What others said about Arabic From the author's own Arabic
In a lecture at the Arab Academy in Damascus, explaining why all the peoples of al-Andalus took to Arabic:
“We must look for another cause, one that has nothing to do with self-interest: in the fifth century [AH] Arabic appeared to all the peoples living in al-Andalus as the only language that could quench the thirst of the poet or the philosopher – by its wealth and its suppleness; yes, the only language able, by the breadth of its vocabulary, the art of its syntax and the strength of its words, native and borrowed, to express the finest feelings and the highest thoughts, because the language of the Arabs, the language of Quraysh and of the tribes of old Arab stock, had reached by the fifth century a perfection it would not go beyond.”
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
يجب علينا أن نلتمس سبباً آخر لا يمتُّ إلى المصلحة بصلة، وهو أنّ اللغة العربيّة في القرن الخامس تظهر للشعوب جمعاءَ القاطنةِ بالأندلس اللغةَ الوحيدةَ التي تَشفي غُلّةَ الشاعر أو الفيلسوف – بثروتها ومرونتها، نعم اللغةَ الوحيدةَ التي تقدر، باتّساعِ نطاقِ مفرداتها وتفنُّنِ تراكيبها النحويّة، وجَزالةِ ألفاظها من أصيلةٍ ودخيلة، على أن تعبّر عن أدقِّ العواطف وأعلى الأفكار وذلك لأنّ لغة العرب، لغةَ قريشٍ والقبائلِ العريقة في العروبة، قد بلغت، في القرن الخامس، إلى كمالٍ لا تتجاوزه فيما بعد.
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. 406
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.
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