ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A History of Muslim Philosophy Volume 2, Book 5 Chapter 51: Arabic Literature, Poetic and Prose Forms A. Grammar The intellectual activity of the early Muslims stemmed directly from their devotion of religion. The Arabs had throughout been sensitively proud of their language; contacts with foreigners were regarded by them as derogatory to pure Arabism.

However, before Islam any corruption of the dialect was but a social drawback; after Islam, any lapse from the norm inevitably led to distortion of the sacred text with dire consequences both in this as well as in the next world. Curiously enough, it was Islam itself which brought about the commingling of the Arabs with the non-Arabs on a vast and unprecedented scale.

In the very second decade of the Hijrah the Arabs were carried on the crest of a wave of military conquests across the bounds of their homeland to settle down in the neighbouring countries of Iraq, Persia, Syria, and Egypt. At the same time there was a large influx of aliens, mostly prisoners of war, into the principal towns – Mecca and Medina – of Arabia itself.

Before long, there appeared for the first time in history a considerable and growing number of neophytes seeking initiation into Arab society with a conscious effort to learn, imbibe, and serve that new religious culture which was only couched in Arabic and had its prototype in Arab milieu.

Naturally enough, the inaptitude of these neophytes in the use of the Arabic tongue excited the laughter of the younger folk in Arab households, it also shocked the elders as it amounted to inadvertent profanity and distortion of the Qur’anic verses.[^1] The corruptive effects on the new generation of the Arabs – the townsmen among them – were no less disconcerting; the daily usages marked a sharp decline from the Qur’anic idiom.

Thus, there is little doubt that about the middle of the first century of the Hijrah the Muslims were squarely face to face with their foremost literary problem, viz, the need for the preservation of the Qur’an.