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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
“Latin and Greek together, even if they joined forces, would come out far the smaller […]; from these first roots there grows an infinite forest of words.”
Nam primitiva, seu themata, longe numerosiora habet, & à primis hisce radicibus infinita vocum sylva succrescit.
Thomas Greaves
1612–1676
 Read in the original
On Arabic medical terminology:
“On the other hand, apart from the fairly copious anatomical, pathological and medical vocabulary properly belonging to the Arabic language, it has a great power of forming significant derivatives from existing roots, which, when formed, are at once intelligible. Thus there exists in Arabic a special form for the "noun of pain," wherein the first root-letter is followed by a short u and the second by a long ā (the form known to Arab grammarians as فُعال, fu‘āl), and this is the form assumed by the names of most diseases and ailments; as the already mentioned ṣudā‘ (صُداع), "a splitting headache," the "soda" of the Latino-Barbari; zukām (زُكام), "a catarrh"; judhām (جُذام), "elephantiasis," etc.”
فإنّ لها قدرةً عظيمةً على توليد مشتقّاتٍ دالّةٍ من الجذور الموجودة، تُفهَمُ حالَ صَوغِها.
Edward Granville Browne
1862–1926
 Read in the original
“It will be realized that with such manifold nuances at the disposal of every verb and noun the Arabic language could readily be adapted to express the scientific terminology of the classical world. […] The triliteral root with its ramifications through a thousand forms, each of which has an assonance with the same form of another root, produces a rhythm in Arabic as natural as it is inevitable. When we utter an abstract idea we have no thought of the primitive meaning of the word we employ. 'Association' sits very loosely to socius in the mind of the speaker. […] But in Arabic the material is never more than faintly obscured beneath the abstract; its presence can always be felt.”
إِنَّ الجَذْرَ الثُّلَاثِيَّ بِتَشَعُّبِهِ فِي أَلْفِ صِيغَةٍ… يُحْدِثُ فِي العَرَبِيَّةِ إِيقَاعاً طَبِيعِيَّاً لَا مَفَرَّ مِنْهُ… أَمَّا فِي العَرَبِيَّةِ فَالأَصْلُ الحِسِّيُّ لَا يَغِيبُ تَحْتَ المُجَرَّدِ إِلَّا غِيَابَاً خَفِيفَاً، وَيَظَلُّ حُضُورُهُ مَحْسُوسَاً أَبَداً.
Alfred Guillaume
1888–1965
 Read in the original
After the conquests, when Arabic had become the language of an empire and of a culture:
“The conquests made Arabic an imperial language, soon also the language of a great and diverse culture. Arabic expanded to meet these two needs, partly by borrowing new words and expressions, but mainly by development from within, forming new words from old roots, giving new meanings to old words. […] The language created in this way possessed a vivid, concrete and pictorial vocabulary, with each term having deep roots in a purely Arab past and tradition.”
وَاتَّسَعَتِ العَرَبِيَّةُ لِتَفِيَ بِهَاتَيْنِ الحَاجَتَيْنِ، بِالِاقْتِرَاضِ حِيناً، وَلِكِنْ بِالنُّمُوِّ مِنْ دَاخِلِهَا فِي الغَالِبِ: تَصُوغُ أََلْفَاظاً جَدِيدَةً مِنْ جُذُورٍ قَدِيمَةٍ، وَتَمْنَحُ الأَلْفَاظَ القَدِيمَةَ مَعَانِيَ جَدِيدَة.
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.