Conclusions

The sixth and concluding chapter outlines systematically how these six lines of striking similarity cohere to maintain and perpetuate a cohesive standard language ideology among the Hebrew grammarians (who wrote in Judeo-Arabic) and the Arabic grammarians of the ʿAbbasid period. An argument is also made that at least some of these similarities are not the merely due to a shared cultural framework but actually the result of direct influence of the Arabic grammatical tradition on the Hebrew grammatical tradition. Such findings have profound implications not only for how we conceive of the history of the study of Hebrew grammar and its institutionalisation, but for the interface between Hebrew/Jewish and Arabic/Muslim communities in the Middle Ages as well.