What they said about Arabic Via a reliable witness
Reported of him in the books of adab:
“A grammatical slip in speech is uglier than a tear in a garment or pockmarks on a face. When someone said to him, “Grey hair has come early to you, Commander of the Faithful,” he answered: “What turned me grey was climbing the pulpits and dreading a slip.””
ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwan
d. 86 AH / 705 CE
Umayyad caliph, one of the eloquent orators of Quraysh, in whose reign the state registers were put into Arabic.
The Arabic original
اللَّحْنُ فِي الكَلامِ أَقْبَحُ مِنَ التَّفْتِيقِ فِي الثَّوْبِ، وَالجُدَرِيِّ فِي الوَجْهِ. وَقِيلَ لَهُ: لَقَدْ عَجِلَ عَلَيْكَ الشَّيْبُ يا أَمِيرَ المُؤْمِنِينَ، قالَ: شَيَّبَنِي ارْتِقاءُ المَنابِرِ وَتَوَقُّعُ اللَّحْنِ.
Source
Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIqd al-farid, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1st ed., 1404 AH, vol. 2, p. 308
The English translation is Voice of Arabic's, made from the original.
Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih gives it without a chain of transmission; it is widely quoted in these words in the adab literature.
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