The Emergence, Growth, and Maturation of the Arabic Language

The writer had heard about Al-Karmali before reading him or anyone who wrote about him. He motivated me to choose this book from among what he had written, and it fell into my hands. I began to look at it repeatedly and examine its thirty-nine chapters. I am not one of those whose hearts are consumed by envy, hatred, or grudges. According to what Al-Karmali mentioned. Rather, I read it in a beneficial manner, as he said: “With an open heart and a grateful heart[i].” A passionate observer meant for me the opportunity provided by “The Iraqi Academy Papers” to commemorate him and explain his role in serving Arabic: as a council, lecturer, and author.Among his extensive linguistic efforts, which were monitored by our Professor Ibrahim Al-Samarrai (may God have mercy on him), who said about these efforts: “The word fascinates him, so he researches its construction, origin, derivation, and its closeness to another Semitic language, or a non-Semitic language, he does not miss using it, the aspect of eloquence in that usage, the widespread error in its use by the public, and how it moved away from eloquence, becoming a disgraced colloquialism”.[ii]From this point of view, I examined his book: “The Emergence, Growth, and Maturation of the Arabic language.”It is clear from this title that this scholar monitors Arabic in its three stages: emergence, growth, and maturation, with his belief in historical linguistic development: He confirms what was said in its origins: “A group holds that words were initially placed on a single consonant, a vowel, and a vowelless consonant”.“Another group says: Words are formed at the beginning of their emergence into three letters”. Then he chooses “the first opinion… so we decided to publish it and detail its facts”.[iii]The statement about the duality of the Arabic word is not new, as Al-Khalil bin Ahmad Al-Farahidi (d. 175 AH) established (Kitab Al-Ain) “on four categories: the dual, the tripartite, the quadruple, and the quinqueliteral[iv]”.This opinion was stated by Dominican Bishop Augustine Marmarji (d. 1963 AD, 1382 AH)[v]. Perhaps Father Anastas looked at Al-Khalil’s statement, as he published an excerpt from “The Book of the Eye” in Al-Aytam Press/Baghdad in 1914 AD[vi].Al-Karmali was influenced by Sibawayh (d. 180 AH) is evident in his use of the word (kalam), as Sibawayh said: “This is a chapter on the knowledge of speech from Arabic[vii]”.As concerns the title of his book, we have the following observation:The scholar used the word (Iktihaliha, Maturation), and the stem (K, H, L) means: “The one whose hair turns gray, and who becomes old mature[viii]”. That is, language has reached maturity and strength, and it indicates the third stage of development, but I’d rather like him to have used the word (its completion) due to the perfection it achieved until God chose it as the language of His revelation, it would have been more accurate in expression, and this is not in the sense of (becoming mature), because after that the old person will grow older and die!