Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia - Khalili ...

FV & Harding GL. Inscriptions
from Fifty Safaitic Cairns. Toronto:
University of Toronto
Near and Middle East Series, 9:
1978.
WTay Taymanitic inscriptions published
in Winnett & Reed, Ancient
Records from North Arabia.
WTI Dumaitic, Thamudic B, C and
D,Hismaic andSafaitic inscriptions
published in Winnett &
Reed, Ancient Records from
North Arabia.
ZI Ancient South Arabian inscriptions
published in c Inān ZA.
Ta $ rīh hw adw ārat al-yaman alqadīma.
Al-Qāhira: Al-silfiyya,
1976.
References
1. When first mentioning a term I shall use diacritical
marks, when appropriate, to indicate pronunciation
or etymology. However, in subsequent
references I shall follow normal practice
and omit these marks. In transliterations of texts
I use the following editorial sigla: a letter between
{ } is a doubtful reading; a letter between
[ ] is restored; ∞.± represents signs or marks
which are considered extraneous to the text and
which have been omitted from the reading; a
letter between ( ) is an emendation when a text is
known only from a hand-copy; and - - - mark a
missing or unreadable passage, regardless of its
length. One / represents a word-divider, two //
the end of a line. Inseparable particles and enclitic
pronouns are attached by a hyphen to the
following or preceding word respectively. With
the exception of Dadanitic, most North and
South Arabian texts are written entirely without
matres lectionis, I have therefore not vocalized
names in the translations. Finally, Alexander
Sima has pointed out to me that the ancient name
of the oasis now called al-‘Ulā was almost certainly
pronounced Dadan (thus uru da-da-nu in the
Nabonidus Stelae from Harran H2,A and H2,B,
both i: 26, and the Septuagint’s rendering of Hebrew
d e dānbyDadau. The Hebrew transcription,
d e dān, (from which English ‘Dedan’ derives) is
the result of two sound shifts characteristic of
Hebrew: /a/±/ā/ in an accented syllable (He-
THE LINGUISTIC MAP OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA
brew placing the accent on the final syllable) and
the unaccented vocal in the preceding syllable
being reduced to a schwa (cf. m e lāk-īm∞*malakīm).
I therefore refer throughout this paper to
Dadan and Dadanitic and only use the term ‘Dedanite’
when referring to the name formerly
given to some of the Dadanitic inscriptions. I am
most grateful to Dr. Sima for this suggestion
which I have quoted verbatim.
2. Thus, for instance, Nabia Abbott’s book entitled
The Rise of the North Arabic script... which deals
with the development of the Arabic script, not
the North Arabian alphabets and the (to me)
bizarre classifications in Bergsträsser’s Einführung
in die semitischen Sprachen (retained in the
English translation of 1983) in which ‘North
Arabic’ refers only to Arabic, and ‘South Arabic’
refers to Ge c ez, Amharic, Tigrē and Mehri! Reference
to Ancient South Arabian in Bergsträsser’s
book is confined to notes on Mehri.
3. In view of this confusion I would suggest that
the terms ‘North Arabic’ and ‘South Arabic’ be
abandoned altogether, since they are not even
useful to describe the dialects of spoken Arabic
found in the north and south of the Peninsula,
for which the terms ‘northern/southern Arabic
dialects’ are better used. In French too, Christian
Robin has led a move away from the traditional
terms ‘nord-arabe’ and ‘sud-arabe’ in favour
of ‘nordarabique’ and ‘sudarabique’. Unfortunately,
such a distinction is not possible in
German where ‘arabisch’ is used for both ‘Arabian’
and ‘Arabic’. Nevertheless, a clear differentiation
is still possible, see below.
4. See Figs 1 and 2.
5. See Fig. 1.
6. W. W. Müller, following Caskel, used the term
‘Frühnordarabisch’ for these texts. However, he
did so in the belief ‘daß die Sprache der thamudischen,
lihyanischen, safaitischen und hasaitischen
Inschriften eine Vorstufe des Altarabischen
bildet’ (Müller WW. Das Altarabische
und das klassische Arabisch. In: Fischer W, ed.
Grundriß der Arabischen Philologie, 1. Wiesbaden:
Reichert, 1982: 17). More than a decade and a
half later, I am not sure that he would maintain
this view, and it is one with which I cannot
agree. It is clear that in pre-Islamic Syria and
Arabia there were two North Arabian dialect
groups, one using h- (or possibly zero) as the definite
article and one using $ l-. It is only the latter
which is the direct ancestor of the Arabic known
from the Islamic period, and it is this which I
have called ‘Old Arabic’ and to which I would
suggest the term ‘Altarabisch’ be restricted. I
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