Magic and Religion in North Africa

...Congress of Orientalists that we were just speaking about, to apply to the language of the divine book the modern methods of philology and to reduce Quranic Arabic to the vulgar pre-Islamic language, he unleashed storms among the Muslims present. Since literary Arabic is immutable, it must suffice unto itself without ever having to borrow foreign words; also, we saw, at the same Congress, Cheïkh Mohammed Asal, a delegate from Egypt, advocate for the institution of an official commission to translate foreign words (mainly scientific) into Arabic, with the sole resources of that language, and to force professors, civil servants, and newspapers to use them, in order to finally impose them upon the people.

Poetry has most often been viewed with an unfavorable eye by Muslim orthodoxy, except when it is devoted to pious subjects; the study of classical Arabic poetry, without being positively proscribed, is relegated to the background among Muslims: it has no place, for example, in the teaching of El Qarouiyyin a historic university in Fez, Morocco, in Fez. Is the Quran not the eternal prototype of literary beauty? Muhammad defended himself from being among the poets and expressed himself several times in unkind terms toward them See Basset, "Pre-Islamic Poetry," pp. 7-11. See the hadith sayings of the Prophet gathered in the Chamâïl of Tirmidhi (El Baïdjoûrî on Tirmidhi, Cairo, 1311, pp. 125-130). Cf. de Slane, Translation of the Diwân of Amroulqaïs, p. XX, XXIV.. However, religious poetry (madîh panegyric poetry praising the Prophet), that is to say the panegyrics of the Prophet and the saints, has remained flourishing: the Borda and the Hamziya of Cheïkh El Boûcîrî with the innumerable...