Review

Author(s): Muhsin Mahdi

Review by: Muhsin Mahdi
Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan., 1961), pp. 60-64
Published by: University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/543070
Accessed: 18-12-2015 02:58 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Near Eastern
Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Fri, 18 Dec 2015 02:58:51 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

60

OFNEAREASTERN
JOURNAL
STUDIES

shapes of characteristic decorated pottery

are then established for Egypt and the
"Asiatic zone" (pp. 86-89). From a rapid survey of the various forms of spouted pots or
loop-handled ones from Egypt and Asia it is
apparent that each country had its characteristics, quite elegant in the Egyptian
spouts and less so in the loop-handled pots,
which would explain the attribution of a
foreign origin to the latter (p. 94). The author
finds that "a distinctive group of pottery
found in Egypt is dependent in shape or
decoration, or in both, on prototypes which
make their appearance during the early Uruk
period in Mesopotamia" (p. 98).5 A few
parallelisms are shown in predynastic vases
(footed, inverted tronconical, oval with four
lug-handles) though most characteristics of
the Egyptian pottery have no counterparts
in Western Asia (p. 115). However, the author
finds that a new group of shapes is introduced
into Egypt in protodynastic times: "The vessels seem to appear earlier in Western Asia
than in Egypt" (p. 119).
The short Appendix (pp. 120-22) gives a
cursory note on Merimda, cOmari, Heliopolis,
and Macadi. The description of "wooden
houses" for the oval huts sunk in the ground
and having posts at Merimda is inadequate.
The walls were of mats or wickerwork. Again
the description of lumps of clay as "some type
of primitive mud brick" is misleading
(p. 120).6 This second part aims, by providing
comparisons not corroborated otherwise by
chronological evidence, at proving the introduction of Naqada II from Mesopotamia.
The book is thoroughly subjective and,
however stimulating its reading could be, it
fails to be convincing, especially since some
of the theories are not corroborated by
chronological evidence (Neolithic of the Fayyum cannot be contemporaneous with cAmra,
as the author wishes it to be; nor Merimda
with Gerza).7 Practically nothing is men5 Massoulard, op. cit., p. 518, n. 5, reports this
same remark.
6 This is similar to the modern
"galus," cf.
Badawy, Egyptian Architecture, p. 14.
7 Massoulard, op. cit., p. 516, n. 1. Also H. Kantor,
American Journal of Archaeology, LIII (1949), 76-79.

tioned about the Palaeolithic, though this

formed the earliest and by far the longest
period of prehistory. Similarly Lower Egypt
is looked upon as a district wherefrom no culture could originate, on account of the
alleged unlivable climatic conditions. This
has been proved to be erroneous.8 Though
the theory of Sethe concerning the predominance of an early kingdom at Heliopolis
has not yet been proved, was approved by
Massoulard,9 but attacked by Schott,10 it is
by no means "dethroned." No definite proof
is to be expected before the material from the
Delta is excavated and studied.11 Arguments
ex silentio are always dangerous. It might
then become essential to revise the denominations of the predynastic cultures called after
small centers (Badari, cAmra, Gerza). The
title of the book would have been more adequately worded as "The Predynastic Cultures
of Upper Egypt."
The work is certainly stimulating, affording an approach to a comparative stylistic
study of the earliest achievements of Egypt
and the East. An index would have helped.
The presentation by the Oxford University
Press is excellent.
ALEXANDER

BADAWY

University of Kansas

Wirterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache.

Auf Grund der Sammlungen von

AUGUST

FISCHER, THEODOR NOLDEKE, HERMANN

RECKENDORF und anderer Quellen. Heraus-

gegeben durch die Deutsche Morgenliindische Gesellschaft. 1. Lfg. K bis

Kataba.

In Verbindung

mit

ANTON

8 S. Passarge, Die
Urlandschaft Aegyptens und die
Lokalisierung der Wiege der Altdgyptischen Kulture
("Nova Acta Leopoldina: Abhandlungen der kaiserlich Leopoldinisch-carolinisch
deutschen Akademie
der Naturforscher," IX (1940), pp. 75-152. Also J.
von Beckerath, Tanis und Theben (Gliickstadt, 1951),
pp. 11-12.
9 Massoulard, op. cit., pp. 435 ff.
10 S. Schott, Bericht iiber den VI. Internationalen
Kongress fiir Archaeologie (Berlin 21-26 August 1939),
pp. 266-70.
11 K. R. Maxwell-Hyslop, Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology, XXXVI (1950), 115-16. Kantor, op. cit.

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Fri, 18 Dec 2015 02:58:51 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOKREVIEWS
SPITALER bearbeitet von JoRG KRAEMER
und HELMUT GATJE. Wiesbaden:
Otto

Harrassowitz, 1957. Pp. xiii + 40. DM 9.-.

With the development of Arabic philology
into a modern scientific discipline in the nineteenth century the need was felt and expressed for lexical material in general, and
for such material as can be based directly
and exclusively on the sources to help in the
precise delimitation of the temporal and
local variations of usage and to assist in
clarifying the possible origins, growth,
changes, and variations of the use made of
words and idioms in particular. Students of
all periods and genres of Arabic literature,
but especially of pre-Islamic and early
Islamic poetry and prose, were acutely aware
that without such an indispensable tool they
were bound to remain in the dark or at least
uncertain about the delicate shades of meanings of words and idioms despite traditional
philological commentaries.
At first scholars turned their attention to
the long-established tradition of Arabic
lexicography whose origins date back to
the second-third/eighth-ninth centuries and
which was still current in the eighteenth century. This tradition comprised the main
stream of lexical works whose primary purpose was to preserve the "chaste" classical
Arabic of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic
periods, and various branches concerned
with dialects and other specialized subjects
(including technical, scientific terms). From
these writings (but essentially from the
former group), European Arabists composed
various Arabic-European

lexicons,

the most

important of which have been the ArabicLatin lexicons by Golius (1653) and Freitag
(1830-37), the Arabic-French lexicon by
Kazimirski (1860), and the Arabic-English
lexicon by Lane (1863-93). The last and
most thorough of these was unfortunately
left incomplete by its learned and industrious
author.
It was clear from the start, however, that
the principles followed in Arabic lexical writings (for a description of their sources,
methods, and arrangement, cf. E. W. Lane,
Arabic-English Lexicon [London, 1863-93],

61

IV, "Preface," pp. vii-xx) could not satisfy

the needs of modern Arabists. They did
indeed represent "a collection of such authority, such exactness, and such copiousness, as
we do not find to have been approached in
the case of any other language after its corruption or decay" (ibid., p. viii); but their
sources and scope were defined by their purpose, which was primarily to preserve the
of the pre-Islamic
"chaste"
knowledge
Arabic in order to aid Muslims in understanding the Qurln and the Tradition of the
Prophet at a time when that language was
becoming increasingly corrupt and obsolescent. This meant that they almost completely
disregarded the post-classical language; and
where they did condescend to consider the
language of post-classical authors, their over-

riding purpose was to supply authoritative

information about hard or difficult and good
words together with their proper meanings.
Thus they shared in the objectives of all
European dictionaries down to the middle of
the nineteenth century, and their authors
assumed the role of literary critics writing
guides to good usage. With the spread of
historicism, however, scholars became wary
of concepts like "good" words and usages or
"proper" meanings, and sought to emancifrom such "value-judgpate themselves
ments," although they had to confess that in

practice (e.g., when they had to decide upon

what belongs to "literary" usage and what a

"representative" quotation is) they did not

succeed. Further, modern hiscompletely
torical and systematic
philology could in

many instances contribute to a surer and

more refined understanding of certain
matters that could not have been easily
understood by Arab lexicographers, e.g.,
distinctions among homonymous roots.
These and similar criticisms became increasingly frequent in the second half of the
ninteenth century, at a time when the
criticism of previous European dictionaries
began to bear fruit, and new dictionaries in
the form of historical inventories of all the
words of a language were composed by
authors assuming the role of historians rather
than that of critics, and presenting the fruits

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Fri, 18 Dec 2015 02:58:51 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

62

JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

of comprehensive investigators of words that

were more systematic and precise than those
of their predecessors. The positive aspect of
these criticisms (cf. more recently J. Fiick
in ZDMG, CVII [1957], 341-42) was the
progressive formulation of the principal requirements for a newly organized Arabic
These requirements
are now
dictionary.
generally known; and they had been stated
and fulfilled in many parallel projects (notably in the discussions centering around the
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae [Leipzig, 1900--]).
August Fischer, one of the greatest Arabists
of all times, stated them for Arabic on many
occasions, the last of which was in the introduction to the first and only fascicle published of his dictionary (cf. below) as follows:
each single word existing in the language
must be investigated and presented with regard to the following seven aspects: (1) its
history, (2) its etymology, (3) its flection, (4)
its semasiology, (5) its syntax, (6) its phraseology, and (7) its stylistic uses (cf. also J6rg
Kraemer in ZDMG, CV [1955], 86-88). The
result should be a comprehensive
(though
not necessarily exhaustive)
historical dictionary, covering all periods and subjects,
and documented directly from the sources.
Such an ambitious project remains today,
i.e., at least in so far as the present century is
concerned, a distant hope. The reason is that
both the relevant text editions and the
number of qualified "readers" and specialists
willing to dedicate their full time to it are so
limited that all that could be hoped for at
present is to make a modest beginning
in the organization
of the project: to encourage scholars to edit and to prepare
suitable indexes for such texts as are infor the projected
dispensable
dictionary,
and to establish a center (preferably with a
specialized journal) where information and
documents related to the project could be
relevant problems discussed,
accumulated,
and a card archive assembled. All this has to
be undertaken by western Arabists. In the
Arab countries, both Language Academies
and scholars are at present absorbed in the
immediate task of helping to make Arabic
the medium of modern thought, and of find-

ing or coining equivalents of modern scientific terms. Yet once a center and a journal
for Arabic lexicography are established, it
may be possible to arrive at some arrangement
all new
text
editions
whereby
(including those done in Arab countries) are
executed according to generally accepted
and provided
with
uniform
principles
indexes which can then be directly used in
building up the card archive for the projected
dictionary.
This discouraging situation has been the
subject of intensive consultations
among
Arabists in recent years. The result has been
an International
Committee
of Arabic
Lexicography formed under the auspices of a
number of international learned societies and
and composed of prominent
organizations
scholars in the field. Its work has already
born fruit in the form of two important projects. The first is apparently a long-term project undertaken by the Institut d' Etudes
in Paris (cf. R. Blachere in
Islamiques
Arabica, II [1955], 134-35). Its objective is a
and
systematic
investigation,
evaluation,
of
representative
literary
d6pouillement
Arabic douments, including technical works
and existing glossaries, with a view to organize a cumulative card archive to serve in the
of a new Arabic-French
diccomposition
tionary to replace that of Kazimirski (it will
also include selected quotations from the
material thus excerpted). This card archive
will be made available for use by all interested
scholars. It is to be hoped that with the support of international learned societies, and of
Arabists both in the West and in the Islamic
world, this project will attract a sufficient
number of qualified specialists, absorb existing collections such as that of Fischer, and
become a sound beginning for the eventual
project that would bring the hoped-for historical dictionary into being. It certainly
deserves all possible encouragement and support.
The second project was designed to meet a
more immediate need. The most exhaustive
Arabic-European
dictionary, that of Lane,
stops somewhere in the middle of the letter
Q&f, and there is a genuine need for some

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Fri, 18 Dec 2015 02:58:51 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS
form of a continuation of it. With the existence of important lexical material collected
by prominent German Arabists (which the
Gesellsehaft was
Deutsche Morgenlindische
interested in publishing), it was decided that
these collections should form the basis of a
Lane-continuation
to begin with the letter
Kaf. (Under the direction of Professor M.
Guillaume, Dr. W. cArafdt is editing and
completing the rest of the letter Qaf on the
basis of the collection begun. C. H. H. Macnaghten who had planned to continue Lane,
following the latter's principles, but did not
go beyond this incomplete letter.) The fascicle under review is the first to be published
in this second project.
At the foundation of the whole work are
two important lexical collections. The first
and more extensive is that of August Fischer
(d. 1949) on which the great Arabist worked
for about four decades and of which we now
have a relatively detailed description (Jorg
Kraemer in ZDMG,
CV [1955], 89-96).
Fischer began to organize this collection on
the basis of the material left by H. L.
Fleischer
(d. 1888) and H. Thorbecke
(d. 1890) which he complemented by the results of his own systematic research while in
Leipzig. In 1936 the Egyptian Academy, of
which he was a member, offered him its
patronage and financial support; he transported his material to Cairo, and continued
to work there intensively with the help of
numerous assistants until 1939 when he had
to return to Germany leaving his collection
behind him. This short "Cairene period" was
responsible for about half of the slips in his
collection. Of the final results of his labor, he
saw only the proofs of a sample fascicle he
had prepared for publication. After his death,
it was finally published by the Academy
under the title Mucjam Fisher, Muqaddima
wa-numifdhaj minh (Cairo, 1950). Apart from
the restricted number of entries (from Alif to
"bd), significant for gaining a clear idea of the
intended character of the work, it contains
his valuable introduction (pp. 1-38) in which
he justifies the need for a new lexicon and
sets down the principles that must govern
the new enterprise. The material he left

63

behind, however, comprises diverse periods

representing various stages of completeness,
and is of uneven quality and utility. The
second collection comprises the material left
by Theodor N6ldeke (d. 1930) and Hermann
Reckendorf (d. 1924). J6rg Kraemer (who
gave a short description of this collection in
XCIX [1945-49], 94-96) edited a
ZDMG,
the letter Alif
sample of it containing
(Theodor Ngldekes Belew6rterbuch zur klassischen arabischen Sprache, 1-2 Lfg. [Berlin,
1952-54]). Unlike Fischer's collection, which
was made systematically
and was intended
to be comprehensive, this comprises valuable
but more or less incidental readings intended
to supplement and complete existing lexicons.
To prepare this material for publication
was a delicate and difficult task. It contained
sizeable gaps, new and improved editions had
in the meantime become available, and all
the evidence had to be sifted, evaluated, and
controlled. The general principle adopted by
the editors was to take the FleischerThorbecke-Fischer
collection as a point of
forms
about 50 per cent of the
departure (it
published material), to complete it first with
the aid of the Noldeke-Reckendorf
collection
(which supplies another 25 per cent), and
then to fill the remaining gaps with their own
collections, with the aid of published glossaries and indexes, and finally by turning to
the Arabic lexicons for such words and quotations as they had not succeeded in documenting from other sources and for those
that cannot be found except in these lexicons.
The product will thus continue Lane as far as
the alphabetical order is concerned; yet it will
be of a completely different character. It will
certainly fill the gap left by Lane, but it will
also be the first significant attempt to construct an Arabic dictionary meeting the
requirements of modern scholarship. Because
of the conditions already mentioned, it will
not be fully complete or even representative;
for the classical period (i.e.,
nevertheless,
down to the third/ninth century), it will be of
a much wider scope than that of Lane and in
many ways more useful. In any case, it is an
excellent experiment through which Arabists
will become better prepared for working to

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Fri, 18 Dec 2015 02:58:51 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

64
achieve

JOURNAL

the future comprehensive

OF NEAR

historical

dictionary.
After the completion of a more substantial
part, the editors promise an introduction in
which they will discuss the method, sources,
and other technical problems relating to the
organization of the dictionary. The review
of these matters will have to await the completion of at least one letter and preferably
also the publication of the introduction.
MUHSIN MAHDI
The University of Chicago

Lebanon in History.

By PHILIP K. HITTI.

London: The Macmillan Company, 1957.

Pp. xix + 548. Maps. Illustrated. $9.00.
Professor Hitti has once more presented us
with a sizeable volume unfolding the progress
of meaningful events in the Middle East.
Since the appearance of his History of the
Arabs he has narrowed the area of concentration first in the History of Syria and now still
further in this companion volume under review. This is no local history of a small
country but, as the well-chosen title implies,
a study of the historic role of a strategic
region in the rise and fall of successive and
rival world empires from ancient times to our
day, "making the story that of a large part of
the civilized world in miniature" (p. vii).
Lebanon and Palestine have for the greater
part of their political history formed but a
small district of a Syrian province of this or
that empire. Yet, because of their location
and the character of their people, both territories have acquired a supra-political identity by virtue of their tangible contributions
to the Mediterranean cultures that have
evolved into what we know as Western
Civilization. The Old and New Testaments
and the countless books that they have inspired have dramatized the history and culture of Palestine. Professor Hitti makes here
a daring attempt to dramatize that of
Lebanon.
The work is divided into five unequal
parts: Prehistory, the Ancient Semites, and
the Greco-Roman, Arab, and Ottoman

EASTERN

STUDIES

periods; more than half of the book is devoted

to parts four and five. Centered in so large a
canvas for its continuous and progressive
background, Lebanon's distinctive story is
delineated in a series of pictures with different angles of perspective so as to reflect
the changes wrought by the long march of
time and to give added dimensions to that
country's economic, social, and intellectual
history.
The author nowhere states a general thesis
and the reader is hard put to find and state
one briefly and simply-there are so many
strands to the unbroken thread of the story.
The introductory chapter, however, provides
a key to Lebanon's history. This is to be
found perhaps less in its strategic location,
which is shared by several of its neighbors,
than in the distinctive features of the land
itself. Unlike its neighbors, Lebanon does
not have to contend with the desert. Its
coastal plain and the inland plateau contrast
with its mountain chains. These attract different types of settlers to give rise eventually
to a different type of society-the palimpsest
in the plain and plateau and the mosaic in
the mountains. Periodically the people of
the mountain descend either to challenge or
reinforce those of the plains, or to join them
in waves of migrations westward reaching,
in time, the New World. More often than not
they established commercial colonies, some
of which developed into powerful city-states,
pioneered in navigation, and entered early
contests for sea power (pp. 113, 152). Long
exposure to the interactions of the East and
West rendered Lebanon a cultural bridgehead
and cast its people in the role of resourceful
middle men who could develop and propagate, for instance, the Phoenician alphabet
(p. 122). The attraction of Lebanon and
neighboring territories for Egypt, who, as far
back as the fifteenth century B.C.,first incorporated this entire area-a feat she was to
repeat on several occasions down to modern
times-is instructively told. Egypt and all
of the other Mediterranean empires who absorbed this area administered it with little
regard for the geographic unity or the
political aspirations of Lebanon as such. Even

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Fri, 18 Dec 2015 02:58:51 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions