What others said about Arabic Via a reliable witness
“If we turn from the sky to the earth, it becomes clear that the geographical ideas of the pre-Islamic Arabs were meagre and did not go beyond the bounds of their peninsula… It hardly needs saying how rich the ancient Arabic language is in everything that concerns the soil and its most particular inner features, and the plant and animal worlds as well.”
Ignaty Krachkovsky
1883–1951
Dean of Russian Arabists, member of the Academy of Sciences and corresponding member of the Arab Academy of Damascus; author of «Arabic Geographical Literature» and «Among Arabic Manuscripts».
In Arabic
فإذا ما تحوّلنا مِن السماءِ إلى الأرض فسيتّضح لنا أنّ التصوّرات الجغرافيّة لدى عرب الجاهليّة كانت نَزْرةً ولم تتعدَّ حدودَ جزيرتِهم… ومن نافلة القول أن نؤكّدَ غِنى اللغةِ العربيّةِ القديمةِ في كلّ ما يتعلّق بالتربة وأخصِّ مميّزاتِها الباطنيّة، وبالعالَمَين النباتيّ والحيوانيّ أيضاً.
Source
Arabic Geographical Literature (Arabskaya geograficheskaya literatura, 1957), Arabic tr. Salah al-Din Uthman Hashim, Cairo 1963, vol. 1, p. 42 (ch. 1)
The English is ours, from the reported Arabic.
Written in Russian and published posthumously in 1957; we have not seen the Russian, so this is his Arabic translator's text and the English is ours from it.
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