Machine summary:
in accordance with the demands of a progres• sive civilization and the special needs of separate branches of knowledge: it would be still correct to say that the grammatical structure of the language, as written by educated men in the Arabic world to-day, is essentially the same as that of the language of the Qur'an and the ancient • A paper read before the Panjah University Arabic and Peesian Society, Lahore.
Any serious student of religious history, who desires to specialize in the study of Islam and wants to understand properly the religious character of the Muslim Society and fathom its motive-springs, must learn Arabic; for the Qur'an and the Traditions of the Prophet, which are the two main fountain-heads of the religious and cultural life of the Muslims-not to mention their numerous satellite disciplines-are in Arabic.
If the Arabic language is indispensable for the full and satisfactory understanding of Islam and the Islamic civilization, it is also of consider• able importance from the point of view of Biblical studies; for Arabic has afforded valuable help to scholars in the study of the Old Testament.
The Arabs have always had a great liking for historical narrative; and the vast extent of the literature they produced in this field may be gauged from the fact that when the indefatigable Wiistenfeld made a survey of the Arabic historians, who had flourished during· the first thousand years of Islam, in his well-known work, Die Geschichtsschreiber der Araber und ihre Werke, the total number of authors noted by him came up to 590.