Paleo-Arabic

Text of the Zabad inscription: May [the Christian] God be mindful of Sirgu son of Abd-Manafu and Ha{l/n}i son of Mara al-Qays and Sirgu son of Sadu and Syrw and S{.}ygw.

Paleo-Arabic (or Palaeo-Arabic, previously called pre-Islamic Arabic or Old Arabic ^{[1] [2]} ) is a pre-Islamic script used to write Arabic. It began to be used in the fifth century, when it succeeded the earlier Nabataeo-Arabic script, and it was used until the early seventh century, when the Arabic script was standardized in the Islamic era. ^{[3] [4] [5]}

Evidence for the use of Paleo-Arabic was once confined to Syria and Jordan. In more recent years^{[ when? ]}, Paleo-Arabic inscriptions have been discovered across the Arabian Peninsula including: South Arabia (the Christian Hima texts), ^[6] near Taif in the Hejaz ^[7] and in the Tabuk region of northwestern Saudi Arabia. ^[8]

Most Paleo-Arabic inscriptions were written by Christians, as indicated by their vocabulary, the name of the signing author, or by the inscription/drawing of a cross associated with the writing. ^[9]

The term "Paleo-Arabic" was first used by Christian Robin in the form of the French expression "paléo-arabe". ^[10]

Classification

Paleo-Arabic refers to the Arabic script in the centuries prior to the standardization Arabic underwent in the Islamic era. According to Ahmad Al-Jallad and Hythem Sidky, Paleo-Arabic can be distinguished from the script that occurs in later periods by a number of orthographic features, including: ^[11]

• Wawation (the addition of a seemingly superfluous waw (و) to the end of nouns) ^[12]
• Use of Arameograms, i.e. fossilized Aramaic forms of Arabic words such as Aramaic br for Arabic bn ('son') or Aramaic ’nh for Arabic ’na ('I; me')
• Absence of ʾalif ( ا ) to represent the long ā
• Occasional phonetic spelling of the definite article, i.e. eye spelling of al (ال) to match assimilated sun letters instead of retaining the lam.
• Occasional use of dots to distinguish the dāl (د) from rē (ر) as a relic from the Syriac script

Genres

Known Paleo-Arabic inscriptions fall into one of three categories: ^[7]

• simple signatures with no confessional statements
• monotheist invocations
• specifically Christian texts

As such, they reflect the dominance attained by the spread of monotheism in pre-Islamic Arabia from the fourth to sixth centuries in the pre-Islamic period. ^[7]

Terminology

God

Paleo-Arabic inscriptions most commonly refer to "God" as al-ʾilāh or by its orthographic variant illāh, though the term Rabb for "Lord" also appears as is seen in the Abd Shams inscription, Jabal Dabub inscription, and the Ri al-Zallalah inscription. ^[7]

Introductory formulae

The present corpus of Paleo-Arabic inscriptions attests the following introductory formulae: ^[13]

• b-sm-k rb-nʾ / In your name, our lord
• brk-[k]m rb-nʾ / May our lord bless you
• b-sm-k ʾllhm / In your name, O God

Calendar

Several Paleo-Arabic inscriptions, including the Jebel Usays inscription and the Hima Paleo-Arabic inscriptions typically date events according to the Bostran era, whose beginning is the equivalent of the year 106 in the Gregorian calendar. However, at least one, the Zabad inscription (known from Syria) uses the Seleucid era.

List of Paleo-Arabic inscriptions

The current list of known Paleo-Arabic texts and inscriptions is given in a table and appendix of a paper jointly written by Ahmad Al-Jallad and Hythem Sidky. ^[7]

Name	Location	Number of texts	Date	Publication
Zabad inscription	Zabad, Syria	1	512	[14]
Jebel Usays inscription	Jebel Usays, Syria	1	528	[14]
Harran inscription	Harran, Syria	1	562	[14]
Umm al-Jimal Paleo-Arabic inscription	Umm el-Jimal, Jordan	1	undated	[15]
Yazid inscription	Qasr Burqu, Jordan	1	undated	[16]
Hima Paleo-Arabic inscriptions	Hima, Saudi Arabia	25	470, 513	[4]
Ri al-Zallalah inscription	Ri al-Zallalah, Saudi Arabia	1	undated	[7]
None	Medina, Saudi Arabia	2	undated	Unpublished but see [1]
Umm Burayrah (Abd Shams) inscription	Northwest Hejaz, Saudi Arabia	9 + 2	undated	[8] [17]
Dumat al-Jandal inscription	Dumat al-Jandal, Saudi Arabia	2	548	[15] [18]

See also

• Namara inscription
• Old Arabic
• Safaitic

References

Citations

1. Lindstedt 2023, p. 49–50.
2. Alhatlani & Al-Manaser 2024, p. 4–5.
3. Nehmé 2010, p. 47–48.
4. Robin, al-Ghabbān & al-Saʿīd 2014.
5. Nehmé 2020.
6. Fisher 2020, p. 186–187.
7. Al-Jallad & Sidky 2021.
8. Alhatlani & Al-Otibi 2023.
9. Alhatlani & Al-Manaser 2024, p. 6.
10. Robin, al-Ghabbān & al-Saʿīd 2014, p. 1039.
11. Al-Jallad & Sidky 2024, p. 4.
12. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Stages-in-the-development-of-wawation_fig1_367852828
13. Al-Jallad & Sidky 2024, p. 8.
14. Fiema et al. 2015, p. 377.
15. Nehmé et al. 2018.
16. al-Shdaifat et al. 2017.
17. "نقوش عربية بــ"لكنة" نبطية!". فريق الصحراء. 2019-09-05.
18. Nehmé 2017.

Sources

• Al-Jallad, Ahmad; Sidky, Hythem (2021). "A Paleo-Arabic inscription on a route north of Ṭāʾif". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. 33 (1): 202–215. doi:10.1111/aae.12203.
• Al-Jallad, Ahmad; Sidky, Hythem (2024). "A Paleo-Arabic Inscription of a Companion of Muhammad?" . Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 83 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1086/729531.
• al-Shdaifat, Younis; Al-Jallad, Ahmad; al-Salameen, Zeyad; Harahsheh, Rafe (2017). "An early Christian Arabic graffito mentioning 'Yazīd the king'". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. 28 (2): 315–324. doi: 10.1111/aae.12105 .
• Alhatlani, Abdullah Saad; Al-Otibi, Ajab Mohammad (2023). "A Palaeo-Arabic inscription from the Ḥismā Desert (Tabūk region)". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. 34 (1): 183–193. doi:10.1111/aae.12235.
• Alhatlani, Abdullah Saad; Al-Manaser, Ali (2024). "From Nabataeo-Arabic to Palaeo-Arabic: Two new pre-Islamic graffiti from the Jordanian Ḥarrah" . Palestinian Exploration Quarterly: 1–10. doi:10.1080/00310328.2024.2363676.
• Fiema, Zbigniew; Al-Jallad, Ahmad; MacDonald, Michael C.A.; Nehmé, Laila (2015). "Provincia Arabia: Nabataea, the Emergence of Arabic as a Written Language, and Graeco-Arabica". In Fisher, Greg (ed.). Arabs and Empires Before Islam. Oxford University Press. pp. 373–433. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654529.003.0008. ISBN   978-0-19-965452-9.
• Fisher, Greg (2020). Rome, Persia, and Arabia: shaping the Middle East from Pompey to Muhammad. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   978-1-000-74090-5.
• Lindstedt, Ilkka (2023). Muhammad and His Followers in Context: The Religious Map of Late Antique Arabia. Brill.
• Nehmé, Laila (2010). "A glimpse of the development of the Nabataean script into Arabic based on old and new epigraphic material". In MacDonald, Michael C.A. (ed.). The development of Arabic as a written language: Papers from the special session of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held on 24 July, 2009. Archaeopress. pp. 47–88.
• Nehmé, Laila (2017). "New dated inscriptions (Nabataean and pre-Islamic Arabic) from a site near al-Jawf, ancient Dūmah, Saudi Arabia". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. 3: 121‒164.
• Nehmé, Laila; Briquel-Chatonnet, Françoise; Desreumaux, Alain Jacques Paul; Al-Ghabban, Ali I; MacDonald, Michael; Villeneuve, François F. (2018). The Darb al-Bakrah. A Caravan Route in North-West Arabia Discovered by Ali I. al-Ghabban. Catalogue of the Inscriptions. Series of Archaeological Refereed Studies. Vol. 50. Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage.
• Nehmé, Laila (2020). "The religious landscape of Northwest Arabia as reflected in the Nabataean, Nabataeo-Arabic, and pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions" . Semitica et Classica. 13: 127–154. doi:10.1484/J.SEC.5.122984.
• Robin, Christian; al-Ghabbān, ʿAlī Ibrāhīm; al-Saʿīd, Saʿīd Fāyiz (2014). "Inscriptions antiques de la région de Najran (Arabie Séoudite meridionale): nouveaux jalons pour l'histoire de l'écriture, de la langue et du calendrier Arabes". Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres. 158 (3): 1033–1128. doi:10.3406/crai.2014.94960.

External links

• DiCoNab: The Digital Corpus of the Nabataean and Developing Arabic Inscriptions