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82-523: The mosque was founded in the 14th century during the Marinid period. Although the exact date and patron of its construction is not confirmed, it is believed to have been was built by the Marinid sultan Abu al-Hasan during his reign between 1331 and 1348 CE . Abu al-Hasan was one of the most prolific builders of the Marinid era, and was responsible for building several madrasas and mosques in Fes and beyond. The mosque

164-721: A base to recover his sultanate. But Abu Inan's armies descended on the area, forcing Abu al-Hasan to flee with what remained of his supporters to Marrakesh . In May 1350, Abu Inan defeated Abu al-Hasan on the banks of the Oum er-Rebia . With Abu Inan on his heels, Abu al-Hasan fled into the high Atlas Mountains , taking refuge among the Hintata tribes. Broken, ill and without resources, the once-mighty Abu al-Hasan, finally agreed to abdicate in favour of Abu Inan in late 1350 or early 1351. Abu al-Hasan died in May 1351, still in his Atlas mountain hideout. His body

246-574: A campaign in early 1347, Abu al-Hasan's Moroccan army swept through Ifriqiya and entered Tunis in September, 1347. By uniting Morocco, Tlemcen and Ifriqiya, the Marinid ruler Abu al-Hasan effectively accomplished the conquest of dominions as great as the Almohad empire of the Maghreb , and the comparison was not lost on contemporaries. However, Abu al-Hasan went too far in attempting to impose his authority over

328-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

410-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

492-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

574-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

656-637: A mark of respect for their courage in defending the town for so long. The fall of Gibraltar was rapturously received back in Morocco; the Moorish chronicler Ibn Marzuq recorded that while he was studying in Tlemcen , his teacher announced to his class: "Rejoice, community of the faithful, because God has had the goodness to restore Gibraltar to us!" According to Ibn Marzuq, the jubilant students burst out into cries of praise, gave thanks and shed tears of joy. The success of

738-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

820-453: A number of resemblances with this building. The mosque is located on Tala'a Kebira , the main souq (market) street and artery of Fes el-Bali , the old city of Fez, from which its minaret is prominently visible. The surrounding district is also referred to as Chrabliyine, a name which refers to a type of traditional Moroccan women's shoe called " cherbil" in which the local shops specialized (and still do to some extent today). The mosque

902-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

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984-540: A revolt of the Arab tribes, was shipwrecked, and lost many of his supporters. His son Abu Inan Faris seized power in Fez . Abu Al-Hasan died in exile in the High Atlas mountains. Abu al-Hasan was the son of Marinid ruler Abu Sa'id Uthman II . Al-Baydhaq says that his mother was a woman from Fez called Fatima. It is unknown whether she was a wife or a concubine. He had a dark complexion inherited from his Abyssinian mother, and

1066-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

1148-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

1230-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

1312-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

1394-416: A veritable adjoining city. In 1336 or 1337, Abu al-Hasan suspended the siege of Tlemcen to campaign in southern Morocco, where his troublesome brother, Abu Ali, who ruled an appanage at Sijilmassa , was threatening to divide the Marinid dominions. In May 1337, after a two-year siege, Tlemcen finally fell to a Marinid assault. Ibn Tashufin died during the fighting. His brothers were captured and killed and

1476-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

1558-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

1640-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

1722-507: Is a rectangular water basin, decorated with simple tilework, while around the courtyard are multiple small rooms which contain latrines. Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman Abu Al-Hasan 'Ali ibn 'Othman ( c.  1297 – 24 May 1351), ( Arabic : أبو الحسن علي بن عثمان ) was a sultan of the Marinid dynasty who reigned in Morocco between 1331 and 1348. In 1333 he captured Gibraltar from

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1804-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

1886-419: Is also an entrance to an ablutions room. On its southern/eastern side is the prayer hall, featuring two transverse naves formed by rows of five horseshoe arches parallel to the qibla wall (i.e. the wall towards which prayers face). The mihrab , a decorative alcove or niche in the qibla wall that symbolizes the direction of prayer, is a small octagonal space topped by a dome of muqarnas . On either side of

1968-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

2050-421: Is considered notable for its minaret , which is particularly well-decorated in the medieval Moroccan-Andalusian style (evolved from earlier Almohad models), making use of the darj-w-ktaf or sebka pattern (resembling palmettes or fleur-de-lys shapes) covering much of the facades, as well as polylobed arch motifs near the base, merlons at the top, and multicolored mosaic tiles ( zellij ) that fill in

2132-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon

2214-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and

2296-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

2378-786: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

2460-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

2542-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

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2624-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

2706-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

2788-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary

2870-696: The Battle of Río Salado in October 1340, and Abu al-Hasan was forced to retreat back to Algeciras. After this defeat, Al-Hasan ended his campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula . A few years later, Alfonso XI of Castile had little difficulty taking Algeciras in March 1344. In 1346 the Hafsid Sultan, Abu Bakr, died and a dispute over the succession ensued. Several Ifriqiyan parties appealed to the Marinid ruler for assistance. In

2952-520: The Castilians . The assembly of a large Marinid invasion force in Morocco prompted the Castilian king Alfonso XI to bring to an end his quarrel with Afonso IV of Portugal . In April 1340, a Castilian fleet of some 32 galleys under admiral Alonso Jofré Tenorio set out against the Marinid invasion fleet being outfitted at Ceuta . The Marinid fleet, under the command of Muhammad ibn Ali al-Azafi, destroyed

3034-564: The Sultanate of Tlemcen (covering roughly modern western half of Algeria) was annexed by the Marinids. Abu al-Hasan received delegates from Egypt, Granada, Tunis and Mali congratulating him on his victory, by which he had gained complete control of the trans-Saharan trade. Flush from these victories, in 1339, Abu al-Hasan received an appeal from the Nasrid ruler Yusuf I of Granada to help drive back

3116-561: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

3198-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

3280-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In

3362-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

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3444-562: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of

3526-812: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ    [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

3608-455: The Arab tribes. They revolted and in April 1348 defeated his army near Kairouan . His son, Abu Inan Faris , who had been serving as governor of Tlemcen, returned to Fez and declared that he was the sultan. Tlemcen and the central Maghreb revolted. The Zayyanid Abu Sa'id Uthman II was proclaimed king of Tlemcen. Abu al-Hasan's fleet was wrecked on its homeward journey by a tempest off Bougie , and

3690-673: The Castilian fleet in the naval battle of Gibraltar on 5 April 1340. The Castilian admiral Tenorio was killed during the engagement and only five Castilian galleys managed to make it safely out. With the sea now clear for an invasion, Abu al-Hasan spent the rest of the summer calmly ferrying his troops and supplies across the straits to Algeciras . Abu al-Hasan crossed with the bulk of the Marinid forces in August 1340. The Marinid invasion force joined up with Granadan forces under Yusuf I in September, and together proceeded to lay siege to Tarifa . A desperate Alfonso XI appealed to his father-in-law,

3772-453: The Castilians, although a later attempt to take Tarifa in 1339 ended in fiasco. In North Africa he extended his rule over Tlemcen and Hafsid Ifriqiya , which together covered the north of what is now Algeria and Tunisia . Under him the Marinid realms in the Maghreb briefly covered an area that rivalled that of the preceding Almohad Caliphate . However, he was forced to retreat due to

3854-566: The Gibraltar campaign stoked fears in the Granadan court that the Marinids would become too influential, and provoked the assassination of Muhammad IV by resentful Granadan nobles only a few months later. However, Abu al-Hasan was not ready to invade the Iberian peninsula since he was engaged in hostilities with Tlemcen. Muhammad IV's brother and successor, Yusuf I of Granada maintained the alliance with

3936-515: The Marinid ruler. A peace treaty was signed at Fez on 26 February 1334 between Castile, Granada and Morocco with a four-year duration. The ruler of Tlemcen, Ibn Tashufin (r. 1318–1337), initiated hostilities against Ifriqiya, besieged Béjaïa , and sent an army into Tunisia that defeated the Hafsid king Abu Yahya Abu Bakr II , who fled to Constantine while the Zayyanids occupied Tunis . Abu al-Hasan

4018-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

4100-583: The Muslim-ruled Emirate of Granada . In 1333, responding to the appeal of Nasrid ruler Muhammad IV of Granada , Abu al-Hasan sent a Moroccan army to Algeciras under the command of his son Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahid . A force of 7,000 men was transported across the Strait of Gibraltar to rendezvous with the forces of Muhammad IV of Granada at Algeciras in February 1333. The Castilians were distracted by

4182-555: The Portuguese king Afonso IV for assistance. In October 1340, a Portuguese fleet under Manuel Pessanha , supplemented by a leased Genoese fleet, managed to move into position off Tarifa and cut off the besiegers' supply line to Morocco. In the meantime, Afonso IV of Portugal led an army overland to join Alfonso XI of Castile near Seville , and together they moved against the besiegers at Tarifa. The Marinid-Nasrid forces were defeated at

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4264-672: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

4346-512: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

4428-567: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after

4510-565: The coronation of King Alfonso XI and were slow to respond to the invasion force, which was able to lay siege to Gibraltar before much of a response could be organised. The situation in Gibraltar was desperate by mid-June. The food had run out and the townspeople and garrison had been reduced to eating their own shields, belts and shoes in an attempt to gain sustenance from the leather from which they were made. On 17 June 1333, Vasco Perez surrendered Gibraltar after agreeing terms with Abd al-Malik. The defenders were allowed to leave with honour as

4592-577: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of

4674-417: The empty spaces. One of these tile mosaics, on the side of the minaret overlooking the interior courtyard, features a notable inscription in the "square" kufic style. The colourful mosaic tilework of the minaret were likely added in the reign of Moulay Slimane (between 1792 and 1822), although the wide band of zellij at the top is most likely part of the original Marinid design. The main street entrance to

4756-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around

4838-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

4920-501: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

5002-579: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

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5084-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

5166-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

5248-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

5330-407: The main prayer hall can also be accessed by smaller secondary entrances from the street on the eastern side of the building. Directly across the street from the mosque is a mida'a ( Arabic : ميضأة), a facility that allowed Muslims to perform ablutions . The facility consists of an internal courtyard which was reached through a bent corridor from the street entrance. At the middle of the courtyard

5412-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

5494-434: The mihrab are two small doors leading to other rooms. The eastern one (on the left) connects to a "mosque of the dead" or funerary mosque ( Jama' el-Gnaiz ), a space used for funerary rites and prayers around the bodies of the deceased before they are buried. (This space is attached but separate from the rest of the mosque in order to protect the cleanliness and sanctity of the main prayer space.) Both this funerary space and

5576-463: The mosque is directly below the minaret and is overlooked by a canopy of carved wood. The street facade of the building also includes spaces for two shops. The interior of the mosque features a rectangular courtyard (roughly 11 by 5 meters) that can be accessed directly from the street entrance and which is flanked on either side by annexes. The courtyard, like that of many mosques, features a marble fountain in its center, while on its north/western side

5658-768: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

5740-452: The once mighty sultan was left stranded in the heart of enemy territory. Abu al-Hasan escaped capture and made his way to join his partisans in Algiers . He managed to gather enough forces to attempt a march to recover Tlemcen, but was defeated by the resurgent Abdalwadid princes near the Chelif River . As many of his former supporters defected, Abu al-Hasan was forced to proceed to Sijilmassa , in southern Morocco, which he hoped to use as

5822-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

5904-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on

5986-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

6068-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

6150-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

6232-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

6314-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

6396-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

6478-519: Was considerably restored under the reign of the Alaouite sultan Moulay Slimane between 1792 and 1822. Only the minaret and the mosque entrance are still essentially in their original Marinid form, while the appearance of the rest of the mosque generally dates from the Alaouite restoration. The Mosque of Abu al-Hasan to the west, built by the same ruler in 1341 and similarly renovated by Moulay Slimane, bears

6560-616: Was known as the 'Black Sultan'. He succeeded his father Abu Sa'id Uthman II in 1331. Abu al-Hasan married Fatima, daughter of the Hafsid ruler Abu Yahya Abu Bakr II of Ifriqiya , sealing an alliance between the Marinids and Hafsids against the Zayyanid dynasty of Tlemcen . In 1309, Castillian troops under Ferdinand IV captured Gibraltar, then known as the Medinat al-Fath (City of Victory), from

6642-494: Was married to a Hafsid princess, and in 1334 the Hafsids appealed to him for help, giving him a welcome excuse for invading his neighbour. In early 1335, Marinid forces under Abu al-Hasan invaded Tlemcen from the west and dispatched a naval force to assist the Hafsids from the east. The Zayyanids were rolled back into the city of Tlemcen . The Marinid sultan Abu al-Hasan started a lengthy siege of Tlemcen, turning his siege camp into

6724-653: Was transferred by Abu Inan , allegedly with great public mourning, to the Marinid necropolis at Chellah . In 1352 Abu Inan Faris recaptured Tlemcen. He also reconquered the central Maghreb. He took Béjaïa in 1353 and Tunis in 1357, becoming master of Ifriqiya. In 1358 he was forced to return to Fez due to Arab opposition, where he was strangled to death by his vizier. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

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