ABSTRACT
It is universally accepted that the Arabs have studied their language in an exclusively synchronic manner. What seems to justify this conclusion is that the Arab grammarians and lexicographers neither made any serious effort to compare Arabic with other languages — whether Persian, Greek, or the more closely akin Syriac and Hebrew — nor did they resort to Semitic languages in favor of either the Basran or Kufan schools of grammatical thought during their numerous factional controversies. This, however, is only one aspect of the truth. The other aspect, which has been strangely neglected, can only be disclosed through a study which is not restricted to Works on grammar and lexicography, but which should include other equally important sources like the books of grammarians' ahbar and tabaqat, the more general Works on literature and criticism, and even Works which are not of grammatical or literary nature, as we shall see.
