The classical Arabic, be it observed, in consequence of an extended
empire, soon split up into various dialects, as the Latin under similar
circumstances separated into the Neo-Roman patois of Italy, Sicily,
Provence, and Languedoc. And though Niebuhr has been deservedly

[p.27]censured for comparing the Koranic language to Latin and the
vulgar tongue to Italian, still there is a great difference between
them, almost every word having undergone some alteration in addition to
the manifold changes and simplifications of grammar and syntax. The
traveller will hear in every part of Arabia that some distant tribe
preserves the linguistic purity of its ancestors, uses final vowels
with the noun, and rejects the addition of the pronoun which apocope in
the verb now renders necessary.[FN#45] But I greatly doubt the
existence of such a race of philologists. In Al-Hijaz, however, it is
considered graceful in an old man, especially when conversing publicly,
to lean towards classical Arabic. On the contrary, in a youth this
would be treated as pedantic affectation, and condemned in some such
satiric quotation as

“There are two things colder than ice,
A young old man, and an old young man.”

[FN#1] Ibn Jubayr relates that in his day a descendant of Belal, the
original Mu’ezzin of the Prophet, practised his ancestral profession at
Al-Madinah.
[FN#2] This word is said to be the plural of Nakhwali,—one who cultivates
the date tree, a gardener or farmer. No one could tell me whether these
heretics had not a peculiar name for themselves. I hazard a conjecture
that they may be identical with the Mutawalli (also written Mutawilah,