Old Arabic

Old Arabic
Region Northwestern Arabia and the southern Levant
Era 8th century BCE to 6th century CE
Dialects
Old North Arabian script
Language codes
ISO 639-3 None (mis)
Glottolog None

Old Arabic is the earliest attested stage of the Arabic language, beginning with the first attestation of personal names in the 9th century BC, and culminating in the codification of Classical Arabic beginning in the 6th century AD.

Classification

Old Arabic and its descendants are Central Semitic languages, most closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the languages of the Dadanitic, Taymanitic inscriptions, the poorly understood languages labeled 'Thamudic', and the ancient languages of Yemen written in the Ancient South Arabian script. Old Arabic is however distinguished from all of these languages by the following innovations:[1]

  1. negative particles m */mā/; lʾn */lā-ʾan/ > CAr lan
  2. mafʿūl G-passive participle
  3. prepositions and adverbs f, ʿn, ʿnd, ḥt, ʿkdy
  4. a subjunctive in -a
  5. t-demonstratives
  6. leveling of the -at allomorph of the feminine ending
  7. ʾn complementizer and subordinator
  8. the use of f- to introduce modal clauses
  9. independent object pronoun in (ʾ)y
  10. vestiges of nunation

History

Early Old Arabic (9th c. BC - AD 273)

The earliest attestations of Arabic are personal names dating back to the Assyrian period. From the 2nd century BC onwards, personal names are attested in Nabataean inscriptions, and Arabic substratal influence can be demonstrated in the Nabataean language. Dating to the 1st century BC, the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions concentrated in Hawran and Hisma respectively attest to the forms of Arabic used by the nomads of those regions.[2]

Early on, it appears that some sort of difference obtained between the Arabic of nomads and settled peoples. This difference would manifest itself around the turn of the era in the development of two major epigraphic traditions of writing Old Arabic. The nomads continued to use Safaitic and Hismaic scripts, while the settled peoples began to use the Nabataean script to express their dialects, which differed from those of nomads in a few key respects. While that of the nomads exhibited a diversity of forms of the definite article (h-, ʾ-, ʾl-, hn-, or none at all), the dialect of the settled peoples appeared to use ʾl- exclusively.[2]

The ʿEn ʿAvdat inscription in the Nabataean script dating to no later than AD 150 shows that case marking was functional in at least the dialect of the inscription. The reconstructed text of the inscription is as follows:[3]

  1. pa-yapʿal lā pedā wa lā ʾoṯrā
  2. pa-kon honā yabġe-nā ʾal-mawto lā ʾabġā-h
  3. pa-kon honā ʾadāda gorḥo lā yorde-nā

An inscription dated to the 3rd or 4th c. AD in Greek script in a dialect showing affinities to that of the Safaitic inscriptions shows that short final high vowels had been lost in at least some dialects of Old Arabic at that time, obliterating the distinction between nominative and genitive case in the singular, leaving the accusative the only marked case:[5]

Late Old Arabic (AD 273 - AD 622)

The collapse of the Palmyrene Empire in AD 273 saw the rapid rise of the Saracens in the Syrian desert, the rapid decline of Ancient North Arabian scripts, and the proliferation of Arabic inscriptions composed in the Nabataeo-Arabic script referring to tribal groupings with demonstrable relation to those mentioned in later Muslim historiographical sources. Perhaps the most well-known of these inscriptions is the Namarah inscription (AD 328).

This period saw linguistic Arabization farther afield: in Yemen in the 6th century, especially in the language of trade and among the military, and following the influence of Kinda, in Palestine, and, one would expect, in areas where Ancient North Arabian scripts were used. The Nabataeo-Arabic script did not replace the Ancient North Arabian scripts functionally, however, and it may be that the disappearance of inscriptions in the Ancient North Arabian scripts had more to do with the integration of the peoples who produced them into an emerging Arab society in which the day-to-day role of these peoples had changed.[6]

The end of this period saw the emergence of the Arabic poetic tradition, the earliest evidence of which dates to the Umayyad period however. The first revelations of the Qur'an can also be dated to this period.

Geographical distribution

The territories from which the earliest Arabic inscriptions emerged belonged mainly to the Nabataean areas of northern Arabia, the Negev, and Syria. Examining a map of Arabic-speaking areas around the year AD 500 would reveal a geographical distribution suggesting territories connected by a band along routes of trade, military movements, and transhumance very likely to have been set first under the auspices of Kinda, using the koine which had become fairly consistent in the 6th century AD. Features of this koine are also identifiable alongside, and to the east of, the ancient line of communication from Yemen to the northeast. In this picture, west-central Arabia, the Hijaz, remains somewhat indeterminate. In all, there were the makings of relative linguistic homogenization across territories under the influence of Arab principalities.[6]

Morphology

Feminine -t

Arabic appears to have leveled the at allomorph of the feminine ending.[1] In JSLih 384 the t allomorph survives in bnt as opposed to ah (< at) in s1lmh.

Case and Mood

The A1 inscription provides proof that case inflection was operative in the northern dialects of Old Arabic. The survival of the accusative case alone suggests the loss of high vowels in final position first, similar to what happened in Gəʿəz. This phenomenon invites comparison with the dialect upon which Qurʾanic orthography was based. In non-diptotic and indefinite nouns, only one case is indicated graphically, the accusative, written with a final ʾ.[5]

Case ʿEn ʿAvdat QCT A1
Nominative -w -∅ -∅
Accusative -ʾ -ʾ -α
Genitive -w -∅ -∅

Dialects, accents, and varieties

Safaitic

Main article: Safaitic dialect

Hismaic

Main article: Hismaic dialect

References

  1. 1 2 Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2015-03-27). An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions. BRILL. ISBN 9789004289826.
  2. 1 2 "Al-Jallad. The earliest stages of Arabic and its linguistic classification (Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, forthcoming)". www.academia.edu. Retrieved 2015-12-08.
  3. ↑ "Al-Jallad. 2015. Echoes of the Baal Cycle in a Safaito-Hismaic Inscription". www.academia.edu. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
  4. ↑ Fisher, Associate Professor College of the Humanities and Department of History Greg; Fisher, Greg (2015-07-30). Arabs and Empire Before Islam. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199654529.
  5. 1 2 "Al-Jallad. 2015. New Epigraphica from Jordan I: a pre-Islamic Arabic inscription in Greek letters and a Greek inscription from north-eastern Jordan, w. A. al-Manaser". www.academia.edu. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
  6. 1 2 Al-Azmeh, Aziz (2014-03-06). The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107729360.

External links

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