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1 Introduction
All praises are due to Allāh. We praise Him, seek His help, and ask for His forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allāh from the evil in our souls and from our sinful deeds. Whomever Allāh guides, no one can mislead. Whomever Allāh leads astray, no one can guide. I bear witness that there is no one worthy of worship except Allāh. I also bear witness that Muḥammad is His servant and messenger.
May the peace and blessings of Allāh be upon the Prophet Muḥammad, his family, his companions, and those who followed them with good conduct.
1.1 History of Arabic
Allāh, may He be glorified and exalted, revealed the Qurʾān, some fourteen and a half centuries ago, to the Prophet Muḥammad, may Allāh grant peace and confer blessing upon him. The language of the Qurʾān is the Arabic language, as it was understood by the Arabs at that time. The sayings and actions of the Prophet, may Allāh grant peace and confer blessing upon him, were recorded by his companions also in this Arabic language. Also, composed in this Arabic language, was a vast body of poetry that the Arabs would consider eloquent and worth transmitting. We will call the Arabic of this pre-Islāmic and early Islāmic era as Classical Arabic. The Classical Arabic language consisted of multiple dialects that were spoken by the different tribes and in the different regions of the Arabian peninsula.
All languages change naturally over time. For example, English has changed to such a degree that the Old English language spoken 1400 years ago would be unintelligible to us today. So too did the Classical Arabic dialects begin to change. But as part of preserving His religion, Allāh preserved the Arabic language as well. This was by means of the efforts of scholars who recorded the Classical Arabic language of the time of the revelation.
In the process of preserving Classical Arabic, one particular variety became standardized and gained prevalence as a literary language over the other dialects of the Arabic of the early-Islāmic period. We will call this variety Standard Classical Arabic (sca).
sca became the language of religious scholarship, science, and literature in the Islāmic world. As scholars developed new branches of religious and secular sciences, new terms and meanings were added (which are termed post-classical). A few words were also borrowed from foreign languages and Arabicized, as needed by the different scientific disciplines. Classical Arabic itself had a few Arabicized foreign borrowings from neighboring languages.
While sca was preserved and used for literary purposes, the vernacular language that was spoken by Arabs in their day-to-day lives continued to change over time and in the different regions where Arabic was spoken. And so, there began to exist two very distinct types of Arabic: the preserved sca which is taught by formal education and which is primarily a written language, and the vernacular Arabic dialects which Arabs learn as their mother tongue and which are primarily only spoken and not written.
In modern times, many new words and meanings were added to sca, often via translation from Western languages, to keep up with technological advancements and modern media. This modern development of sca is called Modern Standard Arabic (msa).
The figure below depicts the historical development of sca
1.2 What defines sca
It may be appropriate to say a few words about what defines sca proper. When the Arab grammarians first began recording and describing Classical Arabic, the regular, day-to-day, speech of many people had already begun to deviate from Classical Arabic. So the grammarians would seek out and record samples of speech and texts from only authoritative sources. And they had criteria for determining what constituted an authority in the language. One such criterion was that the text sample be native Classical Arabic speech.
By the time sca emerged as a standard, Classical Arabic itself had more or less ceased to be a native language. All literary output produced in sca was then an attempt to conform to the standard. So, even though proficiency in sca was generally pretty high, texts written in sca are not generally, themselves, definitive of sca.1
As a new learner, this exactitude is largely academic. Excepting the Qurʾān, which is inimitable, you may feel free to emulate the writing of good writers of sca.
1.3 Spoken sca
As we have mentioned above sca is primarily a written language. As a spoken language, sca is, today, heard almost only in religious and formal settings.
We will learn in this book, if Allāh wills, that there are very exact rules for properly pronuncing and pausing in sca.
Practically, however, most native Arabic speakers today rarely adhere to these rules exactly in extemporaneous speech. Furthermore, speakers may sometimes casually mix in their vernacular dialect within their sca speech. In fact, a strict adherence to all sca grammar and pronunciation rules in informal spoken settings may, today, come across as turgid or pedantic.2
1.4 About this book
1.4.1 Scope
In this book, we will study the grammar of sca. If Allāh wills, this will help you to begin to understand the language of the Qurʾān, the Ḥadīt͡h, and Islāmic literature.
If your goal is to learn msa, then this book may still be of help because the core language and the grammar are essentially the same. However, you may prefer to study from a resource that focuses on the modern language.
This book does not touch at all upon the modern vernacular dialects that are spoken in the Arab world today.
1.4.2 Current status
This book is currently a work in progress, and not yet ready for study.
1.4.3 Methodology
We will start, if Allāh wills, with the Arabic script and present, in each chapter, a new concept of Arabic grammar, together with examples. Though there is none right now, we also plan to give, if Allāh wills, a vocabulary list and exercises for each chapter.
We have generally tried to organize content coherently for convenience reference during learning. Sometimes, this can mean that on encountering a new topic, we present it in more detail than is strictly necessary for learning at that stage. Although identifying such material may not be easy for the learner, you may feel free to skim over such material and refer back to it later, as needed.
Some of the sentences we present, both as examples and as chapter exercises, because of their contrived nature, may seem of dubious usefulness to a learner wanting to learn practical usage. Also, when translating examples, we usually steer toward a literal, word-for-word, translation rather than an idiomatic one. This is in order to illustrate the function of each word, and to show a correspondence between the words in the Arabic sentence and the English translation. The resulting English will then often sound awkward, and even sometimes ungrammatical. We request the reader’s patience and indulgence in these and other matters.
1.4.4 How to study from this book
1.4.4.1 Exercises
In answering the exercises, we strongly recommend that you memorize the vocabulary in full and write down the answers with pen and paper. We strongly recommend that you resist the tendency to answer the exercises only orally or mentally without writing them down, or look up the answers from the answer key before attempting to write the answer yourself, or look up words in the vocabulary list without memorizing them, or proceed to the next chapter before memorizing the vocabulary and going through the exercises. You may also find yourself having to go back a few chapters every once in a while and revising the concepts therein. This is very normal and not a cause for any concern. It may also prove beneficial to re-do the exercises of that chapter when doing so.
1.4.4.2 Vocabulary
Know that while Arabic grammar requires effort to master to a proficient degree, the real barrier to reading and understanding Arabic texts by oneself is vocabulary. Arabic is a very rich language and knowledge of a few thousand words is needed before the student can begin to read texts independently. In fact, we would not be too far off to say that grammar, at this stage, is only a tool to help you make sense of the vocabulary that you are acquiring. So strive to achieve a balance between learning grammar and acquiring vovabulary. In appendix @ref(vocabulary-and-reading), we suggest companion reading material, dictionaries, and techniques on acquiring and retaining vocabulary.
See also علة رفض الاحتجاج بكبار الشعراء والكتاب الذين جاءوا بعد زمن الفصاحة in مجموع مقالات فيصل المنصور 93–95↩︎
Hallberg, A., Case endings in Spoken Standard Arabic 54–55, 86↩︎