Arabic Islamic Literature as Textual Civilization: A Document-Based Content Analysis of Meaning Transmission in Non Arab Cultural Spaces

Yusuf Aziz Mustofa; Yasmin Athira Hasania; Sarah Ainu Rahmah

Authors

Yusuf Aziz Mustofa Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Yasmin Athira Hasania Universitas islam Darussalam, Ciamis, Indonesia
Sarah Ainu Rahmah Universitas Al-Azhar, Kairo, Mesir

Keywords:

Textual Civilization, Islamic Intellectual Inheritance, Arabic Islamic Literature, Non Arab Cultural Spaces

Abstract

Purpose of the study: This study re-reads Arabic in non-Arab contexts not as a foreign-language skill alone but as a field of textual civilization, and maps how its meaning, adab, and worldview are transmitted into non-Arab cultural spaces through identifiable channels of translation, commentary, scholarly networks, and classical texts. Methodology: A document-based qualitative design with directed (deductive-inductive) qualitative content analysis was applied. A purposive corpus of forty-one scholarly documents (peer-reviewed articles, monographs, and reference works, 2001-2024) was selected against explicit inclusion criteria and coded with a four-point category matrix. Trustworthiness was addressed through an audit trail, constant comparison, peer debriefing, and reflexivity. Main Findings: Five themes emerged: Arabic as a carrier of epistemic authority in revelation and translation; literature and balaghah as the formation of adab; sanad, ijazah, and ulama networks as channels of authority; manuscripts, paratexts, and kitab kuning as the material life of meaning; and the modern risk of reducing Arabic to instrumental function. Together they describe one architecture of inherited meaning. Novelty/Originality of this study: The study bridges two literatures usually kept apart, the pedagogy of Arabic as a foreign language and the historical study of Arabic-Islamic textual culture, through a single lens of inherited meaning. It contributes a paradigm of inherited meaning for Arabic language education, arguing that curricula in non-Arab contexts should connect competence with adab, literature, tafsir, and textual heritage.

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