Grammar and Lexicography.—Arab tradition ascribes the first grammatical treatment of the language to Abū-l-Aswad ud-Du‛alī (latter half of the 7th century), but the certain beginnings of Arabic grammar are found a hundred years later. The Arabs from early times have always been proud of their language, but its systematic study seems to have arisen from contact with Persian and from the respect for the language of the Koran. In Irāk the two towns of Basra and Kufa produced two rival schools of philologists. Bagdad soon had one of its own (cf. G. Flügel’s Die grammatischen Schulen der Araber, Leipzig, 1862). Khalīl ibn Aḥmad (718-791), an Arab from Omān, of the school of Basra, was the first to enunciate the laws of Arabic metre and the first to write a dictionary. His pupil Sibawaihi (q.v.), a Persian, wrote the grammar known simply as The Book, which is generally regarded in the East as authoritative and almost above criticism. Other members of the school of Basra were Abu ‛Ubaida (q.v.), Asma‛ī (q.v.), Mubarrad (q.v.) and Ibn Duraid (q.v.). The school of Kufa claimed to pay more attention to the living language (spoken among the Bedouins) than to written laws of grammar. Among its teachers were Kisā‛ī, the tutor of Harūn al-Rashīd’s sons, Ibn A‛rābi, Ibn as-Sikkīt (d. 857) and Ibn ul-Anbāri (885-939). In the fourth century of Islam the two schools of Kūfa and Basra declined in importance before the increasing power of Bagdad, where Ibn Qutaiba, Ibn Jinnī (941-1002) and others carried on the work, but without the former rivalry of the older schools. Persia from the beginning of the 10th century produced some outstanding students of Arabic. Hamadhāni (d. 932) wrote a book of synonyms (ed. L. Cheikho, Beirut, 1885). Jauharī (q.v.) wrote his great dictionary the Sahāh. Tha‛ālibi (q.v.) and Jurjānī (q.v.) were almost contemporary, and a little later came Zamakhsharī (q.v.), whose philological works are almost as famous as his commentary on the Koran. The most important dictionaries of Arabic are late in origin. The immense work, Lisān ul Arab (ed. 20 vols, Būlāq, 1883-1889), was compiled by Ibn Manzūr (1232-1311), the Qāmūs by Fairūzābādī, the Taj ul‛Arūs (ed. 10 vols., Būlāq, 1890), founded on the Qāmūs, by Murtadā uz-Zabīdī (1732-1790).
Scientific Literature.—The literature of the various sciences is dealt with elsewhere. It is enough here to mention that such existed, and that it was not indigenous. It was in the early Abbasid period that the scientific works of Greece were translated into Arabic, often through the Syriac, and at the same time the influence of Sanskrit works made itself felt. Astronomy seems in this way to have come chiefly from India. The study of mathematics learned from Greece and India was developed by Arabian writers, who in turn became the teachers of Europe in the 16th century. Medical literature was indebted for its origin to the works of Galen and the medical school of Gondesapur. Many of the Arabian philosophers were also physicians and wrote on medicine. Chemistry proper was not understood, but Arabian writings on alchemy led Europe to it later. So also the literature of the animal world (cf. Damīrī) is not zoological but legendary, and the works on minerals are practical and not scientific. See [Arabian Philosophy] and historical sections of such scientific articles as [Astronomy], &c.
(G. W. T.)
[1] For the general history of the succeeding period see [Caliphate]; [Egypt]: History, § “Mahommedan.”
[2] For further details of this period, see Egypt: History, “Mahommedan Period,” § 8.
[3] On the subject of transmission cf. Th. Nöldeke’s Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber (Hanover, 1804); and W. Ahlwardt’s Bemerkungen über die Aechtheit der alten arabischen Gedickte (Greifswald, 1872).
[4] For details see the introduction to Nöldeke’s translation of Tabari’s Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden (Leiden, 1879).
[5] Published in excerpt by Wüstenfeld along with Azraqi (Leipzig, 1857-1859).
[6] Of this work the Gotha Library has a portion containing 290-320 A.H., of which the part about the West has been printed by Dozy in the Bayan, and the rest was published at Leiden in 1897.