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115-531: The Christian monks and ascetics of pre-Islamic Arabia may be associated in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry with texts called mazmour , which in other contexts may refer to palm leaf documents . This has been interpreted by some as referring to psalters . Among many Christians in the Middle East and in South Asia , the word mazmour ( Hindustani مزمور ( Nastaʿlīq ) , ज़बूर ( Devanagari ) )

230-540: A "faraway, half-mythical place" . Dilmun is also described in the epic story of Enki and Ninhursag as the site at which the Creation occurred. The promise of Enki to Ninhursag, the Earth Mother: For Dilmun, the land of my lady's heart, I will create long waterways, rivers and canals, whereby water will flow to quench the thirst of all beings and bring abundance to all that lives. Ninlil ,

345-679: A Persian dominion under a Yemenite vassal and thus came within the sphere of influence of the Sassanid Empire. After the demise of the Lakhmids, another army was sent to Yemen, making it a province of the Sassanid Empire under a Persian satrap . Following the death of Khosrau II in 628, the Persian governor in Southern Arabia, Badhan , converted to Islam and Yemen followed the new religion. Lihyan , also called Dadān or Dedan,

460-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

575-435: 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

690-1081: 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

805-487: 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

920-690: 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

1035-627: A new city there and named it Batan Ardashir after his father. At this time, Eastern Arabia incorporated the southern Sassanid province covering the Persian Gulf's southern shore plus the archipelago of Bahrain. The southern province of the Sassanids was subdivided into three districts of Haggar ( Hofuf , Saudi Arabia), Batan Ardashir ( al-Qatif province , Saudi Arabia), and Mishmahig ( Muharraq , Bahrain; also referred to as Samahij ) (In Middle-Persian /Pahlavi means "ewe-fish". ) which included

1150-769: A part), and the Iranian religions . The ʿĀd nation were known to the Greeks and Egyptians . Claudius Ptolemy 's Geographos (2nd century CE) refers to the area as the "land of the Iobaritae" a region which legend later referred to as Ubar . The origin of the Midianites has not been established. Because of the Mycenaean motifs on what is referred to as Midianite pottery , some scholars including George Mendenhall, Peter Parr, and Beno Rothenberg have suggested that

1265-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

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1380-462: 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",

1495-470: 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

1610-507: 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

1725-507: 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

1840-423: A verdant land that was part of a wide trading network; he recorded: "That in the island of Tylos, situated in the Persian Gulf, are large plantations of cotton tree, from which are manufactured clothes called sindones , a very different degrees of value, some being costly, others less expensive. The use of these is not confined to India, but extends to Arabia." The Greek historian, Theophrastus , states that much of

1955-476: 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

2070-737: 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

2185-590: 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

2300-559: 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

2415-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

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2530-408: 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

2645-472: 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

2760-479: Is locally named Ḥajar Asfal . Qataban was one of the ancient Yemeni kingdoms which thrived in the Beihan valley. Like the other Southern Arabian kingdoms, it gained great wealth from the trade of frankincense and myrrh incense, which were burned at altars. The capital of Qataban was named Timna and was located on the trade route which passed through the other kingdoms of Hadramaut, Saba and Ma'in. The chief deity of

2875-574: 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

2990-480: Is now Yemen's modern capital, Sana'a . According to South Arabian tradition, the eldest son of Noah , Shem , founded the city of Ma'rib. During Sabaean rule, Yemen was called " Arabia Felix " by the Romans, who were impressed by its wealth and prosperity. The Roman emperor Augustus sent a military expedition to conquer the "Arabia Felix", under the command of Aelius Gallus . After an unsuccessful siege of Ma'rib,

3105-855: 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

3220-542: Is referred to in Islam in the context of jahiliyyah ( lit.   ' The period of ignorance ' ), highlighting the prevalence of paganism throughout the region at the time. Some of the settled communities developed into distinctive civilizations. Information about these communities is limited and has been pieced together from archaeological evidence, accounts written outside of Arabia, and Arab oral traditions that were later recorded by Muslim historians . Among

3335-889: Is taken to be a representation possibly of the Jewish king Malkīkarib Yuhaʾmin or more likely the Christian Esimiphaios (Samu Yafa'). The Aksumite intervention is connected with Dhu Nuwas , a Himyarite king who changed the state religion to Judaism and began to persecute the Christians in Yemen. Outraged, Kaleb , the Christian King of Aksum with the encouragement of the Byzantine Emperor Justin I invaded and annexed Yemen. The Aksumites controlled Himyar and attempted to invade Mecca in

3450-572: 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

3565-590: 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

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3680-413: 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

3795-684: Is used for the Psalms of David in the Hebrew Bible . The Arabic word zabūr means "book", "inscription", or "writing." In early sources it may refer to Ancient South Arabian writing on palm leaves . Much of Western scholarship sees the word zabūr in the sense "psalter" as being a conflation of Arabic zabūr , "writing", with the Hebrew word for "psalm", mizmōr ( Hebrew : מִזְמוֹר ) or its Aramaic equivalent mazmūrā ( Syriac : ܡܙܡܘܪܐ ). An alternate, less accepted origin for

3910-524: 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

4025-445: 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

4140-520: The Garden of Eden story. Dilmun appears first in Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets dated to the end of fourth millennium BCE, found in the temple of goddess Inanna , in the city of Uruk . The adjective "Dilmun" is used to describe a type of axe and one specific official; in addition there are lists of rations of wool issued to people connected with Dilmun. Dilmun was an important trading center from

4255-758: The Kassite dynasty in Mesopotamia. Dilmun, sometimes described as "the place where the sun rises" and "the Land of the Living", is the scene of some versions of the Eridu Genesis , and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim ( Ziusudra ), was taken by the gods to live forever. Thorkild Jacobsen 's translation of the Eridu Genesis calls it "Mount Dilmun" which he locates as

4370-476: The Marib Dam , was built ca. 700 BCE and provided irrigation for about 25,000 acres (101 km ) of land and stood for over a millennium, finally collapsing in 570 CE after centuries of neglect. The first known inscriptions of Hadramaut are known from the 8th century BCE. It was first referenced by an outside civilization in an Old Sabaic inscription of Karab'il Watar from the early 7th century BCE, in which

4485-695: The Qur'an , old Arabian poetry , Assyrian annals (Tamudi), in a Greek temple inscription from the northwest Hejaz of 169 CE, in a 5th-century Byzantine source and in Old North Arabian graffiti within Tayma . They are also mentioned in the victory annals of the Neo-Assyrian King, Sargon II (8th century BCE), who defeated these people in a campaign in northern Arabia. The Greeks also refer to these people as "Tamudaei", i.e. "Thamud", in

4600-648: The Sabaeans and the Minaeans , and Eastern Arabia was inhabited by Semitic-speaking peoples who presumably migrated from the southwest, such as the so-called Samad population . From 106 CE to 630 CE, Arabia's most northwestern areas were controlled by the Roman Empire , which governed it as Arabia Petraea . A few nodal points were controlled by the Iranian peoples , first under the Parthians and then under

4715-568: The Sasanians . Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia was diverse; although polytheism was prevalent, monotheism was still a notable practice among some of the region's inhabitants, such as the Jewish tribes . In addition to Arabian paganism, other religious practices in the region included those of the ancient Semitic religions , the Abrahamic religions (of which the emerging Islam would become

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4830-568: 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

4945-494: 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

5060-419: 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

5175-454: 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

5290-591: The 3rd century CE, the South Arabian kingdoms were in continuous conflict with one another. Gadarat (GDRT) of Aksum began to interfere in South Arabian affairs, signing an alliance with Saba, and a Himyarite text notes that Hadramaut and Qataban were also allied against the kingdom. As a result of this, the Aksumite Empire was able to capture the Himyarite capital of Thifar in the first quarter of

5405-462: The 3rd century. However, the alliances did not last, and Sha`ir Awtar of Saba unexpectedly turned on Hadramaut, allying again with Aksum and taking its capital in 225. Himyar then allied with Saba and invaded the newly taken Aksumite territories, retaking Thifar, which had been under the control of Gadarat's son Beygat, and pushing Aksum back into the Tihama . The standing relief image of a crowned man,

5520-571: 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

5635-668: The 5th century, Beth Qatraye was a major centre for Nestorian Christianity , which had come to dominate the southern shores of the Persian Gulf. As a sect, the Nestorians were often persecuted as heretics by the Byzantine Empire , but eastern Arabia was outside the Empire's control offering some safety. Several notable Nestorian writers originated from Beth Qatraye, including Isaac of Nineveh , Dadisho Qatraya , Gabriel of Qatar and Ahob of Qatar. Christianity's significance

5750-457: The 7th century CE, Eastern Arabia was controlled by two other Iranian dynasties of the Parthians and Sassanids . By about 250 BCE, the Seleucids lost their territories to Parthians , an Iranian tribe from Central Asia . The Parthian dynasty brought the Persian Gulf under their control and extended their influence as far as Oman. Because they needed to control the Persian Gulf trade route,

5865-716: The 8th and 7th century BCE, there was a close contact of cultures between the Kingdom of Dʿmt in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia and Saba. Though the civilization was indigenous and the royal inscriptions were written in a sort of proto- Ethiosemitic , there were also some Sabaean immigrants in the kingdom as evidenced by a few of the Dʿmt inscriptions. Agriculture in Yemen thrived during this time due to an advanced irrigation system which consisted of large water tunnels in mountains, and dams. The most impressive of these earthworks, known as

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5980-782: 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

6095-647: The Bahrain archipelago that was earlier called Aval . The name, meaning 'ewe-fish' would appear to suggest that the name /Tulos/ is related to Hebrew /ṭāleh/ 'lamb' (Strong's 2924). The Christian name used for the region encompassing north-eastern Arabia was Beth Qatraye, or "the Isles". The name translates to 'region of the Qataris' in Syriac . It included Bahrain, Tarout Island , Al-Khatt, Al-Hasa , and Qatar. By

6210-449: The Greek geographers, for instance, we read of two islands, named Tyrus or Tylos , and Arad, Bahrain , which boasted that they were the mother country of the Phoenicians, and exhibited relics of Phoenician temples." The people of Tyre in particular have long maintained Persian Gulf origins, and the similarity in the words "Tylos" and "Tyre" has been commented upon. However, there is little evidence of occupation at all in Bahrain during

6325-438: The King of Hadramaut, Yada`'il, is mentioned as being one of his allies. When the Minaeans took control of the caravan routes in the 4th century BCE, however, Hadramaut became one of its confederates, probably because of commercial interests. It later became independent and was invaded by the growing Yemeni kingdom of Himyar toward the end of the 1st century BCE, but it was able to repel the attack. Hadramaut annexed Qataban in

6440-409: The Kingdom of Maīin, as far away as al-'Ula in northwestern Saudi Arabia and even on the island of Delos and Egypt. It was the first of the Yemeni kingdoms to end, and the Minaean language died around 100 CE . During Sabaean rule, trade and agriculture flourished, generating much wealth and prosperity. The Sabaean kingdom was located in Yemen, and its capital, Ma'rib , is located near what

6555-555: The Lihyanites fell into the hands of the Nabataeans around 65 BCE upon their seizure of Hegra then marching to Tayma , and finally to their capital Dedan in 9 BCE. Werner Cascel consider the Nabataean annexation of Lihyan was around 24 BCE under the reign of the Nabataeans king Aretas IV . The Thamud ( Arabic : ثمود ) was an ancient civilization in Hejaz , which was a flourished kingdom from 3000 BCE to 200 BCE. Recent archaeological work has revealed numerous Thamudic rock writings and pictures. They are mentioned in sources such as

6670-412: 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

6785-404: The Midianites were originally Sea Peoples who migrated from the Aegean region and imposed themselves on a pre-existing Semitic stratum. The question of the origin of the Midianites still remains open. The sedentary people of pre-Islamic Eastern Arabia were mainly Aramaic , Arabic and to some degree Persian speakers while Syriac functioned as a liturgical language . In pre-Islamic times,

6900-493: The Parthians established garrisons in the southern coast of Persian Gulf. In the 3rd century CE, the Sassanids succeeded the Parthians and held the area until the rise of Islam four centuries later. Ardashir , the first ruler of the Iranian Sassanians dynasty marched down the Persian Gulf to Oman and Bahrain and defeated Sanatruq (or Satiran ), probably the Parthian governor of Eastern Arabia. He appointed his son Shapur I as governor of Eastern Arabia. Shapur constructed

7015-405: The Persian Gulf. Alexander had planned to settle the eastern shores of the Persian Gulf with Greek empires, and although it is not clear that this happened on the scale he envisaged, Tylos was very much part of the Hellenised world: the language of the upper classes was Greek (although Aramaic was in everyday use), while Zeus was worshipped in the form of the Arabian sun-god Shams. Tylos even became

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7130-579: The Qatabanians was Amm , or "Uncle" and the people called themselves the "children of Amm". The Himyarites rebelled against Qataban and eventually united Southwestern Arabia (Hejaz and Yemen), controlling the Red Sea as well as the coasts of the Gulf of Aden . From their capital city, Ẓafār , the Himyarite kings launched successful military campaigns, and had stretched its domain at times as far east as eastern Yemen and as far north as Najran Together with their Kindite allies, it extended maximally as far north as Riyadh and as far east as Yabrin . During

7245-474: 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

7360-459: The Roman general retreated to Egypt, while his fleet destroyed the port of Aden in order to guarantee the Roman merchant route to India . The success of the kingdom was based on the cultivation and trade of spices and aromatics including frankincense and myrrh . These were exported to the Mediterranean , India, and Abyssinia , where they were greatly prized by many cultures, using camels on routes through Arabia, and to India by sea. During

7475-413: 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

7590-436: The Sumerian goddess of air and south wind had her home in Dilmun. It is also featured in the Epic of Gilgamesh . However, in the early epic " Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta " , the main events, which center on Enmerkar 's construction of the ziggurats in Uruk and Eridu , are described as taking place in a world "before Dilmun had yet been settled". Gerrha ( Arabic : جرهاء ), was an ancient city of Eastern Arabia, on

7705-481: The United Arab Emirates comprised the ecclesiastical province known as Beth Mazunaye. The name was derived from 'Mazun', the Persian name for Oman and the United Arab Emirates. During Minaean rule, the capital was at Karna (now known as Sa'dah ). Their other important city was Yathill (now known as Baraqish ). The Minaean Kingdom was centered in northwestern Yemen, with most of its cities lying along Wādī Madhab . Minaean inscriptions have been found far afield of

7820-402: The Writings or Ketuvim , a broader grouping of Jewish holy books encompassing the Psalms and other collections of Hebrew literature and poetry. Pre-Islamic Arabia Pre-Islamic Arabia ( Arabic : شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام , romanized :  shibh al-jazirat al-'arabiyat qabl al-islām ), referring to the Arabian Peninsula before Muhammad's first revelation in 610 CE,

7935-399: The Zabur (i.e. Psalms) was made easy for David. He used to order that his riding animals be saddled, and would finish reciting the Zabur before they were saddled. And he would never eat except from the earnings of his manual work." Christian apologist Karl Gottlieb Pfander suggested that the Qur'an's reference to Zabur actually refers to the third division of the Hebrew Scriptures, known as

8050-411: The ancient Greek name for Muharraq island. Herodotus 's account (written c. 440 BCE) refers to the Io and Europa myths. ( History, I:1). According to the Persians best informed in history, the Phoenicians began the quarrel. These people, who had formerly dwelt on the shores of the Erythraean Sea ( the eastern part of the Arabia peninsula ), having migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in

8165-417: The area belonged to the Dilmun civilization, which was conquered by the Assyrian Empire in 709 BCE. Gerrha was the center of an Arab kingdom from approximately 650 BCE to circa 300 CE. The kingdom was attacked by Antiochus III the Great in 205-204 BCE, though it seems to have survived. It is currently unknown exactly when Gerrha fell, but the area was under Sassanid Persian control after 300 CE. Gerrha

8280-603: The book [of Psalms]. And We have already written in the book [of Psalms] after the [previous] mention that the land [of Paradise] is inherited by My righteous servants. In the Quran and Urdu translation of the Bible, the Zabur refers to the Psalms . The Quran 21:105 says that in the Zabur there is a quote "the land is inherited by my righteous servants". This resembles the 29th verse of Psalm 37 , which says "[t]he righteous shall inherit

8395-536: The collapse of the Kassite dynasty, Mesopotamian documents make no mention of Dilmun with the exception of Assyrian inscriptions dated to 1250 BCE which proclaimed the Assyrian king to be king of Dilmun and Meluhha . Assyrian inscriptions recorded tribute from Dilmun. There are other Assyrian inscriptions during the first millennium BCE indicating Assyrian sovereignty over Dilmun. Dilmun was also later on controlled by

8510-574: 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

8625-489: The earth". Indeed, We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], as We revealed to Noah and the prophets after him. And we revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, the Descendants, Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon, and to David We gave the book [of Psalms]. And your Lord is most knowing of whoever is in the heavens and the earth. And We have made some of the prophets exceed others [in various ways], and to David We gave

8740-587: 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

8855-728: 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

8970-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

9085-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

9200-618: The head of the bay behind the islands of Bahrain. Bahrain was referred to by the Greeks as Tylos , the center of pearl trading, when Nearchus came to discover it serving under Alexander the Great . From the 6th to 3rd century BCE Bahrain was included in Persian Empire by Achaemenians , an Iranian dynasty . The Greek admiral Nearchus is believed to have been the first of Alexander's commanders to visit this islands, and he found

9315-597: 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

9430-576: The islands were covered in these cotton trees and that Tylos was famous for exporting walking canes engraved with emblems that were customarily carried in Babylon. Ares was also worshipped by the ancient Baharna and the Greek empires. It is not known whether Bahrain was part of the Seleucid Empire , although the archaeological site at Qalat Al Bahrain has been proposed as a Seleucid base in

9545-823: The land with maritime trade between diverse regions as the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia in the early period and China and the Mediterranean in the later period (from the 3rd to the 16th century CE). Dilmun was mentioned in two letters dated to the reign of Burna-Buriash II (c. 1370 BCE) recovered from Nippur , during the Kassite dynasty of Babylon . These letters were from a provincial official, Ilī-ippašra , in Dilmun to his friend Enlil-kidinni in Mesopotamia. The names referred to are Akkadian . These letters and other documents, hint at an administrative relationship between Dilmun and Babylon at that time. Following

9660-648: The land, and abide forever in it." Ahrens supports the view that al-Anbiya 105 is quoting from the Psalms (1930). He says that the verse in the Qur'an reads, "We have written in the Zabur after the reminder that My righteous servants shall inherit the earth." His conclusion is that this verse represents a close and rare linguistic parallel with the Hebrew Bible and, more pointedly, with Psalm 37 ascribed specifically to David (see wording in verses 9 ,11 ,29 ). One hadith, considered valid by Muhammad al-Bukhari , says: Narrated Abu Huraira : The Prophet said, "The reciting of

9775-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

9890-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

10005-542: The late fourth millennium to 1800 BCE. Dilmun was very prosperous during the first 300 years of the second millennium. Dilmun's commercial power began to decline between 2000 BCE and 1800 BCE because piracy flourished in the Persian Gulf. In 600 BCE, the Babylonians and later the Persians added Dilmun to their empires. The Dilmun civilization was the centre of commercial activities linking traditional agriculture of

10120-420: 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

10235-883: 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

10350-456: The most prominent communities were the Thamud , who arose around 3000 BCE and lasted to around 300 CE; and the earliest Semitic-speaking civilization in the eastern part was Dilmun , which arose around the end of the 4th millennium BCE and lasted to around 600 CE. Additionally, from around the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE, Southern Arabia was the home to a number of kingdoms, such as

10465-782: 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

10580-424: 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

10695-549: 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

10810-483: The parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria... The Greek historian Strabo believed the Phoenicians originated from Eastern Arabia. Herodotus also believed that the homeland of the Phoenicians was Eastern Arabia. This theory was accepted by the 19th-century German classicist Arnold Heeren who said that: "In

10925-562: The population of Eastern Arabia consisted of Christianized Arabs (including Abd al-Qays ), Aramean Christians, Persian-speaking Zoroastrians and Jewish agriculturalists. According to Robert Bertram Serjeant , the Baharna may be the Arabized "descendants of converts from the original population of Christians (Aramaeans), Jews and ancient Persians (Majus) inhabiting the island and cultivated coastal provinces of Eastern Arabia at

11040-410: 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

11155-458: 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

11270-533: The second half of the 2nd century CE, reaching its greatest size. The kingdom of Hadramaut was eventually conquered by the Himyarite king Shammar Yahri'sh around 300 CE, unifying all of the South Arabian kingdoms. The ancient Kingdom of Awsān in South Arabia (modern Yemen), with a capital at Ḥagar Yaḥirr in the wadi Markhah, to the south of the Wādī Bayḥān, is now marked by a tell or artificial mound, which

11385-581: The site of Greek athletic contests. The name Tylos is thought to be a Hellenisation of the Semitic, Tilmun (from Dilmun ). The term Tylos was commonly used for the islands until Ptolemy's Geographia when the inhabitants are referred to as 'Thilouanoi'. Some place names in Bahrain go back to the Tylos era, for instance, the residential suburb of Arad in Muharraq , is believed to originate from "Arados",

11500-458: 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

11615-563: 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

11730-403: The starting point for a trader's route, making the location within the archipelago of islands comprising the modern Kingdom of Bahrain , particularly the main island of Bahrain itself, another possibility. Various other identifications of the site have been attempted, Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville choosing Qatif , Carsten Niebuhr preferring Kuwait and C Forster suggesting the ruins at

11845-583: The time of the Arab conquest". Other archaeological assemblages cannot be brought clearly into larger context, such as the Samad Late Iron Age . Zoroastrianism was also present in Eastern Arabia. The Zoroastrians of Eastern Arabia were known as " Majoos " in pre-Islamic times. The sedentary dialects of Eastern Arabia, including Bahrani Arabic , were influenced by Akkadian , Aramaic and Syriac languages. The Dilmun civilization

11960-410: The time when such migration had supposedly taken place. With the waning of Seleucid Greek power, Tylos was incorporated into Characene or Mesenian, the state founded in what today is Kuwait by Hyspaosines in 127 BCE. A building inscriptions found in Bahrain indicate that Hyspoasines occupied the islands, (and it also mention his wife, Thalassia). From the 3rd century BCE to arrival of Islam in

12075-423: The title zabūr in this sense is that it is a corruption of the Hebrew zimrah ( Hebrew : זִמְרָה ) meaning "song, music" or sippūr ( Hebrew : סִפּוּר ), meaning "story." In the Qur'an, the Zabur is mentioned by name three times. The Qur'an itself says nothing about the Zabur specifically, except that it was revealed to Dawud and that in the Zabur is written "My servants the righteous, shall inherit

12190-501: 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

12305-554: The west side of the Persian Gulf . More accurately, the ancient city of Gerrha has been determined to have existed near or under the present fort of Uqair . This fort is 50 miles northeast of al-Hasa in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia . This site was first proposed by Robert Ernest Cheesman in 1924. Gerrha and Uqair are archaeological sites on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula . Prior to Gerrha,

12420-451: 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

12535-476: The writings of Aristotle , Ptolemy , and Pliny . Before the rise of Islam , approximately between 400 and 600 CE, the Thamud completely disappeared. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

12650-679: The year 570 CE. Eastern Yemen remained allied to the Sassanids via tribal alliances with the Lakhmids , which later brought the Sassanid army into Yemen, ending the Aksumite period. The Persian king Khosrau I sent troops under the command of Vahriz ( Persian : اسپهبد وهرز ), who helped the semi-legendary Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan to drive the Aksumites out of Yemen. Southern Arabia became

12765-412: Was 2 miles from the Persian Gulf near current day Hofuf . The researcher Abdulkhaliq Al Janbi argued in his book that Gerrha was most likely the ancient city of Hajar, located in modern-day Al Ahsa , Saudi Arabia . Al Janbi's theory is the most widely accepted one by modern scholars, although there are some difficulties with this argument given that Al Ahsa is 60 km inland and thus less likely to be

12880-422: Was a powerful and highly organized ancient Arab kingdom that played a vital cultural and economic role in the north-western region of the Arabian Peninsula and used Dadanitic language. The Lihyanite kingdom went through three different stages, the early phase of Lihyan Kingdom was around the 7th century BC, started as a Sheikdom of Dedan then developed into the Kingdom of Lihyan tribe. Some authors assert that

12995-462: Was an important trading center which at the height of its power controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes. The Sumerians regarded Dilmun as holy land . Dilmun is regarded as one of the oldest ancient civilizations in the Middle East . The Sumerians described Dilmun as a paradise garden in the Epic of Gilgamesh . The Sumerian tale of the garden paradise of Dilmun may have been an inspiration for

13110-512: Was described by Strabo as inhabited by Chaldean exiles from Babylon , who built their houses of salt and repaired them by the application of salt water. Pliny the Elder (lust. Nat. vi. 32) says it was 5 miles in circumference with towers built of square blocks of salt. Gerrha was destroyed by the Qarmatians in the end of the 9th century where all inhabitants were massacred (300,000). It

13225-488: Was diminished by the arrival of Islam in Eastern Arabia by 628. In 676, the bishops of Beth Qatraye stopped attending synods; although the practice of Christianity persisted in the region until the late 9th century. The dioceses of Beth Qatraye did not form an ecclesiastical province , except for a short period during the mid-to-late seventh century. They were instead subject to the Metropolitan of Fars . Oman and

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