What they said about Arabic From the author's own Arabic
Speaking of the beauty of God’s making of man and of his speech:
“…Then He formed every nation upon a language, made them speak it and made it easy for them; and He made the Arabic tongue the sweetest of tongues in its sounds, the most even in its course, the clearest in expression and the widest in its variety; and He made case-endings an ornament for the tongue, a rein upon it, and a line that divides wherever its meanings might be confused.”
Abu Bakr al-Zubaydi
d. 379 AH / 989 CE
Muhammad ibn al-Hasan of Seville, the leading grammarian and lexicographer of Cordoba, tutor of the caliph Hisham al-Muʾayyad, author of Tabaqat al-nahwiyyin wa-l-lughawiyyin.
The Arabic original
…ثُمَّ جَبَلَ كُلَّ أُمَّةٍ مِنَ الأُمَمِ عَلَى لُغَةٍ أَنْطَقَهُمْ بِهَا، وَيَسَّرَهُمْ لَهَا، وَجَعَلَ اللِّسَانَ العَرَبِيَّ أَعْذَبَ الأَلْسِنَةِ مَخْرَجاً، وَأَعْدَلَهَا مَنْهَجاً، وَأَوْضَحَهَا بَيَاناً، وَأَوْسَعَهَا افْتِنَاناً، وَجَعَلَ الإِعْرَابَ حَلْياً لِلِّسَانِ، وَزِمَاماً وَفَصْلاً لِمَا اخْتُلِفَ فِيهِ مِنْ مَعَانِيهِ.
Source
Abu Bakr al-Zubaydi, Tabaqat al-nahwiyyin wa-l-lughawiyyin, ed. Muhammad Abu l-Fadl Ibrahim, Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 2nd ed., author’s preface, p. 11
The English translation is Voice of Arabic's, made from the original.
From the opening praise of the book; the subject is God. By iʿrab he means the case-endings: an ornament for speech, a rein that controls it, and a divider between meanings.
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