What they said about Arabic From the author's own Arabic
In al-Imtaʿ wa-l-muʾanasa, answering the vizier Ibn Saʿdan, who had asked him whether one nation excels another:
“We have heard many languages – though we have not mastered them – from every nation: the speech of our Persian companions, of the Byzantines, the Indians, the Turks, Khwarazm, the Slavs, al-Andalus and the Zanj; and we found in none of them the clarity of Arabic – I mean the openings within its words, the space we find between its letters, the distance between its points of articulation, the balance we taste in its patterns, and the undeniable evenness of its forms.”
Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi
d. c. 400 AH / 1010 CE
ʿAli ibn Muhammad ibn al-ʿAbbas, the Baghdad man of letters, “the philosopher among writers and the writer among philosophers”, author of al-Basaʾir wa-l-dhakhaʾir and al-Imtaʿ wa-l-muʾanasa.
The Arabic original
وَقَدْ سَمِعْنَا لُغَاتٍ كَثِيرَةً – وَإِنْ لَمْ نَسْتَوْعِبْهَا – مِنْ جَمِيعِ الأُمَمِ، كَلُغَةِ أَصْحَابِنَا العَجَمِ وَالرُّومِ وَالهِنْدِ وَالتُّرْكِ وَخُوَارِزْمَ وَصَقْلَابَ وَأَنْدَلُسَ وَالزَّنْجِ، فَمَا وَجَدْنَا لِشَيْءٍ مِنْ هَذِهِ اللُّغَاتِ نُصُوعَ العَرَبِيَّةِ، أَعْنِي الفُرَجَ الَّتِي فِي كَلِمَاتِهَا، وَالفَضَاءَ الَّذِي نَجِدُهُ بَيْنَ حُرُوفِهَا، وَالمَسَافَةَ الَّتِي بَيْنَ مَخَارِجِهَا، وَالمُعَادَلَةَ الَّتِي نَذُوقُهَا فِي أَمْثِلَتِهَا، وَالمُسَاوَاةَ الَّتِي لَا تُجْحَدُ فِي أَبْنِيَتِهَا.
Source
Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi, al-Imtaʿ wa-l-muʾanasa, ed. Haytham Khalifa al-Taʿimi, Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAsriyya, 1st ed., 1424 AH, vol. 1, pp. 73–74
The English translation is Voice of Arabic's, made from the original.
“Though we have not mastered them” is his own caveat: he judges by ear, not by knowledge. By “patterns” he means the morphological measures, and by “forms” the word shapes.
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