Proto-Arabic is the name given to the hypothetical reconstructed ancestor of all the varieties of Arabic attested since the 9th century BC. There are two lines of evidence to reconstruct Proto-Arabic:
14-656: Old Arabic in the Nabataean script is first attested in the Negev desert in the 1st century BC, but it becomes more frequent in the region after the decline of Safaitic and Hismaic . From the 4th century AD, Old Arabic inscriptions are attested from Northern Syria to the Hejaz , in a script that is intermediate between cursive Nabataean and the Kufic script of Islamic times. The urheimat of Proto-Arabic can thus be regarded as
28-463: A 1st-century BCE inscription in Qaryat al-Faw (formerly Qaryat Dhat Kahil, near Sulayyil , Saudi Arabia ). The earliest datable Safaitic inscriptions go back to the 3rd century BCE, but the vast majority of texts are undatable and so may stretch back much further in time. Aramaic ostraca dated 362–301 BC bear witness to the presence of people of Edomite origin in the southern Shephelah and
42-947: Is however, distinguished from all of them by the following innovations: The oldest known attestation of the Arabic language dubbed as pre-Historic Arabic language is a bi-lingual inscription written in Old Arabic which was written in the undifferentiated North Arabian script (known as Thamudic B) and Canaanite which remains undeciphered, discovered in Bayir, Jordan . h haː mlkm malkamu w wa kms kamaːsu w wa qws kʼawsu b bi km kumu ʿwḏn ʕawuðnaː h mlkm w kms1 w qws1 b km ʿwḏn haː malkamu wa kamaːsu wa kʼawsu bi kumu ʕawuðnaː "O Malkom and Kemosh and Qaws , in ye we seek refuge" A characteristic of Nabataean Arabic and Old Hijazi (from which Classical Arabic much later developed)
56-399: Is the definite article al- . The first unambiguous literary attestation of this feature occurs in the 5th century BCE, in the epithet of a goddess which Herodotus ( Histories I: 131, III: 8) quotes in its preclassical Arabic form as Alilat (Ἀλιλάτ, i. e., ʼal-ʼilāt ), which means "the goddess". An early piece of inscriptional evidence for this form of the article is provided by
70-468: The Arabic language is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Old Arabic Old Arabic is the name for any Arabic language or dialect continuum before Islam. Various forms of Old Arabic are attested in scripts like Safaitic , Hismaic , Nabatean , and even Greek . Alternatively, the term has been used synonymously with " Paleo-Arabic " to describe the form of the Arabic script in
84-794: The Beersheva Valley before the Hellenistic period . They contain personal names that can be defined as Arabic on the basis of their linguistic features: Hismaic inscriptions, contemporaneous with the Nabatean Kingdom attest a variety of Old Arabic which may have merged [ð] with [d]. Furthermore, there are 52 Hismaic inscriptions which attest the formula ḏkrt lt [ðakarat allaːtu] "May Allāt be mindful of", foreshadowing similar formulae which are attested in Christian contexts from northern Syria to northern Arabia during
98-470: The 6th and possibly 7th centuries CE. One such inscription, found near Wadi Rum , is given below: l *Li- ʼbs lm ʼabs¹alām bn bin qymy qayyemyV d dū/ī ʼl ʼāl gs m gas²m w uwa dkrt-n dakaratn lt Qasr Bayir Qasr Bayir ( Arabic : قصر بيير ) is a desert castle built in 743 CE by Prince Walid bin Yazid . It is found in the desert of Jordan and it
112-614: The classical caliphate period (VIII-XI centuries), the post-classical period (XI-XV centuries), and then the period of decline (XVI-XVIII centuries). Late Preclassic dialects, both urban and Bedouin, are described to some extent by early Arab philologists. New Arabic or Middle Arabic, which became the urban language of the Arab Caliphate in the 8th century, emerged from pre-classical Arabic dialects, which continued to develop until modern Arabic dialects, showing tremendous changes. There are several features shared by Classical Arabic ,
126-594: The development of Preclassic Arabic, following the Semitic Arabian languages and preceding Early Arabic of the 3rd to 6th centuries. There are also those who refer to the North Arabian languages as "Proto-Arabic" and distinguish between them and Preclassic Arabic. Agathangel of Crimea defined the period of existence of the Old Arabic (pre-classical) language as the V-VIII centuries (until 750), followed by
140-411: The epigraphic North Arabian languages to be among the ancient Arabic dialects that are not identical to Late Classical Arabic. Applying such a name to the North Arabian languages is an error. Ancient Arabic apparently coexisted with North Arabian but, unlike them, remained a purely spoken language. Dutch scholar Emery van Donzel considered "Old Arabic (Proto-Arabic) language" to be one of three stages in
154-632: The fifth and sixth centuries. Old Arabic and its descendants are classified as Central Semitic languages , which is an intermediate language group containing the Northwest Semitic languages (e.g., Aramaic and Hebrew ), the languages of the Dadanitic , Taymanitic inscriptions, the poorly understood languages labeled Thamudic , and the ancient languages of Yemen written in the Ancient South Arabian script . Old Arabic,
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#1732764951917168-480: The frontier between northwest Arabia and the southern Levant. There is confusion with the application of the terms "pre-classical Arabic", "Proto-Arabic", "Old Arabic" and "Old Arabic". This is sometimes the name given to ancient epigraphic North Arabian languages. Sabatino Moscati called them "pre-classical", Georgi Akhvlediani called them "proto-Arabic", Johann Fück, Haim Rabin, Ibrahim al-Samarrai and Karl Brockelmann called them "ancient Arabic". Brockelmann considered
182-459: The varieties of Modern Arabic and the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions that are unattested in any other Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of the northern Hejaz . They are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor, Proto-Arabic. The following features can be reconstructed with confidence for Proto-Arabic: This article related to
196-511: Was destroyed in 1931. In 743, during the Umayyad period, the future caliph Al-Walid II had the castle built in what is today the Jordanian badiya (desert). The structure was 70 meters long and was built of large sandstone blocks. It was destroyed in 1931 by Beake Pasha and the stone blocks were used to construct an Arab Legion outpost. Qasr al-Mushash This article about
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