Others[85] hold that the original home of the Semites was in the south of Arabia whence they gradually overspread the peninsula, so that, as Sprenger expresses it, “All Semite are successive layers of Arabs.” The arguments for this theory are briefly given by Sayce:[86] “The Semitic traditions all point to Arabia as the original home of the race. It is the only part of the world which has remained exclusively Semites. The racial characteristics—intensity of faith, ferocity, exclusiveness, imagination—can best be explained by a desert origin.” De Goeje lays stress on the fine climate of Central Arabia and the splendid physical development of the Arab as additional proof together with the indisputable fact that “of all Semitic languages the Arabic approaches nearest to the original mother-tongue as was conclusively demonstrated by Professor Schrader of Berlin.”
The following table will show at a glance the position of Arabic in the Semitic family group, _dead languages being put in italics_. Arabic, ancient and modern belongs to the South Semitic group and at an early period supplanted the Himyaritic in Yemen, although the Mahri and Ehkeli dialects are still used in the mountains of Hadramaut.[87] It was practically the only conquering language on the list and is the only one that is growing in use.
NORTHERN: EASTERN _Babylonian._ _Assyrian._ WESTERN (Aramaic) Eastern Syriac. Mandean. _Nabathean._ Western _Samaritan._ _Jewish Aramaic_ (as Targums and Talmud). _Palmyrene._ _Egyptian Aramaic._
CENTRAL: _Phœnician._ Hebrew. _Moabite_ and _Canaanitish dialects_.
SOUTHERN: ARABIC (Ishmaelite) One written language but Modern Dialects in speech. Maltese [?]. Morocco. Algerian, etc. Egyptian. Syrian. Yemen. Bagdadi. Omanese, etc. _Himyaritic_ Mahri. _Ehkeli._ Ethiopic (Joktanite) _Old Geez._ Tigre. Tigrina. Amharic. Harari.
There are to-day over one hundred Arabic newspapers and magazines regularly published and which together have an immense circulation in all parts of the Arabic-speaking world.
While the Arabic language has now acknowledged supremacy above all its sisters, in its historical and literary development it was last of them all. Not until the seventh century of our era did Arabic become, in any sense, important. The language received its literary birthright and its inspiration through the illiterate prophet who could not read but who set all the Eastern world to studying his book. The Arabic literature of the days before Mohammed has a high literary character, but with all its beauty it was only the morning star that ushered in the sunrise. When once the Koran was promulgated, literature and grammar and the sciences all spoke Arabic. It was the renaissance of the dead and dying East. Whatever effect the Koran may have had on the social life and morals of a people, no one denies that it was the Koran and that alone which rescued Arabic from becoming a local idiom. Again this Koran was the unifying factor of the new religion, sweeping everything down before it; not only did it unify the hostile tribes of Arabia but melted all their dialects into one and established an ever-abiding classical standard for the remotest student of the language of revelation. We do not of course hold, as do the Arabs, that the Arabic of the Koran is absolutely without a parallel in grammatical purity and diction. The contrary has been proved by Nöldeke and Dozy. The latter states that the Koran is “full of bastard-Arabic and has many grammatical blunders, which are at present unnoticed, since the grammarians have kindly constructed rules or exceptions to include even these in the list of unapproachable style and perfection.”