290 chapter seven
The Decline in the Formal Use of Arabic Language
The shift of the pendulum of political power to the Ottoman Turks
could be said to have led to the decreasing role of Arabic language as
the formal language of the Islamic state. Neither were the rulers of
the state of Arab origin nor was Arabic their means of communica-
tion with their peoples. It may be true to say that the signs of sep-
aration between the masses and Arabic language could be witnessed
earlier when the Persian language began to push its rival out of the
scene, which was particularly the case after the increasing domain
of the Persians prior to the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258.
Nevertheless, it might be equally true to infer that, in contrast to the
Abbasids who were Arabs and surrounded their court with an Arab
entourage, the new caliphs were not Arab nor was their language
Arabic. As such, the Arabic language would lose the opportunity of
being the language of the masters of the land, and as a consequence
of not being acknowledged as the formal language of communica-
tion in the caliphate court, it would be driven out of practice by
court officials and be shun by the public at large in their formal
communication with state officials. This was different from the case
of the Abbasìd caliphs who, even if under the Persian influence they
became figurative, they were still seen as Arabs and the Arabic lan-
guage was still perceived as the formal language of the caliphate.
There were signs, however, indicating that the ruling Turks made
sincere endeavours to project themselves as the preservers of the
Islamic traditions including that of the language of the Qur"àn. They
adopted the Arabic alphabets to their Turkish writing, which lasted
until 1928. However, it may be argued that while the Persian genius
had expressed itself in a splendid national literature (Nicholson, 1993)
the Turkish rivalry did not seem to be a plausible Persian contestant.
The Ottomans could not however be accused of a lack of enthusi-
asm for Islam, as they embraced the religion with tremendous zeal.
Indeed, the Ottoman Empire had given Islam a driving force and
unmistaken momentum for two centuries or so from the mid-fifteenth
century onward.
The Western influence added a further reason for the eclipsed role
of the Arabic language. Educationally, the medium of communica-
tion with the imported expertise from France, Italy and England was
to be their own foreign languages, not Arabic, and Muslims in the
Turkish and Turkish Egyptian army had to learn the language of