One of the longest Hismaic inscriptions yet discovered comes from the region of Madaba, Jordan. It was published first in an Arabic article by Khraysheh in  and was re-edited by Graf and Zwettler four years later. Both editions remark on the striking similarity in language and style between this text and Classical Arabic. Indeed, this inscription and a closely related text from Uraynibah West, also published by Graf and Zwettler in the same article, are among the best witnesses to the Arabic of this region during the Nabataean period. This article will offer a few remarks on the language of the Hismaic inscriptions and then provide a new reading of line  of the Madaba inscription, which had previously evaded satisfactory interpretation.

2013

This book discusses a highly-debated research topic regarding the history of the Arabic language. It investigates exhaustively the ancient roots of Classical Arabic through detailed tracings and readings of selected ancient inscriptions from the Northern and Southern Arabian Peninsula. Specifically, this book provides detailed readings of important Nabataean, Musnad, and Akkadian inscriptions, including the Namarah inscription and the Epic of Gilgamesh. In his book, the author, a known Arabic type designer and independent scholar, provides clear indisputable transcriptional material evidence indicating Classical Arabic was utilized in major population centers of the greater Arabian Peninsula, many centuries before Islam. He presents for the first time a new clear reading of Classical Arabic poetry verses written in the Nabataean script and dated to the first century CE. Furthermore, he offers for the first time a clear detailed Classical Arabic reading of a sample text from two ancient editions of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, separated by more than1000 years. Throughout his readings, the author provides verifiable evidence from major historical Arabic etymological dictionaries, dated many centuries ago. The abundant of in-depth analysis, images, and detailed original tables in this book makes it a very suitable reference for both scholars and students in academic and research institutions, and for independent learners. http://books.google.com/books?id=r3SsGB336osC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Asian Social Science, 2020

The aim of this research is to present a new collection of ANA inscriptions (Safaitic) discovered in 2017 in the Jordanian northeastern Badia in the area of Tall Al-Hafit. The research attempts to add a new meaning to the interpretation of the verb ʿwr in the Safaitic inscriptions. This research also introduces a new inscription bearing a reference to the town of Salkhad, which is located in southern Syria. This is the fifth inscription mentioning the name of this town. In addition, the research attempts to shed light on the importance of interpreting Safaitic inscriptions in relation to their geographical locations (the places where the inscriptions were discovered). This is because it is believed that these inscriptions and the meanings their authors wanted to convey can be better understood when interpreting these inscriptions in relation to their geographical contexts.

Arabian Epigraphic Notes 1, 2015

This article studies two unique Greek inscriptions from Wadi Salma in north-eastern Jordan. The first contains seven lines of Old Arabic written in Greek letters, and is our first secure example of Arabic prose written in Greek in the pre-Islamic period. The inscription sheds light on several grammatical features otherwise obscured by the consonantal skeletons of the Semitic scripts, such as the presence of case inflection, the realization of III-w suffix-conjugated verbs, and the vowel pattern of the prefix conjugation. The second inscription is written entirely in the Greek language, but contains a long section of prose which is thematically similar to what is typically found in the Safaitic inscriptions.

Arabian Epigraphic Notes, 2015

This article studies two unique Greek inscriptions from Wadi Salma in north-eastern Jordan. The first contains seven lines of Old Arabic written in Greek letters, and is our first secure example of Arabic prose written in Greek in the pre-Islamic period. The inscription sheds light on several grammatical features otherwise obscured by the consonantal skeletons of the Semitic scripts, such as the presence of case inflection, the realization of III-w suffix-conjugated verbs, and the vowel pattern of the prefix conjugation. The second inscription is written entirely in the Greek language, but contains a long section of prose which is thematically similar to what is typically found in the Safaitic inscriptions.

Egyptian Journal of Archaeological and Restoration Studies (Print), 2021

This study deals with a new group of Ancient North Arabian (Ḥarrat Belād Ash Shām zone) inscriptions that collected during a recent survey in the North Eastern Bādiya of Jordan known by (Ḥarrat Belād Ash Shām). This concerns three Pre-Islamic Safaitic inscriptions, and two early Islamic texts. The purpose of this article is to publish images of the newly-found inscriptions, give a translation, and provide some commentary. This work was achieved through 4 main points; field survey, lab works, documenting and tracing the collected inscriptions, and, theoretical works including translating and analyzing. Our results proved that Islamic inscriptions show the extent of development in writing the simple Kufic script and the ability of the people of the desert to learn.

Semitica et Classica, 2017

Revue annuelle publiée par l'Association Semitica & classica, avec le concours du CNRS et le soutien de l'UMR 8167 « Orient & Méditerranée » (Mondes sémitiques, Antiquité classique et tardive, Monde byzantin, Médecine grecque, Islam médiéval, Mondes pharaoniques).

2016

of them is the first to contain a translation of the Old Arabic prose into Greek. In addition to their decipherment and translation, the paper offers a few grammatical observations on the Arabic and Greek and remarks on the growing evidence for Arabic-Greek bilingualism in the Harrah.

This paper sheds light on twenty-one new Ancient North Arabian (Safaitic) inscriptions discovered in 2015 in Jordan, one of which mentions the Nabataean Damaṣī.

1989

Summary: The present paper studies eight Ancient North Arabian (ANA) graffiti of the Thamudic E (Hismaic) type which concur in their contents with some accompanying Nabataean texts. The corpus is from the Hismã region of southern Jordan. The texts provide further evidence of the bilingual and bi-scribal tradition that seems to have existed in the Hismã during the pre-Islamic period. Each inscription is treated philologically. The linguistic aspects that distinguish the ANA and Nabataean versions are highlighted, especially the use of the definite article 7-in Nabataean and its corresponding absence in ANA. One text also shows that the Nabataean lexeme sr was used to express its ANA counterpart hit. An excursus appended to this paper tackles similar ANA-Nabataean bilingual texts from neighbouring regions, including eastern and northern Jordan and southern Syria. Moreover, this paper provides insights into the cultural background of the authors of these bilingual texts.

This small contribution is offered to John Healey in celebration of his seventieth birthday. It is offered with admiration for all he has achieved both in research and in teaching over an incredibly productive career, in which the age of seventy is simply a passing milestone. Among the great variety of fields to which he has made major contributions, the one closest to mine, Nabataean studies, has been transformed by his work in epigraphy, philology, legal and social history, and much else for which all those involved in the study of this remarkable civilization are profoundly grateful. Clarity and accessibility have always been hallmarks of his work, a courtesy to the reader which is increasingly hard to find elsewhere. But they are also hallmarks of John's personality, his openness, modesty, readiness to share his knowledge, discuss and explain, qualities which have made him a generous and inspiring teacher, a brilliant scholar, and a dear and valued friend. As is well known, the Ḥismā of southern Jordan and north-west Saudi Arabia is a dramatic and extremely beautiful sandstone desert dotted with mountain ranges and inselbergen of many colours. In the last two centuries bce and the early centuries ce, this area, and particularly the famous Wādī Ramm, was used by the Nabataeans, whose capital, Petra, was some 50 km to the north. They built a temple there, embellished natural 'sanctuaries', dammed numerous gullies, dug wells and left religious carvings, official inscriptions, and graffiti. 1 However, there was also an indigenous population in the Ḥismā which spoke an Old Arabic dialect written in one of the Ancient North Arabian scripts. 2 This script has been labelled 'Hismaic' because the greatest concentration of inscriptions using it is in the Ḥismā, even though scattered outliers can be found elsewhere, for instance in the Madaba region 3 and at Khirbat al-

In the frst article under this title I published six Ḥismaic inscriptions from Ġarah. The present work publishes a second series of another fourteen inscriptions.

Norris, J., A woman’s Hismaic inscription from the Wādī Ramm desert: AMJ 2/J.14202 (Amman Museum), Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 28, 2017: 90–109., 2017

This article focuses on an unpublished Hismaic (Thamudic E) inscription housed in the Amman Museum (AMJ 2/J.14202), which was discovered in 1981 by W.J. Jobling in the area of W ad ı Ramm, southwestern Jordan. The text presents some interest for the study of the history and language of the nomadic tribes who lived in southern Transjordan and northern Arabia in antiquity, as it represents a rare example of an inscription carved by a woman and because it contains the first attestation, in Hismaic, of the feminine singular form of the relative pronoun ḏ.

Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, 2020

This is the first in a series of papers which aim to publish and comment on new Nabataean and Ancient North Arabian (ANA) inscriptions that contain important data on the political, social, linguistic and religious history of the Nabataeans and their nomadic neighbours. The focus is particularly on texts providing evidence on relationships between the Nabataeans and the groups who left the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions, particularly under the lens of their common cult of Dushara, the main deity of the Nabataeans, and of the question of Hismaic/Nabataean and Safaitic/Nabataean bilingualisms for which there is growing evidence. The inscriptions discussed here come from the massif of Ṭūr al-Qawwās in the region of Tabūk, northwest Saudi Arabia (Figs 1 and 2). They were recorded in October 2013 by a group of Saudi travellers and amateur archaeologists known as the Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ, "the Desert Team". 1 They are carved on a flat and rectangular panel standing a few meters above the valley floor that forms a kind of natural "triptych", the sections of which are separated from each other by some fissures and cracks in the bedrock (Fig. 3). They consist of five Hismaic and three Nabataean inscriptions that surround a group of rock drawings and wusūm (tribal marks), knowing that three of the texts are actually associated to each other and that they form a Nabataean/Hismaic partial bilingual (TQNab 1 The study and publication of this material was carried out with the kind permission of Dr. Abdullah Al-Zahrani, Director General of the Centre for Research and Archaeological Studies at the SCTH (Saudi Commission for Tourism & National Heritage), to whom we are extremely grateful.

2015

This paper edits twenty-one previously unpublished Ancient North Arabian (Safaitic) inscriptions discovered in 2015 in Jordan, one of which mentions the Nabataean Damaṣī.

2019

This paper publishes two short Nabataean graffiti discovered in 2015 by the team of the OCIANA project at Tell al-ʿAbd and Marabb al-Shurafāʾ, in the H arrah desert, north-eastern Jordan. Despite their brevity, these new texts appear of interest because the H arrah is an area well outside that in which Nabataean inscriptions are normally found, bringing to twelve the number of known texts from that region, taking the Namārah epitaph into account. Consisting exclusively of onomastica, they contain some personal names already known among the settled and nomadic communities of southern Syria and northern Jordan as well as some new anthroponyms in the Nabataean onomasticon, notably šmʿn, that may correspond to the Arab name Samʿān.

Acta Orientalia, 2014

This paper aims at studying a group of fourteen Safaitic inscriptions collected during an epigraphical survey in the Haroun Region in Western Bādiyah of Jordan. The research deals with the verbs and names semantically and syntactically, with an outlook to their parallels in other Semitic languages. This group of inscriptions contains some new personal names, terms and nouns hitherto unrecorded in Safaitic inscriptions: šrr (No. 1), jrml (No. 2), fjl (No. 3), hdrs (No. 6), zblt (No. 7), kyl (No. 8), 't (No. 9) and bdy (No. 9) are all new personal names in Safaitic; the term 'ns-h (No. 11) is attested for the first time in Safaitic in this form, and jfrt (No. 14) "young female camel" is a noun hitherto unrecorded elsewhere in Safaitic or other northwestern Semitic inscriptions.

An edition of new Nabataean Inscriptions from Umm al-Jimāl *, 2023

This paper reports on a study of six new Nabataean inscriptions found in Umm al-Jimāl in the northeastern Badia of Jordan. These inscriptions are a new addition to the corpus of Nabataean inscriptions. The inscriptions were engraved using the square or monumental script.

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