At the beginning of the Islamic period, only two sources of literary Arabic were available, the Qur’aan and the pre-Islamic poems. It is not surprising, then, that these two sources were to play a crucial role in the standardisation and development of the Arabic language. It is not surprising, either, that the first scholarly activities in Islam concentrated on the text of the Qur’aan, which had to be transmitted and explained, both on the level of the text and on that of the contents. At the same time, when the direct ties with the desert were broken, the living practice of poetry was very soon replaced by scholarly interest in the pre-Islamic poems. The transmission of both ‘texts’ had taken place orally and informally, but in the rapidlyexpanding empire such a form of transmission could no longer be trusted.

The language itself, too, underwent a process of standardisation. While in pre-Islamic times the Bedouin regarded themselves as members of one speech community, they had no single linguistic norm, and even in the language of poetry, which was supposed to be supra-tribal, a great deal of variation was accepted. After the conquests, when Arabic became the language of an empire, there was an urgent need to standardise the language for three reasons. First, the divergence between the language of the Bedouin and the various colloquial varieties that emerged became a real threat to communication in the empire. Second, the policy of the central government, first in Damascus and later in Baghdad, aimed at the control of the subjects, not only in economical and religious but also in linguistic matters. Obviously, if Arabic was to be used as the language of the central administration, it had to be standardised. Third, the changed situation called forth a rapid expansion of the lexicon, which had to be regulated in order to achieve some measure of uniformity.

This chapter deals with three topics connected with the process of standardisation. The most important prerequisite for the written codification of the language was the invention of an orthography, or rather the adaptation of existing scribal practices to the new situation. Then a standardised norm for the language was elaborated, and the lexicon was inventoried and expanded. Subsequently, when these requirements had been met, a stylistic standard was developed. The existing Bedouin model was instrumental in the development of a stylistic standard for poetry, but the emergence of an Arabic prose style marked the real beginning of Classical Arabic as we know it. In the final section of this chapter, we shall deal with the official status of the Arabic language.

From The Arabic Language
© 1997 Kees Versteegh
Used by permission of the Edinburgh University Press.