1. Introduction
The Arabic word Nahḍa, a noun derived from the root n-h-ḍ, literally means “rise”, “revival” or “awakening”. It refers to the revival/renaissance of Arabic language and culture, especially in Egypt and Greater Syria, under growing Western influence during the ninteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century.Footnote 1 It is also known as the period of transformation into what the Arab intellectuals of the period termed a civilised/modern society (mutamaddin).
One of the leading figures of the Nahḍa period was Buṭrus al-Bustānī (1819–1883), an intellectual, writer, educator, journalist, linguist, lexicographer, translator and encyclopaedist. Al-Bustānī studied at ʿAyn Warqa College from 1830–1840 where he took Arabic, Syriac, Latin, Italian and English. After graduating in 1840, and due to the difficulties caused by the departure of Bashīr II, the Amīr of Mount Lebanon, and the withdrawal of Egyptian troops from the region, he moved to Beirut where he lived for the next 43 years. In Beirut he taught American missionaries Arabic and gradually formed close relationships with them, which eventually contributed to his conversion to Protestantism.Footnote 2
In the late 1840s, al-Bustānī was appointed official dragoman of the American Consulate in Beirut, a position he held until he passed it on to his son Salīm in 1862. During this time, he studied European and Semitic languages and in the end was proficient in nine. In 1848 he and another prominent intellectual of the Nahḍa, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, helped the American missionaries Smith and Dr Cornelius Van Dyck to translate the Bible into Arabic.Footnote 3 Around 1857, al-Bustānī gradually detached himself from his work with the American mission and started to publicly express the need for an Arab identity based on a sense of shared culture and language. He believed that education and the Arabic language were the main vehicles to achieving Arab identity/culture and to rekindling the magnificence of the Arabic heritage.
In February 1859 in his well-known lecture which is considered to herald the start of the Nahḍa period, Khuṭba fī Ᾱdāb al-ʿArab (“Lecture/Speech on the Arab Culture”), he publicly appealed for the revival of Arabic language, literature and culture. In the coming years he called upon Arabs to work for a modern and civilised (mutamaddin) Arab society by adapting European political, educational and social values in a selective manner, while responding to the needs of their own society and local culture. He emphasizes that this modern Arabic society will be achieved not only by reforming its language but also by preserving its Arabic culture, heratige and virtues. Loyal to the Ottoman Empire, he was troubled by the repeated civil wars in the Syrian region. After the civil war in Mount Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 he called for Syrian waṭaniyya (patriotism) with Arabic culture and heritage at its core. He felt that the Tanẓīmāt period (the Ottoman reforms, 1839–76) and the idea of Ottomanism were the best political framework to achieve this Syrian-Arab identity. He believed that a pre-national cultural identity would transcend the sectarian and religious differences in the region.Footnote 4
In the 1870s he became increasingly involved in journalism and published several journals such as al-Jinān and Junayna. In his life-long efforts to revive the Arabic language, culture and literature, he was the first to compile a modern Arabic dictionary Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ (“The Ocean of Oceans”) which he completed in 1869, as well as an abridged version called Quṭūr al-Muḥīṭ for schools in the region, but he was also the first to write a modern Arabic encyclopedia Dāʾirat al-Mʿārif (literally, “The Knowledge Circle”).Footnote 5
In most studies on the Nahḍa, al-Bustānī's activities, work and projects are considered to have made an important contribution to the revival of the Arabic language by transforming it to meet the needs of modern times.Footnote 6 Al-Bustānī was not the only intellectual to work toward this goal. In the nineteenth century other prominent intellectuals such as Fāris al-Shidyāq (died c. 1890) and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī (1800–1871) made contributions to this effort and al-Bustānī shared certain ideas with many first-generation writers of the Arabic revival. However, al-Bustānī's work was more comprehensive and better disseminated these same ideas than his contemporaries.Footnote 7 Both al-Shidyāq and al-Yāzijī wrote grammar booksFootnote 8 and took an interest in lexicography. These books are not very different from those of al-Bustānī because they also deal with morphologhy and syntax, and as al-Shidyāq writes in the introduction to his book, his aim was to provide a helpful tool that would simplify grammatical rules. However, he also states that he draws on traditional grammarians. Hence, like al-Bustānī he simply eliminates details but keeps the core of the explanation provided by these grammarians. Despite this similarity this article centres on al-Bustānī because of his scholary endeavour to promote his ideas in a more methodical manner than other intellectuals of his time. He is one of the few scholars who wrote an encyclopedia to synthesize advances in the linguistic, lexcical and scientific fields. His goal was to find a way to express his new ideas and values while preserving the Arabic language and its cultural heritage.Footnote 9 His Encyclopedia, Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif, is the outcome since it assembles a wealth of information and makes it available to intellectuals and common people as well who wanted to use the Arabic language and adapt to the modern world.
The first volume of the Encyclopedia Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif appeared in 1876. Al-Bustānī died in 1883 while writing the sixth volume. It then became a family project, and his son Salīm edited two other volumes. After Salīm's death, two of his younger sons, Nasīb and Najīb (1862–1919) along with another member of the family, Sulaymān al-Bustānī (1856–1925) continued the Encyclopedia. Eleven volumes were eventually written but the Encyclopedia was never completed.Footnote 10
2. Overview of Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif
Before introducing al-Bustānī's Encyclopedia and to better grasp the difference between classical and modern dictionaries and encyclopedias, we begin with a brief overview of the development of Arabic lexicography (dictionaries and encyclopedias) in the Arab world. The most intriguing question as regards the evolution of Arabic dictionaries is how entries were arranged. There are three types of dictionary arrangement. The first is al-Khalīl's method. Al-Khalīl (d. 110-170/718-786) entitled his lexicon Kitāb al-ʿAyn (the Book of the Letter ʿAyn), which was named after the letter of the alphabet with which the work starts. Al-Khalīl introduced the phonetic order of the alphabet, a system that was unknown to Arabic philological tradition up to then, and is based on the different articulations of consonant phonemes. The phonetic model was adopted by several lexicographers such as Ibn Durayd (223-323/837-934).
The second arrangement is by rhyme which was used systematically by al- Jawharī (d. 393/1003). In his Tāj al-Lugha wa-Ṣiḥāḥ al-ʿArabiyya (“The Crown of the Arabic Language and its Correctness”) the sections are arranged according to the last letter of the root form. Ibn Manẓūr (630-711/1232-1311) was perhaps the best known successor of al-Jawharī. The third and most contemporary arrangement is alphabetical order which was used by al-Zamakhsharī (467-538/1074-1144) in his Asās al-Balāgha (“The Basis of Rhetoric”). Alphabetical order became the method of choice in the nineteenth century, as shown below.Footnote 11 According to Pellat (2012) “In the sense of a work dealing with all the sciences and arts, the idea of an encyclopaedia was not expressed in Classical Arabic, and it was not until the nineteenth century that the expression dāʾirat al-maʿārif” “circle of items of knowledge” of items of knowledge” was coined, corresponding approximately to the etymological meaning of the word current in Western languages, and not until the twentieth that a neologism, mawsūʿa, emerged, which contains an idea of breadth, of wide coverage”.Footnote 12
Nevertheless, Pellat also notes that encyclopedic writing in the Muslim world was composed from the third/ninth and the fourth/tenth centuries onward. One key work is Kitāb al-Ḥayawān (The Book of Animals) by al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868-9), which is far from being a zoological dictionary. It differs considerably from ʿAjāʾib al-Makhlūqāt (“The Wonders of Creation”) by al-Qazwīnī (600-682/1203-1283), which contains an alphabetical series of notices concerning animals in the section on the description of the universe dealing with terrestrial matters. Ḥayāt al-Ḥayawān al-Kubrā (“The Comprehensive Book of Animal Life”) of al-Damīrī (742-808/1341-1405) is a true zoological encyclopaedia adhering to the author's alphabetical classification. It is striking for the division of the entries into philological remarks and descriptions of the animal. Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889) Adab al-Kātib (“Manual for Secretary”) classifies knowledge into philological disciplines, applied sciences, techniques of public works, principles of jurisprudence, history and ethics. Al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) covers human knowledge in a rich and diverse work outside of Islam and follows a classification of the sciences that was well-known in the Western Middle Ages.
In the medieval era, al-Nuwayrī (677-732/1279-1332) compiled Nihāyat al-ʿArab fī Funūn al-Adab (“The Aim of the Intelligent in the Arat of Literature”) that purportedly contains all the information a kātib taking on important responsibilities would need to possess: cosmography, zoology, botany, ethics and history. Finally, al-Qalqashandī (d. 821/1418) produced an encyclopedia called Ṣubḥ al-Aʿshā (“The Dawning Light for the Blind”). Thus Arab lexicography developed constantly throughout the centuries. However, the first attempt to produce an encyclopedia enabling its readers to adapt to modern scientific progress was only made by Buṭrus al-Bustānī in the second half of the nineteenth century. This Encyclopedia was Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif.
In the introduction to the Encyclopedia,Footnote 13 al-Bustānī states that the needs of nations have changed and that a range of responses should be put into practice to adapt to modern times.Footnote 14 One of these is an encyclopedia, which is a source of knowledge (both cultural and linguistic) in various fields that nations need for their development, such as agriculture, industry, commerce, science and technology. Like other intellectuals of the Nahḍa he believed that an encyclopedia was a wellspring of cultural richness and that its readers could acquire the foundational principles of politics, law and justice which would thus serve to educate the people. He believed it would also ameliorate the character and habits of individuals as well as the nation as a whole. Al-Bustānī saw a direct connection between the revival of Arabic language and culture and the transformation of Arab society into a civilised modern society. He argued that the West had developed encyclopedias and dictionaries to encourage the process of modernisationFootnote 15 and that it was time for the Arabic people (ahl al-ʿarabiyya) to recognise the merits of this literary genre.
Al-Bustānī's Encyclopedia includes entries from eight different fields: (1) theology and philosophy (2) political science/law (3) history and geography, Greek archeology and mythology (4) mathematics including algebra and engineering (5) the physical sciences such as chemistry and astronomy (6) the natural sciences such as botany, medicine, natural resources, and natural phenomena (7) language and literature including rhetoric, poetry, and composition (8) arts and technologies including architecture, music, agriculture, hunting, production of natural resources, publishing, printing, commerce, etc.Footnote 16 The overarching aim was to be a general work both scholars and the less educated could refer to, and serve as a compendium of Arabic and Western culture. Al-Bustānī acknowledged that he encountered considerable difficulties in collecting information about the people, places and terminology used in his encyclopedia and noted that he mainly drew on Western encyclopedias.
Al-Bustānī arranged the entries alphabetically, which he believed would be more intuitive to the reader.Footnote 17 As it was mentioned previously in medieval dictionaries such as Ibn Manẓūrʾs (630-711/1311-1232) Lisān al-ʿArab or al-Fīrūzābādī's (726-817/1326-1414), al-Qamūs al-Muḥīṭ, on which al-Bustānī relied in his work (see Section 4), used a rhyming order based on the final letters and not the initials.Footnote 18 Al-Shidyāq another prominent intellectual of the Nahḍa, was also in favour of dropping the rhyming order and replacing it with the normal alphabetical order.Footnote 19 For instance, in al-Bustānī's Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif, he writes the word ibn “son”, which in the classical dictionary appeared under the root bnw, under the letter alif (or hamza).
At the end of the introduction al-Bustānī discusses the use and rules of transliteration, stating it serves to bridge between Arabic and European languages. For example, in writing names, places and people, such as أخِينُعَم he uses the transliteration (Ahinoʿam). Translations are also provided; for instance the English “stadium” is listed next to the word إستادة whereas both the French translation “encre” and the English translation “ink” are listed in the entry for the word ḥibr.Footnote 20
3. Al-Bustānī's View on the State of the Arabic Language
Al-Bustānī's perspective on the state of the Arabic language is reflected in his works. In his lecture Khuṭba fī Ādāb al-ʿArab,Footnote 21 he pointed out that Arabic is one of the most ancient languages in the world, as well as one of the most complete and distinguished; the language of Adam and Eve in their earthly paradise.Footnote 22 Despite revolutions and historical events, the Arabic language has been preserved from damage and division. In al-Bustānī's opinion its linguistic richness makes Arabic the first among other languages, living or dead. The spread of the language and the number of Arabic speakers have made it the world's key language. Even though Arabs tend to use European languages, the Qurʾān and the dissemination of Arabic writings will always preserve the strength of the Arabic language.
However, al-Bustānī also criticises the number of antiquated terms that appear in Arabic dictionaries. For example, the word asad “lion”, in the classical fieldFootnote 23 has approximately 500 synonyms and there are roughly 1,000 words for jamal “camel”. Al-Bustānī's position is that in modern times, there is no need for such a diversity since the camel is no longer the prime means of transportation. Thus, in spite of the lexical richness of the Arabic language, changes are still needed. Although European languages can compensate for lacunae in Arabic words, Arabic lexemes need to be adapted to incorporate contemporary meanings.
In his perspective, a dictionary or an encyclopedia can enable Arabic speakers to express themselves in their own language without relying on foreign languages or using spoken Arabic (i.e., Arabic dialects). Nevertheless, al-Bustānī also makes it clear that classical dictionaries are still essential and enriching. This suggests that al-Bustānī wanted to orient language in a more instrumentalist direction that would focus on those definitions most relevant to modern life. However, he recognised that he could not ignore the richness of the language referenced in classical dictionaries.
He notes that linguistic reforms must include syntax and morphology. He underscores that methodologies of traditional grammarians are complicated and that the rules, the terminology, and the lengthy explanations detract from acquiring a grasp of the fundamental principles of Arabic grammar such that in his opinion no one can be said to truly dominate the Arabic language and its grammatical rules, which are primarily learned by rote.Footnote 24 Al-Bustānī's most virulent critique was that as as result, the Arabic language and other sciences are declining.
4. Objectives and Methodology
The next sections examine how al-Bustānī implemented his theory in practice, and the solutions he put forward to fight what he considered to be the decadence of the Arabic language. We elaborate on how he resolved the difficulties of the grammatical material and the methods he employed when coining lexical items.
The literature on this topic tends to relate only generally to al-Bustānī's work on the lexicon and to a lesser extent on his innovations in grammar. Lázaro Durán (1985) examined al-Bustānī's view of Arabic as reflected in his Khuṭba fī Ādāb al-ʿArab. He reviews al-Bustānīʿs grammatical and lexical work but does not elaborate on their content or possible contribution. Jandora (1984) states that most of al-Bustānī's works in the lexicography field were innovative in their concept and arrangement, without further explanation. Jandora mentions that al-Bustānī published the grammar book Miftāḥ al-Miṣbāḥ, but does not refer to its content. Glaß (2008, 2010, 2012) does not deal with grammar either, although she mentions that al-Bustānī (like other intellectuals) contributed to the development of the Arabic lexicon by borrowing words from European languages, the translation of foreign words and phrases, and the semantic extension of classical Arabic words. Patel (2010) noted that during the Nahḍa nearly all intellectuals took an active interest in Arabic and can be divided into “conservative reformists” such as al-Bustānī and “liberal reformists” such as al-Shidyāq.Footnote 25 The question remains as to whether al-Bustānī indeed can be regarded as a “conservative reformist” since it help assess whether al-Bustānī was successful in rendering the language more appropriate for the modern age.
We reviewed all the entries in the six volumes of Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif. In particular, we collected all the entries which we considered to relate to the Arabic language and classified them into two main groups: (a) grammar; (b) lexicon (we excluded words which are not technical terms, names of places or persons). In the analysis of the grammatical entries we first examined their content, which in our opinion partly relies on al-Bustānī's earlier grammar books Miṣbāḥ al-Ṭālib fī Baḥth al-Maṭālib (1854) and Miftāḥ al-Miṣbāḥ fī l-Ṣarf wa-l-Naḥw (1862). These entries were then compared to works by traditional grammarians to shed light on the ways in which they contributed to the revival of Arabic.
In terms of the lexicon, the entries were compared to classical dictionaries such as Lisān al-ʿArab and al-Qāmūs al-Muḥiṭ by al-Fīrūzābādī, which are considered by JandoraFootnote 26 and IssaFootnote 27 as authorities on the classical meanings of words.Footnote 28 This comparison enabled us to differentiate between two types of entries: modern words that did not exist in Classical Arabic, and classical Arabic words which preserved their original meanings in al-Bustānī's time. This will serve to show that although al-Bustānī preserved the original definitions in classical dictionaries he historicised the terms to correspond to changes and technical innovations.
5. Reforms in Arabic Grammar?
There are 23 entries referring to grammatical terms in Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif. The syntactic terms are: ittibāʿ “(lit.) following”, which according to al-Bustānīʿs definition can be also translated as “agreement/concord”; ittisāʿ “latitude” (see below); ittiṣāl “connectedness”; ikhtiṣāṣ “specification” (see below); ishtighāl ” (lit.) “occupation” (see below); ism “noun”; tābiʿ “appositive”; ikhtiṣār “shortening”; ibtidāʾ “beginning”/istiftāḥ “beginning”/istiʾnāf “beginning (mostly of a new clause or sentence)”, according to al-Bustānī the three terms are synonyms; istithnāʾ exception”; istifhām “interrogative”; istiqbāl “future tense”; isnād “the assignment of the predicate to the subject”; ishāra “demonstrative pronoun”;iḍāfa “annexation”; iʿrāb “the declension of case endings”.
The morphological terms are: ishmām “the pronunciation of u with the traces of i”. imāla “pronunciations of a shaded toward e”. The morphological terms are: idghām “assimilation”; ishtiqāq “deviation”.
Al-Bustānī addressed those grammatical issues which in his opinion had the greatest practical value for ordinary language, and cut down on grammatical issues discussed by traditional grammarians. Two main methods characterise the grammatical entries written by al-Bustānī. The first is ikhtiṣār “shortening”, where al-Bustānī simply quotes selective parts of the grammatical definitions provided by traditional grammarians. In some cases, he mentions the names of these grammarians and also refers to the grammatical differences between the school of Kūfa and the school of Baṣra. Here, three grammatical terms will be discussed to illustrat this method: iḍāfa “annexation”; ikhtiṣāṣ “specification” and idghām “assimilation”. We first present al-Bustānīʿs definition and then indicate the similarities and differences between al-Bustānī and traditional grammarians. The second method is his use of the same examples provided by traditional grammarians, except for Qurʾānic or poetic verses. This method is illustrated below by the terms ittisāʿ “extent” and ishtighāl “occupation”.
A good example of the first methodology is the term iḍāfa “annexation” – a fundamental syntactic structure used in all discourse.Footnote 29 The entry begins with a short definition. Al-Bustānī explains that iḍāfa means the attribution of a noun to another noun, whereas a preposition should be reconstructed. For example, in ghulamu zaydin “the servant of Zayd”, the underlying structure is ghulamun li-zaydin “a servant of Zayd”. The nomen rectum (al-muḍāf) governs the nomen regens (al-muḍāf ilayhi) and causes it to always be in the genitive. Al-Bustānī then distinguishes between two types of annexation: maʻnawiyya “the logical annexation” which is also called al-maḥḍa “the real annexation” and lafẓiyya “the verbal annexation” which is called ghayr maḥḍa “improper annexation”.Footnote 30 Proper annexation has a specific communicative value, which is to determine the noun which serves as the muḍāf by annexing a defined muḍāf ilayhi; e.g., ghulamu zaydin “the servant of Zayd”. It can also specify/qualify the muḍāf by annexing to it an indefinite muḍāf ᾽ilayhi, e.g., thawbu rajulin “the clothes of the man”. Al-Bustānī states that proper annexation must fulfil a number of criteria: an adjective cannot serve as muḍāf, and if the reconstructed preposition is min “of”, it indicates that the muḍāf ilayhi is the genus or material of the muḍāf. For example, khātimu dhahabin “a golden ring” can reformulated as khātimun min dhahabin “a ring made of gold”. The reformulated preposition can also be fī “in” when an adverb of place serves as muḍāf ilayhi, for example raḥīlu ramaḍāna “journey during Ramadan”.
The second type is al-iḍāfa al-lafẓiyya “verbal annexation” where an adjective or a present participle functions as muḍāf. For example, the underlying structure of ḍāribu zaydin “The one who strikes Zayd” is ḍāribun zaydan, where the active participle governs the direct object. At the end of the entry, al-Bustānī mentions two additional types: aṣ-ṣifa al-mushabbaha “the adjective that acts like a verb”, for example al-ḥasanu l-wajhi “The man whose face is handsome”; however, al-Bustānī does not elaborate further and refers the reader to grammar books for further details. He also mentions the annexation of numerals (iḍāfat al-ʻadad), which is part of the ʻadad entry in the part of the Encyclopedia that was never completed.
A comparison of al-Bustānīʾs definition of annexation to grammarians' definitions shows that he cites the main features discussed by traditional grammarians and distinguishes between two types of annexation:Footnote 31 proper and improper.Footnote 32 However, he does not refer to issues mentioned by traditional grammarians such as:
(1) Grammarians refer to the literal meaning of the word iḍāfa. SuyūṭīFootnote 33 lists at least seven different meanings of this word, such as iḍāfa can mean imāla “inclining”; e.g., ḍāfati sh-shamsu li-l-ghurūbi “The sun sets in the West”.Footnote 34 SībawayhiFootnote 35 uses the term iḍāfa to mean nisba “relation”, “attribution”. Sībawayhi calls this yāʾ an-nisba, which relates a person to a city, or to a certain tribe yāʾ al-iḍāfa.
(2) Al-Bustānī explains the deletion of the tanwīn from the muḍāf as takhfīf “lightening”. Grammarians,Footnote 36 however, explain it as ittisāl “connection”, while adding that tanwīn denotes infiṣāl “separation”; i.e., the two components that compound the annexation are disconnected.
(3) Al-Bustānī does not refer to structures such as wāḥidu/waḥīdu ummihi “a single child of his mother”. Though the muḍāf ilayhi is definite, the annexation is semantically indefinite.Footnote 37
(4) In the encyclopedic entry al-Bustānī mentions briefly that muḍāf ilayhi is always in the genitive. In his grammar book Miṣbāḥ al-Miftāḥ Footnote 38 he explains that the original muḍāf was deleted and the muḍāf ilayhi took its syntactic position; e.g., jāʾa rabbuka “(lit.) Your Lord came” should be reconstructed as jāʾa amru rabbika “The command of your Lord came”. The noun amr was deleted and rabb took its place, whereas the suffixed pronoun -ka is in the position of a noun in the genitive.
This is also mentioned by the grammarians, but Ibn YaʿīshFootnote 39 suggests that the preposition was deleted and that the muḍāf ilayhi replaces it.
(5) Al-Bustānī mentions briefly in Miṣbāḥ al-Miftāḥ Footnote 40 that the muḍāf ilayhi follows immediately after the muḍāf; however, in some cases a syntactic component is introduced between the components, for example antum tārikū lī ṣāḥibi “you are leaving to me my friend/owner”. This issue is not mentioned in the encyclopedia entry. The separation between the muḍāf and the muḍāf ilayhi is a more complex issue among grammarians. Al-Anbārī's book al-Inṣāf Footnote 41 provides numerous examples showing the range of syntactic elements that can be inserted between the muḍāf and the muḍāf ilayhi.
(6) al-Bustānī does not refer in any of his works to the deletion of muḍāf or the muḍāf ilayhi.Footnote 42
(7) It is inferred from al-Bustānī's definition in the entry that in annexation a noun is mostly annexed to another noun. In Miṣbāḥ al-Miftāḥ Footnote 43 he mentions briefly that sometimes a clause can serve as muḍāf ilayhi; e.g., qumtu ḥīna qāma zaydun “I stood up when Zayd stood up”. The grammarians elaborate on the syntactic components which can serve as muḍāf such as a relative clause, a verbal noun, an active participle, the numbers three to ten, various adverbs kull; ayy; baʿḍ; kilā and kiltā; adjectives in the form of afʿal; ḥasba(ka) (and its related words) “is sufficient for you”.Footnote 44 The syntactic components which can serve as muḍāf ilayhi are verbal clauses (see example below) under specific conditions.Footnote 45
Another example is the term ikhtiṣāṣ “specification”. This term does not appear in al-Bustānīʿs grammar book Miftāḥ al-Miṣbāḥ, but it does appear in his earlier book Miṣbāḥ al-Ṭālib fī Baḥth al-Maṭālib (1854). In the encyclopedia entry al-BustānīFootnote 46 first refers to the meaning of this term in the rhetorical branch of al-bayān,Footnote 47 which is al-qaṣr “restriction”, “limitation”. However, no further information is given because as al-Bustānī noted, he intended to devote a specific entry to this term. As a grammatical term it means qaṣru l-ḥukmi ʿalā baʿḍi afrādi l-jinsi “the restriction of a specific character on some members of the same class”. For example anā afʿalu dhālika ayyuhā r-rajulu “I will do it, O man” (meaning himself) and naḥnu l-ʿaraba aqrā n-nāsi li-ḍ-ḍayfi “we, the Arabs, the most hospitable”; namely the Arabs are specified by this character trait among all men and among all peoples. He then notes that ikhtiṣāṣ yakūnu manqūlan ʿani n-nidāʾ aw ghayra manqūlin “The specification is related to the vocative or not”, as shown in the two examples above. Al-Bustānī also adds that there are various rules concerning ikhtiṣāṣ, which one can read in traditional grammar books. At the end he mentions the term ikhtiṣāṣ an-nāʿit “the specification of the qualifier”; for example, jismun abyaḍu “white body [corpus albicans]”.
Although the most dominant feature in this entry is the brevity of the definition, the meaning of the term ikhtiṣāṣ remains incomprehensible. This is because al-Bustānī does not clarify the relationship between ikhtiṣāṣ and the vocative. It should be mentioned that the definition of this term in Miṣbāḥ al-Ṭālib fī Baḥth al-Maṭālib Footnote 48 is not much clearer. He says that ikhtiṣāṣ resembles the vocative in formulation but he does not explain how or why. He only says that ikhtiṣāṣ is distinguished from the vocative in three ways: (1) the specifying component is preceded by a component (such as a pronoun), (2) the specifying component must be definite, (3) A vocative particle never precedes ikhtiṣāṣ.
A comparison of al-Bustānī's entry to the grammarians' explanation shows that like the grammarians, he mentions the two structures naḥnu l-ʿaraba aqrā n-nāsi li-ḍ-ḍayfi, and anā afʿalu dhālika ayyuhā r-rajulu. However, he does not address the following issues:
(1) The structures mentioned above usually begin with a pronoun in the first or the second person followed by the specifying noun. The nouns that can be used and function as specifying nouns are: banū fulān “the sons of John Doe” (e.g., banū dārimin “the sons of dārim”), maʻshar + the noun (e.g., maʿshar al-anbiyāʾ “the band of prophets”, ahl al-bayt “kinsfolk” (e.g., salmānu minnā ahla al-bayti “Salmān is one of us, the kinsfolk of the prophet”) and āl-fulān “the household of John Doe”.Footnote 49
(2) The specifying noun must be a definite noun and cannot be a demonstrative pronoun, or more precisely ism mubham “ambiguous noun” or nouns that have a “vague signification”, as for example inni hādhā afʿalu kadhā wa-kadhā “I, this one, will do this and that”.Footnote 50
(3) Grammarians show that ikhtiṣāṣ and nidāʾ are connected since in both structures the specifying noun (al-makhṣūṣ/al-mukhtaṣṣ) and the addressed noun (al-munādā) are in the accusative case. However the specifying nouns in the structure of ikhtiṣāṣ are in the accusative case not because they are preceded (or should be preceded) by vocative particles, but simply because the verb that governs them is omitted just as it is omitted in vocative structures (see below no. 5).Footnote 51
(4) ikhtiṣāṣ is used in Arabic to qualify a pronoun. For example, the pronoun naḥnu can have various meanings. By adding a specifying noun to this pronoun such as maʿshar quraysh “the tribe of Quraysh”, the meaning the pronoun becomes clearer and more specified.Footnote 52
(5) The specifying noun according to traditional Arab grammarians is in the accusative, because of the supposition of the elided verb aʿnī which governs the noun in the “we, the Arabs, the most hospitable”, and should be analyzed as follows:
naḥnu = mubtadaʿ (subject)/ l-ʿaraba = mafʿūl bihi (direct object of a deleted verb)/ aqrā n-nāsi li-ḍ-ḍayfi = khabar (predicate).Footnote 53
The third example is the term idghām, which in Arabic morphology denotes the insertion of one letter in another consonant (idrāju ḥarfin fī ākhar); namely assimilation. Al-BustānīFootnote 54 mentions that the fundamental condition for assimilation is that the first letter must be vocalised by sukūn and the second is vocalised by a vowel. This assimilation process can be illustrated in the verbal noun madd “extension”. This type of assimilation is called al-idghām aṣ-ṣaghīr, because it involves one action, the insertion of one letter in another consonant. Another type involves the deletion of the vowel or moving it (to another letter). This type is called al-idghām al-kabīr because it involves two actions: the first is the loss of the vowel and the second is the assimilation of the letter. Idghām contrasts with its opposite, the so-called al-fakk (lit.) “to break up” and al-iẓhār (lit.) “to make visible”, al-fakk refers to cases in which the letter which should be assimilated appears, for example lā tamdud “do not extend/stretch” (instead of lā tamudda). Al-iẓhār means to leave the original form, for example iẓṭilām “to suffer injustice” (instead of iẓẓilām). Al-Bustānī mentions that the term idghām was used by the Kūfan school, whereas the Baṣran school called it iddighām. He concludes the encyclopedia entry by saying that the term idghām has exhaustive morphological/phonological details. These details, which are discussed extensively by the traditional grammarians, are left out of the encyclopedia entry. In al-Bustānī's grammar books Miṣbāḥ al-Ṭālib fī Baḥth al-Maṭālib Footnote 55 and Miṣbāḥ al-Miftāḥ Footnote 56 he refers to the following issues: the assimilation of two identical radicals (iddighām al-mutajānisayni), for example yafirru “he will run away” and the assimilation of two mutual radicals (iddighām al-mutaqāribayni) in particular in verbs of the form iftaʿala, for example iḍṭaraba “become disturbed”.
These issues are of course discussed by grammarians alongside other issues that are not mentioned by al-Bustānī, such as the assimilation of khāʾ in ghayn. Al-MubarradFootnote 57 says that we may say islaghghanamaka (written as one word اسلغَّنَمَك ) instead of islakh ghanamaka “skin your sheep”. Another example is the assimilation of nūn in rāʾ or lām, for example: man rraʾayta (من رَّأَيْتَ ) “whom did you see?”, aḥsirraʾyaka (written in one word أَحسِرَّأْيَكَ ) instead of ʾaḥsin raʾyaka “be good [in expressing] your opinion”.
The second method used by al-Bustānī in his grammatical exegeses is the use of examples. These examples are the same ones as provided by traditional grammarians. Furthermore, he rarely cites Qurʾānic verses or poetic verses as examples. A good illustration of this method is the entry of ittisāʿ “breadth”, “extent”.Footnote 58 This term is also used in Arabic rhetoric, and means elaboration in explaining specific poetic verses.Footnote 59
The term ittisāʿ is also called saʿat al-kalām and the ittisāʿ al-kalām or tawassuʿ al-kalām “latitude of speech” by traditional grammarians. This grammatical term is not mentioned in Miṣbāḥ al-Ṭālib fī Baḥth al-Maṭālib (1854) or in Bustānīʿs grammar book Miftāḥ al-Miṣbāḥ. It is worth noting that grammarians do not discuss this term in a specific chapter, but mention it in the context of various grammatical issues.Footnote 60 Instead of collecting all the structures discussed by the traditional grammarians al-Bustānī refers in an unorganised way to a few structures which make the entry difficult to follow.
For example, he refers to adverbs of time and place functioning as the direct object (ittisāʿ aẓ-ẓarf “the latitude of the adverb”), but the preposition fī “in” is not reconstructed. Al-Bustānī does not give any examples of this but then refers to a structure when an adverb of time is annexed to another word; e.g., māliki yawmi d-dīn (Q 1:4) “Master of the Day of Judgment”, whereas the underlying structure should be mālikin fī yawmi d-dīn “Master on the Day of Judgment”. Even more complicated to understand particularly due to the lack of examples is his reference to a structure in which a syntactic component is deleted. Though the reader expects that al-Bustānī will mention the most common example of deletion mentioned by the grammarians, wa-sʾali l-qaryata (Q 12:82) “Ask the people of the village” he does not refer to it in this context. According to grammarians wa-sʾali l-qaryata should be reconstructed as wa-sʾali ahla l-qaryat. However, the nomen regens takes the place of the deleted nomen rectum, governed by the verb (ask) which causes it to be in the accusative.Footnote 61 Furthermore, Sībawayhi restricts deletion by saying that the deletion is allowed li-ʻilmi l-mukhāṭabi bi-l-maʿnā “[The deletion is only allowed] when the addressee understands the complete meaning of the utterance;” i.e., deletion can occur when it does not distort the meaning.
Another example is the term ishtighāl (lit. “occupation”). A basic explanation for the term ishtighāl can be found in Miṣbāḥ al-Ṭālib fī Baḥth al-Maṭālib Footnote 62 where two types of ishtighāl are defined. In the first type a noun is preposed and the verb is postposed, whereas it governs the suffixed pronoun (which functions as the direct object of the verb), e.g., zaydun ḍarabtuhu “Zayd – I struck him”. Thus, the suffixed pronoun -hu is the component governed by the verb (fa-l-hāʾ maʿmūl ḍarabtu), and it refers to Zayd (wa-huwa ʿāʾidun ilā zaydin).
In the second type a noun is preposed and the verb is postposed, whereas it governs a noun with an annexation structure, while the nomen regens (i.e., a suffixed pronoun) refers back to the preposed noun, e.g, zaydun ḍarabtu akhāhu “Zayd – I struck his brother”. The verb in the first example governs the suffixed pronoun which refers to the preposed noun. In the second example the verb governs the muḍāf (akh) to which the pronoun (-hu), which refers to the preposed noun, is suffixed.
Al-Bustānī then states that the preposed noun can be in the nominative or in the accusative, although it usually depends on the component that precedes it. For example, the preposed noun must be in the nominative when it preceded by idhā al-fujāʾiyya “idhā indicating something unexpressed; e.g., kharajtu fa-idhā zaydun yaḍribuhu ghulāmuhu “I went out and suddenly Zayd, ʿhis servant hit him”.
This explanation of the term ishtighāl with some slight changes can be found in Miftāḥ al-Miṣbāḥ Footnote 63 and in the encyclopediac entry ishtighāl.Footnote 64
Comparison of al-Bustānīʿs definition with that of the grammariansFootnote 65 shows that there is not much difference and he uses the same examples. However, al-Bustānī only mentions one example in which the nominative case when the preposed noun is obligatory (when it is preceded by idhā al-fujāʾiyya), one instance in which the nominative case is obligatory (when it is preceded by the conditional particle in) and one instance where the accusative is possible (when it is preceded by the interrogative pronoun a-).
In some entries al-Bustānī reduces his explanation to a few lines without giving any examples. In the entry for istiqbāl Footnote 66 he defines it as: huwa az-zamānu lladhī yaʾtī baʿda waqtika lladhī anta fīhi wa-yuqālu lahu az-zamānu l-wāsiʿu wa-lahu adātāni as-sīn wa-sawfa (…) “This term indicates the time that comes after the time you are in now [i.e., the time that comes later]. It is is also called the extensive time. There are two particles indicating this time: sa- and sawfa”.Footnote 67
Thus overall, al-Bustānī does not eliminate the traditional terms and does not develop new grammatical terms or a new grammatical discourse. One example of this lack of innovation is the use of the same examples mentioned in grammar books. In his entry on ishtighāl he gives the example of zaydan ḍarabtuhu “Zayd – I struck him” and to illustrate the term ikhtiṣāṣ he provides the sentence naḥnu l-ʿaraba aqrā n-nāsi li-ḍ-ḍayfi “we, the Arabs, the most hospitable”. One would have expected him, as an intellectual exposed to modern writing and the author of modern texts, to provide new and more modern examples.
There is ample justification for abbreviating the explanations provided by grammarians. For example, when al-Bustānī defines the term idghām he refers to the most common cases of assimilation. However, it is difficult to determine which details are important or useful. For iḍāfa, one of the main problems students of Arabic face is to identify the annexation structure. Traditional grammars are useful because they state which syntactic components can serve as muḍāf or muḍāf ilayhi. Instead of redefining the term annexation by referring to all issues in a simplified way, al-Bustānī neglects these issues in his works. Furthermore, since he simply omits details but keeps the same words as used by grammarians and the same classical terminology, al-Bustānī does not address the complexity of grammatical rules.
6. Reforms in the Arabic Lexicon
During the nineteenth century lexicographers were called upon to respond to tremendous changes and challenges in various fields such as politics, printing, journalism, science and literature stemming from the encounter with the West. The modernisation of the Arabic lexicon was intertwined with efforts to draw on classical Arabic to generate neologisms and preserve their linguistic heritage. Intellectuals engaged in a search for appropriate Arabic terminology to denote Western technological, and cultural and scientific innovations and express new ideas.
Al-Ṭahṭāwī, SawaieFootnote 68 noted that one way he coined lexical items was through the Arabicisation of French terms. This method amounted to the appropriation and adaptation of French terminology to the Arabic phonological and morphological systems. These include jurnāl “newspaper”, kulīj “college” and bulvār “boulevard.” The second method involved the “revival” of Arabic terms from the classical or colloquial language whose ranges of meaning al-Ṭahṭāwī expanded to represent newly encountered ideas and things. For example, in describing theatre and opera he suggested that “spectacle” could be rendered as manẓar.
Al-Bustānī's approach to the lexicon did not differ greatly from al-Ṭahṭāwī's strategy:
(a) He imported European, but mostly Greek and Latin words into Arabic. These include: istāda “stadium”;Footnote 69 arkhūn “archon”;Footnote 70 akādimiyya “academy”;Footnote 71 bitrūl “oil”;Footnote 72 burt “port”;Footnote 73 bank “bank”;Footnote 74 tilifūn “telephone”.Footnote 75
(b) Al-Bustānī also infused classical usages with new meanings, for example:
• ibra Footnote 76 means needle. Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 77 defines it as dhirāʿ “arm (of the body)” or as ʿaẓm al-ʿurqūb “Achilles' tendon”. Al-FīrūzābādīFootnote 78 defines it as misallatu l-ḥadīd “large needle made of iron”.
• tabannā Footnote 79 means adoption. Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 80 mentions it in the expression tabannā s-sanāmu, i.e., to become fat. Al-FīrūzābādīFootnote 81 defines it as ittakhadhahu bnan “he took him as a son”.
• jarīda Footnote 82 means newspaper. Al-Fīrūzābādī does not mention this word. Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 83 defines it as khaylun lā rajjāla fīhā “horses without riders”.
• jihāz Footnote 84 means apparatus or system. Al-Fīrūzābādī does not mention this word. Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 85 defines it as things which are needed (equipment).
• jawāz Footnote 86 means passport. Both Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 87 and Al-FīrūzābādīFootnote 88 define it as ṣakku l-musāfir “the document of the traveller”.
• ḥabl Footnote 89 means rope. Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 90 defines it as tawāṣul “continuity” or wiṣāl “reunion”. Al-FīrūzābādīFootnote 91 defines it as ribāṭ “ribbon”, “band”.
• iʿlān Footnote 92 means advertising (especially in newspapers). Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 93 defines it as “announcement”.
A comparison of purely Arabic lexemes whose meanings have not been obscured by foreign etymologies and have no specific “flavour” (religious, historical, political, geographic, etc.) with classical equivalents revealed three methods: Ommiting references to traditional sources; Reducing morphological issues; Referring to various languages, religions and cultures.
As for the first method it involves omitting references to traditional sources such as Qurʾānic exegesis, grammarians, pre-Islamic poetry and old lexicography. IssaFootnote 94 noted that “Arabic lexicography usually operated under a solid - mainly Qurʾānic - notion of what constitutes a legitimate source for lexical elaboration. However, through his lexicon (al-Muḥīṭ), al-Bustānī made it possible to speak about the Arabic language without having to refer in any direct way to the Qurʾān”.
This distancing from the Qurʾān's interpretation was also reflected and motivated by al-Bustānī's political and social vision that Arabic language and culture are not only recognised/connected to Islam but in fact developed before it. Especially after the civil war of 1860 in Mount Lebanon and Damascus, he called for Syrian waṭaniyya (patriotism) with Arabic culture and heritage at its core. He felt, as an Arab Christian living in a Muslim society, that the Tanẓīmāt period (the Ottoman reforms, 1839-76) and the idea of Ottomanism were the best political framework to achieve Syrian-Arab non-sectarian identity. He believed that a pre-Islamic (Arab) cultural identity would transcend the sectarian and religious differences in the region of Greater Syria. Al-Bustānī thought that in this society, individuals would identify with one another on the basis of a common language, cultural heritage, and homeland and would act as one regardless of religious affiliation.Footnote 95 Thus he aimed to create an Arab culture and language that was suitable to all Arabs regardless of their sectarian affiliation. At the same time, as can be seen in his Encyclopedia, he did not reject Islam nor the Qurʾān entirely.Footnote 96
The first method can be illustrated by the entry for the word burj “tower”, “castle”. Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 97 provides two definitions of this word. The first is the 12 signs of the zodiac and the second is fortress or castles. Notice that Ibn Manẓūr relies on exegesis in his definition when he refers to al-FarrāʾFootnote 98 (and later to al-Zajjāj), who states that there is some debate as to the meaning of this lexeme. In Q 15:16, burūj denotes nujūm “stars” or al-quṣūr fī s-samāʾ “castle in the sky” and in Q 4:78 it denotes fortress. He then mentions that according to al-Layth Ibn al-Muẓaffar burūj means sūru l-madīnati wa-l-ḥiṣni: buyūtun tubnā ʿalā s-sūri, wa-qad tusammā buyūtun tubnā ʿalā nawāḥī arkāni l-qaṣri burūjan “the city wall and the fortress: houses built on the wall, and houses built on the sides of the castle's corners are called fortresses”. Al-Fīrūzābādī,Footnote 99 on the other hand, provide a laconic definition saying that al-burj means ar-rukn “basis” “corner” and al-ḥiṣn “fortress”.
Al-Bustānī first defines the word burj as al-qaṣr wa-l-ḥiṣn; namely, round or square structures that can stand alone or be supported by adjacent buildings or can be a feature on top of a large structure or building. Most towers are located on the walls of a city. He indicates that historically, the people of Tuscany were probably the first to build towers for protection. Then the Romans continued the tradition of building towers on walls. Al-Bustānī explains that towers are also found in palaces, where they had different functions such as prisons.
Al-Bustānī preserves the same definition as found in the age-old Arabic tradition of lexicography; however the encyclopedic entry burj is longer and more detailed than those in most classical Arabic dictionaries. Whereas classical dictionaries typically provide limited information, which make it difficult for the reader to grasp the meaning, al-Bustānī presents extensive historical and comparative meanings in greater depth and conveys the most pertinent knowledge on the subject. He does so by developing the entry starting from the earliest point in time and ending in modern times. Ibn Manẓūr, on the other hand, repeats himself. He provides a fundamental definition and then refers the reader to different commentators, philologists or grammarians who basically say the same thing. Thus al-Bustānī may have wanted his readers to become more knowledgeable but in a condensed fashion more appropriate to modern times. Whereas lexicographers were attuned to the classical knowledge of the Islamic world, al-Bustānī wanted his readers to be cognizant of modern trends.
Another example is the word āl “family”, “clan”, “companions.” Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 100 defines this word as ahl “family” explaining that the letter hāʾ in ahl was replaced by alif or wāw, such that the word should have been written as أال or أول (and then became آل ). The same definition is found in al-Bustānī's EncyclopediaFootnote 101 where he also mentions that this word was annexed to the names of the head of families/clans, e.g., āl ʿuthmān. However, al-Bustānī does not include the additional explanation provided by Ibn Manẓūr: (1) The diminutive form of ahl is uwayl (أُوَيْل ) or uhayl (أُهَيْل ). (2) A poetic verse by al-Farazdaq is cited. (3) Ibn Manẓūr engages in an exhaustive discussion of the expression āl Muḥammad saying that it denotes the companions of the prophet Muḥammad or ahl dīn Muḥammad “the people, who follow Muḥammad's religion”. (4) The diminutive form is mentioned again, whereas this time al-Farrāʾ and al-KisāʾīFootnote 102 are mentioned.
The final example is the word burhān “proof”. Al-Bustānī's definitionFootnote 103 is not very different from the definition provided by Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 104 or al-Fīrūzābādī.Footnote 105 However, Ibn Manẓūr states that in a ḥadīth (transmitted from Abū Mālik al-Ḥārith Ibn ʿĀṣim al-Ashʿarī) it is said aṣ-ṣadaqatu burhānun “the charity/almsgiving is a proof” which al-Bustānī does not mention.
The second method consists of cutting down on references to morphology, for example in the word ibn “son”. Unlike the dictionary entry by Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 106 which focuses on the morphological aspects of this word, al-Bustānī's entryFootnote 107 provides other information. Both Ibn Manẓūr and al-FīrūzābādīFootnote 108 define ibn “son” as walad “son”, “boy”, “descendant” saying that its root is either bny or bnw. Ibn Manẓūr also refers to the feminine form bint and ibna. Al-Bustānīʾs entry first mentions the basic denotation of this word: ibn denotes a son; namely, a male offspring, a boy or man in relation to his parents and this relation can be denoted by the expression ibn fulān “the son of X”. Then he refers to the additional denotations of this word, for example ibn can be used metaphorically for example when the king calls his subjects his children (abnāʾ) or when characterising someone, someone's lifestyle, occupation or way of life, as in abnāʾ al-ʿilm “the learned” (lit. sons of science). Al-Bustānī ends with a reference to the grammatical/morphological features of the word and states that when the noun ibn is between two proper names the alif should be omitted; e.g., Isḥāq bnu Ibrāhʾīm.
Another example is the word ab “father”. Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 109 does not define the meaning of ab. At the beginning he states that its root is abw, indicating the plural (ābāʾ) and dual (abawāni) form of this lexeme. He then explains the inflection of the dual form when it appears in annexation, by quoting poetic verses. Al-BustānīFootnote 110 mentions two morphological issues. The word ab in annexation takes suffixes in accordance with its grammatical function such that in the nominative it would be abūk, in the accusative abāka and in genitive abīka. Second, the plural form is ābāʾ. ab has several denotations: father, a man who has begotten a child, Christian monks are also addressed as fathers and the title God the father is given to God. In Arabic ab can be used as a surname (kunya) consisting of abū followed by the name of the son.Footnote 111
The third method consists of referring to other languages/sciences/religions in the definition. This method broadened interpretations and meanings used both in the West as well as in local discourse. This was done to educate his readers about changing conceptions, to expose his readers to the scientific knowledge of the time, and to help them to understand different societies. One example is the word aḥad. Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 112 focuses on the difference between aḥad and wāḥid saying that wāḥid is used as an adjective, whereas aḥad is used as a noun and can be used in negations, e.g., mā atānī minhum aḥadun “no one came to me”. Al-FairūzābādīFootnote 113 defines it as yawm mina l-ayyām “a day of the week”, and notes that it has no plural form and it is also used as an attribute of God (Allāhu al-aḥad).
Al-BustānīFootnote 114 defines aḥad, as the first day of the week and notes that the ancient Arabs called it awhad (اوْهَد), namely uṭlub usbūʿ “call/search a week”. He then explains the etymology of this day in English and French. In English it is called Sunday, meaning the sun's day. In French this day is called dimanche because it is the equivalent of “the Lord's day”. He states that Christians also believe that the first day of the week was the day Christ was resurrected, and the first day was the day on which the holy spirit emanated over the church.Footnote 115
Another example is the word bard “cold”. In classical lexicography this word is simply defined as ḍidda l-ḥarr “in contrast to heat” (for example Ibn Manẓūr).Footnote 116 Al-Bustānī also mentions this definition, but adds scientific information, such as what causes cold temperatures and a description of the disease the common cold.Footnote 117
The last example is the word bikr “firstborn”. al-Bustānī's entryFootnote 118 mentions that Abraham left property to his eldest son Isḥaq and the story Jacob robbing Esau of his inheritance. Al-Bustānī then mentions that the most devastating plague of Egypt was the tenth – the death of the Egyptians’ firstborn. Ibn ManẓūrFootnote 119 does not include this information and states that bikr means firstborn or virgin (both men and women).
Conclusion
Although al-Bustānī aimed to write a modern encyclopedia he could not free himself entirely from the classical genre of Arab dictionaries, which he saw as symbolising high Arab culture. Though the Encyclopedia includes modern entries in fields such as science and technology it is also largely focused on biographies, geography and linguistics, similar to classical dictionaries. This is why the word dictionary is also part of the Encyclopedia's title. Thus, Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif was one of the first encyclopedias to reflect the transformations from classical dictionaries to that of a modern encyclopedia.
Al-Bustānī's Encyclopedia innovated as regards lexicology such as his shift from classical Arabic dictionaries not only in terms of the introduction of new words but also the presentation of new topics. Al-Bustānī usually included a Western interpretation and words associated with the needs of modernisation, while adapting them to the local culture. This contrasted with classical dictionaries that typically provided limited information and often left readers unsure of the meaning. Al-Bustānī provided extensive details on meaning and conveyed what he considered to be the state of the art on each subject. He did so by writing entries chronologically from the earliest historical point through to modern times by relying on Western knowledge.
The combination of old Arabic and Western sources is less apparent in his grammatical entries. Al-Bustānī's mainly criticised the length and complexity of traditional grammarians. To simplify these rules he only shortened the content. Though this could be seen as a reform, he did not coin new linguistic terms, did not use Western linguistic terminology, or introduce new examples. Al-Bustānī was proficient in several Western languages and was familiar with other grammatical systems. Therefore his lack of innovation is unclear. Possibly his commitment to preserving the uniqueness of the Arabic language and his realisation that the grammatical systems of Western languages did not coincide with the Arabic grammatical system may account for the disparity between his grammatical entries and his more innovative lexical work.
Al-Bustānī's prime aim was to contribute to the revival of the Arabic language. He did so by creating an authentic local Arab encyclopedia that paved the way for the development of more practical modern language usage. Modernity was the key concept in al-Bustānīʾs ideology because he understood that certain new habits, practices, worldviews, technological innovation, governance, and socioeconomics changes would eventually be adopted in the Arab world. Al-Bustānī felt he needed to find solutions to convince his society to engaging with advances in science and technology. By introducing new modern words in Arabic or by giving existing Arabic words a modern definition he enabled his readers to integrate scientific developments into their daily lives. Although grammar constituted an additional important facet of these language reforms, al-Bustānī was less of an innovator since he relied on traditional grammars and simply deleted parts of the explanations provided by traditional grammarians. Thus, when learning Arabic, people still had to deal with complicated terms and archaic examples that were not used in the texts of their time.
