Literary papyri from the University of Utah Arabic papyrus and paper collection

This dissertation is a description of the influence of Classical Arabic grammar on Arabic literature of the first three Islamic centuries. The main argument of this dissertation is that the appearance of Sibawayhi's Kitab in the late second / seventh century obfuscated all grammatical norms that predated it. The traditional description of the Kitab maintains that it is a grammar based on the purest Arabic from the Quran, the bedouin Arabs, and pre-Islamic poetry. This view holds that the work of Sibawayhi and the grammarians who followed him was preservative rather than creative. In other words, the traditional account holds that Classical Arabic grammar always existed, but it was not until Sibawayhi that someone collected it, analyzed it, and codified it. If the traditional account is true, and if there has always been a Classical Arabic grammar, then one wonders why there are almost no papyrus texts from the early Islamic era that follow Sibawayhi's rules perfectly. It cannot be an accident that almost all early Arabic papyri contain elements of Middle Arabic, which is Arabic that is grammatically substandard compared to Classical Arabic. Scholars who adhere to the traditional view of the Kitab believe that the presence of Middle Arabic in the papyri proves that Arabic needed a scholar like Sibawayhi before it was irretrievably lost. However, what they have failed to take account of is that fact that there are almost no examples of what Sibawayhi defined as Classical Arabic in the earliest Arabic texts. Obviously, it cannot have been the case that history and fate preserved only those papyri that contained substandard Arabic and that all other texts have disappeared. Therefore, there is reason to reevaluate the traditional account of the history of Arabic grammar in an effort to discover what might have defined proper grammar before Sibawayhi. In the course of this investigation, one finds that the affect of Sibawayhi's Kitab might have been more far reaching than has hitherto been assumed.