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93-560: The full Arabic term for this kind of mosque is masjid jāmi‘ ( مَسْجِد جَامِع ), which is typically translated as "mosque of congregation" or "congregational mosque". "Congregational" is used to translate jāmi‘ ( جَامِع ), which comes from the Arabic root "ج - م - ع" which has a meaning ‘to bring together’ or ‘to unify’ (verbal form: جمع and يجمع ). In Arabic, the term is typically simplified to just jāmi‘ ( جَامِع ). Similarly, in Turkish

186-460: A basic unit consisted of rooms built around a central courtyard, with an arcade of arches on one side of the courtyard being the principal means of access. In the mid-12th century, the caliph of Egypt was the teenager Athid , but his position was primarily ceremonial. The true power in Egypt was that of the vizier, Shawar . He had been involved in extensive political intrigue for years, working to repel

279-513: 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

372-581: A community space. As a community space, it allows for prayer and social engagement. Congregational mosques have a crucial role in communities Islamic practices. The Qur'an does not state architectural parameters for a congregational mosque, and as a result there are both differences and similarities between congregational mosques of different regions. As all male members of the community are expected to attend Friday prayers, congregational mosques must be large enough to accommodate them and their size thus varies from community to community. The Qur'an does highlight that

465-435: 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

558-1077: 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

651-483: 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

744-677: 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

837-467: A new capital on the eastern bank of the river. The early population of the city was composed almost entirely of soldiers and their families, and the layout of the city was similar to that of a garrison. Amr intended for Fustat to serve as a base from which to conquer North Africa, as well as to launch further campaigns against Byzantium. It remained the primary base for Arab expansion in Africa until Qayrawan

930-576: 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

1023-425: A rubbish dump, though it still maintained a population of thousands, with the primary crafts being those of pottery and trash-collecting. The layers of garbage accumulated over hundreds of years, and gradually the population decreased, leaving what had once been a thriving city a wasteland. Today, little remains of the grandeur of the old city. The three capitals, Fustat, al-Askar and al-Qatta'i were absorbed into

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1116-462: 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",

1209-465: 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

1302-464: A successful attack on Egypt in order to expand the Crusader territories, had finally achieved a certain amount of success. He and his army entered Egypt, sacked the city of Bilbeis , slaughtered nearly all of its inhabitants, and then continued on towards Fustat. Amalric and his troops camped just south of the city, and then sent a message to the young Egyptian caliph Athid , only 18 years old, to surrender

1395-503: 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

1488-499: 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

1581-470: 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

1674-727: 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

1767-585: 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

1860-542: 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

1953-469: 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

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2046-408: 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

2139-468: 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

2232-566: 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

2325-836: 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

2418-573: Is properly the name of the whole country of Egypt. The country's first mosque, the Mosque of Amr , was later built in 642 on the same site of the commander's tent. For thousands of years, the capital of Egypt was moved with different cultures through multiple locations up and down the Nile, such as Thebes and Memphis , depending on which dynasty was in power. After Alexander the Great conquered Egypt around 331 BC,

2511-559: 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

2604-584: 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

2697-413: 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

2790-516: 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

2883-445: 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

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2976-644: The Ayyubid dynasty. With Fustat no more than a dying suburb, the center of government moved permanently to nearby Cairo. Saladin later attempted to unite Cairo and Fustat into one city by enclosing them in massive walls, although this proved to be largely unsuccessful. In 1166 Maimonides went to Egypt and settled in Fustat, where he gained much renown as a physician, practising in the family of Saladin and in that of his vizier Ḳaḍi al-Faḍil al-Baisami, and Saladin's successors. The title Ra'is al-Umma or al-Millah (Head of

3069-561: 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

3162-584: The early periods of Islam , a functional distinction existed between large central mosques built and controlled by the state versus small local mosques built and maintained by the general population. In the early years of Islam, under the Rashidun caliphs and many of the Umayyad caliphs , each city generally had only one congregational mosque where Friday prayers were held, while smaller mosques for regular prayers were built in local neighbourhoods. In fact, in some parts of

3255-494: 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

3348-419: 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

3441-784: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Fustat Fustat ( Arabic : الفُسطاط , romanized :  al-Fusṭāṭ ), also Fostat ,

3534-454: 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

3627-538: The 15th century, under the Mamluks , the urban agglomeration of Cairo and Fustat had 130 congregational mosques. In fact, the city became so saturated with congregational mosques that by the late 15th century its rulers could rarely build new ones. A similar proliferation of congregational mosques occurred in the cities of Syria , Iraq , Iran , and Morocco , as well as in the newly conquered Constantinople ( Istanbul ) under Ottoman rule. Congregational mosques function as

3720-562: 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

3813-812: 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

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3906-458: The Islamic world such as in Egypt , Friday services were initially not permitted in villages and in other areas outside the main city where the congregational mosque stood. The ruler or governor of the city usually built his residence (the dar al-imara ) next to the congregational mosque, and in this early period the ruler also delivered the khutbah (Friday sermon) during Friday prayers. This practice

3999-412: 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

4092-609: The Nation or of the Faith), was bestowed upon him. In Fustat, he wrote his Mishneh Torah (1180) and The Guide for the Perplexed . Some of his writings were later discovered among the manuscript fragments in the geniza (storeroom) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue , located in Fustat. While the Mamluks were in power from the 13th century to the 16th century, the area of Fustat was used as

4185-672: 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

4278-561: 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

4371-602: The advances of both the Christian Crusaders, and the forces of the Nur al-Din from Syria. Shawar managed this by constantly shifting alliances between the two, playing them against each other, and in effect keeping them in a stalemate where neither army could successfully attack Egypt without being blocked by the other. However, in 1168, the Christian King Amalric I of Jerusalem , who had been trying for years to launch

4464-578: The capital became the city named for him, Alexandria , on the Mediterranean coast. This situation remained stable for nearly a thousand years. After the army of the Arabian Caliph Umar captured the region in the 7th century, shortly after the death of Muhammad , he wanted to establish a new capital. When Alexandria fell in September 641, Amr ibn al-As , the commander of the conquering army, founded

4557-455: The city or suffer the same fate as Bilbeis. Seeing that Amalric's attack was imminent, Shawar ordered Fustat city burned, to keep it out of Amalric's hands. According to the Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi (1346–1442): Shawar ordered that Fustat be evacuated. He forced [the citizens] to leave their money and property behind and flee for their lives with their children. In the panic and chaos of

4650-666: The city's founding in 641, its authority was uninterrupted until 750, when the Abbasid dynasty staged a revolt against the Umayyads . This conflict was focused not in Egypt, but elsewhere in the Arab world. When the Abbasids gained power, they moved various capitals to more controllable areas. They had established the centre of their caliphate in Baghdad , moving the capital from its previous Umayyad location at Damascus . Similar moves were made throughout

4743-567: 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

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4836-660: The destruction of Fustat, the Syrian forces arrived and successfully repelled Amalric's forces. Then with the Christians gone, the Syrians were able to conquer Egypt themselves. The untrustworthy Shawar was put to death, and the reign of the Fatimids was effectively over. The Syrian general Shirkuh was placed in power, but died due to ill health just a few months later, after which his nephew Saladin became vizier of Egypt on March 2, 1169, launching

4929-447: The dove's nest as a sign from God, and the tent was left untouched as he and his troops went off to battle. When they returned victorious, Amr told his soldiers to pitch their tents around his, giving his new capital city its name, Miṣr al-Fusṭāṭ , or Fusṭāṭ Miṣr , popularly translated as ' city of the tents ' , though this is not an exact translation. The word Miṣr was an ancient Semitic root designating Egypt, but in Arabic also has

5022-577: 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

5115-515: The emergence of the madrasa as a distinct institution during the 11th century, the congregational mosque was also the main venue for religious education by hosting halqa s (study circles). In later centuries, as the Islamic world became increasingly divided between different political states, as the Muslim population and the cities grew, and as new rulers wished to leave their mark of patronage, it became common to have multiple congregational mosques in

5208-728: 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

5301-461: The exodus, the fleeing crowd looked like a massive army of ghosts.... Some took refuge in the mosques and bathhouses...awaiting a Christian onslaught similar to the one in Bilbeis. Shawar sent 20,000 naphtha pots and 10,000 lighting bombs [mish'al] and distributed them throughout the city. Flames and smoke engulfed the city and rose to the sky in a terrifying scene. The blaze raged for 54 days.... After

5394-576: The exotic and beautiful wares in the Fustat markets: iridescent pottery, crystal, and many fruits and flowers, even during the winter months. From 975 to 1075, Fustat was a major production centre for Islamic art and ceramics , and one of the wealthiest cities in the world. One report stated that it paid taxes that were equivalent to US$ 150,000 per day, to the administration of Caliph al-Mu'izz. Modern archaeological digs have turned up trade artefacts from as far away as Spain, China, and Vietnam . Excavations have also revealed intricate house and street plans;

5487-593: 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

5580-509: The first mosques built in Africa), the Mosque of Amr , is still in use, but has been extensively rebuilt over the centuries, and nothing remains of the original structure. In February 2017 the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation was inaugurated on a site adjacent to the mosque. It is believed that further archaeological digs could yield substantial rewards, considering that the remains of

5673-501: 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

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5766-427: The growing city of Cairo. Some of the old buildings remain visible in the region known as " Old Cairo ", but much of the rest has fallen into disrepair, overgrown with weeds or used as garbage dumps . The oldest-remaining building from the area is probably the Mosque of Ibn Tulun , from the 9th century, which was built while the capital was in al-Qatta'i. The first mosque ever built in Egypt (and by extension, one of

5859-588: The hands of Amalric , king of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem . The capital of Egypt was ultimately moved to Cairo . According to legend, the location of Fustat was chosen by a bird: A dove laid an egg in the tent of 'Amr ibn al-'As (585–664), the Muslim conqueror of Egypt , just before he was to march against Alexandria in 641. His camp at that time was just north of the Roman fortress of Babylon . Amr declared

5952-579: 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

6045-558: 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

6138-550: 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)

6231-420: 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

6324-883: 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

6417-409: The meaning of a ' large city, metropolis ' (or, as a verb, ' to civilize ' ), so the name Miṣr al-Fusṭāṭ could mean ' metropolis of the tent ' . Fusṭāṭ Miṣr would mean ' the pavilion of Egypt ' . (Since it lacks the article on the word Miṣr it would not be ' the pavilion of the metropolis ' .) Egyptians to this day call Cairo Miṣr , or, in Egyptian Arabic , Maṣr , even though this

6510-448: The mid-10th century had lost all political power, retained the privilege of designating congregational mosques in the city and of appointing their preachers. By the 11th century, the Arab writer and traveler Ibn Jubayr notes eleven congregational mosques in the city. In another example, Fustat , the predecessor of modern Cairo , was founded in the seventh century with just one congregational mosque (the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As ), but by

6603-624: 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

6696-611: The new dynasty. In Egypt, they moved the capital from Fustat slightly north to the Abbasid city of al-Askar , which remained the capital until 868. When the Tulunid dynasty took control in 868, the Egyptian capital moved briefly to another nearby northern city, al-Qatta'i . This lasted only until 905, when al-Qatta'i was destroyed and the capital was returned to Fustat. The city again lost its status as capital city when its own vizier, Shawar , ordered its burning in 1168, fearing it might fall into

6789-424: 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

6882-549: 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

6975-618: The prayer hall has to accommodate the population of the community. Almost all congregational mosques feature a minbar , which is an elevated platform where the Friday sermon is given. The minbar is usually places near the qibla wall (the wall standing in the direction of prayer) and the mihrab . Arabic Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

7068-410: 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

7161-700: The same city. Baghdad , the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate , had just two congregational mosques by the late 9th century: the Great Mosque of al-Mansur , located in the original Round City on the western shore of the Tigris River , and the Mosque of al-Mahdi , in the Rusafa quarter added on the eastern shore of the river. During the 10th century, the number of congregational mosques grew to six, compared to hundreds of other local regular mosques. The Abbasid caliphs, who had by

7254-467: The same root, jumu‘ah ( Arabic : جُمُعَة , lit.   'assembly, gathering'), a term which refers to the Friday noon prayers ( Arabic : صَلَاة الْجُمُعَة , romanized :  ṣalāṫ al-jumu‘ah , lit.   'prayer of assembly') or the Friday itself ( Arabic : يَوْم الْجُمُعَة , romanized :  yawm al-jumu‘ah , lit.   'day of assembly'). Since

7347-458: 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

7440-458: 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

7533-556: 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

7626-414: The term cami ( Turkish pronunciation: [d͡ʒami] ) is used for the same purpose. As the distinction between a "congregational mosque" and other mosques has diminished in more recent history, the Arabic terms masjid and jami' have become more interchangeable. In non-Arab Muslim nations, the word jāmi‘ ("that which gathers, congregates or assembles") is often conflated with another word from

7719-501: 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

7812-451: 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

7905-608: Was a major city, and in the 9th century, it had a population of approximately 120,000. But when General Gawhar of the Tunisian -based Fatimids captured the region, this launched a new era when Egypt was the centre of its own power. Gawhar founded a new city just north of Fustat on August 8, 969, naming it Al Qahira ( Cairo ), and in 971, the Fatimid Caliph al-Mu'izz moved his court from al-Mansuriya in Tunisia to Al Qahira. But Cairo

7998-459: Was founded in Tunisia in 670. Fustat developed as a series of tribal areas, khittas , around the central mosque and administrative buildings. The majority of the settlers came from Yemen , with the next largest grouping from western Arabia , along with some Jews and Roman mercenaries. Arabic was generally the primary spoken dialect in Egypt, and was the language of written communication. Coptic

8091-422: Was inherited from the example of Muhammad and was passed on the caliphs after him. In the provinces, the local governors who ruled on behalf of the caliph were expected to deliver the khutbah for their local community. The minbar , a kind of pulpit from which the khutbah was traditionally given, also became a standard feature of congregational mosques by the early Abbasid period (late eighth century). Until

8184-502: Was known for its prosperity, with shaded streets, gardens, and markets. It contained high-rise residential buildings, some seven storeys tall, which could reportedly accommodate hundreds of people. Al-Muqaddasi in the 10th century described them as minarets , while Nasir Khusraw in the early 11th century described some of them rising up to 14 stories, with roof gardens on the top storey complete with ox-drawn water wheels for irrigation. The Persian traveller Nasir-i-Khusron wrote of

8277-458: Was not intended as a center of government at the time—it was used primarily as the royal enclosure for the Caliph and his court and army, while Fustat remained the capital in terms of economic and administrative power. The city thrived and grew, and in 987, the geographer Ibn Hawkal wrote that al-Fustat was approximately one third the size of Baghdad . By 1168, it had a population of 200,000. The city

8370-455: Was still spoken in Fustat in the 8th century. Fustat was the centre of power in Egypt under the Umayyad dynasty, which had started with the rule of Muawiyah I , and headed the Islamic caliphate from 660 to 750. However, Egypt was considered only a province of larger powers, and was ruled by governors who were appointed from other Muslim centres such as Damascus , Medina , and Baghdad . Fustat

8463-504: Was the centre of administrative power in Egypt, until it was ordered burnt in 1168 by its own vizier , Shawar , to keep its wealth out of the hands of the invading Crusaders . The remains of the city were eventually absorbed by nearby Cairo , which had been built to the north of Fustat in 969 when the Fatimids conquered the region and created a new city as a royal enclosure for the Caliph. The area fell into disrepair for hundreds of years and

8556-535: Was the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule , and the historical centre of modern Cairo . It was built adjacent to what is now known as Old Cairo by the Rashidun Muslim general 'Amr ibn al-'As immediately after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641, and featured the Mosque of Amr , the first mosque built in Egypt. The city reached its peak in the 12th century, with a population of approximately 200,000. It

8649-455: Was used as a rubbish dump. Today, the ruins of Fustat lie within the modern district of Old Cairo , with few buildings remaining from its days as a capital. Many archaeological digs have revealed the wealth of buried material in the area. Many ancient items recovered from the site are on display in Cairo's Museum of Islamic Art . Fustat was the capital of Egypt for approximately 500 years. After

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