Sumptuously and sturdily produced in The Netherlands, this second volume of a multi‐volume set bears on its cover intricate details from the inscriptions framing the entrance portal to the Imām Mosque (formerly Shāh Mosque) in Işfahān. Intricacy aptly sums up the character of this collective achievement of scholars at scores of universities in every corner of the globe. Arabic studies clearly have an international dimension of first order.
Articles are given very generous space, many extending to chapter length. Topics are treated historically and synchronically – even the era of cell phones and digital TV. A concluding summary is followed by bibliographical references, often very extensive. Transliteration is standardised throughout and the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) is used to differentiate pronunciation or to describe spoken languages such as Ki‐Nubi of Uganda and Kenya, an Arabic creole with hardly any written expression. Volume II has major articles specifically on individual areas or countries touched by the Arabic language, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Gulf States, Horn of Africa, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel and Jordan.
It is unlikely that such well informed and authoritative analyses of the history and current status of Arabic are to be easily found elsewhere. Other studies discuss languages influenced by Arabic, such as Amazigh, English, French, Fulfulde, Greek, Gypsy/Romami or Romanes, Hausa, Himyaritic, Ibero‐Romance, Indonesian/Malay, Italian, Ivrit, Javanese, Judaeo‐Arabic, Kanuri, Kazah, Kufik, Kurdish. Loanwords are given special attention. Dialectology is a prime concern of all country articles, with specific, refined studies also devoted to the Arabic dialects of the western Sahara (Hassāniyya Arabic), Jerusalem, Jordan (Amman), Juba, Khartoum, Khuzestan (south western Iran) and Kuwait. Many of the dialects discussed throughout the encyclopaedia are little known outside their own areas. An outstanding virtue of this is near definitive encyclopaedia is its meticulous presentation of grammatical, morphological, phonological, and syntactical features and patterns both in terms of the Arabic linguistic tradition (e.g. Fi'l, Hamza (glottal stop), Ism, Jumla, Kalām, Kalima, Kināya), and of the international “classical” categories or phenomena (e.g. elative, ellipsis, enclisis, epenthesis, fronting functional grammar, gender, glide, inflection, intonation …). Both treatments are exemplary and instructive.
Every page reveals the fascination of the history of Islam, of the irredentism of Muslim societies, of calligraphy and epigraphy (illustrated), of culture and language contact, of Islamic education, and of modernisation. Internet (pp. 380‐387), with details of software, chat forums and websites is invaluable. Anthropologists and sociologists will certainly benefit from the enlightening articles on ethnicity and language, foreigner talk, greetings, insults, kinship terms and the like. History of Arabic (pp. 261‐268), a masterpiece of summary, traces the evolution of a language with more than 200 million speakers in at least 23 countries.
Thoughtful discussion of first language acquisition, first language teaching, interface linguistics, language academies, language and gender, language attitudes, language contact, language impairment, language loss, language pathology, language policies and language planning, language shift – taken together – constitute a genuinely significant contribution, of universal relevance, to linguistics, applied, comparative and general. These splendid articles take this encyclopaedia far beyond the realm of Arabic Studies per se.
Rarely have I been so profoundly impressed by a work of collective scholarship, virtually beyond criticism in every respect. Contributions and editing alike are of exceptional quality, and its value embraces lay readers (who will find it readable, often amusing), serious students (who will make progress), and denizens of ivory towers (who will wish they had written part or whole). A brilliant contribution to knowledge, destined to be the benchmark for future research and popularisation. Recommended without reservation to all academic libraries. To quote the greetings article: 'ahlan, 'ahlan!
