The term “vernacular” is traditionally employed to refer to the development of particular linguistic traditions while underlining a polarity between native languages and the lingua franca. Arabic, however, is usually considered a continuous linguistic tradition entailing various registers. The question that I will address in my paper is how does the concept of the vernacular fit within the complex Arabic linguistic context? In my paper, I shall interrogate the adequacy of using the concept in the Arabic tradition by looking into texts from the period prior to the establishment of literary modernity. I will focus on writings that contain features which are usually distinguished as “Middle Arabic.” Specifically, I shall look into narrative texts composed in the Syrian lands which clearly oscillate between linguistic registers and reflect an attachment to oral storytelling practices. The texts I will explore are from the late 18th- to the early 19th-century and include Hanna Diyab‘s Book of Travels, a late reworked variant of Kalila wa-Dimna, and the first Robinson Crusoe in Arabic. By illustrating some of the linguistic variations within these texts, I will expound, how such features are not to be read as simply an impact of oral culture or the authors‘ colloquial language, but rather as part and parcel of the literary practices which disclose an awareness of a growing textual environment. Such illustrations can be indicative of different means of dealing with existing narrative material in a creative fashion and encompass practices of re-contextualizing, re-narrating, re-writing and translating. In my conclusion, I shall discuss the concept of Middle Arabic literature as a pre-print praxis of consciously combining linguistic registers and mediating between literary traditions in a globalized textual universe.