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90-727: The Rasulids ( Arabic : بنو رسول , romanized :  Banū Rasūl ) or the Rasulid dynasty was a Sunni Muslim Arab dynasty who ruled Yemen from 1229 to 1454. The Rasulids took their name from al-Amin 's nickname "Rasul". The Zaidi Shi'i Imams of Yemen were the arch rivals of the Sunni Rasulids, and Zaidi sources emphasized the dynasty's Ghuzz origin to ensure the Qahtani majority of Yemen treats them more harshly as rootless outsiders. The term Ghuzz in Arabic sources

180-522: 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

270-435: 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

360-1081: 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

450-577: A diploma of recognition from the Abbasid caliph al-Mustansir I . As sultan he was called al-Malik al-Mansur I. The regime was in a certain sense a direct continuation of Ayyubid rule, with power based on the control of military forces and Abbasid approval, rather than acquiescence from the local population. The coastal capital was established in Zabid . However, al-Malik al-Muzaffar fell victim to internal intrigues in 1249 when his own guards assassinated him at

540-478: A general history of Yemen. Most of the rulers built mosques and madrasas, embellishing Ta'izz and other cities with fine buildings. Among the most well-known monuments are Jami al-Muzaffar from the thirteenth century and Ashrafiyya from the fourteenth century, both in Ta'izz. These monuments were inspired by models from places like Egypt and Syria and broke with the older Yemeni style of architecture. Coins were struck by all

630-487: 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

720-690: 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

810-768: A native of the Yemeni highlands, founded the Mahdid dynasty in the Tihama region. Al-Himyari and his followers burned down several districts north of Zabid. He had sworn to put the Abyssinians into slavery and ordered his men to kill everyone, including the handicapped. Out of desperation, the people of Zabid sought assistance from the Zaydi imam Ahmed ibn Sulayman against al-Himyari. The Zaydi imam ordered Fatiq III to be executed on account of his alleged homosexuality . Fatiq III

900-594: 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

990-462: 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",

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1080-562: A side-branch of the family governed for a while. The Rasulid state nurtured Yemen's commercial links with India and the Far East . They profited greatly by the Red Sea transit trade via Aden and Zabid. The economy also boomed with the agricultural development programs instituted by the kings who promoted massive cultivation of palms . The Rasulid kings enjoyed the support of the population of Tihama and southern Yemen, while they had to buy

1170-470: 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

1260-507: 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

1350-507: 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

1440-476: 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

1530-584: A winter residence. The city reached its apogee during this period and had a larger number of palaces, gardens, and religious institutions than any other city in Yemen. Al-Khazraji , a local 14th-century Arab writer, claimed that the city counted between 230 and 240 mosques. Even today, the city reportedly has the highest concentration of mosques in Yemen. Hadım Suleiman Pasha extended the Ottoman Empire 's authority to include Zabid in 1539. Zabid became

1620-737: 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 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

1710-590: 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

1800-559: 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

1890-761: Is associated with the Oghuz Turks . The Ghuzz term appeared regularly in Zaidi literature and was for pre- Ottoman era of Oghuz Turkic mamluks & Turkic state ( Seljuk ) who were actively expanding in Oman to the east of Yemen, later writers used this Arabic term which describes the Oghuz Turks, in the Zaidi sources, as their reference of the Turkic origin of the Rasulids. Some historians and genealogists that served

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1980-478: 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

2070-408: 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

2160-472: 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

2250-574: 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

2340-855: 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

2430-495: Is often considered one of the most brilliant in the history of Yemen. While the history of this region has usually been characterized by deep political and religious divisions, the extent of territory that the Rasulids ruled would not be superseded until (briefly) in the seventeenth century. The southern coast of Arabia up to Dhofar was kept under loose control. Rasulid influence stretched as far as Zafan near Salalah in Oman , where

2520-577: Is one of the oldest in Yemen. It was originally a village known as al-Husayb that was inhabited by the Asha'ir tribe. It later took on the name of the Wadi Zabid, the valley to its south. According to tradition, the town's early history is associated with Abu Musa al-Ash'ari , one of the companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad , who is said to have built the al-Asha'ir Mosque as the fifth mosque in

2610-572: 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

2700-590: 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

2790-413: 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

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2880-524: 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

2970-445: 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

3060-572: The Mahdids (1158 to 1174). During this time the city grew in importance. Its mosques, including the al-Asha'ir Mosque and the Great Mosque , became centers of Islamic learning. Its location on the road between Mecca and Aden also granted the city economic prosperity. In 1067, during the pilgrimage to Mecca , the Banu Najah clan under Sa'id Ibn Najah, the prince of Zabid, attacked

3150-692: The Tahirids . In the 1940s, descendants of the Rasulid dynasty established an Islamic dynastic order , named the Order of the Rasulids, under the protection of the Qavloical Authority. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

3240-568: 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

3330-620: The history of Islam . The present town was created circa 820 by Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Ziyad, the founder of the Ziyadid dynasty , who had been sent by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun to suppress a rebellion of the Asha'ir and Akk tribes. It became the capital of the Ziyadids (up to 1016) and continued to serve this role under their successors, the Najahid dynasty (from 1022 to 1158) and

3420-494: 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

3510-419: 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

3600-706: 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. Zabid The town

3690-454: 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

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3780-571: 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

3870-779: 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

3960-665: The Kurdish Ayyubids had held power also in most of Yemen since deposing the Zurayids 1173. The last of the line, al-Malik al-Mas'ud, left Yemen for Bilad al-Sham in 1229 and entrusted governance to an ambitious member of his own mercenary force. This was Umar bin Ali who nominally acknowledged the Ayyubids of Egypt during his first years in power. However, he proclaimed himself ruler in his own right in 1235 after receiving

4050-412: 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

4140-708: The Oghuz theory by explaining that they've lived amongst the Turkish tribes but were in fact, from Ghassanid Arab origin. Originally a general of the Oghuz Zengid dynasty , Saladin , a Kurd , founded the Ayyubid dynasty . After the foundation of a separate dominion over Egypt , the Ayyubid army was still generally composed of Oghuz and Kipchak troops and mercenaries. After having the control over most of Levant ,

4230-690: 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

4320-587: The Rasulid dynasty claimed an Arab origin for the family and pressed a Ghassanid origin for the family, a branch of the Azd . These same medieval historians and genealogists wrote that a distant ancestor of the Rasulid dynasty, who lived in the time of the Caliph Umar ( r.   634–644) converted to Christianity and went to live in Byzantine territory. The children of his purported ancestor then migrated to

4410-506: The Rasulid sultan al-Mujahid Ali was captured by Egyptian Mamluks in Mecca when he went on a pilgrimage, and was held prisoner in Egypt for a year. Sultan an-Nasir Ahmad (r. 1401–1424) was able to revive the Rasulid dynasty's declining fortunes and even received gifts from distant China . After his death in 1424 the dynasty fell into a period of upheaval and weakness, aggravated by the outbreak of

4500-576: 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

4590-682: The Seljuk invasion of the Middle East. The Turkologist Peter B. Golden also suggests a Turkic origin: Although a suitable Arab genealogy was created for them, the Sunni Rasulid house (1228-1454) appears to have stemmed from an Oḡuz Turkic clan, the Menjik (Menčik), a personal name also found among the Mamluks. The historian Nile Green refers to the Rasulid dynasty as being of Turkic origin as well. The historian Irfan Shahid , however, rejects

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4680-424: The Tihama region. Zabid was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993. Zabid's Great Mosque occupies a prominent place in the town. The vestiges of its university can also be visited. In 2000, Zabid was listed on the List of World Heritage in Danger ; the listing was made at the behest of the Yemeni government due to a state of poor upkeep and conservation. According to a UNESCO report, roughly "40% of

4770-417: The Yemeni court. The Chinese brought gifts equivalent to 20,000 miskals, consisting of expensive perfumes, scented wood, and Chinese potteries. The Yemeni ruler sent luxury goods made from coral at the port of Ifranza, wild cattle and donkeys, domesticated lion cubs, and wild and trained leopards in exchange. The Yemeni envoy accompanied the Chinese to the port of Aden with the gifts, which maintained trade under

4860-437: The administrative headquarters of Yemen Eyalet . Today, however, Zabid is at the intellectual and economic margins of modern Yemen. Muhammad Abdul-Wali 's novel Sana'a: An Open City tells the story of a young man who traveled to Zabid in the mid-20th century and was surprised to find the town had become a backwater. Zabid has an urban population of around 52,590 persons. It is located on Yemen's western coastal plain, in

4950-454: The base of the dynasty together with Zabid. After the 1258 fall of Baghdad to the Mongols , al-Malik al-Muzaffar Yusuf appropriated the title of caliph. Yusuf died in 1296, having reigned for 47 years. When the news of his death reached the Zaydi imam Al-Mutawakkil al-Mutahhar bin Yahya , he commented: The greatest king of Yemen, the Muawiyah of the time, has died. His pens used to break our lances and swords to pieces. The Rasulid era

5040-502: The city's houses have been replaced by concrete buildings, and other houses and the ancient souk are in a deteriorating state. The ongoing Yemeni civil war also poses a threat to Zabid's heritage. Some historic homes were damaged by coalition bombing in 2015. Further concerns were raised in 2018 as fighting drew near to the city. As of 1920, Zabid was one of two places in Arabia growing indigo . Zabid also grows and produces cotton . The British cite tribal disputes as dampening

5130-509: 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

5220-412: 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

5310-405: The end of the thirteenth century, more importantly Zaidi imams managed to convert the Kurds of Dhamar (remnants of the Ayyubid military) into the Zaydi sect & pacified the Kurds of Dhamar, the Rasulid sultans were unable to score a decisive military success against rebels. Zaidi forces took Sanaa in 1324. The Mamluk sultans tended to increase their influence in Hijaz and the holy cities. In 1350

5400-728: 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

5490-402: The facade of gift exchange. Several Rasulid sultans were culturally prominent, being men of letters who wrote literature and even treatises. Thus al-Afdal Abbas (r. 1363–1377) wrote an extensive compendium with passages about matters of practical utility, intellectual interest and entertainment, Fusul majmua fi'l-anwa' wa 'l-zuru' wa 'l-hisad . His son al-Ashraf Isma'il (r. 1377–1401) authored

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5580-447: 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

5670-403: 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

5760-420: 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

5850-450: The instigation of his ambitious nephew Shirkuh . The throne was taken over by his son al-Malik al-Muzaffar Yusuf I (1249-1295), under whom the Yemeni kingdom reached its apogee. The new sultan confirmed Rasulid rule over the Tihama lowland and the southern highlands. Sanaa , one of the traditional centres of the Zaydi imams, was temporarily occupied, and the imams were defeated on several occasions. The cool mountainous city Taiz became

5940-403: The lands of the Turkomans where they settled among the highest of the Turkoman tribes, the "Mandjik". According to the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam , it is probable that the Oghuz Turkic "Mendjik" tribe is meant. In the lands of the Turkomans these children of the Rasulid ancestor "lost their Arab identity entirely and intermarried with the Turkomans and spoke their language". It

6030-558: 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

6120-550: 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)

6210-420: 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

6300-531: The loyalty of Yemen's restive northern highland tribes. While the Hijaz fell to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, the Rasulids temporarily held control over the holy city of Mecca , accordingly raising their own prestige. The Rasulid state was comparatively centralized and kept an extensive bureaucratic apparatus to oversee the collection of taxes and other needs of the state. In every larger city, two royal officials were placed called wali (or amir ) and nasir (or zimam or mushidd ). A considerable concern with

6390-883: 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

6480-782: 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

6570-424: 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

6660-549: 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

6750-524: The plague. Merchants from the east tended to bypass Aden due to the exactions and uncertainties there, going directly to Jedda in the Hijaz which was now part of the Egyptian Mamluk sphere of power. Unlike the previous pattern, when power struggles were only fought between the Rasulids themselves, various magnates interfered in the disputes during the last sultans. The most important of these magnates

6840-612: The ports. Aden was important as a port where ships going between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean stopped. Textiles, perfume and spices came from India , Southeast Asia and China , while slaves, ivory and pepper were brought from Africa . Among the more important Yemeni items for export were horses and agricultural crops. Jewish merchants could be found in the main ports as well as Indians, Africans and Egyptians. In his travel account, Marco Polo mentions

6930-424: The prosperity of the peasantry can be gleaned from the chronicles. Thus sultan al-Mujahid Ali (r. 1322–1363) based taxes on the average of production over several years, and deduced the grain to be sown as seed from the taxable produce. While the state model was taken from the Ayyubid state in Egypt, the Rasulids were more oriented towards trade. The sultans drew much of their income from taxes and customs revenues from

7020-410: 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

7110-695: The returning cargo". King Ahmad bin al-Ashraf of the Rusuild dynasty hosted the Walashama princes and sons of Sultan Sa'ad ad-Din II of Ifat after he was killed by the Ethiopian Empire . Between 30 December 1418 and 27 January 1419, Ming China's treasure fleet visited Yemen under the reign of al-Malik al-Nasir . The Chinese envoy, presumably Admiral Zheng He , was accompanied by the Yemeni envoy Kadi Wazif al-Abdur Rahman bin-Zumeir who escorted him to

7200-458: 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

7290-458: 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

7380-563: 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

7470-399: The sultan of Aden (Yemen) in the late thirteenth century: "In his kingdom there are many towns and castles, and it has the advantage of an excellent port, frequented by ships from India arriving with spices and drugs... The sultan of Aden possesses immense treasures, arising from the imposts he lays, as well upon the merchandise that comes from India, as upon that which is shipped in his port as

7560-400: The sultans in the period c. 1236–1438. There were mints in several cities and the coins were characterized by symbols for each mint: fish for Aden, bird for Zabid, sitting man for Ta'izz, and lion for al-Mahjam. At length, however, they were unable to uphold the flourishing state constructed in the thirteenth century. A series of Zaidi imams managed to regain ground in the Yemeni highlands from

7650-501: 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

7740-599: The travel party of the Sulayhid sultan, Ali al-Sulayhi , and his wife Asma bint Shihab . They killed Ali and took Asma prisoner. She was sequestered in a secret prison in Zabid, and the severed head of her spouse was reportedly planted on a pole visible from her cell. After a year's imprisonment, she managed to get a message through to her son and daughter-in-law in Sanaa , and her son stormed Zabid and freed her. Ali ibn Mahdi,

7830-451: 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

7920-564: Was either killed by the Imam, the Mahdids, or his own soldiers. With this event, the slave dynasty came an end and the Mahdids took over Zabid in 1158. After the Ayyubids took control of Yemen in 1174, Zabid continued to be the economic and political center of the region. Under the Rasulid dynasty (1229–1454), the official capital was moved to Ta'izz but the rulers continued to use Zabid as

8010-544: Was only about the time of Muhammad ibn Harun himself that the family moved to Iraq and from there to Syria and, finally, to Egypt. There, they were notified by the ruling Ayyubid dynasty . The Encyclopedia of Islam concludes that, in all likelihood, the Rasulid dynasty was originally of Mendjik i.e. Oghuz Turkic origin. The historian Clifford Edmund Bosworth also states the Ghassanid ancestry to be concocted and their ancestors to be Oghuz Turks that had participated in

8100-499: Was the Tahir clan, which ruled Juban and al-Miqranah. A rebellion among the Rasulid's slave soldiers deprived the last claimant of any means to assert his position, after 1442. Lahij fell to the Tahir clan in 1443, followed by Aden in 1454. In the same year, the last Rasulid sultan, al-Mas'ud Abu al-Qasim, gave up his throne in favour of az-Zafir Amir bin Tahir and withdrew to Mecca . The new ruling clan governed Yemen from 1454 to 1517 as

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