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109-528: Originally founded by the ancient Egyptians as Shedet, its current name in English is also spelled as Fayum , Faiyum or al-Faiyūm . Faiyum was also previously officially named Madīnat al-Faiyūm ( Arabic for The City of Faiyum ). The name Faiyum (and its spelling variations) may also refer to the Faiyum Oasis , although it is commonly used by Egyptians today to refer to the city. The modern name of

218-734: A Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in 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

327-675: A certain explanation is given in the Talmud , such as the Hebrew words בד בבד ‎ in Exo. 30:34 (explained in Taanit 7a as meaning "each spice pounded separately"), Saadia deviates from the rabbinic tradition in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch, in this case explaining its sense as "having them made of equal portions." In another apparent deviation from Talmudic tradition, where

436-575: 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

545-462: A confrontation between the two strong-willed personalities, Exilarch David and Saadia. Nissim declared, however, that if David was determined to see Saadia in the position, then he would be ready to become the first of Saadia's followers. Under his leadership, the ancient academy of Sura founded by Abba Arikha entered upon a new period of brilliancy. This renaissance was cut short by a clash between Saadia and David, much as Nissim had predicted. In

654-435: 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

763-1081: 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

872-487: 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

981-690: 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

1090-567: A position which he held for 14 years until his death. After only two years of teaching, Saadia recused himself from teaching because of a dispute that had fallen out between him and the Exilarch. During Saadia's absence, his post was occupied by Joseph ben Jacob , the grandson of Natronai ben Hilai . At length, Saadia was reconciled with the Exilarch and returned to serve in his former position, although Joseph ben Jacob also remained serving in his capacity as Gaon. In 922, six years before Saadia

1199-544: A probate case, Saadia refused to sign a verdict of the exilarch, which he thought unjust, although the Gaon of Pumbedita had subscribed to it. When the son of the exilarch threatened Saadia with violence to secure his compliance and was roughly handled by Saadia's servant, open war broke out between the exilarch and the gaon. Each excommunicated the other, declaring that he deposed his opponent from office. David ben Zakkai appointed Joseph ben Jacob Gaon of Sura and Saadia conferred

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1308-648: A product of the Arabization of a large portion of Judaism, it served for centuries as a potent factor in the impregnation of the Jewish spirit with Arabic culture, so that, in this respect, it may take its place beside the Greek Bible-translation of antiquity and the German translation of the Pentateuch by Moses Mendelssohn. As a means of popular religious enlightenment, Saadia's translation presented

1417-590: A residential bishopric, lists it as a titular see . Fayyum was the seat of Shahralanyozan , governor of the Sasanian Egypt (619–629). The 10th-century Bible exegete, Saadia Gaon , thought el-Fayyum to have actually been the biblical city of Pithom , mentioned in Exodus 1:11. Around 1245 CE, the region became the subject of the most detailed government survey to survive from the medieval Arab world, conducted by Abū ‘Amr ‘Uthman Ibn al-Nābulusī . Faiyum

1526-594: 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

1635-462: 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",

1744-470: 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

1853-535: A statement made by Abraham ibn Daud and doubtless derived from Saadia's son Dosa, Saadia himself died in Babylonia at Sura in 942, at the age of sixty, of "black gall" (melancholia), repeated illnesses having undermined his health. An anecdote is reported in Sefer Hasidim about Saadia ben Yosef "the sage," in which he ends a dispute between a servant who claims to be the heir of his deceased master and

1962-668: A theatre. Under the Roman Empire , Arsinoë became part of the province of Arcadia Aegypti . To distinguish it from other cities of the same name, it was called "Arsinoë in Arcadia". With the arrival of Christianity , Arsinoë became the seat of a bishopric , a suffragan of Oxyrhynchus , the capital of the province and the metropolitan see . Michel Le Quien gives the names of several bishops of Arsinoë, nearly all of them associated with one heresy or another. The Catholic Church , considering Arsinoë in Arcadia to be no longer

2071-507: 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

2180-507: 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

2289-476: 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

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2398-674: Is a bird that harbingers rain in the Levant (around October), for which reason the Talmud says: "When raḥam arrives, mercy ( raḥamīm ) comes into the world." He wrote both in Hebrew and in Arabic a work, now known only from a few fragments, entitled "Sefer ha-Galui" (Arabic title, "Kitab al-Ṭarid"), in which he emphasized with great but justifiable pride the services which he had rendered, especially in his opposition to heresy. The fourteen years which Saadia spent in Babylonia did not interrupt his literary activity. His principal philosophical work

2507-590: 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

2616-559: 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

2725-478: 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

2834-408: 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

2943-472: 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

3052-628: Is described, and the process described in Sefer Yetzirah (matter formed by speech). The cosmogony of Sefer Yetzirah is even omitted from the discussion of creation in his magnum opus "Kitab al-Amanat wal-I'tiḳadat." Concerning the supposed attribution of the book to the patriarch Abraham , he allows that the ideas it contains might be ancient. Nonetheless, he clearly considered the work worthy of deep study and echoes of Sefer Yetzirah's cosmogony do appear in "Kitab al-Amanat wal-I'tiḳadat" when Saadia discusses his theory of prophecy. Saadia translated

3161-574: 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

3270-855: 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

3379-509: Is on the canal, with four waterwheels which were adopted by the governorate of Fayoum as its symbol; their chariots and bazaars are easy to spot. The city is home of the football club Misr Lel Makkasa SC , that play in the Egyptian Premier League . The Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies its climate as hot desert (BWh). The highest record temperatures was 46 °C (115 °F) on June 13, 1965, and

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3488-572: 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

3597-775: Is the source of some famous death masks or mummy portraits painted during the Roman occupation of the area. The Egyptians continued their practice of burying their dead, despite the Roman preference for cremation . While under the control of the Roman Empire, Egyptian death masks were painted on wood in a pigmented wax technique called encaustic —the Faiyum mummy portraits represent this technique. While previously believed to represent Greek settlers in Egypt, modern studies conclude that

3706-590: 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

3815-413: 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

3924-524: 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

4033-674: Is whether Saadia applied this principle in his other translations. Re'em (Hebrew: ראם , romanized:  rəʾēm ), as in Deuteronomy 33:17 , improperly translated as "unicorn" in some English translations, is a word that is now used in Modern Hebrew to represent the " oryx ." However, Saadia understood the same word to mean " rhinoceros " and writes there the Judeo-Arabic word for the creature ( Judeo-Arabic : אלכרכדאן , romanized:  al-karkadann ). He interprets

4142-445: 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

4251-589: The Epipalaeolithic . Middle Holocene occupations of the area are most widely studied on the north shore of Lake Moeris , where Gertrude Caton Thompson and Elinor Wight Gardner did a number of excavations of Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic sites, as well as a general survey of the area. Recently the area has been further investigated by a team from the UCLA/RUG/UOA Fayum Project. According to Roger S. Bagnall , habitation began in

4360-728: The Fayyum , which is located in Middle Egypt ; in Hebrew, it is often given as Pitomi , derived from a contemporary identification of Fayum with the Biblical Pithom , an identification found in Saadia's works. At the age of 20, Saadia began composing his first great work, the Hebrew dictionary called the Agron . At 23, he composed a polemic against the followers of Anan ben David , particularly Solomon ben Yeruham, thus beginning

4469-527: The Jews of Yemen has been exceptionally great, as many of Saadia's extant works were preserved by the community and used extensively by them. The basis for the Yemenite tiklāl is founded upon the prayer format edited originally by Saadia. The Yemenite Jewish community also adopted thirteen penitential verse written by Saadia for Yom Kippur , as well as the liturgical poems composed by him for Hoshana Rabbah ,

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4578-618: The Palestinian Gaonate (then located in Ramla ), claimed a tradition according to which the cutoff point was 642/1080 of an hour (approximately 35 minutes) after noon. In that particular year, this change would result in a two-day schism with the major Jewish communities in Babylonia: according to Ben Meir the first day of Passover would be on a Sunday, while according to the generally accepted rule it would be on Tuesday. Saadia

4687-568: 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

4796-494: 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

4905-646: The zamer (Hebrew: זָֽמֶר , romanized:  zāmer ) in Deuteronomy 14:5 as giraffe . In Saadia's translation and commentary on the Book of Psalms ( Kitāb al-Tasābiḥ ), he has done what no other medieval writer has done before him, bringing down a biblical exegesis and noting where the verse is to be read as a rhetorical question, and where the verse itself derides the question with good humor: הַר אֱלהִים הַר בָּשָׁן. הַר גַּבְנֻנִּים הַר בָּשָׁן לָמָּה תְּרַצְדוּן הָרִים גַּבְנֻנִּים הָהָר חָמַד אֱלהִים לְשִׁבְתּוֹ. אַף יי' יִשְׁכּן לָנֶצַח ‎ Is

5014-419: 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

5123-745: 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. Saadia Gaon Saʿadia ben Yosef Gaon (882/892 – 942)

5232-454: 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

5341-571: 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

5450-834: 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

5559-592: The Bible whenever he thought that they broke-away from the plain and ordinary meaning of the text. Saadia adopts in principle the method of the Sages that even the episodic-like parts of the Bible (e.g. story of Abraham and Sarah, the selling of Joseph, etc.) that do not contain commandments have a moral lesson to tell. In some instances, Saadia's biblical translations reflect his own rationale of difficult Hebrew words based on their lexical root, and he will, at times, reject

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5668-539: The Faiyum portraits instead represent mainly native Egyptians, reflecting the complex synthesis of the predominant Egyptian culture and that of the elite Greek minority in the city. The construction of the settlement of Philadelphia under Ptolemy II Philadelphus was recorded in detail by a 3rd-century BC Greek public official named Zeno (or Zenon, Greek : Ζήνων ). Zeno, a native of Kaunos in lower Asia Minor , came to Faiyum to work as private secretary to Apollonius ,

5777-412: 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

5886-410: The Pentateuch, not only an exact interpretation of the text, but also a refutation of the cavils which the heretics raised against it. Further, it set forth the bases of the commandments of reason and the characterization of the commandments of revelation; in the case of the former the author appealed to philosophical speculation; of the latter, naturally, to tradition. The position assigned to Saadia in

5995-690: 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

6104-576: 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

6213-487: The Scriptures even to the unlearned in a rational form which aimed at the greatest possible degree of clarity and consistency. His system of hermeneutics was not limited to the exegesis of individual passages, but treated also each book of the Bible as a whole, and showed the connection of its various portions with one another. The commentary contained, as is stated in the author's own introduction to his translation of

6322-544: The Talmud ( Hullin 63a) names a biblical species of fowl (Leviticus 11:18) known as raḥam ( Hebrew : רחם ) and says that it is the colorful European bee-eater called the sheraqraq , Saadia in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Humash writes that raḥam is the Egyptian vulture based on the phonetic similarity of its Arabic name with the Hebrew. The sheraqraq ( Arabic : شقراق , romanized :  šiqirrāq )

6431-399: The activity which was to prove important in opposition to Karaite Judaism in defense of Rabbinic Judaism . In the same year, he left Egypt and moved to Palestine . In 921, Saadia triumphed over Gaon Aaron ben Meïr over the latter's introduction of a new triennial cycle of Torah reading that also changed the dates of Passover and Rosh Hashanah . Later, one of Saadia's chief disputants

6540-433: The assertions of Ben Meïr regarding the calendar and helped to avert from the Jewish community the perils of schism. His dispute with Ben Meir was an important factor in his call to Sura in 928. The Exilarch insisted on appointing him as Gaon "head of the academy" despite the weight of precedent (no foreigner had ever served as Gaon before) and against the advice of the aged Nissim Nahrwani, a Resh Kallah at Sura, who feared

6649-548: The city Arsinoë and the whole nome after the name of his sister-wife Arsinoe II (316–270 or 268), who was deified after her death as part of the Ptolemaic cult of Alexander the Great , the official religion of the kingdom. Ptolemy II Philadelphus also established a town at the edge of Faiyum named Philadelphia . It was laid out in a regular grid plan to resemble a typical Greek city, with private dwellings, palaces, baths and

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6758-432: The city comes from Coptic  ̀Ⲫⲓⲟⲙ / Ⲡⲉⲓⲟⲙ epʰiom/peiom (whence also the personal name Ⲡⲁⲓⲟⲙ payom ), meaning the Sea or the Lake , which in turn comes from late Egyptian pꜣ-ym of the same meaning, a reference to the nearby Lake Moeris ; the extinct elephant ancestor Phiomia was named after it. Archaeological evidence has found occupations around the Faiyum dating back to at least

6867-471: The content of this esoteric work by the light of philosophy and scientific knowledge, especially by a system of Hebrew phonology which he himself had founded. He did not permit himself in this commentary to be influenced by the theological speculations of the Kalam , which are so important in his main works. In introducing Sefer Yetzirah's theory of creation he makes a distinction between the Biblical account of creation ex nihilo , in which no process of creation

6976-509: 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

7085-445: The definitive trait of " a cock girded about the loins " within Proverbs 30:31 ( Douay–Rheims Bible ) as "the honesty of their behavior and their success", rather than the aesthetic interpretations of so many others, thus identifying a spiritual purpose of a religious vessel within that religious and spiritual instilling schema of purpose and use. In his commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah , Saadia sought to render lucid and intelligible

7194-463: The earlier Targum for his own understanding. For example, in Psalm 16:4, Saadia retracts from the Targum (translated): "They will multiply their goddesses ( Hebrew : עַצְּבוֹתָם ); they have hastened after some other thing; I shall not pour out their libations of blood, neither shall I take-up their names upon my lips," writing instead: "They will multiply their revenues (Judeo-Arabic:אכסאבהם); they have hastened after some other thing," etc. Even where

7303-412: 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

7412-728: 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

7521-519: The exilarchate on David's brother Hasan (Josiah; 930). Hasan was forced to flee and died in exile in Greater Khorasan , and the strife that divided Babylonian Judaism continued. Saadia was attacked by the exilarch and his chief adherent, the young but learned Aaron ibn Sargado (later Gaon of Pumbedita, 943-960), in Hebrew pamphlets. Fragments of these pamphlets show a hatred on the part of the exilarch and his partisans that did not shrink from scandal. Saadia did not fail to reply. Saadia's influence upon

7630-447: 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

7739-463: The famous ascetic of the first century. Saadia expressed this claim by calling his son Dosa ; this son later served as gaon of Sura Academy from 1012–1018. Regarding Joseph, Saadia's father, a statement of the ancient Jewish gaon Aaron ben Meïr has been preserved saying that he was compelled to leave Egypt and died in Jaffa , probably during Saadia's prolonged residence in the Holy Land . The usual nisba al-Fayyumi refers to Saadia's native place,

7848-615: The fifth millennium BC and a settlement was established by the Old Kingdom ( c.  2685 –2180 BC) called Shedet (Medinet el-Fayyum). It was the most significant centre of the cult of the crocodile god Sobek (borrowed from the Demotic pronunciation as Koinē Greek : Σοῦχος Soûkhos , and then into Latin as Suchus ). In consequence, the Greeks called it "Crocodile City" ( Koinē Greek : Κροκοδειλόπολις Krokodeilópolis ), which

7957-411: The finance minister to Ptolemy II Philadelphus (and later to Ptolemy III Euergetes ). During his employment, Zeno wrote detailed descriptions of the construction of theatres, gymnasiums, palaces and baths in the 250s and 240s BC, as well as making copious written records of various legal and financial transactions between citizens. During the winter of 1914–1915, a cache of over 2,000 papyrus documents

8066-566: The first systematic attempt to integrate Jewish theology with components of ancient Greek philosophy . Saadia was also very active in opposition to Karaite Judaism in defense of Rabbinic Judaism . Saadia was born in Dilāẓ in the Faiyum in Middle Egypt in 892. He immigrated to ancient Israel (in the Abbasid province of Bilad Al-Sham) in 915 at the age of 23, where he studied in Tiberias under

8175-510: 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

8284-641: The hill of God the hill of Bashan? A hunchback mountain is the hill of Bashan! (Meaning, it is unfit for God's Divine Presence). Why leap ye, ye hunchback mountains? That mountain wherein God desires to dwell (i.e. Mount Moriah in Jerusalem), even the Lord shall dwell [therein] forever more. Saadia's approach to rabbinic exegesis and midrashic literature was ambivalent. Although he adopted them in his liturgies, he did not recoil from denouncing them in his commentary on

8393-538: 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

8502-613: 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

8611-604: 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)

8720-420: 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

8829-399: The lowest record temperature was 2 °C (36 °F) on January 8, 1966. People from Faiyum may be known as al-Fayyumi: Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] ) is

8938-408: The man's true son and heir by having them both draw blood into separate vessels. He then took a bone from the deceased man and placed it into each of the cups. The bone in the cup of the true heir absorbed the blood, while the servant's blood was not absorbed in the bone. Using this as genetic proof of the son's true inheritance, Saadia had the servant return the man's property to his son. Saadia Gaon

9047-883: 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

9156-782: 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

9265-469: The oldest list of Hebrew grammarians, which is contained in the introduction to Abraham ibn Ezra 's "Moznayim," has not been challenged even by the latest historical investigations. Here, too, he was the first; his grammatical work, now lost, gave an inspiration to further studies, which attained their most brilliant and lasting results in Spain , and he created in part the categories and rules along whose lines

9374-424: 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

9483-549: 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

9592-410: 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

9701-633: The river: one of three arches, which carries the main street and bazaar, and one of two arches, over which is built the Qaitbay mosque, a gift from his wife to honor the Mamluk Sultan in Fayoum. Mounds north of the city mark the site of Arsinoe, known to the ancient Greeks as Crocodilopolis, where in ancient times the sacred crocodile kept in Lake Moeris was worshipped. The center of the city

9810-458: 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

9919-639: The scholar Abu Kathir Yaḥya al-Katib (known as Eli ben Yehudah ha-Nazir in Hebrew), a Jewish mutakallim or theologian also mentioned by ibn Ḥazm . In 926, Saadia settled permanently in Lower Mesopotamia , known to Jews as " Babylonia ", where he became a member of Sura Academy . Saadia, in Sefer ha-Galui , stresses his Jewish lineage, claiming to belong to the noble family of Shelah , son of Judah , and counting among his ancestors Hanina ben Dosa ,

10028-778: The seventh day of Sukkot . Saadia's Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch, the Tafsir , was copied by the Yemenite Jews in nearly all their handwritten codices. They originally studied Saadia's major work of philosophy, Beliefs and Opinions , in its original Judeo-Arabic, although by the early 20th-century, only fragments survived. As much as Saadia's Judeo-Arabic translation of the Torah ( Tafsīr ) has brought relief and succour to Jews living in Arabic-speaking countries, his identification of places, fauna and flora, and

10137-458: 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

10246-498: 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

10355-516: The stones of the priestly breastplate , has found him at variance with some scholars. Abraham ibn Ezra , in his commentary on the Torah, wrote scathing remarks on Saadia's commentary, saying: "He doesn't have an oral tradition […] perhaps he has a vision in a dream, while he has already erred with respect to certain places […]; therefore, we will not rely on his dreams." However, Saadia assures his readers elsewhere that when he rendered translations for

10464-551: The style of the Bible. He was likewise one of the founders of comparative philology, not only through his brief "Book of Seventy Words," already mentioned, but especially through his explanation of the Hebrew vocabulary by the Arabic, particularly in the case of the favorite translation of Biblical words by Arabic terms having the same sound. Saadia's works were the inspiration and basis for later Jewish writers, such as Berachyah in his encyclopedic philosophical work Sefer Hahibbur (The Book of Compilation). Saadia likewise identifies

10573-501: 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

10682-621: The twenty-odd unclean fowl mentioned in the Hebrew Bible , ( Leviticus 11:13–19; Deuteronomy 14:12–18) his translation was based on an oral tradition received by him. Saadia's method of conveying names for the fowls based on what he had received by way of an oral tradition prompted him to add in his defense: "Every detail about them, had one of them merely come unto us [for identification], we would not have been able to identify it for certain, much less recognize their related kinds." The question often asked by scholars now

10791-451: 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

10900-418: Was a pioneer in the fields in which he toiled. The foremost object of his work was the Bible; his importance is due primarily to his establishment of a new school of Biblical exegesis characterized by a rational investigation of the contents of the Bible and a scientific knowledge of the language of the holy text. Saadia's Arabic translation of the Torah is of importance for the history of civilization; itself

11009-452: Was a prominent rabbi , gaon , Jewish philosopher, and exegete who was active in the Abbasid Caliphate . Saadia is the first important rabbinic figure to write extensively in Judeo-Arabic . Known for his works on Hebrew linguistics , halakha , and Jewish philosophy , he was a practitioner of the philosophical school known as the " Jewish Kalam ". In this capacity, his philosophical work The Book of Beliefs and Opinions represents

11118-538: Was appointed Gaon of Babylonia, a controversy arose concerning the Hebrew calendar , that threatened the entire Jewish community. Since Hillel II (around 359 CE), the calendar had been based on a series of rules (described more fully in Maimonides ' Code ) rather than on observation of the lunar phases . One of these rules required the date of Rosh Hashanah to be postponed if the calculated lunar conjunction occurred at noon or later. Rabbi Aaron ben Meïr , head of

11227-678: Was borrowed into Latin as Crocodīlopolis . The city worshipped a tamed sacred crocodile called, in Koine, Petsuchos , "the Son of Soukhos", that was adorned with gold and gem pendants. The Petsoukhos lived in a special temple pond and was fed by the priests with food provided by visitors. When Petsuchos died, it was replaced by another. Under the Ptolemaic Kingdom , the city was called Ptolemais Euergétis ( Koinē Greek : Πτολεμαῒς Εὐεργέτις ) until Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) renamed

11336-401: Was completed in 933; and four years later, through Ibn Sargado's father-in-law, Bishr ben Aaron, the two enemies were reconciled. Saadia was reinstated in his office; but he held it for only five more years. David b. Zakkai died before him (c. 940), being followed a few months later by the exilarch's son Judah, while David's young grandson was nobly protected by Saadia as by a father. According to

11445-538: Was developed the grammatical study of the Hebrew language. His dictionary, primitive and merely practical as it was, became the foundation of Hebrew lexicography; and the name "Agron" (literally, "collection"), which he chose and doubtless created, was long used as a designation for Hebrew lexicons, especially by the Karaites. The very categories of rhetoric, as they were found among the Arabs, were first applied by Saadia to

11554-428: Was identified as the former location of ancient Philadelphia. Today, the precise location of the town is unknown, although archaeologists have identified two sites in north-east Faiyum as the possible location for Philadelphia. Faiyum has several large bazaars, mosques , baths and a much-frequented weekly market. The canal called Bahr Yussef runs through the city, its banks lined with houses. There are two bridges over

11663-679: Was in Aleppo , on his way from the East, when he learned of Ben Meïr's regulation of the Jewish calendar. Saadia addressed a warning to him, and in Mesopotamia, he placed his knowledge and pen at the disposal of the exilarch David ben Zakkai and the scholars of the academies, adding his letters to those sent by them to the communities of the Jewish diaspora (922). In Babylonia, he wrote his Sefer haMo'adim , or "Book of Festivals ," in which he refuted

11772-534: Was the Karaite by the name of Abu al-Surri ben Zuṭa, who is referred to by Abraham ibn Ezra , in his commentary on Exodus 21:24 and Leviticus 23:15 ). In the year 928, at the age of thirty-six (variant: forty-six), David ben Zakkai , the Exilarch or head of Babylonian Jewry, petitioned Saadia to assume the honorary title of gaon, where he was appointed that same year the Gaon of Sura Academy at Mata Mehasya ,

11881-604: Was uncovered by Egyptian agricultural labourers who were digging for sebakh near Kôm el-Kharaba el-Kebir . Upon examination by Egyptology scholars, these documents were found to be records written by Zeno in Greek and Demotic . These papyri, now referred to as the Zenon Archive or the Zenon Papyri , have provided historians with a detailed record of 3rd-century BC Philadelphia society and economy. The discovery site

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