less, the language received a peculiarly ample devel- opment in a certain direction. The limited incidents of a desert life still allowed valor, love, generosity, and satire to occupy the keen sensibilities of the chiv- alrous Bedouin. These feelings found their vent in ready verse and eloquent prose ; and thus, when Islam first called the Arabs into the more varied activity and more perilous collision with foreign nations, which re- sulted from the union of their tribes under a common interest to hold the same faith and to propagate it by the sword, the language had already received all the devel- opment which it could derive from the pre-eminently creative and refining impulses of poetry and eloquence. 2. "But great as may be the amount of resemblance between Arabic and Hebrew which a due estimate of all the theoretical grounds for the affinity and for the diversity between them would entitle us to assume, it is certain that a comparison of the actual state of both in their purest form evinces a degree of proxim-
The present order of the letters also is different, al- though there are evidences in their numerical value when so used, and in the memorial words (given in Ewald's Grammatical Cmtica Ling. Arab. § 67), that the arrangement was once the same in both. In a paloe- ographical point of view, the characters have under- gone many changes. The earliest form was that in the Himyarite alphabet. The first specimens of this character (which Arabic writers call al-Mnmad, i. e. stilted, columnar) were given by Seetzen in the Fund. gruben des Orients. Since then Professor Rodiger has produced others, and illustrated them in a valuable paper in the Zeitschrift fur die Kvm.de des Morgenlandes, i, 332. The letters of this alphabet have a striking resemblance to those of the Ethiopic, which were de- rived from them. In Northern Arabia, on the other hand, and not very long before the time of Moham- med, the Syrian character called Estrangelo became the model on which the Arabic alphabet called the
ity which exceeds expectation. Not only may two j Kvfic was formed. This heavy, angular Kufie char thirds of the Hebrew roots (to take the assertion of acter was the one in which the early copies of the Ko- Aurivillius, in his Dissertations, p. 11, ed. Michaelis) ran were written; and it is also found in the ancient be found in Arabic under the corresponding letters, j Mohammedan coinage as late as the seventh century and either in the same or a very kindred sense; but, of the Hegira. From this, at length, was derived the if we allow for the changes of the weak and cognate '. light, neat character called Nishi, the one in which letters, we shall be able to discover a still greater pro- the Arabs continue to write at the present day, and portion. To this great fundamental agreement in the ! which is represented in our printed books. The intro- vocabulary (the wonder of which is somewhat dimin- j duction of this character is ascribed to Urn Mukla, who ished by a* right estimate of the immense disproportion died in the year 327 of the Hegira. See Alphabet. between the two languages as to the number of roots) Lastly, it is worthy of notice that all the letters of the are to be added those resemblances which relate to l Arabic alphabet are only consonants; that, in an nn- the mode of inflexion and construction. Thus, in the j pointed text, the long vowels are denoted by the use verb, its two wide tenses, the mode by which the per- of Alif, Waw, and Ya, as matres lectionis; and that the sons are denoted at the end in the past, and at the be- short vowels are not denoted at all, but are left, to be ginning (with the accessory distinctions at the end) in ' supplied according to the sense in which the reader the future tense, its capability of expressing the gen- j takes the words; whereas, in a pointed text, three der in the second and third persons, and the system on points only suffice to represent the whole vocalization, which the conjugations are formed; and in the noun, the equivalents to which, according to the way in the correspondence in formations, in the use of the j which they are. usually expressed, are a, i, u, pro- two genders, and in all the essential characteristics nounced as in Italian.
of construction ; the possession of the definite article; | "The many uses of the Arabic language in Bib- the independent and affixed pronouns ; and the same lical philology (exclusive of the advantages it affords system of separable and attached particles— all these | for comparing the Arabic versions) may hi part be
ARABIC LANGUAGE
350
ARABIC VERSIONS
gathered from the degree of its affinity to the Hebrew ; and, indeed, chief]}' to the Hebrew before the exile, after which period the Aramaic is the most fruitful means of illustration (Malm, Durstellvng der Leaico- graphie, p. S91). But there are some peculiarities in the relative position of the two dialects which con- siderably enhance the value of the aid to be derived from the Arabic. The Hebrew language of the Old Testament has preserved to us but a small fragment of literature. In the limited number of its roots (some of which even do not occur in the primary sense), in the rarity of some formations, and in the an- tique rudimentary mode in which some of its construc- tions are denoted, are contained those difficulties which cannot receive any other illustration than that which the sister dialects, and most especially the Ara- bic, afford. For this purpose, the resemblances be- tween them are as useful as the diversities. The for- mer enable us to feel certain on points which were li- able to doubt; they confirm and establish an intelli- gent conviction that the larger portion of our knowl- edge of the meaning of words, and of the force of con- structions in Hebrew, is on a sure foundation, because we recognise the same in a kindred form, and in a lit- erature so voluminous as to afford us frequent oppor- tunities of testing our notions by every variety of ex- perience. The diversities, on the other hand (accord- ing to a mode of observation very frequent in com- parative anatomy), show us what exists potentially in the rudimentary state by enabling us to see how a language of the same genius has, in the farther prog- ress of its development, felt the necessity of denoting externally those relations of formation and construc- tion which were only dimly perceived in its antique and uncultivated form. Thus, to adduce a single il- lustration from the Arabic cases in the noun : The pre- cise relation of the words mouth and life, in the com- mon Hebrew phrases, "I call my mouth," and "he smote him his life" (Ewald's Hebr. Gram. § 482), is easily intelligible to one whom Arabic has familiarized with the perpetual use of the so-called accusative to denote the accessor}' descriptions of state. Another important advantage to be derived from the study of Arabic is the opportunity of seeing the grammar of a Syro-Arabian language explained by native scholars. Hebrew grammar has suffered much injury from the mistaken notions of men who, understanding the sense of the written documents by the aid of the versions, have been exempted from obtaining any independent and inward feeling of the genius of the language, and have therefore not hesitated to accommodate it to the grammar of our Indo-Germanic idioms. In Arabic, however, we have a language, every branch of the philosophical study of which has been successfully cultivated by the Arabs themselves. Their own lexi- cographers, grammarians, and scholiasts (to whom the Jews also are indebted for teaching them the grammatical treatment of Hebrew) have placed the language before us with such elaborate explanation of its entire character, that Arabic is not only by far the best understood of the Syro-Arabian dialects, but may even challenge comparison, as to the possession of these advantages, with the Greek itself" (Kitto).