RIFA^⊂A RAFI^⊂ AL-TAHTAWI AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE LEXICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN LITERARY ARABIC

Abstract

In the 19th century, Europe had a tangible impact on the Arab East. During this period, Arabic-speaking regions were brought into intimate contact with the West, both through military intrusion (e.g., the French in 1798–1801 and the British in Egypt in 1882), and institutional penetration (e.g., the founding of Western-style schools and higher-education institutions in the Levant in the 1800s by Christian missionaries such as the Syrian Protestant College in 1866, now the American University of Beirut, and [the Jesuit] St. Joseph University, also in Beirut, in 1874). This overpowering European encroachment on the Arab East in the 19th century resulted in cultural and linguistic identity crises. Muhammad ^⊂Ali, who ruled Egypt from 1805 until 1848, dispatched groups of students to Western countries such as Italy, Austria, and France to study at their universities and technical institutions. At home, he established schools with Western-language instruction, and sponsored translations of scientific works initially into Turkish, and later into Arabic, from Italian and French, thus making available new disciplines such as various branches of engineering, military science, and agriculture. In 1822, he established a printing press in the Bulaq section of Cairo.¹ From then on, Arabicized versions of European terms such as “theater” (tiy―atru), “journal” (jurn―al), “the post” (al-busta), and “politics” (al-bulit―iq―a) signaled the arrival of Western institutions and technology in Arabic-speaking regions, and such terms were adopted by writers in their writings. The cultural, political, military, and technological challenges that resulted from the European contact with the Arab East, and the institutional changes that accompanied them, proved to be a crucial turning point in the development of the Arabic language, particularly its lexicon. However, interest in language matters was central to the Arab renaissance (Nahda) of the 19th century. Arab writers; intellectuals; and translators such Rifa^⊂a Rafi^⊂ al-Tahtawi (1801/2–73), (Ahmad) Faris al-Shidyaq (1801/04?–87), Nasif al-Yaziji (1800–71), and Butrus al-Bustani (1819–83), among others, debated Arabic linguistic issues in terms of their own literary and linguistic heritage. These and other authors discussed the “internal” needs of Arabic, not only issues of translating the culture of the Western societies. They wrote grammars and compiled other literary textbooks to facilitate the teaching of Arabic and to overcome difficulties of learning the language associated with older, traditional ways of language teaching and to raise awareness of the literary tradition of Arabs. These intellectuals also engaged in the preparation of glossaries and dictionaries appropriate to the needs of their societies.²