Evolution of Arabic Language through Medieval Writers: Insights from Ibn Khaldoun's Works

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Evolution of Arabic Language through Medieval Writers: Insights from Ibn Khaldoun's Works

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Themes

Arabic language evolution, medieval Arab societies, Ibn Khaldoun, classical Arabic, Quran language, dialectal Arabic, language competence, non-local elite, language of prestige, cultural interdependence, Arabic dialectology, language change, Muqaddimah, Al Andalus, Islamic literary culture, linguistic spectrum, written Arabic, spoken Arabic, cultural innovations, Arabic linguistic tradition, history of Arabic, pre-Islamic Arabic, language transformation, Islamic spread, Africa, Asia, Malaysia, Morocco, Arabian Peninsula, linguistic devices, cultural exchange, language codification, classical grammarians, non-Arabs, language contact, erudition, intellectual posture

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Abstract

Discover how the Arabic language evolved through medieval writers like Ibn Khaldoun, a prestigious Al Andalus intellectual. Explore the distinction between classical Quranic Arabic and daily spoken dialects, and learn how cultural interactions shaped the language's development. Uncover Ibn Khaldoun's original approach to Arabic dialectology and his insights on language change, influenced by cultural exchange and contact with non-Arabs. Understand the significance of Arabic as a language of prestige, education, and culture in medieval societies, from the Iberian Peninsula to the Atlantic coast and beyond.

The Arabic language, from its tradition to its dissemination
1. A language, a centuries-old tradition
2. An evolving language linked to the spread of Islam
Arabic in the Middle Ages and the evolution enabled by Ibn Khaldoun
1. The unique cultural and social context of Al Andalus
2. The central figure of Ibn Khaldoun at the heart of Arabic teaching

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[...] This section is interesting in the context of our work in that it crystallizes the divergence of the different Arabic dialects at the medieval period. Ibn Khaldoun is therefore clearly a proponent of the pre-Islamic theory of the purity of Arabic in that he attributes all deviation from classical Arabic to contact with non-Arabs. According to him, the Arabs lost their innate ability to speak their language correctly when they left Arabia and settled among non-Arabs. From then on, the more they had contact with non-Arabs, the more their language was 'corrupted'. [...]

[...] In order to narrow down our field of investigation given the complexity of the task, we propose to consider the understanding of the evolution of the Arabic language through the texts of medieval writers, including the central figure of Ibn Khaldoun (1332 - 1406), by taking as focal point the relationship between the so-called classical Arabic, that is to say that of the texts, and what differentiates it necessarily, namely the so-called dialectal Arabic, that is to say the spoken language which remains different and which one finds in Lebanon, in Egypt or still in Morocco. Thus, following our introductory proposal, we can ask ourselves the following question: to what extent has the evolution of the Arabic language been able to take place through the texts of certain medieval writers such as Ibn Khaldoun? [...]

[...] The Arabic language, from tradition to diffusion A. A language, a centuries-old tradition For linguistics specialist Michael Carter, 'the Arabic language is important in more than one way: it is one of the youngest and most developed of the Semitic family, it is the vehicle of the third and most recent of the Abrahamitic religions, it still covers an immense geographical space today, it is the fifth or sixth in terms of its speakers, and it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations'3 » (Carter, 2010). [...]

[...] Consequently, Arabic gradually replaced the Romance languages and Berber as spoken languages. Arabic monolingualism prevailed in Muslim Spain from the end of the XI2nd 12th century or 13th2nd century, until the end of the 17th2nd century8 (Benrabah, 2009). Finally, during this period, the pride of having a good knowledge of classical Arabic was a widespread notion in Andalusian Muslim erudition. We will now see that it is the intellectual posture of Ibn Khaldoun that will catalyze this erudition and characterize the evolution of the Arabic language. [...]

[...] As a result, we can infer that Middle Arabic reflects a stage at which the vernacular Arabic languages, that is, local languages, had moved further away from the literary norm and from each other. Thus, the medieval period remains a period where distinct non-dominant regional varieties began to emerge and where diglossia, that is, a situation where two or more languages or varieties are used in the same community, occurred. linguistic situation of a society that has two languages, granting them hierarchically different statuses, has become more pronounced. [...]

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