What others said about Arabic From the author's own Arabic
In the conclusion of his lecture:
“What, then, do the peoples of al-Andalus lack, when they have the most perfect instrument for expressing their thoughts, serious or light? We have shown that they use it constantly and to the best effect. Arabic appears as an almost universal language, heralding, for al-Andalus, the flowering of literature, philosophy and history in the sixth century [AH] with Ibn Bajja, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd, and in the eighth with Lisan al-Din Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Khaldun.”
Henri Pérès
1890–1983
French scholar of Arabic at the University of Algiers, author of La poésie andalouse en arabe classique au XIe siècle.
In Arabic
إذن ماذا يُعوِزُ الشعوبَ الأندلسيّة ولديها أكملُ آلةٍ للتعبير عن أفكارها الجِدّيّة أو الهزليّة؟ فقد برهنّا أنّها تُكثر من استعمالها على أحسن حال. فاللغة العربيّة تظهر لغةً شبهَ عالميّة تُبشّر، فيما يخصّ الأندلس، بازدهار الأدب والفلسفة والتاريخ في القرن السادس مع ابن باجّة وابن طُفيل وابن رُشد، وفي القرن الثامن مع لسان الدين ابن الخطيب وابن خلدون.
Source
al-Lugha al-ʿarabiyya wa-sukkān al-Andalus fī al-qurūn al-wusṭā (lecture), Damascus: Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī, vol. 19, part 9, 1944, p. 408
The English is ours, from the reported Arabic.
He gave the lecture at the Arab Academy in Damascus on 12 May 1944, and it was printed in Arabic in the Academy's journal; we found no published French original. The hamzas the print drops are restored; the English is ours. The commas around «for al-Andalus» are ours.
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