When Arabism Becomes Foundational Work... The Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language as a Model

The launch of the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language is not merely a linguistic event, nor an isolated academic achievement detached from its historical and political context. Rather, it is a significant cultural act that restores the Arabic language to its rightful place as a living national language, capable of producing knowledge and chronicling its own identity.

This dictionary does not simply document words and their meanings; it tracks the life of the Arabic concept over time: from the emergence of words and how their meanings have transformed, and how the Arabic language has expressed the social, political, and intellectual transformations that the nation has undergone over centuries. We are confronted with a project that restores the importance of the idea of history within language and breaks the apparent linguistic rupture between the past and the present, not viewing the past as a site for sanctification, but as a resource for understanding and reconstruction.

In an era of knowledge dominance, cultural globalization, artificial intelligence, and deep technological development, language is no longer just a tool for communication; it has become a field of sovereignty. Nations that do not document their language nor understand its internal development allow others to define their concepts, reinterpret their history, and determine their place in the global knowledge hierarchy.

Hence, the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language is a restoration of the history, depth, and richness of the Arabic language, extending over the centuries, and an implicit rejection of the role of the subordinate in producing knowledge. It is a historic declaration asserting that the Arabic language is not just a linguistic heritage, but a language of science, analysis, and accumulation, capable of keeping pace with the times if political, intellectual, and institutional will is provided. This has resulted in a historical dictionary of 300,000 lexical entries, a corpus approaching one billion words formed from ten thousand bibliographic sources, in addition to ten thousand morphological roots.

Much has been written in recent days about this dictionary and its significance, and more will be written in the coming decades and centuries. If books outlast their authors, and the poems we recite have endured despite the centuries in which they were written, then a project of this magnitude will last for many centuries, far beyond what we can currently imagine. What concerns me, as part of the Palestinian community inside, is to point out the connection of this work to Dr. Azmi Bishara, who founded our initial institutions before his exile, and there in exile he works to deny it.

He has never been an isolated thinker in an ivory tower, nor an intellectual content with diagnosis and criticism, but has been – since his time in the homeland before his forced exile – a foundational actor and a field leader who combined idea production with building its institutional and organizational tools on the ground.

Within the Palestinian territories, Bishara contributed to establishing and building several research, cultural, political, and human rights institutions, which have formed, and continue to form, a real infrastructure for producing critical knowledge, maintaining national identity, and graduating generations of researchers, intellectuals, and public activists. These institutions were not mere reactive responses; they were long-term projects based on a firm conviction that ideas do not live without institutions to protect them, and that knowledge does not accumulate without frameworks to organize it and ensure its continuity.

This foundational role in the homeland explains much of Bishara's subsequent trajectory, as the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language does not appear here as a separate or sudden project, but rather a natural extension of a deep understanding of the role of the intellectual, which is to transform ideas into structures, visions into projects, and dreams into actions.

For Azmi Bishara, Arabism is not an emotional banner raised during crises, nor a rhetorical discourse consumed as produced by decades of Arab regimes and leaders, but a project measured by its ability to produce knowledge that benefits the nation, and to build institutions and achievements.

Thus, Arabism, according to this understanding, is measured by the depth of impact from producing thought, building institutions, and possessing conceptual tools to understand our reality and change it. The Historical Dictionary is an example of Arabism as a tangible action, not a symbolic claim, and of culture as a battleground no less important than politics.

When it is said that the achievement of the dictionary is a "fulfillment of a promise", the promise here is not a personal pledge, but a historical commitment to the language as the collective vessel for memory, identity, and knowledge. At the same time, it opens a new horizon for generations of researchers, students, and intellectuals to engage with Arabic as a vibrant living language, capable of modernization and capable of producing modern science in the language of its people.

In a moment of Arab despair and disintegration, this achievement reminds us that serious work is still possible, and that Arabism built through action, knowledge, and institutionalization – not by noise and spectacle – can leave a profound impact that transcends the fleeting moment.

The Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language is a cornerstone in the project of restoring confidence in Arab reasoning. This is how nations are built, word by word and meaning by meaning.