Such being the case, it became a matter of the highest importance to the Arabs to preserve the knowledge of that speech which had thus become obsolescent, and to draw a distinct line between the classical and the post-classical languages. For the former language was that of the Kur-an and of the Traditions of Mohammad, the sources of their religious, moral, civil, criminal, and political code’ and they possessed, in that language, preserved by oral tradition, - for the art of writing, in Arabia, had been almost exclusively confined to Christians and Jews….
The classical language they called, by reason of its incomparable excellence, “el-loghah,” or “the language:” and the line between this and the post-classical was easily drawn, on account of the almost sudden commencement, and rapid progress, of the corruption.
….I often have found in my knowledge of modern Arabic a solution of a difficulty; but without great caution, such knowledge would frequently have misled me, in consequence of the changes which have taken place in the applications of many words since the classical age.
References:
An Arabic-English Lexicon, E.W. Lane, volume one, pp. vii – viii; xxii - xxiii
