The Quran—The Miracle Given to the Prophet

place of oriental and occidental philosophy. These factors were enough to transform the Arabic language, as had been the case with other tongues exposed to similar forces. But they were rendered ineffective by the Quran, a specimen of such unrivalled literary excellence that no power could shake the language in which it had been written. With the conquests of Islam, Arabic no longer belonged to one people alone; it became the language of several nations and races. When the “ajamis”180 of Asia and Africa accepted Islam, they gradually adopted Arabic as their language. Naturally, these new converts were not as proficient in speaking the language as the Arabs of old. Then the Arabs, in their turn, were affected by the language spoken by their new co-religionists. The deterioration of Arabic was especially evident in large, cosmopolitan cities, where there was more intermingling of races. First, it was the rank and file, those who did not pay much attention to the finer points of linguistics, who were affected. But the cultural elite did not remain immune either. A man once came to the court of Ziyad ibn Umayyah and lamented. “Our fathers have died, leaving small children,” with both “fathers” and “children” in the wrong case. Mistakes of this nature became commonplace, yet the Arabic language remained essentially the same. Shielded by the Quran’s supreme eloquence, written Arabic was not corrupted by the degradation of the spoken version. It remained cast in the mould of the Quran.