Mesopotamian Arabic has two major varieties:Gelet and Qeltu, also called "North Mesopotamian". Their names derive from the form of the word for "I said" in each variety.^[4] Gelet Arabic is aBedouin variety spoken by Muslims (both sedentary and non-sedentary) in central andLower Mesopotamia and by nomads in the rest of Iraq. Qeltu Arabic is an urban dialect spoken by non-Muslims in this same region, includingBaghdad, and by the sedentary population (both Muslims and non-Muslims) inUpper Mesopotamia.^[5] Non-Muslims includeChristians,Yazidis, andJews, until most Iraqi Jewswere exiled from Iraq in the 1940s–1950s.^[6][7] Geographically, the gelet–qeltu classification roughly corresponds to respectivelyUpper Mesopotamia andLower Mesopotamia.^[8] The isogloss is between theTigris andEuphrates, aroundFallujah andSamarra.^[8]

During theSiege of Baghdad in 1258, theMongol Empire killed all Muslims in the city and environs.^[9] However, sedentary Christians and Jews were spared, and Upper Mesopotamia was untouched.^[9] In Lower Mesopotamia, sedentary Muslims were gradually replaced byBedouins from the countryside.^[9] This explains the current dialect distribution: in the south, inhabitants speak Bedouin varieties closer toGulf Arabic; they are descended from Bedouin varieties of theArabian Peninsula.^[9][10] The exception is urban non-Muslims, who continue to speak pre-1258 Qeltu dialects. In contrast, in the north, Qeltu Arabic is widely spoken by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.^[9]

Qeltu dialects include:^[8]

Baghdadi Arabic is Iraq's de facto national vernacular, as about half of the population speaks it as a mother tongue, and most other Iraqis understand it. It is spreading to northern cities as well.^[12] Other Arabic speakers cannot easily understand Moslawi and Baghdadi.^[12] The Iraqi dialect is notable for its diversity and its general closeness to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), with Iraqis often capable of pronouncing classical Arabic with proper phonetics.

Mesopotamian Arabic, especially North Mesopotamian Arabic, has a significantEastern Aramaicsubstrate,^[15] and through it also has significant influences from the ancient languages of Mesopotamia,Sumerian andAkkadian. Eastern Aramaic dialects flourished and became thelingua franca throughout Mesopotamia when it wasAchaemenid Assyria and then in theHellenistic period, where varieties such asSyriac,Jewish Babylonian Aramaic,Mandaic, andHatran Aramaic came to being.^[16][17] Mesopotamian Arabic also was influenced byNew Persian,Mongolic,Turkic (includingOttoman Turkish), andKoine Greek.^[18]

1. ^North Mesopotamian Arabic atEthnologue (28th ed., 2025)
2. ^North Mesopotamian Arabic atEthnologue (28th ed., 2025)
3. ^North Mesopotamian Arabic atEthnologue (28th ed., 2025)
4. ^Mitchell, T. F. (1990).Pronouncing Arabic, Volume 2.Clarendon Press. p. 37.ISBN 0-19-823989-0.
5. ^Jasim, Maha Ibrahim (2022-12-15)."The Linguistic Heritage of the Maṣlāwī Dialect in Iraq".CREID Working Paper 18.doi:10.19088/creid.2022.015.
6. ^Holes, Clive, ed. (2018).Arabic Historical Dialectology: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches. Oxford University Press. p. 337.ISBN 978-0-19-870137-8.OCLC 1059441655.
7. ^Procházka, Stephan (2018). "3.2. The Arabic dialects of northern Iraq". In Haig, Geoffrey; Khan, Geoffrey (eds.).The Languages and Linguistics of Western Asia. De Gruyter. pp. 243–266.doi:10.1515/9783110421682-008.ISBN 978-3-11-042168-2.S2CID 134361362.
8. ^^abcAhmed, Abdulkareem Yaseen (2018).Phonological variation and change in Mesopotamia: a study of accent levelling in the Arabic dialect of Mosul (PhD thesis). Newcastle University.
9. ^^abcdeHoles, Clive (2006)."The Arabian Peninsula and Iraq". In Ammon, Ulrich; Dittmar, Norbert; Mattheier, Klaus J.; Trudgill, Peter (eds.).The Arabian Peninsula and Iraq/Die arabische Halbinsel und der Irak. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 1937.doi:10.1515/9783110184181.3.9.1930.ISBN 978-3-11-019987-1.{{cite book}}:|journal= ignored (help)
10. ^Al-Wer, Enam; Jong, Rudolf (2017). "Dialects of Arabic". InBoberg, Charles;Nerbonne, John; Watt, Dominic (eds.).The Handbook of Dialectology. Wiley. p. 529.doi:10.1002/9781118827628.ch32.ISBN 978-1-118-82755-0.OCLC 989950951.
11. ^Prochazka, Stephan (2018). "The Northern Fertile Crescent". In Holes, Clive (ed.).Arabic Historical Dialectology: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. p. 266.doi:10.1093/oso/9780198701378.003.0009.ISBN 978-0-19-870137-8.OCLC 1059441655.
12. ^^abCollin, Richard Oliver (2009)."Words of War: The Iraqi Tower of Babel".International Studies Perspectives.10 (3):245–264.doi:10.1111/j.1528-3585.2009.00375.x.
13. ^^abVersteegh, Kees (2001).The Arabic Language.Edinburgh University Press. p. 212.ISBN 0-7486-1436-2.
14. ^Owens, Jonathan (2006).A Linguistic History of Arabic.Oxford University Press. p. 274.ISBN 0-19-929082-2.
15. ^del Rio Sanchez, Francisco (2013). "Influences of Aramaic on dialectal Arabic". In Sala, Juan Pedro Monferrer; Watson, Wilfred G. E. (eds.).Archaism and Innovation in the Semitic Languages: Selected Papers. Oriens Academic.ISBN 978-84-695-7829-2.
16. ^Smart, J. R. (2013).Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language And Literature. Routledge.doi:10.4324/9781315026503.ISBN 978-1-136-78805-5.
17. ^R. J. al-Mawsely,al-Athar, al-Aramiyyah fi lughat al-Mawsil al-amiyyah (Lexicon: Aramaic in the popular language of Mosul): Baghdad 1963
18. ^Afsaruddin, Asma; Zahniser, A. H. Mathias, eds. (1997).Humanism, Culture, and Language in the Near East: Studies in Honor of Georg Krotkoff. Penn State University Press.doi:10.5325/j.ctv1w36pkt.ISBN 978-1-57506-020-0.JSTOR 10.5325/j.ctv1w36pkt.

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