What others said about Arabic Via a reliable witness
On classical Arabic in the third Islamic century:
“In the course of the third/ninth century the growth and spread of the spoken language pursued the classical Arabic whose rules the grammarians had set out on the basis of the Bedouin speech, and steadily drove it out of every domain of everyday language; yet in literature it remained the crowned queen to whom all who belonged to culture, by any tie, swore allegiance.”
Johann Fück
1894–1974
German Arabist, professor at Halle, historian of Arabic style.
In Arabic
أخذ النموُّ والانتشارُ اللغويُّ في خلال القرن الثالث الهجريّ / التاسع الميلاديّ يطارد العربيّةَ الفصحى التي نظم النحاةُ قواعدَها، والتي قامت على أساس لغة البدو، ويُمعن في عزلها باطّرادٍ من جميع مناطق اللغة الدارجة، بيد أنّها ظلّت في الأدب الملكةَ المتوّجة التي أقسم لها يمينَ الطاعة كلُّ من انتمى إلى الثقافة بسببٍ أو نسب.
Source
ʿArabiya (Berlin 1950), Arabic tr. Ramadan ʿAbd al-Tawwab, Cairo: al-Khanji, 1980, p. 150, opening of ch. 8
The English is ours, from the reported Arabic.
From ʿAbd al-Tawwab’s Arabic translation, checked against the print; the English is our translation.
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