What they said about Arabic From the author's own Arabic
In his chapter on language, at the start of the fifth inquiry:
“Since knowledge of our religious law goes back to the Qur’an and the Prophetic reports, and both came in the language of the Arabs, their grammar and their morphology, knowing our law depends on knowing these.”
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
d. 606 AH / 1210 CE
Muhammad ibn ʿUmar of Rayy, theologian, legal theorist and exegete, author of Mafatih al-ghayb and al-Mahsul.
The Arabic original
لَمّا كانَ المَرْجِعُ فِي مَعْرِفَةِ شَرْعِنا إِلَى القُرْآنِ وَالأَخْبارِ، وَهُما وارِدانِ بِلُغَةِ العَرَبِ وَنَحْوِهِمْ وَتَصْرِيفِهِمْ، كانَ العِلْمُ بِشَرْعِنا مَوْقُوفاً عَلَى العِلْمِ بِهَذِهِ الأُمُورِ.
Source
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Mahsul, ed. Taha Jabir al-ʿAlwani, Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risala, 3rd ed., 1997, vol. 1, p. 203
The English translation is Voice of Arabic's, made from the original.
He continues that whatever an absolute duty cannot be fulfilled without is itself a duty; the printed text drops a word there, so the quotation stops before it.
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