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88-490: The Dhofar Governorate ( Arabic : مُحَافَظَة ظُفَّار , romanized :  Muḥāfaẓat Ẓuffār ) is the largest of the 11 governorates in the Sultanate of Oman in terms of area. It lies in southern Oman, on the eastern border with Yemen 's Al Mahrah Governorate and the southern border with Saudi Arabia 's Eastern Province . It is a rather mountainous area that covers 99,300 km (38,300 sq mi) and had

176-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

264-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

352-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

440-576: A historical glimpse into the administration of the region: The administration of the Dhufar Province is in the hands of the Sultan of Muscat himself. He appears to regard Dhufar more as a private estate than as a Province of his Sultanate and maintains a separate treasury. According to an article published some 65 years ago in the Nehla, a superior Arabic magazine of the last century, Sayyid Turki ,

528-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

616-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

704-562: A population of 416,458 in the 2020 census. Salalah is the largest city and capital of the governorate. Historically, the region was a source of frankincense . The local dialect of Arabic is Dhofari Arabic , which is distinct from that used in the rest of Oman and in Yemen. At Aybut Al-Auwal ("First Aybut") in Wadi Aybut (west-central Nejd), a site was discovered in 2011 containing more than 100 surface scatters of stone tools belonging to

792-743: A portion of Dhofar was partially part of the sultanate of Kathiri , and was later mostly controlled by the tribes of Al-Hakli (Qara), thus given the name " Qara Mountain Range ". Al-Shahri were believed to be the original inhabitants of Dhofar. A historical political précis on Dhofar produced by the British Government indicate that in 1876, a man named Sayyid Fadhl bin Alawi, who had arrived in Dhofar from Mecca in August 1875, had established himself as

880-826: A regionally specific lithic industry, the late Nubian Complex, known previously only from Northeast Africa. Two optically stimulated luminescence age estimates place the Arabian Nubian Complex at 106,000 years old. This provides evidence for a distinct Middle Stone Age technocomplex in southern Arabia around the earlier part of the Marine Isotope Stage 5. Bronze Age sites of the Dhofar Survey include tomb complexes found at Hodor (al-Hudfir). Venetian merchant Marco Polo wrote of Dhofar in The Travels of Marco Polo (c. 1300), stating: Dufar

968-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

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1056-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

1144-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

1232-538: A small portion of the northern tip of Yemen are directly exposed to the South East monsoon from mid-June to mid-September; this is known as the Khareef . Monsoon clouds keep the summer cool and humid, while the winter months are warm except for periods when cold winds from the northern deserts cause heavy and prolonged dust storms and a sharp fall in temperature. Dhofar's heavy seasonal rainfall contrasts sharply with

1320-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

1408-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

1496-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

1584-464: Is a great and noble and fine city. The people are Saracens [Muslims] and have a Count for their chief who is subject to the Soldan [Sultan] of Aden . Much white incense is produced here, and I will tell you how it grows. The trees are like small fir trees; these are notched with a knife in several places, and from these notches the incense is exuded. Sometimes it flows from the tree without any notch; this

1672-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

1760-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

1848-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

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1936-562: Is by reason of the great heat of the sun there. This Dhafar is supposed to be the Sephar of Genesis , x. 30. Dhofar was a major exporter of frankincense in ancient times, with some of it being traded as far as China. Al-Baleed (also spelled Al Blaid ), an area near Salalah which contains numerous archeological finds, used to serve as the home of the Manjawi Civilization from the 12th to 16th centuries. Prior to Omani rule,

2024-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon

2112-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and

2200-744: Is home to many expatriates. Salalah, the region's capital, has an international airport, one of the largest seaports in the Middle East, several resorts including the Marriott and the Crowne Plaza , and a university. The Burj-al-Nadha clock tower is a local landmark and is featured in the Dhofar Municipality coat of arms. The Dhofar region is also rich in meteorites . According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ,

2288-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

2376-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

2464-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

2552-530: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

2640-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

2728-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

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2816-653: The Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia , that the two main tribes of Dhofar were the mountain-dwelling Al Qara tribe (for which the Qara Mountain Range was named) and the Al Kathiri tribes (Al-Shanfari, Al-Rawas, Al-Marhoon, Bait Fadhil, Al-Mardoof and Al-Hadhri) who lived in the hills and in villages alike; both were reported to speak dialects of Arabic unknown in other parts of

2904-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary

2992-589: The Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

3080-721: The Arabian Peninsula . Other tribes of importance noted by Lorimer included the Ja'afar tribe, the Bait Al Qalam tribe, the Sayid (or Sadat) tribe, the Hasarit tribe and the Harasis tribe. The inhabitants of Dhofar were described primarily as agriculturalists and were well known for their affinity to 'tobacco', possibly referring to khat which is similar in appearance. At the time of Lorimer's survey, Dhofar had roughly 11,000 inhabitants,

3168-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

3256-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

3344-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In

3432-714: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Mirbat Mirbat (Moscha)

3520-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

3608-571: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of

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3696-834: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ    [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

3784-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

3872-591: The Persian Gulf (PFLOAG). This latter group was supported by Communist South Yemen and several other socialist states, including East Germany . It aimed to depose the Sultan's government, who was assisted by the United Kingdom, Iran , and officers and doctors from Pakistan and India. The rebellion failed, and once the campaign was declared over in December 1975, the active remainder of PFLOAG forces surrendered. J.G. Lorimer noted in his 1908 manuscript,

3960-476: The Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia . In it, Dhofar's boundaries are given as between the Samhan hills (Jebel Samhan) and the sea, from Ra's Risut eastwards for 30 miles to Khor Rori . Colloquially, the term Dhofar was used to describe the villages of Al Haffah and Salalah , which housed about two-thirds of Dhofar's population at that time; however, on an official capacity, the term was understood to refer to

4048-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

4136-576: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

4224-434: The best of them, producing an estimated flow of 40,000 gallons of water an hour. These waters, if unharnessed, again disappear underground in the foothills and reappear to feed extensive fresh water creeks in the coastal belt divided from the sea only by narrow sandbars . Fresh water is easily obtainable from shallow wells at a distance of a hundred yards from high water mark and up to a distance of one mile inland, beyond which

4312-576: The coasts of Dhofar, perhaps Wadi Sayq, are considered the most likely location of the Book of Mormon land of Bountiful , from which the nomadic family of Lehi sailed, some time after 600 BC, in a ship constructed by his son Nephi , to the New World. Dhofar Governorate consists of ten wilayats also called provinces. Al-Mazyunah is the newest after it was declared separate from the Rakhyut wilayat. It

4400-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after

4488-795: The de facto ruler of Dhofar. He claimed allegiance to the Ottomans , however, it was unknown if he was acting under their directive. With the help of Dhofari tribes he carried out warfare against the Bedouins of the interior. He was expelled by local sheikhs in January 1879. Dhofar is extensively detailed in the 1917 publication Gazetteer of Arabia , produced by the Government in British India and mostly based on information gathered by J.G. Lorimer 's in his 1908 and 1915 handbook Gazetteer of

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4576-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of

4664-520: The entire region of Dhofar, much like in the modern sense. Dhofar's physical geography was noted as consisting mainly of barren plains, a mountain range and several valleys, the most important of which was Wadi Raikut. Communication outside of Dhofar was made difficult on account of the rugged landscape and the fact that no large harbors existed on the coast, though Mirbat and Risut were said to offer good anchorage for smaller vessels. The mountain paths were, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible during

4752-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around

4840-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

4928-434: The festival among the lower classes of Dhofar. Jackson (1943) states that the ruler of Oman prohibited Muslims from participating in these festivities sometime in the early 20th century. While Arabic speakers from the dominant culture of Oman have come to live in the province, especially the larger cities and towns, Dhofar has been the traditional homeland of many tribespeople speaking Modern South Arabian languages . One of

5016-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

5104-420: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

5192-413: The increased depth of the water discourages prospective cultivators. Dhofar's forest cover was estimated to be 53,000 hectares in 1989. However, due to human actives and deforestation, it declined to 10,000 hectares in 2020. The forests are home to more than 750 flora species – including 50 native species, which counts for more than 75% of Oman's biodiversity. Dhofar has a tropical climate . Dhofar and

5280-409: The indignation of the Sultan of Oman. They engaged in little cultivation due to the arid landscape, instead preferring to trade incense and rear livestock. In the past, the Hindu festival Diwali was celebrated by practicing Omani Muslims and non-Muslims alike. According to local tradition, the custom was introduced by a Brahmin who was shipwrecked off Dhofar's coast and found a ready acceptance of

5368-558: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

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5456-485: The languages most commonly spoken by Al-Hakli (Qara), Al-Shahri, Al-Barami, Al-Mashaiki and Al-Bathari mountain tribes is the Shehri language (called Jibbali "Mountainous"). The Yemeni language Mehri is somewhat linked to Jeballi. Other indigenous groups speaking smaller languages such as Bat'hari living in the coastal towns of Shuwaymiya and Sharbithat . The Harasis , speaking Harsusi , number 1–2000 and live in Jiddat al-Harasis . The Dhofar Governorate, situated in

5544-550: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

5632-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

5720-423: The locations, geography and history of several of these villages. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] ) is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in

5808-469: The majority of which were Bedouins . In Gordon Noel Jackson's 1943 treatise on the Dhofar Governorate, he wrote that "the people of the province are as varied as the landscape". He goes on to state that the Arabs of the hills, 'mountain Arabs', were highly nomadic and were not proficient in Standard Arabic . Furthermore, it is asserted that they were not overtly observant of Islamic customs, were highly superstitious, and practiced pre-Islamic rites , much to

5896-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

5984-624: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

6072-427: The neighboring barren Empty Quarter Desert. The Salalah plain was once a well cultivated area with a sophisticated irrigation system. Dhofar has a tribal community , including the tribes of Al-Kathiri are the largest number in Salalah and Dhofar in general Al-Hakli (Qara), Hashimi, Al-Yafei, Al-Mashaikhi, Al-Shahri, Al-Mahri, Al-Bat'hari, Al-Daroodi(Dhashisha, Siwaqron, Ali Saleban, Al-bahanta) and Al-Barami. It also

6160-450: The north and east and buffeted and depressed until they are entrapped by the mountains over the Dhofar plain. Thus, Dhofar is unique on the Southern Arabian coast in that it enjoys monsoon rainfall for some three months of the year. The Province contains three distinct physical tracts, a cultivated coastal belt, Al Haffah , divided from the mountains by a desert plain some 40 miles in length and up to 9 miles in depth. The mountains enclosing

6248-421: The north being practically free of clouds and devoid of moisture. It is in these wadis that the frankincense , for which the mountains have been famous through the ages, grows wild. The dryness of the air determines the quality of the frankincense, the resin of similar trees growing on the southern slopes being spoilt by the rain. Although the southern slopes enjoy a good rainfall the ground soil does not retain

6336-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

6424-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on

6512-581: The present Sultan's grandfather, established his rule there at the invitation of the Sayyids of Salalah to forestall the unwelcome interest of the Turks. He entrusted the task of establishing Muscat authority to one Sulaiman bin Suwailim, a former slave, and supplied him with a small body of soldiers to secure the towns from the tribesmen. Sulaiman bin Suwailim built a fort on the site of the present palace which

6600-434: The rainy season. Aside from camels, no other transport animals were widely used. Frankincense was said to comprise the bulk of economic trade, with 9,000 cwt. being sent to Mumbai annually. Other exports were hides, sheep-skins, gums and beeswax. Among the chief imports were khat (which was mistaken for tobacco) from Mukalla and rice, sugar, dates and cloths from Mumbai. Gordon Noel Jackson's 1943 essay on Dhofar provides

6688-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

6776-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

6864-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

6952-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

7040-475: The summer for herds of dairy cattle, camels and goats numbering many hundreds. The uplands rise gently to a height of between 3,000 and 4,000 feet at the top of the watershed and thence slope away to the north draining into Wadi Muqshin on the southern edge of the Rub' al Khali (Empty Quarter). Cloud formations are entrapped over the enclosed plain and on southern slopes of the mountains, the reverse slopes draining to

7128-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

7216-415: The water. Underground rivers drain the waters of Jabal Aram into Wadi Darbat, the mouth of which is sealed by a sheer limestone cliff 500 feet high. The accumulated waters fill a lake two miles long, situated at a height of 1,000 feet, and overflow during the rains to form a picturesque waterfall. Other underground rivers feed perennial springs at the foot of the hills. There are six of these springs; Jarziz,

7304-472: The western end of the plain are precipitous and inaccessible while those to the east rise steeply with many sheer cliffs and deep gorges but are capped by rolling grassy uplands and interspersed with wide park-like valleys well wooded with groves of wild figs , tamarinds , acacias , sycamores . Varieties of evergreens, privets , babuls , wild olives, jasmines , camel thorn, salt cedars and an abundance of wild flowers and grasses provide ample grazing during

7392-543: The western extremity of Oman's territories, is enclosed by the Indian Ocean on its southern side and by the Dhofar Mountains , a semi-circular formation of mountains running into the sea at Ras Hamar and Mirbat , which shut it off from the mountains and deserts to the north, east and west. South-west monsoon (locally referred to as Khareef ) clouds driving up from the Indian Ocean are here met by winds from

7480-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

7568-772: Was fertile enough to produce food and grain to supply a large proportion of the requirement of the British Army fighting in Mesopotamia . A counter-insurgency campaign—the Omani Civil War (1963-76) —was fought here by the Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces against guerrilla fighters of the nationalist Dhofar Liberation Front and later the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and

7656-575: Was later seized and looted by the Kathiri , but it was not long before Muscat authority was re-established. His father took little interest in the Province but Sayyid Said bin Taimur , the present Sultan, has now been in residence there for over a year, has a trained agricultural adviser and an engineer with him and is making great strides in developing the agricultural resources. During World War I it

7744-501: Was named in honor of Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said 's mother, Mazoon bint Ahmad Al Mashani . Each wilayat comprises several villages and towns. The following are the ten wilayats of Dhofar: Dozens of villages are found in the governorate, particularly around the coast and near major towns. The 1917 Gazetteer of Arabia , produced by the Government in British India and based on J.G. Lorimer 's earlier Gazeteer , makes note of

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