ABSTRACT
After a long period of stagnation, starting from the end of the thirteenth until the nineteenth century — what may be described as an age of decadence — a movement of linguistic renaissance began to take place in the Arab world, beginning in Egypt, spreading to Lebanon, and thence to the rest of the Arab nation. This movement represented one aspect of a multidimensional process of revival and revitalization which the nineteenth-century Arab society came to experience as a result of its awakening to the realization that it had to face the challenge of European culture and civilization, with which it was gradually coming into contact.
