Medieval Arabic grammar looked backward to Qur’anic-era speech rather than current usage
Evidence
Medieval Arabic grammars were backward-looking texts, as their compilers did not seek to register the way Arabic was actually spoken or written in their own lifetimes, but rather they sought to deduce from linguistic lore how Arabic had been spoken at the time of the revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet. There was thus a striking parallel between the nahw, or ‘way’, of Arabic grammar and the Sunna or custom of the Prophet, that is to say the orally transmitted corpus of reports about his sayings and doings and those of his immediate companions. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 258
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the parallel structure of nahw (grammar/way) and Sunna (prophetic custom), both anchored to revelation-era Arabic.
- SEED: Angle: how fields of knowledge rooted in a sacred founding moment fossilize language — contrast Arabic grammar’s backward gaze with modern descriptive linguistics, and what this implies for ‘pure’ language movements generally.