Old Arabic
የበ𐪇Ⲟ اللغة العربية القديمة
Epitaph ofImru al-Qays I ibn Amr (328 AD)
Pronunciation	[ʕr͇b]
Region	NorthwesternArabian Peninsula and the southernLevant
Era	Early 1st millennium BCE to 7th century CE
Language family	Afroasiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Old Arabic
Early form	Proto-Arabic
Writing system	Safaitic Hismaic Dadanitic Nabataean Phoenician Arabic Greek
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	None

Old Arabic is the name for anyArabic language or dialect continuum beforeIslam.^[1] Various forms of Old Arabic are attested in scripts likeSafaitic,Hismaic,Nabatean, and evenGreek.^[2]

Alternatively, the term has been used synonymously with "Paleo-Arabic" to describe the form of the Arabic script in the fifth and sixth centuries.^[3]

Old Arabic and its descendants are classified asCentral Semitic languages, which is an intermediate language group containing theNorthwest Semitic languages (e.g.,Aramaic andHebrew), the languages of theDadanitic,Taymanitic inscriptions, the poorly understood languages labeledThamudic, and the ancient languages ofYemen written in theAncient South Arabian script. Old Arabic, is however, distinguished from all of them by the following innovations:^[4]

1. negative particlesm */mā/;lʾn */lā-ʾan/ > CArlan
2. mafʿūl G-passive participle
3. prepositions and adverbsf,ʿn,ʿnd,ḥt,ʿkdy
4. a subjunctive in -a
5. t-demonstratives
6. leveling of the -at allomorph of the feminine ending
7. the use off- to introduce modal clauses
8. independent object pronoun in (ʾ)y
9. vestiges ofnunation

The oldest known attestation of the Arabic language dubbed as pre-Historic Arabic language is a bi-lingual inscription written in Old Arabic which was written in the undifferentiated North Arabian script (known asThamudic B) and Canaanite which remains undeciphered, discovered inBayir, Jordan.^[2]

A characteristic ofNabataean Arabic andOld Hijazi (from whichClassical Arabic much later developed) is thedefinite articleal-. The first unambiguous literary attestation of this feature occurs in the 5th century BCE, in the epithet of a goddess whichHerodotus (Histories I: 131, III: 8) quotes in its preclassical Arabic form asAlilat (Ἀλιλάτ, i. e.,ʼal-ʼilāt), which means "the goddess".^[6] An early piece of inscriptional evidence for this form of the article is provided by a 1st-century BCE inscription inQaryat al-Faw (formerly Qaryat Dhat Kahil, nearSulayyil,Saudi Arabia).^[7][8][9]

The earliest datable Safaitic inscriptions go back to the 3rd century BCE, but the vast majority of texts are undatable and so may stretch back much further in time.^[1]

Aramaic ostraca dated 362–301 BC bear witness to the presence of people ofEdomite origin in the southernShephelah and theBeersheva Valley before theHellenistic period. They contain personal names that can be defined as Arabic on the basis of their linguistic features:^[10]

1. whb, qws-whb (opposed to Northwest Semiticyhb),ytʿ as opposed to Aramaicysʿ and Hebrewyšʿ
2. quṭaylu diminutives:šʿydw, ʿbydw, nhyrw, zbydw
3. personal names ending in -w (wawation):ʿzyzw, ʿbdw, nmrw, mlkw, ḥlfw, zydw
4. personal names ending in feminine -t (as opposed to Aramaic and Hebrew -h):yʿft, ḥlft
5. personal names ending in -n [-aːn]: 'drn, mṭrn, ḥlfn, zydn

Hismaic inscriptions, contemporaneous with theNabatean Kingdom attest a variety of Old Arabic which may have merged [ð] with [d]. Furthermore, there are 52Hismaic inscriptions which attest the formulaḏkrt lt[ðakarat allaːtu]^{[citation needed]} "MayAllāt be mindful of", foreshadowing similar formulae which are attested in Christian contexts from northern Syria to northern Arabia during the 6th and possibly 7th centuries CE. One such inscription, found nearWadi Rum, is given below:

The EnAvdat inscription dates to no later than 150 CE, and contains a prayer to the deified Nabataean kingObodas I:^[12]

The earliest 6th-century Arabic inscription is fromZabad (512), a town nearAleppo. The Arabic inscription consists of a list of names carved on the lowest part of the lintel of amartyrion dedicated toSaint Sergius, the upper parts of which are occupied by inscriptions inGreek andSyriac.^[13]

Two Arabic inscriptions, theJebel Usays inscription (528) and theHarran inscription (568), are from the southern region on the borders ofHauran.

TheQur'an, as standardized byUthman^[14] (r. 644 – 656), is the first Arabic codex still extant, and the first non-inscriptional attestation of theOld Hijazi dialect. TheBirmingham Quran manuscript wasradiocarbon dated to between 568 and 645 CE, and contains parts of chapters 18, 19, and 20.

PERF 558 (643 CE) is the oldest Islamic Arabic text, the first Islamic papyrus, and attests the continuation of wawation into the Islamic period.

The Zuhayr inscription (644 CE) is the oldest Islamic rock inscription.^[15] It references the death ofUmar, and is notable for its fully fledged system of dotting.

A Christian Arabic inscription, known as theYazid inscription, possibly mentionsYazid I and is notable for its continuation of 6th century Christian Arabic formulae as well as maintaining pre-Islamic letter shapes and wawation.^[16]

The ʿEn ʿAvdat inscription in the Nabataean script dating to no later than 150 CE shows that final [n] had been deleted in undetermined triptotes, and that the final short vowels of the determined state were intact. The Old Arabic of the Nabataean inscriptions exhibits almost exclusively the formʾl- of the definite article. UnlikeClassical Arabic, thisʾl almost never exhibits the assimilation of the coda to the coronals.

Example:

1. pa-yapʿal lā pedā wa lā ʾaṯara
2. pa-kon honā yabġe-nā ʾal-mawto lā ʾabġā-h
3. pa-kon honā ʾarādgorḥo lā yorde-nā^[18]

• "And he acts neither for benefit nor favour and if death claims us let me not be claimed. And if an affliction occurs let it not afflict us".^[13]

The A1 inscription dated to the 3rd or 4th century in a Greek alphabet in a dialect showing affinities to that of the Safaitic inscriptions shows that short final high vowels had been lost, obliterating the distinction between nominative and genitive case in the singular, leaving the accusative the only marked case.^[19] Besides dialects with no definite article, the Safaitic inscriptions exhibit about four different article forms, ordered by frequency:h-,ʾ-,ʾl-, andhn-. Unlike the Classical Arabic article, the Old Arabicʾl almost never exhibits the assimilation of the coda to the coronals; the same situation is attested in the Graeco-Arabica, but in A1 the coda assimilates to the followingd, αδαυρα */ʾad-dawra/ 'the region'. The Safaitic and Hismaic texts attest an invariable feminine consonantal -t ending, and the same appears to be true of the earliest Nabataean Arabic. While Greek transcriptions show a mixed situation, it is clear that by the 4th c. CE, the ending had shifted to /-a(h)/ in non-construct position in the settled areas.^[2]

Example:

• ʾAws (bin) ʿūḏ (?) (bin) Bannāʾ (bin) Kazim ʾal-ʾidāmiyy ʾatawa miś-śiḥāṣ; ʾatawa Bannāʾaʾad-dawra wa yirʿawbaqla bi-kānūn
• "ʾAws son of ʿūḏ (?) son of Bannāʾ son of Kazim the ʾidāmite came because of scarcity; he came to Bannāʾ in this region and they pastured on fresh herbage during Kānūn".

The Qur'anic Consonantal Text shows no case distinction with determined triptotes, but the indefinite accusative is marked with a final /ʾ/. In JSLih 384, an early example of Old Hijazi, the Proto-Central Semitic /-t/ allomorph survives inbnt as opposed to /-ah/ < /-at/ ins¹lmh.

Northern Old Arabic preserved the original shape of the relative pronounḏ-, which may either have continued to inflect for case or have become frozen asḏū or ḏī. In one case, it is preceded by the article/demonstrative prefixh-,hḏ */haḏḏV/.^[21]

In Safaitic, the existence of mood inflection is confirmed in the spellings of verbs with y/w as the third root consonant. Verbs of this class in result clauses are spelled in such a way that they must have originally terminated in /a/:f ygzy nḏr-h */pa yagziya naḏra-hu/ 'that he may fulfill his vow'. Sometimes verbs terminate in a -n which may reflect an energic ending, thus,s²ʿ-nh 'join him' perhaps */śeʿannoh/.^[2]

Old Ḥiǧāzī is characterized by the innovative relative pronounʾallaḏī,ʾallatī, etc., which is attested once in JSLih 384 and is the common form in the QCT.^[4]

The QCT along with the papyri of the first century after the Islamic conquests attest a form with an l-element between the demonstrative base and the distal particle, producing from the original proximal setḏālika andtilka.

The texts composed in both scripts are almost 50,000 specimens that provide a rather detailed view of Old Arabic.^[2]

A single text, JSLih 384, composed in theDadanitic script, from northwest Arabia, provides the only non-Nabataean example of Old Arabic from theHijaz.^[2]

Fragmentary evidence in the Greek script, the "Graeco-Arabica", is equally crucial to help complete our understanding of Old Arabic. It encompasses instances of Old Arabic in Greek transcription from documentary sources. The advantage of the Greek script is that it gives us a clear view of the vowels of Old Arabic and can shed important light on the phonetic realization of the Old Arabic phonemes. Finally, a single pre-Islamic Arabic text composed in Greek letters is known, labelled A1.^[2]

Only two texts composed fully in Arabic have been discovered in theNabataean script. The En Avdat inscription contains two lines of an Arabic prayer or hymn embedded in an Aramaic votive inscription. The second is theNamara inscription, 328 CE, which was erected about 60 miles (97 km) southeast ofDamascus. Most examples of Arabic come from the substratal influence the language exercised on Nabataean Aramaic.^[2]

A growing corpus of inscriptions are now known from a script that existed in a transitional phase between recognizable Arabic andNabataean Aramaic. This script has been calledNabataean Arabic and is known from Northwestern Arabia. It provides further lexical and some morphological material for the later stages of Old Arabic in this region. The texts provide important insights as to the development of the Arabic script from its Nabataean forebear and are an important glimpse of the Old Hijazi dialects.^[2]

Severalinscriptions in the fully evolved Arabic script, known asPaleo-Arabic, are now known from the pre-Islamic period. The earliest one is known as theZabad inscription (528 CE) and was discovered inSyria. Another two prominent Paleo-Arabic Syrian inscriptions include theJebel Usays inscription (528 CE) and theHarran inscription (568 CE).^[2]

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