ABSTRACT
Semitic phonology, morphology, and lexicon provided the mould for the form ulation, and, in part, the promulgation of the world’s two great m onotheisms, Judaeo-Christianity and Islam: twin Semitic mappings of the hum an condition and its metaphysical superstructure, which have achieved global significance, and which have influenced other languages and cultures to a degree hardly m atched, if at all, by any other language system. Judaism and Islam agree, moreover, in conferring an extra-linguistic dimension upon their holy books by designating these as ipsissima verba, ‘the Word of G od’. In the Q ur’an it is explicitly reiterated that the Mosaic Law and the Christian Gospel are chronologically earlier but still valid revelations from the one God, which are now subsumed and sealed by the QuPanic text; and it is in this sense that the Jews and the Christians are accepted in the Qur’an as ahl al-kitdb, ‘the people of the B ook’; al-kitdb , ‘the Book’, being the divine exemplar of Islamic theology,
the uncreated Word of God (see Q ur’an XXVI, IV, V, XVII). Semitic prom ulgation of Semitic monotheism was, however, reserved for
Arabic alone. The scriptures of Judaism and Christianity were obliged to seek their wider audiences via translation into non-Semitic media - Greek (the Septuagint and the New Testament), Latin and, in due course, the European successor languages. For the A rabs, on the contrary, the Qur’an inspired, informed and sustained the great wave of territorial, religious and cultural conquest, and the creation of a multilingual Islamic community. As W. M ontgomery Watt puts it:
In the century after M uham m ad’s death many thousands accepted Islam in this way (scil. by becoming ‘protected persons’) and M uham m ad’s little state became a vast empire. This could not have come about but for the Q ur’anic conception of the holy war, which in turn is linked with the distinctive conception of the Islamic community and polity. Thus the later Islamic state, even at the economic level, is in certain respects an embodiment of the Q ur’anic vision. (1968: 109)
Client and conquered communities alike acquired the Arabic script, along with at least a ritual participation in, at best a mastery of the Arabic language. Some of the linguistic results are to be seen in the wealth of Arabic words assimilated into a string of non-Semitic languages, ranging from Spanish and Portuguese to Swahili and Javanese, many of which still use the Arabic script. A nd, at the eastern extremity of the domain of Arabic expansion, it is intriguing to find, in the Buginese and M acassarese translations of the New Testament, the gospels each introduced by an Islamic exordium in Arabic: ‘In the name of Allah, the Com passionate, the Merciful, and to Him we pray, to God most high.’
