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96-595: In ancient Hebrew sources, as well as in Arabic, different segments of the valley bear different names. Arabic names include وادي الجوز, Wadi el-Joz , 'Valley of the Walnut', but possibly a shortening of " Valley of Josaphat ", for the upper segment, near the Temple Mount ; and Wadi en-Nar , 'Fire Valley', for the rest of it – with at least the segment at the ancient Mar Saba (' Saint Sabbas ') monastery also known in

192-460: A nefesh (funeral monument) for the tomb in its lower part, but it was probably also meant as a nefesh for the adjacent burial cave system known as the Cave or Tomb of Jehoshaphat , with which it forms one entity, built at the same time and following a single plan. The freestanding monument contains a burial chamber with three burial sites. The chamber is carved out of the solid lower section of

288-522: 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

384-435: 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

480-487: 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

576-690: 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

672-665: A park to be called the Garden of the King . A road crossing the very steep Wadi Naar (lower Kidron Valley) and connecting Arab towns has been substantially upgraded as part of the USAID effort to modernise the Arab infrastructure. An existing road has been widened and re-paved, and efforts were made to improve the route it takes. Currently, part of East Jerusalem's and the Palestinian Authority 's sewage waters flow freely into

768-474: A rectangular, pyramid-capped monument. Similar forms of the nefesh decorate ossuaries, with the addition of a dome-capped column. In Jerusalem the nefesh as a tomb monument stood either above or beside the tomb; set on steps or on a base. It was in this valley where King Jehoshaphat is thought to have overthrown the enemies of Israel ( 2 Chr. 20:26 ). King David fled through the Kidron Valley during

864-462: 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",

960-470: 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

1056-507: 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

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1152-507: 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

1248-476: 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

1344-590: 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

1440-559: 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

1536-613: Is an ancient monumental rock-cut tomb with a conical roof located in the Kidron Valley in Jerusalem , a few metres from the Tomb of Zechariah and the Tomb of Benei Hezir . Although traditionally ascribed to Absalom , the rebellious son of King David of Israel ( c.  1000 BC ), recent scholarship has dated it to the 1st century AD. The tomb is not only a burial structure in its own right, with its upper part serving as

1632-478: 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

1728-408: 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

1824-472: 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

1920-486: Is dated to the 1st century CE. Literally, the word nefesh means 'soul', but in a funerary context it is the term applied to a form of funerary monument. In descriptions of the tombs of the Jewish nobility, the pyramid shape is also emphasized as the mark of a tomb. This would imply that nefesh and pyramid were synonymous. The Jewish tombs in the Kidron Valley are the best examples of this form of nefesh . They appear as

2016-412: Is decorated from the outside on each side by pairs of Ionic half-columns, flanked in the corners by quarter-columns and pillars (a so-called distyle in antis arrangement). The four square facades are crowned by a Doric frieze of triglyphs and metopes and an Egyptian cornice . The upper, ashlar-built part of the monument consists of three differently-shaped segments: a square base set on top of

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2112-478: 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 is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of

2208-736: Is derived from the root qadar , "to be dark", and may be meant in this context as "dusky". In Christian tradition the similarity between the Greek word for cedar , κέδρος ( kedros ), and the Greek name of the valley as used in the Septuagint , Kedron, has led to the Qidron Valley being wrongly called "Valley of the Cedars". The Hebrew Bible talks of the " Valley of Jehoshaphat – Emek Yehoshafat" ( Hebrew : עמק יהושפט ), meaning "The valley where Yahweh shall judge." Not all scholars agree with

2304-460: Is not a tomb and might also be a monumental marker (nefesh) for the nearby burial cave of the priestly family of Hezir . According to a local legend, Napoleon fired a mortar at the tomb, and removed the shape of a hand that topped the conical roof. However, Napoleon never reached Jerusalem during his campaign in the Holy Land . Actually, the top of the monument is not at all broken, but

2400-574: 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

2496-906: 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

2592-409: Is placed on top of the rock-hewn cube. It consists of a square pedestal carrying a round drum, itself topped by a conical roof. The cone is slightly concave and is crowned by an Egyptian-style lotus flower. The upper part has the general shape of a tholos and is interpreted as a nefesh or monument for the tomb below, and possibly also for the adjacent "Cave of Jehoshaphat". The "Pillar of Absalom"

2688-777: 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 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

2784-590: 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

2880-413: 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

2976-524: 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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3072-445: 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

3168-454: The nefesh of the Tomb of Benei Hezir. Absalom's Tomb consists of two parts. First, a lower cube hewn out of the bedrock, decorated with engaged Ionic columns bearing a Doric frieze and crowned by an Egyptian cornice. This part of the monument contains a small chamber with an entrance and two arcosolia (arched funeral niches) and constitutes the actual tomb. The second part, built of ashlars,

3264-668: The Jerusalem Municipality conducted routine development work in the area. Upon widening a narrow street near one of the approaches to the Silwan village, bulldozers uncovered a number of square openings hewn into rock. The Israel Antiquities Authority immediately stopped the road construction. After uncovering the underground spaces, archaeologists found themselves standing inside large burial complexes which appeared intact. Moving carefully from one chamber to another, flashlights revealed an abundance of artifacts scattered on

3360-636: The New Testament , Jesus crossed the valley many times travelling between Jerusalem and Bethany . The valley contains the Garden of Gethsemane , where Jesus prayed the night before he was crucified. The name Kidron was mentioned in John 18:1 . The Akeldma Tombs were discovered in 1989 at the confluence of the Kidron and Hinnom Valleys, south of Jerusalem's Old City, and were excavated and published by archaeologists Gideon Avni and Zvi Greenhut . In 1989,

3456-568: 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

3552-494: 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

3648-419: 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

3744-874: 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. Tomb of Absalom The Tomb of Absalom ( Hebrew : יד אבשלום , romanized :  Yad Avshalom , lit.   'Absalom's Memorial'), also called Absalom's Pillar ,

3840-454: 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

3936-567: The 19th century as Wadi er-Rahib , 'Monk's Valley'. In its upper part, the Palestinian neighbourhood of Wadi Joz bears the valley's Arabic name. The Jewish settlement of Kedar , in the West Bank , located on a ridge above the valley, is named after the valley's Hebrew name. The Hebrew Bible apparently calls the upper course Emek Yehoshafat , the " Valley of Josaphat ". It appears in Jewish eschatologic prophecies, which include

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4032-571: 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

4128-834: 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

4224-465: The Egyptian cornice of the lower part, followed by a round drum crowned by a rope-shaped decoration, which sustains a conical roof with concave sides (the easily recognisable "hat"), topped by a half-closed lotus flower. The upper part of the monument corresponds to the outline of a classical tholos and is not unlike contemporary Nabatean structures from Petra . On the inside, the upper part of

4320-526: The Kidron Valley, associating them with characters and events from the New Testament , Apocrypha , and Christian traditions. The association of the so-called Tomb of Absalom with Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, has led to confusion with the nearby so-called Tomb of Zechariah , associated by local folklore with a much earlier figure, the Temple priest Zechariah ben Jehoiada ; however, that structure

4416-670: The Kidron stream causing severe environmental damage in the Judean desert and the Dead sea area. In a rare collaboration with the Palestinian Authority, Hagihon is leading the Kidron stream restoration project with a budget of close to a billion shekels. According to the plan the sewage flow to the stream will be stopped and diverted to a new collection line, through an 8-km long pipe to the Og purification facility. To avoid damage to

4512-412: 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

4608-625: The Old City of Jerusalem and ends at the Dead Sea, while the biblical names Nahal Kidron , Emek Yehoshafat , King’s Valley etc. might refer to certain parts of this valley located in the immediate vicinity of ancient Jerusalem, but not to the entire wadi, and certainly not to the long segment crossing the Judean desert. Similarly, in Arabic, large wadis have many names, each applied to a certain distinct segment of its course. The Hebrew name Qidron

4704-591: The Old City was one of the main burial grounds of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period , where hundreds of tombs have survived until today, while the segment east of, and opposite the Temple Mount, boasts several excellently preserved monumental tombs from the same period. Several of the Second Temple period tombs were also used later in time, either as burial or as shelters for hermits and monks of

4800-657: The Palestinian Authority. Arabic 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 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

4896-690: 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

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4992-576: 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

5088-567: 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 a result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary,

5184-580: The Valley of Judgment is a symbolic place. In the times of the Old Testament kings, the Kidron Valley was identified with, at least in part, the King's Garden; the kings owned land in the area. That the upper Kidron Valley was also known as the King's Valley, in which Absalom set up his monument or "pillar" (see 2 Samuel 18:18 ; no connection to the much later " Absalom's Pillar "), is problematic. The Bible does not make this identification explicit, and

5280-594: The Wadi Kidron" ( 2 Chronicles 30:14 ). During the same reforms and as part of the ritual cleaning of the Temple , the priests removed the unclean items from the inner part of the Temple to the courts, and the Levites carried the unclean items to Wadi Kidron ( 2 Chronicles 29:16 ). The Book of Joel mentions that God will assemble all nations in the "Valley of Jehoshaphat" ( Joel 3:2 , Joel 3:12 ). According to

5376-483: The architectural styles used indicates that the monument's construction and its first stage of use happened during the 1st century CE. The irregular-shaped holes made into the monument are of later date, probably from the Byzantine period . Even the original entrance has been widened in such rather defacing manner. See also under "Byzantine inscriptions" below. Absalom's shrine has traditionally been identified as

5472-456: The association can only be inferred as associated with En-rogel, which is farther down the Kidron Valley towards the desert. The name 'King's Valley' may be derived from its location just east of the palace of David in the City of David on the western slopes of the Kidron Valley and south of where the platform was built. The three monumental tombs on the eastern side of the Kidron Valley are among

5568-600: The concept known from Byzantine period sources such as Theodosius (c. 530) that a tradition existed at the time, wrongly identifying the 1st-century monument as the tomb of James, the brother of Jesus ; Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist; and Simeon, the old priest from the Gospel of Luke . These two inscriptions are part of a secondary use of the monument during the Byzantine period, when Christians gave new interpretations to Jewish Second Temple period tombs from

5664-574: 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

5760-521: The death of Absalom. At the start of the 20th century, the monument was considered most likely to be that of Alexander Jannaeus , the Hasmonean king of Judea from 103 to 76 BCE. However, archaeologists have now dated the tomb to the 1st century AD. In a 2013 conference, Professor Gabriel Barkay suggested that it could be the tomb of Herod Agrippa , the grandson of Herod the Great , based in part on

5856-587: 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

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5952-728: 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

6048-447: 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

6144-476: The floors, pottery and glass vessels, oil lamps and many ornamental ossuaries . The three large caves proved to be part of an extensive Jewish burial ground in use at the end of the Second Temple period, which terminated in the year 70 AD, when Jerusalem was conquered and the Temple destroyed by the Roman legions. As of 2010, there is a controversial proposal to reconstruct part of the Kidron Valley, an Arab neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem , and turn it into

6240-403: 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

6336-742: 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

6432-420: 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

6528-486: The inscription date. A second inscription of the same age discovered in 2003 says the monument is "the tomb of Simeon who was a very just man and a very devoted el(der) and (who was) waiting for the consolation of the people". The words describing Simeon are identical to those from Luke 2:25 as they appear in the Codex Sinaiticus , a 4th-century manuscript of the Christian Bible . The two inscriptions, discovered and deciphered by Joe Zias and Émile Puech , support

6624-558: 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

6720-401: The large monastic communities which inhabited the Kidron Valley during the Byzantine Empire period (4th–7th century). The ancient tombs in this area attracted the attention of ancient travelers, most notably Benjamin of Tudela . A source of confusion is the fact that the modern name "Kidron Valley" ( Nahal Kidron in Hebrew) applies to the entire length of a long wadi , which starts north of

6816-550: 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)

6912-420: 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

7008-883: 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

7104-449: The monument is mostly hollow, with a small arched entrance on the south side set above the seam area (where the masonry part starts). Inside this entrance a short staircase leads down to a burial chamber carved out of the solid, lower section. The chamber is 2.4 metres (7 ft 10 in) square, with arcosolium graves on two sides and a small burial niche. The tomb was found empty when first researched by archaeologists. An analysis of

7200-528: The monument of Absalom, rebellious son of King David, based on a verse in the Book of Samuel : Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself a pillar, which is in the king's dale: for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance: and he called the Monument after his own name: and it is called unto this day, Absalom's Monument. A "monument of Absalom" did exist in the days of Josephus , and

7296-407: The monument, but can only be accessed from the upper section via a built entrance and a staircase. It has been compared to Petra , given the rock-cut nature of the bottom segment and the style of the finial . Absalom's Pillar is approximately 20 metres (66 ft) in height. The monument proper stands on a square base and consists of two distinct parts. The lower section is a monolith, hewn out of

7392-517: The most well-known landmarks of ancient Jerusalem. These are, from north to south, the so-called " Tomb of Absalom " (Hebrew: Yad Avshalom), which rises in front of the so-called "Cave" or "Tomb of Jehoshaphat", the (correctly named) Tomb of Benei Hezir ( Benei Hezir is the Hebrew for "sons of Hezir", meaning the Hezir priestly family ), and the so-called " Tomb of Zechariah ", which could quite likely be

7488-541: The natural valley as well as to the Marsaba Monastery and other archeological sites, the route of the sewage line was diverted from the stream itself, through a 60 meter deep 1.3 km long tunnel. The project also includes the construction of a hydroelectric station to generate green electricity. The purified water will be used for agriculture and irrigation of palm groves in the Jordan Valley and

7584-782: 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

7680-424: 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

7776-549: 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

7872-554: The rebellion of Absalom ( 2 Samuel 15:23 ). Chapters 29, 30 and 31 of 2 Chronicles ( 2 Chronicles 29–31 ) cover King Hezekiah 's call for the sanctification of the ministers of the Lord, the purification of unclean things, an invitation to all Israel and Judah to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem, and liturgical reforms. As part of these changes, which took place around 700 BCE, "altars for offering incense they took away and threw into

7968-410: 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

8064-593: The return of Elijah , followed by the arrival of the Messiah , and the War of Gog and Magog and Judgment Day. The upper Kidron Valley holds Jerusalem's most important cemetery from the First Temple period , the Silwan necropolis , assumed to have been used by the highest-ranking officials residing in the city, with rock-cut tombs dating between the 9th and 7th centuries BCE. The upper Kidron Valley segment north of

8160-427: The righteous; their words are their commiseration." In 2003, a mid-4th-century inscription on one of the walls of the monument was discovered. It reads, "This is the tomb of Zachariah, the martyr, the holy priest, the father of John". This suggests that at the time, the monuments was considered to be the burial place of the Temple priest Zechariah , father of John the Baptist , who lived 400 or so years earlier than

8256-503: The rocky slope of the Mount of Olives , while the upper part, rising higher than the original bedrock, is built of neatly cut ashlars . The lower half is thus a solid, almost perfectly cubical monolithic block, about 6 m (20 ft) square by 6.4 m (21 ft) high, surrounded on three sides by passageways which separate it from the vertically cut rock of the Mount of Olives. It

8352-458: 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

8448-437: The same time and following a single plan. During the times of the Second Temple , many wealthy citizens of Jerusalem would have monuments built adjacent to their family burial caves. These monuments were built according to the architectural fashions of the time, many times with a pyramid on top, or in this case, a cone. Jewish sages of that era opposed the building of such monuments by saying: "You do not make nefashot for

8544-425: The similarity to Herod's newly discovered tomb at Herodium . Archeologically, the so-called "Tomb of Absalom" is not only a burial structure in its own right, with its upper part serving as a nefesh (funeral monument) for the tomb in its lower part, but it was probably also meant as a nefesh for the adjacent burial cave system known as the "Cave" or "Tomb of Jehoshaphat", with which it forms one entity, built at

8640-458: 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

8736-563: 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

8832-501: 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

8928-430: The traditional view that the Kidron Valley, as the valley situated between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives to the east, is the location of the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The Kidron Valley was not associated with the Valley of Jehoshaphat until the 4th century AD, making this identification somewhat uncertain since no actual valley of this name is known to pre-Christian antiquity. Biblical commentator Adam Clarke claims that

9024-451: 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

9120-526: Was referred to in his Antiquities . The 19th-century English translation by Havercamp states that the "monument of Absalom" stood at a distance of "two furlongs " from Jerusalem . The attribution of this particular monument to Absalom was quite persistent, although the Book of Samuel reports that Absalom's body was covered over with stones in a pit in the Wood of Ephraim ( 2 Samuel 18:17 ). For centuries, it

9216-475: Was the custom among passersby—Jews, Christians and Muslims —to throw stones at the monument. Residents of Jerusalem would bring their unruly children to the site to teach them what became of a rebellious son. The tomb's exterior design features a Doric frieze and Ionic columns , both being styles originating in ancient Greece and introduced into Judah during the Seleucid Empire , centuries after

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