A historical and intellectual journey awaits visitors to “Arabic Language: Twenty-Eight Letters of Light,” an exhibition in Riyadh that tells the story of one of humanity’s oldest languages.
Through its galleries and interactive displays, the exhibition brings the story of the “language of ḍād” out of books and dictionaries into an innovative, technology-driven experience.
The exhibition has opened at the headquarters of the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language in Riyadh. Aimed at academics, researchers, teachers, students, and Arabic-language enthusiasts, it offers visitors a creative and contemporary way to explore the language.
Its interactive stations allow visitors to explore a range of linguistic topics, engage with modern educational platforms, and participate in specialized training sessions designed to enhance Arabic learners’ skills, improve teaching methods, and present Arabic as a dynamic language capable of keeping pace with advances in knowledge.
The exhibition also serves as a cultural landmark in Riyadh, reinforcing the status of Arabic while supporting the goals of Saudi Vision 2030 in the cultural, tourism, and heritage sectors. Technology-based exhibits trace the language’s history, authenticity, and standing among the world’s languages, highlighting its beauty, richness, and uniqueness.
One section explores the history of languages in the Arabian Peninsula, explaining how scholars have classified the world’s languages into major families and how different linguistic approaches have produced varying classifications. It outlines how many linguists place Arabic within the Hamito-Semitic language family, specifically among the Southwest Semitic languages, which include both Northern and Southern Arabic and the languages of the Arabian Peninsula.
Semitic languages share common characteristics in their sounds, vocabulary, morphology, and grammar. Many scholars believe Arabic is the closest surviving Semitic language to the ancient Proto-Semitic tongue. As spoken and written forms gradually diverged, writing systems emerged across the Arabian Peninsula, enabling people to record languages that differed from their spoken dialects.
Among the exhibits are authentic rock specimens bearing ancient inscriptions, including Thamudic and Nabataean scripts, preserved over centuries in rocks and valley walls as enduring evidence of the evolution of writing and language across Arabia.
Another section traces the evolution of writing itself. Early civilizations wrote on stone, copper, wood, clay tablets, tree materials, camel shoulder blades and ribs, and leather. The exhibition explains how the Sumerians introduced the sharpened stylus in the early fourth millennium BC, using pointed wooden implements to inscribe soft clay tablets that were later dried in the sun. The stylus’s wedge-shaped impression gave rise to what became known as cuneiform writing.
Writing instruments continued to evolve, with different pens developed for specialized purposes. During the Umayyad period, the calligraphers Khalid ibn Abi al-Hayyaj and Qutbah al-Muharrir gained prominence, while the Abbasid era saw the rise of Ibn Muqlah, regarded as the master of Arabic calligraphy, and his student Ibn al-Bawwab.
Over the centuries, Arab scholars developed detailed rules for holding and cutting pens and produced books devoted to writing instruments. Papermaking flourished during the Abbasid era, and Muslims were the first to introduce paper to Spain, paving the way for its spread across Europe.
The exhibition also serves as an advanced knowledge platform, presenting Arabic in its cultural and scientific contexts while showcasing Saudi Arabia’s efforts to support the language, develop Arabic-language education, strengthen its presence in academic and scientific circles, and promote it globally. Through its interactive environment, visitors gain a deeper appreciation of Arabic’s long history, its evolution through the centuries, and its contributions to thought, science, and the arts.
Ali Al-Ahmad, a doctoral researcher in philology, stressed that the exhibition succeeds in transforming the history and development of Arabic “from the dry theoretical setting of lecture halls and dissertations into a living, interactive space that engages the senses.”
“For us as researchers,” he said, “the exhibition offers a different experience by integrating modern technology to tell the remarkable story of our language. Visitors almost feel that Arabic is a living organism, constantly evolving and responding to the changes in its environment.”
Seeing the roots of words, patterns of derivation, and semantic development presented through visual and interactive technological platforms, he added, “compresses years of traditional learning. The exhibition bridges the gap between the digital generation and the authenticity of the Arabic script, offering tangible proof that Arabic is fully capable of leading today’s knowledge landscape, not merely keeping pace with it.”
