Two religions contend for the mastery of the world; Christianity and Islam. Two races strive for the possession of the dark continent, the Anglo-Saxon and the Arab. Two languages have for ages past contested for world-wide extension on the basis of colonization and propagandism—the English and the Arabic. To-day about seventy millions of people speak some form of the Arabic language, as their vernacular; and nearly as many more know something of its literature in the Koran because they are Mohammedans. In the Philippine islands the first chapter of the Koran is repeated before dawn paints the sky red. The refrain is taken up in Moslem prayers at Pekin and is repeated across the whole of China. It is heard in the valleys of the Himalayas and on “the roof of the world.” A few hours later the Persians pronounce these Arabic words and then across the Peninsula the muezzins call the “faithful” to prayer. At the waters of the Nile, the cry “Allahu akbar” is again sounded forth ever carrying the Arab speech westward across the Sudan, the Sahara and the Barbary States until it is last heard in the mosques of Morocco.

The Arabic Koran is a text-book in the day-schools of Turkey, Afghanistan, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, and Southern Russia. Arabic is the spoken language not only of Arabia proper but forces the linguistic boundary of that peninsula 300 miles north of Bagdad to Diarbekr and Mardin, and is used all over Syria and Palestine and the whole of northern Africa. Even at Cape Colony there are daily readers of the language of Mohammed. As early as 1315 Arabic began to be taught at the universities of Europe through the missionary influence of Raymund Lull and to-day the language is more accurately known and its literature more critically investigated at Leiden than at Cairo and at Cambridge than in Damascus.

A missionary in Syria who is a master of the Arab tongue thus characterizes it, “A pure and original speech of the greatest flexibility, with an enormous vocabulary, with great grammatical possibility, fitted to convey theological and philosophical and scientific thought in a manner not to be excelled by any language except the English, and the little group of languages which have been cultivated so happily by Christianity in Central Europe.” Ernest Renan, the French Semitic scholar, after expressing his surprise that such a language as Arabic should spring from the desert-regions of Arabia and reach perfection in nomadic camps, says that the Arabic surpasses all its sister Semitic languages in its rich vocabulary, delicacy of expression, and the logic of its grammatical construction.[83]

The Semitic family of languages is large and ancient, although not as extensive geographically nor so diverse as those of Indo-European family. Some maintain[84] that the Semites were ancient immigrants from the region northeast of Arabia. They hold that before the formation of the different Semitic dialects the Semites everywhere used a name for the camel (jemel) which still appears in all of the dialects. They have however no names in common for the date-palm, the fruit of the the palm nor for the ostrich, therefore, in their first home, the Semites knew the camel but did not know the palm. Now the region where there is neither date-palm nor ostrich and yet where the camel has lived from the remotest antiquity is the central table-land of Asia near the Oxus. Von Kremer holds that from this region the Semites migrated to Babylon even before the Aryan emigration; the Mesopotamian valley is the oldest seat of Semitic culture.

Others[85] hold that the original home of the Semites was in the south of Arabia whence they gradually overspread the peninsula, so that, as Sprenger expresses it, “All Semite are successive layers of Arabs.” The arguments for this theory are briefly given by Sayce:[86] “The Semitic traditions all point to Arabia as the original home of the race. It is the only part of the world which has remained exclusively Semites. The racial characteristics—intensity of faith, ferocity, exclusiveness, imagination—can best be explained by a desert origin.” De Goeje lays stress on the fine climate of Central Arabia and the splendid physical development of the Arab as additional proof together with the indisputable fact that “of all Semitic languages the Arabic approaches nearest to the original mother-tongue as was conclusively demonstrated by Professor Schrader of Berlin.”

The following table will show at a glance the position of Arabic in the Semitic family group, dead languages being put in italics. Arabic, ancient and modern belongs to the South Semitic group and at an early period supplanted the Himyaritic in Yemen, although the Mahri and Ehkeli dialects are still used in the mountains of Hadramaut.[87] It was practically the only conquering language on the list and is the only one that is growing in use.

TABLE OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES.

NORTHERN:
EASTERN
Babylonian.
Assyrian.
WESTERN (Aramaic)
Eastern
Syriac.
Mandean.
Nabathean.
Western
Samaritan.
Jewish Aramaic (as Targums and Talmud).
Palmyrene.
Egyptian Aramaic.
CENTRAL:
Phoenician.
Hebrew.
Moabite and Canaanitish dialects.
SOUTHERN:
ARABIC (Ishmaelite)
One written language but Modern Dialects in speech.
Maltese [?].
Morocco.
Algerian, etc.
Egyptian.
Syrian.
Yemen.
Bagdadi.
Omanese, etc.
Himyaritic
Mahri.
Ehkeli.
Ethiopic (Joktanite)
Old Geez.
Tigre.
Tigrina.
Amharic.
Harari.

There are to-day over one hundred Arabic newspapers and magazines regularly published and which together have an immense circulation in all parts of the Arabic-speaking world.

While the Arabic language has now acknowledged supremacy above all its sisters, in its historical and literary development it was last of them all. Not until the seventh century of our era did Arabic become, in any sense, important. The language received its literary birthright and its inspiration through the illiterate prophet who could not read but who set all the Eastern world to studying his book. The Arabic literature of the days before Mohammed has a high literary character, but with all its beauty it was only the morning star that ushered in the sunrise. When once the Koran was promulgated, literature and grammar and the sciences all spoke Arabic. It was the renaissance of the dead and dying East. Whatever effect the Koran may have had on the social life and morals of a people, no one denies that it was the Koran and that alone which rescued Arabic from becoming a local idiom. Again this Koran was the unifying factor of the new religion, sweeping everything down before it; not only did it unify the hostile tribes of Arabia but melted all their dialects into one and established an ever-abiding classical standard for the remotest student of the language of revelation. We do not of course hold, as do the Arabs, that the Arabic of the Koran is absolutely without a parallel in grammatical purity and diction. The contrary has been proved by NÖldeke and Dozy. The latter states that the Koran is “full of bastard-Arabic and has many grammatical blunders, which are at present unnoticed, since the grammarians have kindly constructed rules or exceptions to include even these in the list of unapproachable style and perfection.”

The origin and history of the Arabic alphabet is exceedingly interesting. All writing was originally pictorial, the next stage being that of the ideogram. Perhaps a trace of this earliest writing still remains in the wasms or tribal marks of the Bedouin. Scholars maintain that the earliest Semitic writing we possess of certain date is that on the Moabite Stone, discovered by the missionary Klein in 1868. Almost of equal age is the Cyprus and Sidon alphabet, and that of the Phoenicians, found on ancient coins and monuments. The date of this writing is put at 890 B.C. On these monuments and coins the system of orthography is already so carefully developed as to prove that the Semites understood the art centuries before that date. The oldest forms of these Semitic alphabets are in turn derived (HalÉvy, NÖldeke) from the Egyptian hieratic characters. The oldest inscriptions found in North Arabia by Doughty and Enting, in the Nabatean character, and in South Arabia by HalÉvy and others in Himyaritic character, are both written, like modern Arabic, from right to left. Although the characters do not resemble each other, this would seem to indicate a common origin. The intimate connection of the present Arabic alphabet with the Hebrew or Phoenician, is shown not only by the forms of the letters, but by their more ancient numerical arrangement called by the Arabs Abjad, and which corresponds with the Hebrew order.

Accounts differ even among the Arabs as to who adapted or invented the present Arabic alphabet from the older Cufic forms. Some even hold that they both developed simultaneously out of the Himyaritic. The Cufic, it is true, is found on old monuments and coins from the Persian Gulf to Spain, and is a square, apparently more crude kind of writing. But the cursive script (now called Naskhi) seems to have been in use also long before Mohammed’s time, the Arab historians to the contrary notwithstanding, for the exigencies of daily life. That writing was known at Mecca before the era of Mohammed is acknowledged by Moslem tradition and the close intercourse with Yemen long before that time would certainly indicate some knowledge of Himyaritic. Syriac and Hebrew were also known in Mecca and Medina because of the Jewish population, and it is not improbable that this may have had influence on the present form of the Arabic alphabet.

It is not without reason that Mohammed’s cognomen for Jew and Christian alike was, “the people of the Book.” At first, like the Hebrew, Arabic had no vowel-points or diacritical marks. In the earliest Cufic Koran manuscripts these have the form of accents, horizontal lines or even triangles. The Arabs tell many interesting stories about the cause and occasion of their invention by Abu Aswad ad Duili or by Nasr bin ’Asim. In each case the awful sin of mispronouncing a word in the Koran leads to the device of vowel-points as a future preventative. According to another tradition it was Hasan-el-Basri (who died A. H. 110) that first pointed the Koran text with the assistance of Yahya bin YÁmar. The vowel-points, so called, were in reality the abbreviated weak-consonants and were placed, in accordance with the sound of these letters, when so pronounced. The vowel-points and diacritical marks are always found in copies of the Koran, but seldom in other books and never in epistolary writing. They are considered by the Arabs themselves as at best a necessary evil, except for grammarians and purists. The story is told that an elaborate piece of Arabic penmanship was once presented to the governor of Khorasan under the Caliph al Mamun, and that he exclaimed, “How beautiful this would be if there were not so much coriander seed scattered over it!”

The demand for perfect accuracy in copying the Koran in every detail of point and accent, led the Arabs to glorify the art of caligraphy, and, as they followed neither painting nor sculpture because of their creed, they naturally put all their artistic taste into their manuscripts. Brilliantly colored and adorned with gold on delicately tinted parchment, or paper, the fanciful chapter-headings and the elegant tracery of each letter in the book make such an old manuscript Koran a real work of art. Three names are recorded of those who in the early days of Islam were the Raphaels and Michael Angelos of the reed-pen; Wazir Muhammed bin Ali, Ali bin Hilal al Bauwab, and Abu-’d-Dur bin Yakut al Musta’sami. As time went by there arose various schools of this art; chiefly distinguished as the Magrib-Berber or Western, and the Turko-Arab or Eastern style. In the decorations of the Alhambra the western school shows some of its most finished art, while Damascus and Cairo mosques show the delicate “Arabesque” traceries of the lighter oriental school. It is in manuscripts, however, that the best work is found; some of these are of priceless value and exceeding beauty. Even to-day there are Arab penmen whose work commands a good price as art and gives them a position in society as it did the monkey, described in the Arabian Nights, who improvised poetry in five styles of caligraphy for the astonished king.

The Arabic language is distinguished among those that know it for its beauty, and among those who are learning it for its difficulty. To the Arabs their language is not only the language of revelation, but of the Revealer himself. Allah speaks Arabic in heaven, and on the day of judgment will judge the world in this “language of the angels.” All other tongues are vastly inferior in grammatical construction, and what else could they be since the Koran with its classical perfection has existed before all words, uncreated, written on the preserved tablet in heaven, the daily delight of the innumerable company of angels! As Renan says, “among a people so preoccupied with language as the Arabs, the language of the Koran became as it were a second religion, a sort of dogma inseparable from Islam.” But the innate beauty of the language is acknowledged by all who have made it a study, whether born on the soil of Arabia or educated in the universities of Europe. From the days of the Dutch scholars, De Dieu, Schultens, Schroeder and Scheid, and the Swiss Hottinger to the times of NÖldeke, Gesenius and Renan, the praises of Arabic have been proclaimed in Europe, and its study pursued with a devotion that almost amounted to a passion.

The elements of beauty in this language are many. There is first its logical structure, which, we are told, surpasses that of any other language. Even the order of the alphabet is more logical as regards form than the Hebrew; its grammar is altogether logical; the exceptions to its rules can be formed, so to say, into a syllogism. Palmer’s and Lansing’s grammars show how this logical structure can be discovered in the minutest detail, so that, e. g., the three short vowels control the forms not only, but the significance of roots, and are the key to the interpretation of all grammatical mysteries.

A second element of beauty is found in the lexical richness of the Arabic. Its boundless vocabulary and wealth of synonyms are universally acknowledged and admired. A dictionary is called a Kamoos or “Deep Ocean” where “full many a gem of purest ray serene, the dark unfathomed caves” conceal for the diligent student. Renan tells of an Arab linguist who wrote a book on the 500 names given to the lion in literature; another gives 200 words for serpent. Firozabadi, the Arabian Webster, is said to have written a sort of supplement on the words for honey and to have left it incomplete at the eightieth word; the same authority asserts that there are over 1,000 different terms in Arabic for sword and, judging from its use by the Arabs, this appears credible. De Hammer Purgstall, a German scholar, wrote a book on the words relating to the camel and finds them, in Arabic literature, to the number of 5,744. But this remarkable exhibition loses some of its grandeur when truth compels us to state that many of the so-called synonyms are epithets changed into substantives or tropes accidentally employed by some poet to conform to his rhyme. It is also true that the wealth of synonym is limited in Arabic to a certain class of words; in other departments of thought, ethics for example, the language is wofully poor, not even having a distinctive word for conscience.

A third point of beauty in the Arabic language is its purity as compared with other Semitic languages or even all other languages. This was partly due to the geographical location of the Arabs and is still due to their early literature together with the Koran which has put a classical standard into the hands of every schoolboy and has prevented, by the law of religion, both development and deterioration. “While other languages of the same family became dead and while many of their forms and meanings changed or disappeared, the Arabic remained comparatively pure and intact excepting perhaps the temporary corruption which necessarily occurred during the Moslem conquests and foreign applications of the first four Caliphs.”[88]

The Arabic race occupied at first a circumscribed territory and came little into contact with the surrounding nations so that the forces which produce linguistic decay were absent. The only thing that will preserve a language pure next to isolation is a classical literature. English has changed less since Shakespeare’s time than it did in the interval between him and Chaucer. So too with Arabic. Had it not been for the Koran and its cognate literature, by this time the people of Syria, Egypt, Morocco and Oman would perhaps scarcely understand each other, and their written language would differ vastly; but the existence of this literature has kept the written language a unit and put a constant check on the vagaries of dialect.

The last, and chief element of beauty in the Arabic tongue is undoubtedly its wonderful literature. In poetry alone, the Arabians can challenge the world; in grammar, logic and rhetoric the number of their works is legion; while both at Bagdad and Cordova Arab historians and biographers filled whole libraries with their learning; in Cordova the royal library contained 400,000 volumes. Algebra and Astronomy are specially indebted to the Arabs; all the sciences received attention and some of them addition from the Arabian mind.

The Arabic tongue is not only beautiful but it is difficult, exceedingly difficult, to every one who attempts to really master it. One of the veteran missionaries of Egypt wrote, in 1864, “I would rather traverse Africa from Alexandria to the Cape of Good Hope, than undertake a second time to master the Arabic language.” The first difficulty is its correct pronunciation. Some Arabic letters cannot be transliterated into English, although certain grammars take infinite pains to accomplish the impossible. The gutturals belong to the desert and were doubtless borrowed from the camel when she complained of overloading. There are also one or two other letters which sorely try the patience of the beginner and in some cases remain obstinate to the end. Then the student soon learns, and the sooner the better, that Arabic is totally different in construction from European tongues and that “as far as the East is from the West” so far he must modify his ideas as to the correct way of expressing thought; and this means to disregard all notions of Indo-European grammar when in touch with the sons of Shem. Every word in the Arabic language is referred to a root of three letters. These roots are modified by prefixes, infixes and suffixes, according to definite models, so that from one root a host of words can be constructed and vice versa, from a compounded word all the servile letters and syllables must be eliminated to find the original root. This digging for roots and building up of roots is not a pastime at the outset because of the extent of the root-garden. Dozy’s supplement to Lane’s Monumental Arabic Lexicon has 1,714 pages. So large in fact is the vocabulary of Arabic writers that the classics require copious explanatory notes for the Arabs themselves and some of them have written notes on the notes, to explain the difficult words used in explaining others more difficult. Moreover Arabic literature is so vast in its extent that acquaintance with the vocabulary of a dozen authors in one line of literature does not yet enable the student to appreciate the language of other works. You may be able to read the Koran tolerably well and understand its diction and yet when you turn to the Arabian Shakespeare or Milton find yourself literally at sea, in the Kamoos, and unable to understand a single line.

The regular verb in Arabic has fifteen conjugations, two voices, two tenses, and several moods; the irregular verbs are many and mysterious to the beginner although grammarians try to make them appear easier by demonstrating that all their irregularities are strictly logical, not the result of linguistic perversity but foreseen calculation and providential wisdom. Is it not “the language of the angels”?—even the broken-plurals?

As a final testimony to the difficulties of the Arabic language listen to Ion Keith Falconer. After passing the Semitic Languages Tripos at Cambridge under Dr. Wright, and taking a special course in Arabic at Leipzig, he writes from Assiut in Egypt: “I am getting on in Arabic, but it is most appallingly hard.... I have learned a good deal and can make myself intelligible to servants and porters. I have a teacher every day for two hours and translate from a child’s reading book.” After five years of further study he writes once more from Aden (Jan. 17, 1886), “I am learning to speak Arabic quite nicely but it will be long before I can deliver real discourses.” And this man was an all-around scholar with a passion for languages. Without any doubt Arabic is one of the most difficult languages in the world to acquire with any degree of fluency, and progress in its attainment means ceaseless plodding and endless diligence.