Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Hisham ibn Kalbi, The Book of Idols,

trans. N. A. Faris (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University 

Press, 1952); Gordon D. Newby, A History of the Jews of 

Arabia: From Ancient Times to Their Eclipse under Islam

(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988); 

F. E. Peters, The Arabs and Arabia on the Eve of Islam

(Aldershot, U.K. and Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1999).

Arabic language and literature

Arabic is the fifth or sixth most widely spoken 

language in the world today, after Mandarin 

Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, and possibly 

Bengali. It is the official language of 21 modern 

countries; nearly 160 million Arabic speakers in 

the Middle East and abroad use it as their mother 

tongue. More than 1 billion Muslims around the 

world regard it as their sacred language because 

it is the language of the q

Uran

, the Islamic 

holy

book

. Many Jews and Christians living in the 

Middle East also speak it. Arabic has been used 

continuously as a living, written, and spoken 

language for nearly 1,400 years and has served 

as the medium for the creation and transmission 

of a great number of works on religion, history, 

philosophy

, 

science

, and 

mathematics

.

Classified by linguists as a member of the 

Semitic family of the Afro-Asiatic languages, 

Arabic is related to Hebrew, Aramaic, and the 

Akkadian language of ancient Mesopotamia. It 

originated in the Arabian Peninsula, where it 

was a poetic language used by the b

edoUin

 and 

townspeople prior to the appearance of i

slam

 in 

the seventh century. The main reason for its rise 

as a world language is because it is the language 

of the Quran, which declares itself to be a direct 

“revelation” from God “in plain Arabic speech” 

(Q 26:192–196). In addition to being a sacred 

language, the Umayyad 

caliph

 Abd al-Malik b. 

Marwan (r. 685–705) made Arabic the administra-

tive language of the early Arab empire, leading to 

its codification as a literary language with its own 

formal grammar by the end of the eighth century. 

Thus, as lands and peoples from Spain and North 

Africa to the banks of the Indus River fell under 

the control of Arab Muslim governments, Arabic 

became the language of their subjects, Muslims 

and non-Muslims alike. The languages formerly 

spoken by the native peoples in these regions 

became isolated, minority languages, such as Cop-

tic in e

gypt

 and Aramaic in Mesopotamia (i

raq

), 

or they were noticeably changed by the introduc-

tion of Arabic vocabulary, such as the Persian 

language. Turkish, Hindi, and Urdu also have an 

extraordinary number of Arabic loanwords as a 

result of the spread of Islamic religion and civili-