The Egyptian Civil Code is the primary source of civil law for Egypt .
83-642: The first version of Egyptian Civil Code was written in 1949 containing 1149 articles. The prime author of the 1949 code was the jurist Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri , who received assistance from Dean Edouard Lambert of the University of Lille . Perhaps due to Lambert's influence, the 1949 code followed the French civil law model. The code focuses on the regulation of business and commerce, and does not include any provisions regarding family law . El-Sanhuri purposely left out family law and succession to set it apart from
166-494: A "hodgepodge of socialist doctrine and sociological jurisprudence." The Egyptian Civil Code has been the source of law and inspiration for numerous other Middle Eastern jurisdictions, including pre- dictatorship kingdoms of Libya and Iraq (both drafted by El-Sanhuri himself and a team of native jurists under his guidance), in addition to Jordan (completed in 1976, after his death) Bahrain (2001), as well as Qatar (1971) (these last two merely inspired by his notions), and
249-575: 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
332-596: A committee of jurists for the drafting of an Iraqi Civil Code, which he tasked el-Sanhūrī with presiding over. Interruptions brought about by the 1936 Iraqi coup d'état and strong opposition from Islamists brought the project to a halt. In 1937, el-Sanhūrī returned to Cairo. Around this time, he interacted with secessionists of the Wafd Party and joined the Saadist Institutional Party . In late 1938, after two drafting committees were abandoned,
415-435: 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
498-705: A course in comparative Islamic and Western law at the IARS. In 1970, on advice of Cairo University, Alexandria University and Ain Shams University , the Egyptian state awarded el-Sanhūrī its prize for social sciences and culture. El-Sanhūrī died on 21 July 1971 at his home in Alexandria, and was buried in Heliopolis , Cairo. El-Sanhūrī's major contribution to modern Arab legal and intellectual thought
581-1081: 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
664-487: 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
747-789: A long time. For the first time in the modern history of the Arab Middle East, the Shari’a would be used to back up a secular document. With the civil code as the principal source of law, all Shari’a courts were abolished. The writing of the civil code was an attempt on the part of Al-Sanhuri to modernize Islamic law by adopting ideas from western civil law, a concept greatly supported by the elite members of Egyptian society. Westernization meant confining certain Islamic law to mostly matters dealing with personal status such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. British colonization led to some shift to
830-690: 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
913-541: A mob instigated by "some army elements" assaulted el-Sanhūrī. One explanation put the assault to a publication by Al-Akhbār newspaper claiming that the Council of State "was about to issue decrees against the Revolution . . . (and) it had been rumoured that Dr el-Sanhuri was to become Prime Minister for the four months until the election of a constituent assembly". When Nasser called at the hospital in which el-Sanhūrī
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#1732765501806996-401: A new series of comprehensive codes. Most of this effort was overseen by the Egyptian jurist Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri . The code was originally drafted in 1942, but went through several revisions before its passage in 1949. Its author, Al-Sanhuri, stayed loyal to his vision of having judges rule in accordance with the code itself before considering using Shari’a, which had not been codified for
1079-594: 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
1162-458: A result, the modern legal systems of Middle Eastern countries share the basic features of French law, such as relying on complete and logical statements of the law in codes as official sources of law, keeping a sharp division between public and private law and between commercial and private law. Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri Abd el-Razzak el-Sanhuri or ‘Abd al-Razzāq el-Sanhūrī ( Arabic : عبد الرزاق السنهوري ) (11 August 1895 – 21 July 1971)
1245-462: 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",
1328-470: 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
1411-507: 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
1494-507: 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
1577-476: 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
1660-590: 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
1743-559: 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
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#17327655018061826-478: 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
1909-408: 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
1992-472: 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
2075-526: Is his method of modernizing Islamic fiqh and sharia by reconciling rules and laws within Islamic Madhhabs with modern European jurisprudential concepts. The reason he resorted to European civil law and Western jurisprudence was not on identitarian or colonial premises, rather, it was on account of their highly elaborate and intellectualised character. This reconciliation is predicated upon an important distinction. According to el-Sanhūrī,
2158-574: 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
2241-855: 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
2324-572: 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
2407-590: 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
2490-413: 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
2573-524: 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
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2656-445: 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
2739-702: 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
2822-489: The Turkish civil code . Article 1 of the code provides that, “in the absence of any applicable legislation, the judge shall decide according to the custom and failing the custom, according to the principles of Islamic Law. In the absence of these principles, the judge shall have recourse to natural law and the rules of equity .” Despite this invocation of Islamic law, one commentator has argued that 1949 code reflected
2905-568: 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
2988-494: 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
3071-419: 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
3154-454: 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
3237-571: 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
3320-779: 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
3403-586: The Arab world. El-Sanhūrī was Minister of Education in the Cabinet of Mahmoud El Nokrashy Pasha from 1945-1946 and again from late 1946 to 1948. He was subsequently appointed as President of the Egyptian Council of State. El-Sanhūrī's tenure as President of the Council of State lasted until 1954, when he was dismissed by coercion. He has been described as "a personality of unique embroidery, never to reoccur". An avowed advocate of Arab unity, el-Sanhūrī
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3486-503: The Council of State to the attention of the military. During March 1954, when the Egyptian Bar Association made demands for a return to civil government, el-Sanhūrī, whose opposition to military rule had by that time become clear, was forcibly dismissed. Widespread demonstrations ensued. The Revolutionary Command Council insisted that the transition system of governance would stay in place. According to Farhat Ziadeh,
3569-626: The Egyptian Civil Code. Egypt began legal reform in 1875 when it gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in judicial and legal matters, which led to the establishment of the Mixed Courts to deal with foreigners and national courts. This necessitated a need for a set of laws that had secular influence. When Egypt obtained the needed international agreement for the union of its legal system in 1937, it started to draw up
3652-568: The Egyptian Minister of Justice Aḥmad al-Khashaba determined that drafting of a civil code would be "best accomplished by two individuals", and proceeded to select el-Sanhūrī and his old mentor, Lambert, for the task. The first draft of the Egyptian Civil Code was completed in 1942. Various administrative hold-ups and legislative procedures resulted in the Code being promulgated on 15 October 1949. In 1943, el-Sanhūrī left Egypt to help draft
3735-743: The Faculty of Law at Cairo University ) where he obtained his BA in 1917. He was subsequently assigned to the position of Deputy Prosecutor at the National Court of Mansura which he retained until 1919, when his incitement of riots during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 led to his dismissal. After this, el-Sanhūrī briefly worked as a teacher in Madrasat al-qadā ash-shariyya . In 1921, el-Sanhūrī moved to Lyon, France to obtain his doctorate. During that time, he undertook research under
3818-627: The French jurist Édouard Lambert. El-Sanhūrī returned to Cairo in 1926 to take up a position as a teacher of civil law at his alma mater . After spending eight years as a teacher of civil law at the Faculty of Law in Cairo, el-Sanhūrī moved to Baghdad in 1935, where he became dean of the Baghdad School of Law. In February 1936, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani , then the Minister of Interior, put together
3901-412: 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
3984-690: 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
4067-576: 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
4150-400: The adaptation of the system by the courts to the changing needs of court practice through following the general guidelines set out by doctrine. It will also be desirable that a relative unity of vision guides the legislators of different Muslim countries, which will happen by the very force of the pursuit [of sources], since they will draw all the first inspirations of their legislative work from
4233-471: The articles which he drafted were eventually dropped in favour of the draft which, at the instructions of Husni al-Za'im , more or less mirrored the Egyptian Civil Code. In March 1949, el-Sanhūrī accepted the position of presidency at the Egyptian Council of State. His tenure coincided with the Egyptian revolution of 1952 . Power struggles between Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser eventually brought
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#17327655018064316-408: The bookshelves of many an Arab law firm, even in countries where the Egyptian Civil Code is not law". Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] ) is a Central Semitic language of
4399-473: The civil code of Iraq anew. This time, the attempt at drafting a code was more favourable; an Iraqi Civil Code which combined the Majalla and the Egyptian Civil Code as its sources was promulgated in 1951 (but only came into force in 1953). El-Sanhūrī also visited Syria, at which time he contributed to the drafting of a civil code. His contribution, however, was cut short by his return to Cairo in 1948. Moreover,
4482-480: The commercial code of Kuwait (drafted by El-Sanhuri). When Sudan drafted its own civil code in 1970, it was in large part copied from the Egyptian Civil Code with slight modifications. The Saudi Civil Code, introduced in December 2023, is also modelled after the Egyptian Civil Code. Today, all Mashriq Arab nations possessing modern civil codes, with the exception of Lebanon and Oman , are based fully or partly on
4565-448: The common law, but the common law had little long-term impact on the legal systems of many countries that fell under British rule where there was an existing codified system. Thus civil law, mostly of French origins, now prevails throughout the Middle East, and the occasional remnants of common law are likely not to survive (with the exception of Israeli law which remains largely based on common law as it pertains to non-private matters). As
4648-574: 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
4731-469: The courts, which, in each of the Muslim countries, could benefit from the judicial experiments carried out by the related case law. One commentator argued that el-Sanhūrī's codes reflected a "hodgepodge of socialist doctrine and sociological jurisprudence." Other commentators have pointed out that his place in the legal history of the modern Middle East is nevertheless secure; indeed, his Al-Wasīṭ "adorns
4814-587: 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
4897-728: 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
4980-607: 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
5063-612: The first time in 1953) to assist in drafting and legislative exercises. Most of el-Sanhūrī's later life was dedicated to the writing and publication of further volumes of Al-Wasīṭ . Nevertheless, in 1959, he was appointed, to Nasser's displeasure, as the director of the legal department at the Arab League's Institute of Arab Research and Studies (IARS) in Cairo, now administered by the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization . El-Sanhūrī taught
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#17327655018065146-510: 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
5229-597: 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
5312-613: 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
5395-604: 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)
5478-420: 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
5561-883: 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
5644-624: 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
5727-424: 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
5810-549: 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
5893-631: The process of elaborating law and dispensing justice can only rightly operate when the ulama and the jurists are substantively distinguished: whereas the ulama are responsible for elaborating ibadat , that part of Islamic law which pertains to rituals and worship, and must therefore be confined to the religious parts of fiqh , the jurists proper concern themselves with the temporal and particular (i.e. variable) parts of fiqh and sharia . This would allow jurists, judges and law-makers to keep 'modern' Arab justice from being wholly subordinated to Islamic theology while drawing on Islamic legal principles all
5976-410: 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
6059-458: 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
6142-409: The same source, Muslim doctrine; but it will of course also be necessary to take into account the particularities of the economic life of each country... The existence of a common ground of ideas between the various [jurisdictional] laws would render conflicts of laws less acute, widen the field of activity of lawyers in Muslim countries, and give more solidity to the creative work of the jurisprudence of
6225-458: 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
6308-563: 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
6391-501: 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
6474-623: The while. In this way, justice would remain faithful to its historic roots but with an invariable view of reaching humanistic ends; particularly when state legislation, the sharia and traditional customs all fail to find a solution to one or more legal or juridical problems. The tenets of El-Sanhūrī's philosophy are unity and experience; as he explains in Le Califat , a careful balance must be achieved between both: It will be prudent, in reducing modernized Muslim law to legislative expression, to have recourse to formulas flexible enough to allow for
6557-451: 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
6640-447: Was an Egyptian jurist , law professor, judge and politician. He is best remembered as the primary author of the revised Egyptian Civil Code of 1948. El-Sanhūrī's multi-volume masterwork, Al-Wasīṭ fī sharḥ al-qānūn al-madanī al-jadīd , a comprehensive commentary on the Egyptian Civil Code of 1948 and on civil law more generally, published during 1952-1970, remains in print and is highly regarded in legal and juristic professions throughout
6723-562: Was born on 11 August 1895 in Alexandria. His father, who, by the time of el-Sanhūrī's birth, had lost his fortune, worked as a 'minor' employee at the Alexandria Municipal Council. el-Sanhūrī had six other siblings. His father's passing in 1900 aggravated the family's destitution. El-Sanhuri obtained his secondary school certificate from the ʿAbbāsiyya in 1913 and then joined the Khedival School of Law (later
6806-607: Was notably active in the legal and institutional reforms of different Arab countries throughout most of his adult life. He presided over a committee which drafted the Iraqi Civil Code , while at the same time serving as dean of the Baghdad Law School, from 1935 to 1937. He also contributed to a drafting project of a Syrian civil code throughout the early 1940s. El-Sanhūrī also drafted various public and private laws of Kuwait, Sudan, Libya and Bahrain. El-Sanhūrī
6889-561: Was receiving treatment for the injuries he sustained from the assault, el-Sanhūrī refused to see him. It is often claimed that el-Sanhuri was unable to leave Egypt following this incident. It is unclear whether el-Sanhūrī was placed under any house arrest. He is known to have briefly resided in Kuwait during 1959–60 to assist Kuwaiti legislators and politicians in different legislative projects. It has also been suggested that he visited Libya once again around that time (having briefly visited it for
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