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

155. There is, of course, no reason why Old Arabic,
which before the sixth century AD was a purely
spoken language, should not have been written
in the Safaitic script from time to time, and there
are indeed some examples of this, see below
and Macdonald, The Form of the Definite Article.
156. See the excellent photograph in al-Ansary AT.
Qaryat al-Fau. A Portrait of Pre-Islamic Civilisation
in Saudi Arabia. London: Croom Helm, 1982:
146, and the translation and commentary in
Beeston AFL. Nemara and Faw. BSOAS 42:
1979: 1–2. In the period of its prosperity, Qaryat
al-Faw must have been one of the most cosmopolitan
centres in Arabia. Inscriptions in the Sabaic,
‘Thamudic’, Pahlavi and Nabataean
scripts have been found there and in the (Undifferentiated)
North Arabian, Old Arabic, Pahlavi,
Nabataean and Sabaic languages (see Ansary,
Qaryat al-Fau: 19–20, 28, 73–74, 87–91, 99,
106, 118–119, 123, 129–133, 137, 141–147, and
Ryckmans, Alphabets, Scripts and Languages:
75). In the 1980s, Jacques Ryckmans (Alphabets,
Scripts and Languages: 75) and Walter Müller
(Das Altarabische und das klassische Arabisch:
33–34) published admirable summaries of the
evidence from Faw, and a few more texts have
been recognized since then (see Kropp, The
Inscription Ghoneim; Robin, L’Arabie antique:
97, 103, 113–116). Faw was the centre of the
North Arabian tribes of Kinda, Madhw igˇ and
Qahw tw ān. See the tombstone of M c wyt bn Rb c tmlk
qhw tw n w-mdhw g (Ansary, Qaryat al-Fau: 144/2); the
Sabaic text from Mahw ram Bilqīsī, Ja 635 (Jamme
A. Sabaean Inscriptions from Mahw ram Bilqîs
(Mârib). Baltimore: PAFSM, 3: 1962: 136–138),
lines 25–28 of which mention rb c td- $ ltwrmmlk
kdt w qhw tw n at Qryt m dt Khl (ie. Qaryat al-Faw);
and Ja 2110, also originally from Marib (Doe
DB & Jamme A. New Sabaean Inscriptions from
South Arabia. JRAS 1968: 15–16) lines 8–9 of
which read Mlk m bn bd mlk kdt w mdhw g m ,
although this text does not specifically link him
with Faw. The adoption of Qahw tw ān as the ancestor
of all the ‘southern’ Arab tribes seems to
have been a later development (see Fischer A &
Irvine AK. Kw ahw tw ān. In: EI, (new edition), 4.
Leiden: Brill, 1978: 448).
157. So Robin, L’Arabie antique: 115–116, on palaeographic
grounds.
158. See Macdonald, The Form of the Definite Article
for a detailed analysis of the treatment of
the definite article in this text. The / $ / is assimilated
when it is preceded by an inseparable particle,
leaving l-, while the /l/ is assimilated be-
THE LINGUISTIC MAP OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA
fore sibilants leaving $ -. There is no case in this
text where the article is both preceded by a particle
and followed by a sibilant. Robin assumes
that wlh in line 5 stands for ‘wa-∞Al±lāh’
(L’Arabie antique: 116). However, as just noted,
the divine names Lh and Lt are known from Safaitic
where they stand beside the common
nouns $ lh (eg. b c ls 1 mn $ lh s cc ‘B c ls 1 mn god of Sī c ’
in CSNS 424) and $ lt (see above), and the epithets
h- $ lh (‘the god’, eg. WH 3923 as re-read in
Macdonald MCA. Cursive Safaitic Inscriptions?
A Preliminary Investigation. In: Ibrahim MM,
ed. Arabian Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Ghul:
Symposium at Yarmouk University December 8–11,
1984. Wiesbaden: Yarmouk University Publications:
Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology
Series, 2: 1989: 65–66, 73, 79) and h- $ lt (‘the
goddess’, see above).
159. c Igl bn Hf c m line 1 where *banā appears as the
second of the three bns in the line (no vowels
are represented in the Ancient South Arabian
script). See Beeston’s excellent reading and
commentary (Nemara and Faw: 1–2).
160. Robin interprets bn in line 8 as the South Arabian
preposition (L’Arabie antique: 116) and remarks
on its curious co-existence with Old
Arabic mn in line 6. However, Beeston’s explanation
of bn from Arabic bayn ‘in its primary
sense of ‘‘separation, parting’’ [±‘without’]’
(Nemara and Faw: 2) is surely preferable, both
in the sense it gives and as an explanation of
the presence of bn at this point in the text.
161. The two examples of the 3rd person pl. enclitic
pronoun (lines 3 and 4) are also North Arabian
-hm rather than Sabaic -hmw.
162. However, see Beeston, Nemara and Faw: 1, n. 1
for one possible explanation of this feature, and
see below for another.
163. Müller, Das Altarabische und das klassische
Arabisch: 32–33.
164. See Drewes AJ. The Phonemes of Lihyanite. In:
Robin C, ed. Mélanges linguistiques offerts à
Maxime Rodinson par ses élèves, ses collègues et ses
amis. Paris: GLECS Supplément, 12: 1985: 165–
173. Contra Drewes, only final /ā/ and /ū/ and
the diphthong /ay/ in final position are consistently
expressed in this way (by –h, –w and –y
respectively). Final /ī/ and medial vowels and
diphthongs seem rarely, if ever, to have been
represented. Drewes assumes that, because
diphthongs in medial position are not represented
in Dadanitic (in accordance with the
normal practice in all the ANA scripts), the
diphthongs /aw/ and /ay/ must have been
monophthongized. This argumentum e silentio,
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