لغات الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام

(تم التحويل من Languages of pre-Islamic Arabia)
هذا المقال هو عن pre-Islamic Arabian languages. إذا كنت تريد writing systems in the Arabian Peninsula before Islam، انظر Writing systems of pre-Islamic Arabia. إذا كنت تريد written records، انظر Pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions.

The languages of pre-Islamic Arabia were the spoken and written languages attested in the Arabian Peninsula and its frontier zones before the rise of Islam in the seventh century. Some languages are known from pre-Islamic inscriptions, and others are only known from short texts or later descriptions by Arabic scholars. The main indigenous languages attested in Arabia were Semitic languages, especially Ancient South Arabian, Ancient North Arabian, and Old Arabic, but the peninsula also formed part of a wider written environment in which Aramaic, Greek, Syriac, Middle Persian, Hebrew, Ethiopic, and other languages appeared in various settings.[1][2]

The linguistic situation of pre-Islamic Arabia cannot be reconstructed by projecting the later dominance of Arabic backward into antiquity. In northern and central Arabia, tens of thousands of inscriptions in related scripts preserve a variety of North Arabian languages and dialects, some of which are now understood as forms of Old Arabic while others appear to be distinct Semitic languages. In South Arabia, the monumental and minuscule inscriptions of Yemen and adjacent regions attest a separate group of Ancient South Arabian languages, especially Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic, and Hadramitic.[3][4]

The development of Arabic as a written language was gradual. Before the fully developed Arabic script, Arabic was written in several scripts, including Nabataean, North Arabian, South Arabian, and occasionally Greek. The late antique period of Arabia saw the increasing use of Paleo-Arabic and early Arabic writing, while other prestige languages, especially Greek, Syriac, Nabataean Aramaic, and Middle Persian, remained important for administration, religion, diplomacy, and elite communication.[5][6]

Sources and limitations

Knowledge of the languages of pre-Islamic Arabia depends primarily on inscriptions. In South Arabia, the largest bodies of evidence are monumental inscriptions on stone or metal and minuscule inscriptions written on wooden sticks or palm-leaf stalks. The monumental inscriptions include dedicatory, building, legal, and commemorative texts, while the minuscule corpus preserves more everyday documents, including letters, legal deeds, instructions, and business records.[7] In northern and central Arabia, the evidence is more often graffiti, short prayers, signatures, and texts associated with rock art, though the oasis of Dadān also produced a monumental inscriptional tradition.[8]

The evidence does not map neatly onto spoken language. Many inscriptions are short and formulaic, and a script name does not always correspond to a single language. Some texts are linguistically mixed, while others were written in prestige languages that may not have been the writer's ordinary speech. Macdonald therefore distinguished between scripts, languages, and social uses of writing, and warned against older terms that confused "Arabian" with "Arabic".[9] Debié likewise emphasizes that pre-Islamic Arabs lived in a multilingual and allographic environment, in which Arabic and other local languages could be written in several scripts and elite groups could operate in Greek, Syriac, Nabataean Aramaic, Middle Persian, and other written languages.[10]

Classification

The following list preserves the main languages and written languages attested in or around pre-Islamic Arabia. Some entries are languages in the strict sense, while others are conventional labels for inscriptional corpora, scripts, or poorly understood groups of texts.

North Arabian and Old Arabic

Ancient North Arabian

The term Ancient North Arabian has been used for a group of inscriptions from northern and central Arabia written in varieties of the South Semitic script that are not Ancient South Arabian. In Macdonald's influential terminology, these included Oasis North Arabian inscriptions, such as Taymanitic, Dadanitic, Dumaitic, and related dispersed texts, and Desert North Arabian inscriptions, such as Safaitic, Hismaic, Thamudic, and possibly Hasaitic.[11][12]

Recent scholarship has questioned whether Ancient North Arabian is a single linguistic unit. Al-Jallad argues that the category began as a classification of scripts and inscriptional corpora, not as a proven language family. Some corpora, especially Safaitic and Hismaic, preserve dialects that can be classified genealogically as Arabic, while other corpora, such as Taymanitic and Dadanitic, show features that distinguish them from Proto-Arabic.[13]

Safaitic and Hismaic

Safaitic and Hismaic are modern names for two large inscriptional corpora from the Syro-Arabian desert, southern Syria, Jordan, northwestern Arabia, and adjoining areas. Together they preserve tens of thousands of inscriptions. The texts are usually informal, often carved by pastoralists, and include names, genealogies, prayers, laments, and references to movement, herding, raiding, and political events.[14][15]

Although older scholarship often separated these inscriptions from Arabic because many use a definite article written h-, Al-Jallad has argued that the linguistic features of Safaitic, and to a lesser extent Hismaic, place them within Arabic in genealogical terms. These features include elements of Arabic negation, the mafʿūl passive participle, the use of ʾan as a complementizer, Arabic-like prepositions and particles, and other morphological and syntactic traits.[15] The variety of article forms in these inscriptions also shows that the shape of the definite article alone is not a reliable criterion for separating Arabic from other North Arabian languages.[16]

Dadanitic

Dadanitic was the script and language of the oasis of Dadān, modern al-ʿUlā, in northwestern Arabia. It replaced older labels such as "Dedanite" and "Lihyanite" for the language of the inscriptions from this oasis. Dadanitic is important because, unlike most North Arabian corpora, it includes a monumental tradition as well as shorter texts.[17][18]

Dadanitic appears to be distinct from Arabic, though the oasis was not linguistically isolated. Al-Jallad identifies features that distinguish Dadanitic from Proto-Arabic, including the retention of an anaphoric third-person pronoun, different treatment of the feminine ending, and evidence for both h- and ʾ- causatives. At the same time, individual texts or features point to contact with Old Arabic or the presence of Arabic speakers in the oasis.[19]

Taymanitic

Taymanitic is the name for the script and language associated with the oasis of Tayma in northern Arabia. It was formerly grouped under "Thamudic A" or called "Taymanite". Its linguistic profile differs from Arabic: among other features, it shows a shift of word-initial w to y, as in forms comparable to Northwest Semitic, and does not exhibit the defining innovations of Arabic.[11][20]

Thamudic and unclassified texts

Thamudic is a conventional label for several groups of inscriptions that are not necessarily related to one another and should not be equated with the historical tribe of Thamud. Modern scholarship commonly distinguishes Thamudic B, C, D, and F, while former Thamudic A and E are now usually called Taymanitic and Hismaic. The Thamudic texts are often short and difficult to interpret, and their linguistic classification remains uncertain.[21][22]

Al-Jallad treats Thamudic as a residual category rather than a coherent language. Some groups show features foreign to Arabic, while others provide too little evidence for classification. Thamudic F, or Himaitic, refers to non-South Arabian inscriptions from the Ḥimā region near Najrān, where several forms of the definite article are attested in names.[22]

Hasaitic and eastern Arabian evidence

Hasaitic is a poorly understood corpus from eastern Arabia and the Gulf region. Macdonald treated Hasaitic cautiously, noting uncertainty about both its script and linguistic affiliation. It has often been discussed in relation to the South Arabian script because several texts are written in a related monumental alphabet, but the language itself remains difficult to classify.[23]

Eastern Arabia was also exposed to Aramaic, Middle Persian, Greek, Syriac, and other written languages through trade, imperial administration, and Christian institutions. The linguistic situation of the Gulf therefore cannot be reduced to Hasaitic alone.[24]

Old Arabic

Old Arabic is the documentary phase of Arabic before the Islamic conquests. It is not a single standardized language but a group of pre-Islamic Arabic varieties attested in inscriptions and in substratal influence on other written languages. The sources for Old Arabic include Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions, a small number of texts in the Dadanitic and Nabataean scripts, Nabataeo-Arabic inscriptions, early Arabic inscriptions, and Arabic transcribed in Greek.[25]

Two important Old Arabic inscriptions in the Nabataean script are the ʿEn ʿAvdat inscription and the Namara inscription of 328 CE. Later inscriptions in early Arabic script include the inscriptions of Zebed, Jabal Usays, and Ḥarrān, as well as finds from Dūmat al-Jandal and Ḥimā. These texts are often brief, but they illuminate the gradual emergence of Arabic as a written language and the transition from Nabataean to Arabic script.[26][27]

Old Arabic also differs in important ways from Classical Arabic. Its evidence shows variation in definite marking, preservation of older phonological features, and dialectal diversity before the standardizing effects of the Qur'anic and early Islamic written traditions.[28]

Ancient South Arabian

Ancient South Arabian is a collective term for the Semitic languages of ancient Yemen and adjacent parts of southern Arabia. The four principal languages are Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic, and Hadramitic. They were written from at least the early first millennium BCE until the sixth century CE and are known almost entirely through inscriptions.[4]

The shared script of these languages should not obscure their linguistic differences. Stein emphasizes that the four main idioms are distinct enough to be treated as separate languages, even though the exact classification of Ancient South Arabian within Semitic remains debated. Ancient South Arabian is not simply an early form of Arabic, nor is it the direct ancestor of the Modern South Arabian languages.[29][30]

Sabaic

Sabaic is the best-attested Ancient South Arabian language, with more than 5,500 published inscriptions. It was used in the kingdom of Sabaʾ and later became the dominant written language of South Arabia. Sabaic is conventionally divided into Early, Middle, and Late phases, and Middle Sabaic includes regional dialects such as North, Central, and South Sabaic.[31]

Late Sabaic emerged after the rise of Ḥimyar, drawing especially on South Sabaic forms mixed with elements of the Central Sabaic written standard. The relationship between the medieval reports of "Ḥimyaritic" and the epigraphic record remains debated: some scholars interpret medieval Ḥimyaritic as a separate non-Ṣayhadic language, while others view it as a later development related to Sabaic.[32]

Minaic, Qatabanic and Hadramitic

Minaic, also called Madhābic, is known mainly from the Jawf region in northern Yemen, the heartland of the Minaean kingdom, but Minaic inscriptions are also attested in northwest Arabia, Egypt, and on Delos. Qatabanic was used in the kingdom of Qatabān, while Hadramitic is associated especially with the region of Shabwa and Raybun in Ḥaḍramawt.[31]

The documentation for these languages is uneven. Qatabanic and Minaic are represented by substantial inscriptional corpora, while Hadramitic is less well documented in usable linguistic material despite many published fragments. These languages share many structural features with Sabaic but differ in pronouns, verbal morphology, and other grammatical details.[33]

Script and writing culture

Ancient South Arabian was written in both monumental musnad and minuscule zabūr scripts. Monumental inscriptions were carved on stone, rock, or metal and were often formal public texts. Minuscule writing, by contrast, was used on portable wooden sticks and palm-leaf stalks for everyday documents such as letters, legal records, commercial instructions, and cultic notes.[7]

This distinction matters for linguistic history because the minuscule corpus preserves forms of communication and language use not normally visible in monumental epigraphy. It shows that South Arabian writing was not limited to royal display or temple dedication, but also included practical literacy and correspondence.[34]

Aramaic and Nabataean

Forms of Aramaic were used in and around Arabia for many centuries. Nabataean Aramaic was especially important in northwestern Arabia and the southern Levant. The Nabataeans used Aramaic as a written prestige language, while Arabic influence appears in personal names, syntax, loanwords, and later mixed inscriptions.[35][26]

The development of the Arabic script is closely connected with Nabataean writing. Late Nabataean and Nabataeo-Arabic inscriptions occupy an intermediate position between Classical Nabataean Aramaic and the Arabic script. Debié notes that Paleo-Arabic should be understood within a wider late antique scribal environment that included Nabataean, Syriac, Greek, and other scripts.[27]

Greek, Syriac and Christian Arabic contexts

Greek was the dominant language of administration and ecclesiastical hierarchy in the eastern Roman provinces, including areas where Arab groups lived or served as allies. Greek inscriptions and literary sources document Arab phylarchs, military units, churches, and diplomatic exchanges. Some bilingual or mixed evidence also shows that individuals from nomadic or Arab communities could operate in Greek contexts.[36]

Syriac was the major written language of several Christian communities in the Near East and eastern Arabia. Arab Christians could participate in churches whose liturgy, correspondence, and theological literature were written in Syriac or Greek. In the Gulf, the East Syriac milieu of Beth Qatraye produced Syriac Christian writers in the sixth and seventh centuries.[37][38]

Arabic itself is only sparsely attested as a Christian written language before Islam, but late antique inscriptions show the growing use of Arabic script in Christian and monotheist settings. The pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions of Syria and northern Arabia, such as Zebed, Jabal Usays, and Ḥarrān, belong to this broader context of late antique religious and scribal change.[26][39]

Middle Persian and the Gulf

Middle Persian was the official Iranian language of the Sasanian Empire and was relevant in eastern and northeastern Arabia through Sasanian administration, military activity, and political influence. Debié argues that Arab groups connected to the Sasanians, especially in al-Ḥīra and eastern Arabia, would have encountered Middle Persian in administrative and diplomatic contexts.[40]

Middle Persian was not a general vernacular of Arabia, but it formed part of the peninsula's late antique written environment. Its role was strongest in zones of Sasanian power, including eastern Arabia, al-Ḥīra, and regions connected with taxation, military organization, and imperial correspondence.[40]

Hebrew, Jewish Aramaic and Ethiopic

Jewish communities in Arabia used Hebrew and Aramaic in religious settings. Debié notes evidence for Hebrew inscriptions and for the use of Hebrew in reading the Torah, while also emphasizing that the spoken or studied Aramaic of Arabian Jewish communities may have included Palestinian, Babylonian, or older Jewish Aramaic forms.[41]

Ethiopic is attested in South Arabia in connection with Aksumite activity and the wider Red Sea world. It was not one of the main indigenous languages of Arabia, but Ethiopic inscriptions and Aksumite political involvement show that South Arabia's linguistic landscape was connected to Ethiopia as well as to the Near East.[42]

Modern South Arabian and later Arabic dialects

The Modern South Arabian languages are non-Arabic Semitic languages spoken today in southern Arabia, especially in Oman, Yemen, and Socotra. They are not direct descendants of the Ancient South Arabian epigraphic languages, though both groups belong to the wider Semitic linguistic history of southern Arabia.[30]

Modern Arabic dialects of the Arabian Peninsula preserve some features that illuminate older linguistic layers, especially in the south and southwest. Watson notes that Old Arabic developed in the north and north of the peninsula and gradually replaced ancient North and South Arabian languages. In the southwest, some dialects preserve South Arabian-like features, including nasal definite articles, ḏ-based relative pronouns, and forms related to the ancient k-perfect.[43]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Macdonald 2000, pp. 28-31.
  2. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 195-197.
  3. ^ Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 1-4.
  4. ^ أ ب Stein 2011, pp. 1042-1046.
  5. ^ Al-Jallad 2018a, pp. 323-328.
  6. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 196-197, 244-249.
  7. ^ أ ب Stein 2011, pp. 1042-1044.
  8. ^ Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 1-4, 21-23.
  9. ^ Macdonald 2000, pp. 28-31, 36-39.
  10. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 196-197, 203-208.
  11. ^ أ ب Macdonald 2000, pp. 29-31.
  12. ^ Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 2-4.
  13. ^ Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 4-8, 17-25.
  14. ^ Al-Jallad 2018a, p. 323.
  15. ^ أ ب Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 17-21.
  16. ^ Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 10-16.
  17. ^ Macdonald 2000, pp. 36-39.
  18. ^ Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 21-23.
  19. ^ Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 21-24.
  20. ^ Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 24-25.
  21. ^ Macdonald 2000, pp. 38-39.
  22. ^ أ ب Al-Jallad 2018b, pp. 25-28.
  23. ^ Macdonald 2000, pp. 40-43.
  24. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 210-214, 231-237.
  25. ^ Al-Jallad 2018a, pp. 322-324.
  26. ^ أ ب ت Al-Jallad 2018a, pp. 323-324.
  27. ^ أ ب Debié 2024, pp. 204-208, 244-249.
  28. ^ Al-Jallad 2018a, pp. 324-328.
  29. ^ Stein 2011, pp. 1042-1045.
  30. ^ أ ب Macdonald 2000, pp. 30-31.
  31. ^ أ ب Stein 2011, pp. 1046-1047.
  32. ^ Stein 2011, pp. 1042-1044, 1046-1047.
  33. ^ Stein 2011, pp. 1046-1059.
  34. ^ Stein 2011, pp. 1043-1044.
  35. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 205-208.
  36. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 214-218, 226-230.
  37. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 229-237.
  38. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 241-244.
  39. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 204-208.
  40. ^ أ ب Debié 2024, pp. 213-214.
  41. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 225-226.
  42. ^ Debié 2024, pp. 224-226.
  43. ^ Watson 2011, pp. 887-888, 895-896.

Sources

  • Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2018a). "The Earliest Stages of Arabic and Its Linguistic Classification". In Benmamoun, Elabbas; Bassiouney, Reem (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics. Routledge. pp. 315–331.
  • Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2018b). "What is Ancient North Arabian?". In Birnstiel, Daniel; Pat-El, Naʿama (eds.). Re-engaging Comparative Semitic and Arabic Studies. Harrassowitz. pp. 1–43.
  • Debié, Muriel (2024). "The Arabs and Northern Languages and Scripts before Islam". In Borrut, Antoine; Ceballos, Manuela; Vacca, Alison (eds.). Navigating Language in the Early Islamic World: Multilingualism and Language Change in the First Centuries of Islam. Brepols. pp. 195–257.
  • Macdonald, Michael C. A. (2000). "Reflections on the Linguistic Map of Pre-Islamic Arabia". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. 11: 28–79.
  • Stein, Peter (2011). "Ancient South Arabian". In Weninger, Stefan; Khan, Geoffrey; Streck, Michael P.; Watson, Janet C. E. (eds.). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 1042–1072.
  • Watson, Janet C. E. (2011). "Dialects of the Arabian Peninsula". In Weninger, Stefan; Khan, Geoffrey; Streck, Michael P.; Watson, Janet C. E. (eds.). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 887–898.
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