is difficult, exceedingly difficult, to every one who attempts to really master it. One of the veteran missionaries of Egypt wrote, in 1864, “I would rather traverse Africa from Alexandria to the Cape of Good Hope, than undertake a second time to master the Arabic language.” ”

“ Arabic is the spoken language not only of Arabia proper but forces the linguistic boundary of that peninsula 300 miles north of Bagdad to Diarbekr and Mardin, and is used all over Syria and Palestine and the whole of northern Africa. Even at Cape Colony there are daily readers of the language of Mohammed. As early as 1315 Arabic began to be taught at the universities of Europe through the missionary influence of Raymund Lull and to-day the language is more accurately known and its literature more critically investigated at Leiden than at Cairo and at Cambridge than in Damascus. ”

“ But, even if spoken Egyptian becomes the language of writing, what is to prevent your keeping up the Arabic of the Koran? In the village schools the children can still learn it by heart. In the other schools you can continue to teach it, as we teach classics in England. It has long been considered part of the accomplishments of an English gentleman to write verse and prose in correct Latin and Greek. You have much stronger reasons for making a sound knowledge of classical Arabic a necessary accomplishment of every educated Egyptian. ”

“ But we must not suppose that people, for instance, from Mosul, Morocco, Ṣan‘ā, and the interior of Arabia would be able to understand one another without difficulty. It is a total error to regard the difference between the Arabic dialects and the ancient language as a trifling one, or to represent the development of these dialects as something wholly unlike the development of the Romance languages. No living Arabic dialect diverges from classical Arabic so much as French or Rouman from Latin ”

“ Had it not been for the Koran and its cognate literature, by this time the people of Syria, Egypt, Morocco and Oman would perhaps scarcely understand each other, and their written language would differ vastly; but the existence of this literature has kept the written language a unit and put a constant check on the vagaries of dialect.
The last, and chief element of beauty in the Arabic tongue249 is undoubtedly its wonderful literature. In poetry alone, the Arabians can challenge the world; in grammar, logic and rhetoric the number of their works is legion ”

“ Even reduced to its own resources, this art of Arabic calligraphy is one of the most marvellous forms of decorative skill that has ever sprung from human imagination. It is perhaps the only science of ornament of which it may be said without exaggeration that it possesses a soul, for like the voice, it expresses thought. Owing nothing even to the most cultured parts of the outer world, its independence resembles that of music and seems like the stenography of the innermost beatings of the heart. ”

“ The fall of the 'Umayyads and the replacing of the Arabs by the Persians commences the golden age of Arabic literature and scholarship. The older Arabic literature, that namely which was written by Arabs as yet untouched by external influences, consists entirely of poetry, the work of professional bards who sing of desert life and warfare, lament over the deserted camping grounds, boast of their tribe, and abuse their enemies. It forms a distinct class of poetic composition, which has developed its own literary standards, and attained a high standard of excellence in its way. ”

“ The former, in degenerated dialects, is still spoken in Arabia, in parts of western Asia, and throughout northern Africa, and forms an important part of the Turkish, Persian, and other Oriental languages. The Arabic is characterized by its guttural sounds, by the richness and pliability of its vowels, by its dignity, volume of sound, and vigor of accentuation and pronunciation. Like all Semitic languages, it is written from right to left; the characters are of Syrian origin, and were introduced into Arabia before the time of Mohammed. ”

“ It was probably about the beginning of the Christian era that the demotic finally disappeared before the Coptic, an alphabet derived from the Greek, of which Plate 3 gives an example. The Arabic heading which accompanies the Coptic rubric above the Psalm that begins below (the 118th ριη) , is in a hand of the latter part of the fifteenth century. Notwithstanding the lateness of the specimen, the script takes its proper place here as representing a script of the first century. ”

“ The Orientals deal largely in hyperbole, and scatter numbers and values with the most reckless profusion. The Arabic, like the Hebrew, its sister tongue, and other old original tongues of Man, is a language of roots, and abounds with the boldest metaphors. Now, exaggeration is but the imperfect form of metaphor. The expression is always a splendid amplification of the simple fact. ”

“ A revival, however, of Arabian learning is taking place in Egypt, Syria, and North Africa, but in accordance with European models, and chiefly under European auspices. All original research has long been extinct, even among those populations whose vernacular is the Arabic language; and consequently it is the former, and not the present state of Arab literature, which is the most interesting to the people of to-day. ”

“ In text "Ghayth al-Hátíl = incessant rain of small drops and widely dispread. In Arab. the names for clouds, rain and all such matters important to a pastoral race are well nigh innumerable. Poetry has seized upon the material terms and has converted them into a host of metaphors; for "the genius of the Arabic language, like that of the Hebrew, is to form new ideas by giving a metaphorical signification to material objects (e.g. 'Azud, lit. the upper arm; met. a helper) ." ”

“ And, though it must be granted that the Arabic is extremely fine and copious, so as to afford words sufficient to express with elegance and propriety every subject, it is, nevertheless, not sufficient of itself, any more than any other language, to make a man an author; there being a manifest difference between language and style, insomuch that a man may write the best language in the world, and use the most proper and significant words, and yet not be worth the reading. ”

“ The vivacity of Arabic poetry is one of its greatest charms. Its imagery is born of the fiery imagination of the East; its proficiency in the delineation of human passion is the fruit of centuries of study, reflection, and jealous rivalry. Perfect familiarity with the poems of the pre-Islamic Bedouins, regarded as models by every generation of their descendants, was considered an indispensable qualification of every well-informed scholar. The Arabs were so deeply impressed by the potent influence of poetical genius that they assigned it a place among the kabbala of magical science. ”

“ The Arab children in the mission schools now sing Christian hymns and many of the stories that you love to read, such as “Ben Hur” and “Black Beauty” and “Robinson Crusoe,” have been translated into Arabic. At the Beirut press alone about twenty-five million pages of Christian books are printed every year.
When the Bible takes the place of the Koran, the Arab speech with all its beauty and strength will become more than ever “the language of the angels.” ”

“ Besides these, there are other letters, whose power is extremely difficult to be acquired by an European, because no language in Europe possesses sounds similar to the Arabic letters خ غ ع, nor has any language, except, perhaps, the English, a letter with the power of the Arabian ث. Those who travel into Asia or Africa scarcely ever become sufficiently masters of the Arabic to speak it fluently, which radical defect proceeds altogether from their not learning, while studying it, the peculiar distinction of the synonymous letters. ”

“ Their own speech in Arabic sounds very strange when translated into our own tongue, as the Egyptians, and indeed all the races which speak Arabic, are very fond of using big words, and they invariably express themselves in the most formal and dignified manner. ”

“ The Arabian poetry which has been most frequently translated and written about in English is Pre-islamic poetry. In especial, the Muallaqat, or the seven so-called suspended poems, has been translated several times. Sir William Jones made the first translation in prose in the eighteenth century. In modern times we have had several translations, one by Wilfrid Blunt and his wife. There has been considerable support for the critical view that these poems represent the highest achievement of Arabic poetry, both among Arabs themselves and Aryan critics. ”

“ Even the English language has a number of words that came as Arab guests to the feast of reason and have been adopted into our family and put into our dictionary. When you speak of algebra, ciphers, zero, alchemy, alcove, minaret, alcohol, coffee, sofa, amber, artichokes, gazelles or magazine you are using good Arabic words which nearly every Arab would understand. ”