Ahmad zaki: The founder of Arabic punctuation

The presented paper deals with Ahmad Zaki, one of the leading Arabic illuminers of the early twentieth century, and his work “Punctuation and punctuation marks in the Arabic language”. This work marked the end of hot discussion, which continued in the Arab world during the 19th century, and became the first step for the introduction and development of punctuation as a full-fledged and inherent part of the Arabic language. It shall be stated that, although punctuation marks and its rules were adopted in the Arabic language more than 100 years ago, punctuation usage has not been fully estab-lished till the present day. This topic is reviewed in Russia’s Arabic studies for the first time, which shows the relevance of this study. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze A. Zaki’s work “Punctuation and punctuation marks in the Arabic language”. The article is divided into three parts. The first part describes the biography of this Arab scholar for better understanding of the environment in which his views were shaped. The second part reviews A. Zaki’s work. The last part analyzes the impact of his work on contemporaries and further insight into the punctuation system made by later authors. The research methodology rests on the comparative and descriptive approach. The presented research is intended for those who study the Arabic language, history of Arabic linguistics and punctuation as a linguistic phenomenon. © 2019, Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.