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What They Said About the Arabs and Arabic

What Arab and Muslim scholars have said about their language, and what scholars from outside the Arab world have said about it, and about the Arabs and their civilisation. Nothing is published until it was read in its author's own book or in a named, reliable witness; the Western sayings appear in their original languages beside a translation, each with a link to the page of the book.

105 sayings — 52 by Arab and Muslim scholars, 53 by others; 48 read in the original language of their author.

How these sayings were documented

Most sayings of Western scholars about Arabic circulate in Arabic translations taken from secondary sources, and many turned out to add to or cut from the original. We went back to the authors' own books, in scans of their pages, and publish the original text with a faithful translation, noting under each saying where the circulated version departs from it. Sayings whose original we have not yet found are not published.

Read in the original Read in its author's own language (French, German, Latin…) in a scan of the book; the original is printed beside any translation. From the author's own Arabic The author's own Arabic words, read in his book by edition, volume and page; the English is our translation. Narrated with its chain The speaker wrote no book of his own; this is read in a work that narrates it from him with its chain of transmission, by edition, volume and page. Via a reliable witness Reported by a named scholar without a chain, or not found in the author's own work.

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Read in the original
Answering the scholars of Europe, who read Avicenna and Rhazes in crude medieval Latin translations and scorned the Arabs as barbarous:
“Someone will say: who does not know that to the common people the name of the Arabs means nothing but barbarous, rude and uncultivated? There is some truth in this, but I openly deny that it is true without qualification. For this is not the fault of the Arabs but of the translators. The Arabs, in their time the most learned, the sharpest and the most cultivated writers of all, have through the carelessness and ignorance of translators acquired the name of barbarism, which can hardly be washed away.”
At quis nescit, dicat quis, Arabum nomen apud vulgus aliud nihil, quàm barbarum, rude, & incultum sonare, audire, significare? Verum hoc quidem parte quadam, at in vniuersum hoc verum esse apertè nego. Arabum enim hæc culpa non est, sed interpretum. Arabes enim, scriptores omnium suo tempore doctissimi, acutissimi, cultissimi, interpretum oscitantia & inscitia, cognomen barbariei, vix eluendum, contraxerunt.
William Bedwell
1563 – 1632
 Read in the original
Telling scholars what Arabic holds for them:
“There is no language, my reader (I except Greek and Latin), that contains more monuments of solid learning and of the whole circle of the sciences [than Arabic].”
Nulla, mi Lector, lingua est, (Græcam & Latinam excipio) quæ plura solidæ eruditionis & encyclopædiæ monumenta continet.
William Bedwell
1563 – 1632
 Read in the original
“The Arabic language, having come to prevail throughout the whole empire, served as a binding agent and furthered the transmission of ideas.”
Die arabische Sprache, im ganzen Reiche zur Herrschaft gelangt, diente als Bindemittel und beförderte die Ideenübertragung.
Alfred von Kremer
1828–1889
 Read in the original
On Arabic, before the seventh century the language of the desert alone:
“It is as if that language which before the seventh century had been used only by rude barbarians had been predestined to become one of the main vehicles of religion and of science in the world. […] The Qur'ān helped to standardize the Arabic language; it could not prevent the growth of many dialects for common use, especially when Arabic began to be spoken by men of other nations, but it provided an international standard for the highest needs of life.”
كَأَنَّمَا قُدِّرَ لِتِلْكَ اللُّغَةِ… أَنْ تَصِيرَ إِحْدَى الأَدَاتَيْنِ الكُبْرَيَيْنِ لِلدِّينِ وَلِلْعِلْمِ فِي العَالَم.
George Sarton
1884–1956
 Read in the original
“Biruni fully understood the international role of Arabic as the chief Semitic language of civilization: its power of condensation and abstraction… its unifying value.”
Beruni a parfaitement compris le rôle international de l'arabe comme principale langue sémitique de civilisation: sa puissance de condensation et d'abstraction […] sa valeur d'unification.
Louis Massignon
1883–1962
 Read in the original
“Arabic literature is the enduring monument of a civilization, not of a people. […] Yet even when Arabic was in the Eastern provinces displaced from its supremacy by the rise of a Persian literature, it maintained, and still maintains, its position as the universal language of Islamic theology, philosophy, and science.”
الأَدَبُ العَرَبِيُّ أَثَرٌ بَاقٍ لِحَضَارَةٍ، لَا لِشَعْبٍ بِعَيْنِهِ… وَحَتَّى حِينَ أُزِيحَتِ العَرَبِيَّةُ فِي الأَقَالِيمِ الشَّرْقِيَّةِ عَنْ سِيَادَتِهَا بِنُهُوضِ أَدَبٍ فَارِسِيٍّ، فَقَدْ حَافَظَتْ- وَلَا تَزَالُ تُحَافِظُ- عَلَى مَكَانَتِهَا لُغَةً جَامِعَةً لِعِلْمِ الكَلَامِ الإِسْلَامِيِّ وَالفَلْسَفَةِ وَالعِلْم.
Sir Hamilton A. R. Gibb
1895–1971
 Read in the original
Opening his chapter on Islamic civilisation:
“During the period of greatness of the Arab and Islamic Empires in the Near and Middle East a flourishing civilisation grew up that is usually known as Arabic. It was not brought ready-made by the Arab invaders from the desert, but was created after the conquests by the collaboration of many peoples, Arabs, Persians, Egyptians and others. Nor was it even purely Muslim, for many Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians were among its creators. But its chief medium of expression was Arabic, and it was dominated by Islam and its outlook on life. It was these two things, their language and their faith, which were the great contributions of the Arab invaders to the new and original civilisation which developed under their aegis.”
إِلَّا أَنَّ أَدَاةَ التَّعْبِيرِ الرَّئِيسِيَّةَ فِيهَا كَانَتِ اللُّغَةَ العَرَبِيَّةَ… وَكَانَ هَذَانِ الشَّيْئَانِ، أَيِ اللُّغَةُ وَالدِّينُ، أَعْظَمَ مَا قَدَّمَ العَرَبُ الفَاتِحُونَ إِلَى الحَضَارَةِ الجَدِيدَةِ الأَصِيلَة.
Bernard Lewis
1916–2018
 Read in the original
After listing the Persian, Hellenistic and other sources of Islamic civilisation:
“Despite this diversity of its origins Islamic civilisation was no mere mechanical juxtaposition of previous cultures but rather a new creation in which all these elements were fused into a new and original civilisation by the transposition into Arabic and Islamic forms, recognisable and characteristic in every phase of its achievement.”
وَلَمْ تَكُنِ الحَضَارَةُ الإِسْلَامِيَّةُ… مُجَرَّدَ تَجْمِيعٍ آلِيٍّ لِلثَّقَافَاتِ القَدِيمَةِ، بَلْ هِيَ بِالأَحْرَى خَلْقٌ جَدِيدٌ… وَذَلِكَ بِأَنِ انْتَقَلَتْ إِلَى صُوَرٍ عَرَبِيَّةٍ إِسْلَامِيَّة.
Bernard Lewis
1916–2018

Some well-known sayings attributed to Western scholars have not been traced to an original and are not published: one credited to Krachkovsky (we searched the whole of his history of Arabic geographical literature), one credited to Germanus (not in any of his articles in al-Risāla), others credited to Marçais and Berque, and one credited to Brockelmann ("through the Qur’an Arabic reached an extent…"). The saying credited to al-Asma‘i is one he transmits from al-Khalil from Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani, whose saying is in this section. The saying credited to "William Work" has no such author: the name is a corruption of William H. Worrell, director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, and its source has not been found. The claim that Chomsky was influenced by Sībawayh was denied by Chomsky himself in two published e-mails.