SURVIVAL OF ARABIC LANGUAGE

The Challenge of The Qur’an ~ 314 ~ now read almost exclusively as part of college curricula with the help of glossaries, dictionaries and ‘translations’. But the history of the Arabic language is strikingly different, having withstood the test of time for no less than 1500 years. Wording and style have, of course, undergone some development, but not to such an extent that words should lose their original meaning. Supposing someone belonging to the Quranic times of ancient Arabia could be reborn today, the form of language in which he would express himself would be as understandable to modern Arabs as it was to his own contemporaries. It is as if the Quran had placed a divine imprint upon Arabic, arresting it in its course so that it should remain understandable right up to the last day. This being so, the Quran is never just going to collect dust on some obscure ‘Classical Literature’ shelf, but will be read by, and give inspiration to people for all time to come. In the field of science, despite the great and rapid advances in knowledge in recent years, we come back to what was asserted in the Quran, so many