Читать книгу A Dictionary of Islam. Being a cyclopedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs, together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion онлайн

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Qatādah says that the Quraish tribe used to cull what was most excellent in the dialects of Arabia, so that their dialect became the best of all. This assertion, however, is not altogether correct, for many of the children of the tribe of Quraish, in the time of Muḥammad, were sent into the desert to be there nursed, in order to acquire the utmost chasteness of speech. Muḥammad himself was sent to be brought up among the tribe of Saʿd ibn Bakr ibn Hawāzin, descendants of Muẓar, but not in the line of Quraish; and he is said to have urged the facts of his being a Quraish, and having also grown up among the tribe of Saʿd, as the grounds of his claim to be the most chaste in speech of the Arabs. Certain it is that the language of Maʿadd was characterised by the highest degree of perfection, copiousness, and uniformity, in the time of Muḥammad, although it afterwards declined.

The language of the Qurʾān is universally acknowledged to be the most perfect form of Arabic speech. At the same time we must not forget that the acknowledged claims of the Qurʾān to be the direct utterance of the Divinity have made it impossible for any Muslim to criticise the work, and it has become the standard by which other literary compositions have to be judged. (See Lane’s Introduction to his Arabic Dictionary, and Palmer’s Qurʾān.)