was beginning to inch its way slowly to the front, receiving its stimulation from the living present rather than the dead past. Through their pens the Arabic language, rusty with age and given to the expression of traditional unprogressive thought, received a fresh polish and an injection of new life which started it on its way to becoming a vehicle capable of expressing the finest shades of scientific thought and the most delicate sentiments of the human heart. In this it repeated its experience in Baghdad under Harun al-Rashid and al-Mamun, when it rose to meet the challenge of the new day with its translations from Syriac, Greek and Persian. In both instances it embarked upon a new career of adequate and effective expression for a newly enlightened generation.
The impact of modern ideas — secular, scientific, demo- cratic, naturalistic — played havoc with old traditions, cherished beliefs and venerated institutions. It caused tension and brought about conflicts in the social order. This was indeed a period of transition and, like all such periods, a time of stress and strain. Old ties were loosening ; con- ventional loyalties were changing ; and accepted scales of value were being rearranged. How to reconcile the old with the new became and remained the major problem. Hitherto society had consisted of but two classes: one of landowners, aristocrats, ecclesiastics and the well-to-do and another of farmers, peasants, manual workers and the poor. Any in between were of no consequence. But now a fresh middle class of physicians, teachers, lawyers, writers and other professionals, together with a new variety of business- men, emerged and began to exercise telling influence. With the disruption of the social order the family institution, with its time-honoured loyalties and virtues, began to show cracks in its structure. This was, however, true only in urban settlements. By the early twentieth century women were demanding and receiving a large measure of freedom. Sons were seeking wives of their own choice and when married were moving into domiciles of their own.
