With Islam or before it? .. When did the Arabic language spread in Iraq?

BAGHDAD

- The Arabic language is one of the oldest languages ​​that has preserved its format despite the difference in opinions regarding the date of its appearance, as some researchers attribute it to Ya’rob bin Qahtan and some of them refer it to the Prophet of God Ismail, peace be upon him, while others consider it the language of the people of Paradise, and all these sayings lack evidence. Scientific.

The oldest archaeological text in which the name of the Arabs was mentioned dates back to the seventh century BC during the reign of the Assyrian king "Shalmaneser III", in which he mentioned his victory over the kings of "Aram" and the sheep of a thousand camel soldiers from Arabia.

Al-Alaf: The Arabic language is part of the Semitic languages, which is called Al-Jazirah in relation to the Arabian Peninsula (Al-Jazeera Net)

The origin of Arabic in Iraq

Professor of History at the University of Mosul, Dr. Ibrahim Al-Allaf, believes that the Arabic language is part of the Semitic languages ​​called Jazirah "relative to the Arabian Peninsula".

He adds that the peoples that inhabited Iraq more than 10,000 years ago, such as the Amorites and the Babylonians, spoke different dialects that stem from the Arab origin, despite their differences, based in his opinion on the book Lectures on the History of the Arabs printed in Baghdad in 1954 by Dr. Salih Ahmed Al-Ali, who confirmed the decline of all Iraqi languages ​​from One root and combine in common characteristics such as verb conjugation, the dependence of the noun and the pronoun on the verb that forms the basis of the sentence, and the similarity in the 3 letter etymology.

Al-Allaf confirms to Al-Jazeera Net that the Arabic language is as ancient in Iraq as the history of human existence, as it is one of the Semitic languages ​​that spread from it to the rest of the countries.

Al-Ghazi believes that the Akkadian, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and other languages ​​belong to the Semitic language tree as the reason for their rapprochement (Al-Jazeera Net)

For his part, the researcher in ancient history, Mustafa Al-Ghazi, believes that the affiliation of the Akkadian, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and other languages ​​to the Semitic language tree is the reason for the rapprochement between them and does not mean the Arabness of these languages.

And he indicated that Iraq's strategic location facilitated the mixing of its inhabitants with neighboring peoples, which created linguistic deposits between them, or what is currently called the ancient linguistic heritage.

In his opinion, he relies on what researchers have reached after deciphering the Sumerian symbols in the 19th century and their confirmation of the influence of Sumerian on the languages ​​that were contemporaneous, such as Akkadian, Babylonian and Arabic.

Al-Jubouri suggested that Arabic was the origin of the Iraqi languages, depending on the convergence of vocabulary and its foundations (Al-Jazeera Net)

Standard Arabic in Iraq

There is still a dispute among researchers about the Arabic of the Iraqi languages ​​or their independence, due to the difficulty of determining the linguistic origin, according to the researcher in history Imad al-Jubouri, who is likely to consider Arabic the origin of the Iraqi languages ​​depending on the convergence of vocabulary and its foundations, which is lacking in the rest of the linguistic groups.

Al-Jubouri puts his opinion in the category of theories due to the lack of evidence confirming the origin of the language in Iraq.

Al-Jubouri traces the entry of Standard Arabic to Iraq in the seventh century AD with the arrival of the Islamic conquests in the country.

He explained that the rapprochement between the local and Quraish dialects in which the Qur'an was revealed and the people's desire for Islam contributed to the gradual spread of eloquence until people adopted it with a local dialect in their daily communication during the Umayyad era.

It is noteworthy that many linguists favored Quraish as the language of the Qur’an and that it contained some of the vocabulary and expressions of the neighboring Arab peoples, and it was called Standard Arabic for its eloquence, harmony and distance from foreign linguistic influences.

Dr. Noman considered that Iraq has a great contribution to the sciences of the Arabic language (Al-Jazeera Net)

Antidote science

Iraq and Basra in particular have a great contribution to the sciences of the Arabic language, according to the professor of Arabic language at the University of Tikrit, Dr. Nisreen Qusay Numan. Grammar originated in Basra and there it grew, expanded and integrated.

And she specified - in her conversation with Al-Jazeera Net - that Abu Al-Aswad Al-Du'ali was the first to set the rules of the language after the Rashid Caliph Ali bin Abi Talib ordered him to divide speech into a letter, a noun and a verb, and from here came the sciences of grammar and branched into several schools such as Al-Basri and Al-Baghdadi School and spread after that. To Egypt and Andalusia.

And Dr. Numan continued, that he also "bred up in Basra the science of pronouns developed by Al-Khalil bin Ahmed Al-Farahidi, nicknamed the Imam of Arabic and the owner of the first Arabic lexicon (Al-Ain), and from him a group of linguists, Kesibawayh, Al-Nadr bin Shamil, Wahb bin Jarir, Al-Asma'i, and other prominent figures in this field were taken. ".

She adds that modern Iraq has produced eminent scholars in the language, such as Dr. Fadel Al-Samarrai Al-Badri, who has eloquence of speech and graphic touches, and Ahmed Abdel-Sattar Al-Jawary, known for his linguistic and literary research, and many poets and writers.

Regarding the current challenges facing the language of eloquence, the language professor divides them into two parts.

The first is the internal challenges related to the civilizational crisis and the call to replace the language of eloquence with spoken colloquial or to mix them together, in addition to alienation and intellectual dispersion.

External challenges are related to the technological development based on English and the scarcity of the use of Arabic in its applications.

Dr. Noman attributes these crises to the noticeable decline in the tasks of linguistic groups and the failure to update and Arabize new incoming vocabulary, which led to the adoption of English scientific vocabulary.

While the dispute continues over the origin of the Arabic language and the date of its entry into Iraq, the challenges and neglect of the language in schools are increasing, threatening the safety of future Iraqi generations.