On the History of Grammar Among the Arabs: An Essay in Literary History.

• Author: Smyth, William

On the History of Grammar among the Arabs is another in the ongoing efforts to translate Ignaz Goldziher's Hungarian (and sometimes German) writings into English. Goldziher became a legend in his own time and is still one today. By the age of thirty he had acquired a knowledge of Middle Eastern languages that so impressed the shaykhs of al-Azhar they sought out his advice on legal decisions. Goldziher published widely and voluminously, but in spite of this failed to win a professorship in his native Hungary because of anti-Semitism and his own irascible personality.

The selections in this very slim volume come from a series of lectures Goldziher gave at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1877. They are very general, but provide an excellent introduction to some of the main issues in the study of the Arabic language. Goldziher describes the origin of Arab studies of grammar and brings our attention, in particular, to evidence of Syriac influence in early works. He then presents the distinction between literary Arabic (or fusha) and dialect and considers the attitudes of medieval writers toward the different idioms. He covers the basic differences between the...