8/16/2019 Review by- Muhsin Mahdi -- An Elementary Classical Arabic Readerby M. C. Lyons

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ReviewAuthor(s): Muhsin MahdiReview by: Muhsin MahdiSource: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Jul., 1964), p. 216

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8/16/2019 Review by- Muhsin Mahdi -- An Elementary Classical Arabic Readerby M. C. Lyons

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216 JOURNAL FNEAR EASTERN TUDIES

represent the result of decades of pains-taking scholarship.

Most readers, however, will continue toadmire Professor Baron's relaxed prose,contagious enthusiasm, and the ease withwhich he synthesizes the labor of so many

spice mixers, cooks, and bakers who haveserved medieval Jewish culture, in order toshow to the peoples and princes her beauty,for she is very fair to look on (cf. VIII, 135).

MUHSIN MAHIDI

University of Chicago

A New Arabic Grammar of the WrittenLanguage. By J. A. HAYWOOD nd H. M.NAHMAD. London: Percy Lund, Hum-phries & Co. Ltd., 1962. Pp. ix + 687.45s. net.The new Arabic grammar by Haywood and

Nahmad is intended to replace Rev. G. W.Thatcher's Arabic Grammar. It retains allthat is still valid in the old work, but recaststhe rest to suit modern requirements and thebackground of the average modern student(p. v). The fresh and clear Arabic font will bewelcomed by the students who had to strugglethrough the half-legible photographic reprintsof the older work; the basic vocabulary ofabout 4,000 words is selected from bothclassical and modern texts; and the extractsin the Supplement are useful and inter-esting. Like its model, the new grammar israther personal in its approach and makes noclaim to being philologically and linguistic-ally precise or thorough. This may haveresulted from the attempt to explaingrammatical rules in clear and simplelanguage (ibid.). But there are seriousdisadvantages that will have to be copedwith before this grammar could enjoy thewide use that it deserves. For instance, theauthors devote several pages to explainthe admittedly complicated rules for writingthe hamza (pp. 10-11, 114-16, 199 ff., 206 ff.,251 ff.) with limited success, when betterresults could be achieved through a syste-

matic account that would require little morethan one page (see Ziadeh and Winder, AnIntroduction to Modern Arabic [reviewed inJNES, XVIII (1959), 167-68], pp. 14-15).Most of the book, but especially the chapterson the morphology of verbs, would havebenefited from an account of a few ele-mentary phonetic rules. And apart fromcorrecting the large number of misprints inthe Arabic font, the Arabic word forms andsentences in the text and the exercises wouldcertainly benefit from a thorough check bya philologist who could cleanse it fromvernacular Arabic and especially from artifi-cial Arabic, that is, word forms and

expressions that originate in grammaticalimagination and the habits of other tongues.

MUHSIN MAHDT

University of Chicago

An Elementary Classical Arabic Reader. ByM. C. LYONS. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1962. Pp. viii + 237.

This collection of relatively short extractsfrom premodern Arabic texts is intended as afirst reader in classical Arabic. The authorprovides a full glossary (pp. 78-221) andsome notes (pp. 222-37). There are numerousprinting errors, especially in the vowel signsand diacritical points, which mar an other-wise carefully edited text; and some of thenotes (e.g., selection 3, n. 12, selection 4, n. 5)deserve to be reconsidered.

Thornton and Nicholson's ElementaryArabic reading books have been out of printfor some time. It is hoped that the author andthe Cambridge University Press will beencouraged by the success of this very usefulvolume to edit and publish more advancedreaders with longer selections and fullerphilological notes. In the meantime, everyeffort should be made to reprint the olderseries.

MunsIN MAHDI

University of Chicago

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