Note (return) — SPECIMENS

In this enlightened age, when our intercourse is increasing with nations remote from our own, and possessing different religions, languages, laws, and customs; when the ambassadors of the Muhamedan potentates of Europe, Asia, and Africa, are resident in our metropolis, all understanding the Arabic language; when, with a knowledge of this language, a person may travel and hold colloquial intercourse with the inhabitants of Turkey, with the greater part of Asia, and with Africa; and, lastly, when we consider the valuable and immense stores of Arabian literature, of the best periods which still remain unexplored, is it not remarkable under all the exciting circumstances above enumerated, that in this powerful and opulent country, there should not be found, with all our boasted learning and eagerness of research, three or four Englishmen capable of writing and conversing intelligibly in that beautiful and useful language? The extent of this disgraceful ignorance would be scarcely credible, were there not proofs beyond doubt, that our principal seats of learning are as deficient in this knowledge as the public in general 275, and that letters or public documents written in that language, have been in vain sent to them for translation. What I have long considered as chiefly tending to diminish the desire of acquiring this language, is an opinion dogmatically asserted, and diligently propagated, that the Arabic of the East and West are so different from each other, as almost to form distinct languages, and to be unintelligible to the inhabitants of either of those regions respectively; but, having always doubted the truth of this assertion, I have endeavoured, from time to time, during the last ten years, to ascertain whether the Arabic language spoken in Asia be the same with that which is spoken in Africa, (westward to the shores of the Atlantic ocean,) but without success, and even without the smallest satisfactory elucidation, until the arrival in London last winter, of the most Reverend Doctor Giarve, Bishop of Jerusalem, who has given such incontestible proofs of his proficiency in the Arabic language, that his opinion on this important point cannot but be decisive; accordingly, on presenting to the reverend Doctor some letters from the Emperor of Marocco to me, desiring that he would oblige me with his opinion, whether the Arabic in those letters was the same with that spoken in Syria, the Rev. Doctor replied in the following perspicuous manner, which, I think, decides the question: "I can assure you, that the language and the idiom of the Arabic in these letters from the Emperor of Marocco to you, is precisely the same with that which is spoken in the East."