Fuṣḥa is the standard Arabic language, to be contrasted with spoken varieties of Arabic. It is also known as Literary Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic and Koranic Arabic. With the relatively rare exception of some modern poetry and stageplays that use colloquial dialects, this is the only variety of Arabic that is written. Older texts of course contain many vocabulary items that have fallen out of use, but the written language remains relatively uniform regardless of its time or place of origin.
