languages of pre-islamic arabia

8/22/2019 Languages of Pre-Islamic Arabia

1/10

Languages of Pre-Islamic Arabia

Author(s): A. F. L. BeestonSource: Arabica, T. 28, Fasc. 2/3, Numro Spcial Double: tudes de Linguistique Arabe (Jun. -Sep., 1981), pp. 178-186Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4056297Accessed: 11/11/2010 07:04

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=bap.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

BRILL is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Arabica.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=baphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4056297?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=baphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=baphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4056297?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=bap


2/10

LANGUAGES OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIABY

A. F. L. BEESTON

GEOGRAPHICALLY, the ArabianPeninsula hould be regarded s beingbounded on the north by the so-called Fertile Crescent, and thus

including the desert areas between the Euphrates and the rift valleywhich stretches north from 'Aqaba. For knowledge of the linguisticsituation before Islam in the peninsula so defined, we must dependprincipally on a vast number of inscriptions both formal monumentalones and graffiti very widely scattered from the extreme north to thesouth in the western half, with a very much smaller number on the eastcoast. Some useful information may be gained from the Muslimphilologists, but such data are chronologically limited to a period ofapproximately a century before Islam; about the earlier linguistic factsthe philologists knew nothing. Moreover, the area roughly coincidingwith the modern Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab Emirates southof Bahrayn is virtually a blank for the purposes of this study. There are afew inscriptions at Khor Rori (a little east of Sallala), but these belong toa Hadramite settlement there and tell us nothing of the indigenouslanguage; and a few rock inscriptions have been reported (but not yetpublished) from the Jabal Akhdar. This corner of the peninsula, cut offfrom the rest of it by the sands of the 'Empty Quarter', remains outsidethe practical scope of my remarks.

In pre-Islamic times nearly the whole of the area under survey wasdominated by the use of a scriptof South Semitic type', with an alphabetcomprising 27 or more letters. Only in the extreme north do we findscripts of a North-west Semitic type, comprising a maximum of 22letters, in use. Nevertheless, it is from a script of the latter type thatclassical Arabic script as we know it has evolved.

In view of the brief and frequently enigmatic nature of the graffiti, theyare (in spite of being present in enormous numbers) of very scanty helptowards delineating the linguistic map of the peninsula. Among the more

1 The sole present-day survivor of this is the Ethiopic script.

Arabica, Tome xxviii, Fascicule 2-3


3/10

[2] LANGUAGESOF PRE-ISLAMIC RABIA 179formal inscriptions, where they exist, the most significant in manyrespects are those drafted in Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic and Hadramitic.These four languages (showing many close affinities with each other)were virtually confined to the areas west, south and east of the Sayhadsand desert2, plus the Hadramite settlement mentioned above and asimilar Minaic-speaking settlement at Dedan/al-'Ula in the northernHijaz. Texts in these 'Sayhadic' languages outside the homelands are inpart attributable to transients, as is the case with the Sabaic rockinscriptions at al-Him-a', Kawkab and in southern Najd, written bymembers of Sabaean military expeditions passing through.

In part, however, such texts may be the result of the prestige ofSabaic in particular of the language of a high culture with manycenturies of tradition behind it, thus leading to its use as a medium forwritten records by populations for whom it was not a mother-tongue. Inthe same way, the Palmyrenes and Nabataeans used Aramaic, the greatculture-language of the lands bordering the peninsula on the north, fortheir written records, although it is highly probable that this was nottheir language of everyday intercourse.The Himyaritearea lay to the south of the Sabaena area and remained,until the fourth century A.D., to a large extent outside the domain ofSabaic literate culture; it is only in the fourth to sixth centuriesA.D. thatwe have any appreciablenumberof inscriptions from the Himyaritearea,and while they are in Sabaic, it seems probable that this was not theHimyarites' native language. It will be remembered that the PeriplusMaris Erythraei(of the late first or possibly early second century A.D.)speaks of Sabaeans and Himyarites (Homerites) as two ethne a wordwhich for the Greeks had strong implications of independent linguisticcommunities (it is not in any way a political term).

It is further significant that Hamdani, though able to read SouthArabian script and hence to identify proper names, cites allegedly ancientinscriptions which are so unlike, in their style and content, any authenticancient texts, that we must conclude that all knowledge of genuineSabaic had vanished by his time; yet he certainly knew something thathis contemporaries called Himyaritic (on which see below).

Even in the heart of Sabaean culture in Marib, there are some signsthat by the fifth century Sabaic was becoming a 'learned' language, likeLatin in the European Middle Ages, rather than a mother-tongue, since

2 Thus named by the mediaeval Arab geographers; currently Ramlat al-Sab'atayn.


4/10

180 A. F. L. BEESTON [3]some texts of this period show a few featuresunknown to earlier,'classical', Sabaic. Such featuresmay, no doubt, in part representautonomous inguistic volution,but thisdoes not seemto be acompleteexplanation,since one fifth centurytext consistentlyuses a form of'relative'pronoununattested lsewhere, itherbeforeorafter,except natext fromDhelama,on the edge of the great south-facingescarpment,well outsidethe traditionalSabaeandomainand in the Himyaritearea[Beeston1976].It should be stressed that the Sayhadic languagesconstitute anindependent anguage-family ithinthe Semitic ield, and arein no wayclassifiableas 'dialects' of Arabic. It is true that the Arabic lexiconcontains distinct traces of continuitywith that of the Sayhadiclan-guages;butwhenArabicdiddisplace he earlier anguagesof the south-west,it is onlyto beexpected hat the Yemenitedialectsof Arabicshouldcontainmuch exicalmaterialwhich s ultimatelySayhadic;and the vastcollectionof materials n the greatmediaevalArabiclexicaincludesagood deal that is dialectal,someof it certainlyYemenite Garbini1978,108; Avanzini 1980, 427-8]. Sayhadicsyntaxalso shows many remark-ablesimilarities o that of Arabic. But both here and in the case of thelexicon,it has to be rememberedhat, beforeIslam,centralArabiawaspoisedbetween wo magnetsof higherandthereforeprestigious ulture(the FertileCrescenton the north and Yemen on the south), exposedtoinfluences rom both3.But the crucial factor attestingthe independenceof the Sayhadiclanguage-familyies in its morphology4,which contains a numberofdistinctive featureswholly alien to Arabic; above all, they share theuniformcharacteristic f a definitearticle n the formof an affixed -n,unattested lsewhere hroughoutSemitic5.Even in the early centuriesA.D. there were other languages thanthe Sayhadicgroupin use in Yemen,of which howeverwe possessonly

3 This is specially significant in various non-linguistic domains, where some Europeanscholars have been too prone to look only for northern influences, disregardingthose fromthe south.

4 It is, after all, morphology which stamps English as a Germanic language, in spite ofthe enormous influence of Latin and Romance on the lexicon and even, to some extent, thesyntax.

S ULLENDORFF[1955, 8 and note 30] rightly says that 'the -n affix exists as a deicticelement in many Semitic languages'. But no other Semitic language has transformed thisrather randomly occuring element into a cosistent morpheme with the function of a definitearticle.


5/10

[4] LANGUAGES OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA 181very exiguousevidence.One inscriptionfrom Marib6is a votive textbeginningwith a formulaicpreamblein 'classical'Sabaic, but thenswitchesabruptly o an unknown anguage: houghthis containsa fairnumberof lexical temscongruouswithSabaic, t showsan incidenceofwordsendingin -k which would be whollyunnatural n Sabaic,and itcannotin anyway be interpreted s Sabaic.A preponderancef wordsending in -k is found also in an as yet indecipherableext from thesouthernescapment7.A third is a still unpublishedrock inscriptionagain showing a high proportionof -k endings and which, mostinterestingly,ooks as if it is in verse.

LeavingasideAramaic,Sayhadic,and the abovementioned nknownSouthArabian anguage or languages),heinscriptions f thepeninsulaareclassifiable nto two groupsaccording o the formof definitearticleused: on the one handprefixedh-/hn-,and on the otherprefixed ')l-,the forerunner f Arabic al-. Chronologically,he secondgroupmightwell be regardedas late and innovatory, inceits epigraphic ttestationdates only from about the 2nd/3rd centuryA.D., whereasthe firstgroup s evidenced romthemiddleof the firstmilleniumB.C.onwards;yet the al- groupmay in fact be much moreancient, f we acceptthat,as is usuallybelieved,Herodotus'Arabiandeity Alilat is al-Ilhu?(thegoddess>>.Theh(n) dialects nclude helinguistic ormswhichareconventionallyclassified as Dedanite-Lihyanitethe differentialhere being chronolo-gical, 'Dedanite'applyingto the earlierphase, aroundthe mid firstmilleniumB.C.,and'Lihyanite'o a laterphasedownto thefirstcenturyA.D.), Safaitic, and the so-called 'Thamudic'.All these terms wereoriginallydesigned as geographicallyrelevant,and 'Thamudic'waschosen becauseinscriptionsof this type were first encountered n thedeserts adjoining Dedan, which were the traditionalhome of theTamudeni Thamud).Thetermhas now,however,becomea misnomer,since nscriptions f thistype are nowknownto existalloverthewesternside of the peninsulaas far as and eveninterpenetratinghe bordersofthe Sayhadicdomain; it does not seem credible to me that all theseshould emanate from the single tribe of the Tamudeni,as Van denBranden 1960]supposed.To mentionnothingelse [thoughsee Beeston

6 Zayd b. 'Ali 'Inan, Ta'rih haddratal-Yaman al-qadim (Cairo, 1396), 134-5.7 Van LESSEN24, in Jamme 1971, 86.8 Herodotus' male deity Orotal is not conclusive, since this could represent either ha-Rudd or ar-Rudd.


6/10

182 A. F. L. BEESTON [5]1962], it would involve the bizarre supposition that this tribe alonepossessed the art of writing, to the exclusion of Maddeni (Ma'add),Gorrhamitae (Jurhum), Kinaedokolpitae (Kinanah) and other folks.So far, one might plausibly have concluded that the h(n) articlewas anold west-Arabian feature, forming an isoglossic continuum with theHebrew article, and that (')Iwas an eastern feature which has driven outthe western form, in the same way that the 'eastern' pronunciation ofhamz has become generalized in Arabic, replacing (partially at least) theancient Hijazi pronunciations [Rabin 1951, 130-45]. A puzzling fact,however, is that the tombstones of the al-Hasa' region on the east coast[Jamme 1966; Mandaville 1963],perhaps dateable to around 400 B.C.9,show no trace of (')l but do have hn in proper names. Jamme'sexplanation of this element as a scriptio defectiva for hawn might perhaps have had some plausibility if it had been attested only incombination with a divine name, but it is surely contradicted by thename (J 1044) hn'bd which can hardly be anything else than theequivalent of Arabic al-'abd. Hence [...]rmhn'lt(J 1043) should be seennot as a compositum from three different roots (an onomastic featurehardly, if at all, attested outside Akkadian), but as something like


7/10

[6] LANGUAGES OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA 183Damascus , dated 568 A.D. and in a scriptwhichalreadyshowsthemarksof emergingArabicscript Littmann1912, 193].Thestriking hingabout all theseis that,in spiteof the vastgeographical apbetweenFawon the one hand and Nemara and Harranon the other, they areremarkablyhomogeneous inguisticallyand drafted in what is recog-nisablyalmost pure'classical'Arabic.

There are three other texts, from Zebed [Littmann 1912, 196-7],J.Usays [al-'Uss 1964, 302 and no. 107, P1.85] and Umm al-Jimal[Littmann1949, 1-3],all in the northern rea,whicharein thesametypeof scriptas the Harranone and all similarlydatedin the sixthcenturyA.D. All six can be reasonably lassifiedas 'earlyArabic'.More speculatives thecaseof thegraffiti roma Nabataean emple nW.Ramm in southern Jordan [Grimme 1936, 93-4], which are ofuncertain ating;Grimme's around300' s regarded yDiem[1979,210]as too early.Lastly,thereis a funerary nscriptionat al-'Ula' [Jaussen1914, i.423-7,no 71] classedby the firsteditorsas Lihyanite n the basisof the script, yet it contains the Arabic articlein blhgr>(NabataeanAramaichgr',Greco-LatinEgra),andinsome otherrespectsyields more easily to an interpretationas Arabic than as Lihyanite[Beeston 1973].On the other hand, it also contains the tribal namehn'hnktn Lihyaniteorm.The same name s also found nCIH 450in itsArabicform, since '1/'l'hnktan hardlybe interpreted therwise han asdl al-'ahnikat?the folk of al-Ahnikat>>;he originalprovenanceof thistext is uncertain, hough it should be remarked hat its introductoryformulanafs wa qabr s typical ofcentraland east Arabian unerarypracticeandnot verycharacteristic ftheSayhadic ulture,beingsomewhatrare here(the monumental outhArabianscriptof CIH 450 is, as the exampleof the Faw texts shows, noguaranteeof Sayhadicprovenance).GenuineSayhadic exts seemto referto centraland easternArabiansarbitrarily itherin their native form with the (')l article, or with theSayhadic quivalent n 2. Theal-Asdtribe later o becomeknownas al-Azd) appear n J 635/37 [Jamme1962]as 'I's'dand in the Minaic RES2959/4 as 'hl/[']s'dn. n these cases the reference s certainly o Azd al-

l This is of course not the famous Harran of the Sabians (&ibi'ah) in northernMesopotamia.12 ISabaization' of a North-Arabian name in another way is found in CIH 541/91 wherethe well-known Ghassanid, Harith b.Jabalah, appears as hrtmlbn/gblt with the Sabaictermination -m, very common in proper names.


8/10

184 A. F. L. BEESTON [7]Sarat;but RES 4916 is Hadramiticand its 'sldnperhapsrefersto thebranchwhichwaslaterto become he Azd 'Uman.A problematicaseisthe referencen Sharafaddin 1/9-10to a certainMalikb.Ka'bmlkl'sld,which W. W. Muller [1974] interpretsas


9/10

[8] LANGUAGES OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA 185Himyaritic, wo beingconspicuouslydeviantfrom Arabic: the use of adefinite articleam-, and a verbal inflexionfa'alka, fa'alki, fa'alku 3.Moreover,they displaydistinct tendencies n the direction of treatingHimyaritic s anindependentanguagerather han as a dialectof Arabicon the same plane as the other dialectal variationsthey record.Indescribingdialects elsewhere heymatchtheseagainstthe standardsofhigh-prestige Arabiyyahand classifythem as 'pure', 'good', 'not bad'and 'poor'; but in dealing with the south-westthey speak of 'pureArabic','inferiorArabicmixed with Himyaritic'and 'pureHimyaritic'[Rabin 1951, specially map on p. 46]. Al-Jahiz4 refers to dialectalvariation tahdlu])between uch typical ribalgroupsas Tamim,Qays5,HawazinandtheHijaz,butthengoeson to saythat all thesecollectivelystand opposed to Himyarite (hiyafiaktarihM'aldhilafi lugatiHimyar).Atthe presentday, the abovementionedwo featuresof ancientHimyariticare still to be found in some speech-formsof the southernend of thewest-Arabianmountainspine, thoughin otherrespects t wouldnot bepossible o classify heseas otherthan Arabicdialects Diem1973].Whathas happeneds a gradualconvergencebetweenancientHimyariticandancientArabic, eadingultimately o thedisappearance f theindividualstatusof Himyaritic ut withtheretentionof a few of itsarchaic eatures.The philologistshave also recordedthe am- article in a few west-centralareas, such as Murrah n the vicinity of Medina, and this ledRabin[1951,35]to infer hat it is 'commonwest-Arabian';his,however,seemsa slightover-simplification,n that it doesnot takeaccountof theheavydominanceof the h(n) article n exactly those areas.

My tentative suggestionis that we should distinguish (a) ancientnorth-westArabian, with article h(n)-; (b) ancient north-east (?)Arabian,with article ')l; (c) ancientsouth-westArabian,split into twobranches,the Sayhadictype with article -n and the Himyaritictypewith articleam-; (d) ancientwest-centralArabianof an indeterminatecharacter onstitutinga mosaic of north-west, outh-west Himyaritic),and perhapsalso some north-eastern,peechforms. In courseof time

'3 Thistype of verbal nflexion,however,may have beensharedwithSayhadic.14 Mandqibal-Turk, in Rasa'il al-Jdhiz, ed. 'Abdal-SaIlmHariin Cairo1962),I, 10.' I have doubtswhether he authorreallyreferredhereto the famousQays'Aylan,sinceHawazinwereonly a subdivisionof these.A muchneaterarrangementwould besecuredbythesupposition hatthis is a scribal rror or 'AbdQays,a lessknown ribeonthe east coast aroundal-Qatif;this would producea pair of easterners nd a pair ofwesterners, achpaircomprisingchiasmically)nefasllh roupandonespeakinga dialectregarded s lesscorrect.


10/10

186 A. F. L. BEESTON [9](though the chronology is impossible to determine), the Sayhadic formhas disappeared completely as regards its individual morphologicalfeatures, though its lexicon has continued to exercise a strong influence;and the remaining speech-forms have converged so as to produce theamalgam of dialects which can properly be called Arabic. One of theeffects of this convergence has been total elimination of the h(n) articlein favour of the (')l form, and the present-day restriction of the am-article to a few isolated pockets in Yemen.

BIBLIOGRAPHYAVANZINI 1980: A. AVANZINI,review of Corpus des Inscriptions et antiquites sud-arabesin

RSO 53, 422 ff.BEESTON1962: A. F. L. BEESTON,review of Van den Branden 1960, in BiOr 19, 172.

1973: id., 'The Inscription Jaussen-Sav,ignac 71', Proc., sixth Senminar6r ArabialnStudies, 69-72.1976: id., 'A disputed Sabaic ?relative>> pronoun', BSOAS 39, 421-2.1979: id., 'Nemara and Fait', BSOAS 42, 1-6.

DIEM 1973: W. DIEM, Skiz-enjemenitischer Dialekte (Beiruter Texte u.Studien13) Beirut.1979: id., Untersuchungenzur friihen Geschichteder arabischen Orthographie, Orien-talia 48, 207 ff.

GARBINI 1978: G. GARBINI, review of Pirenne, La nmaitrise e 1'eau, n AION 38.GRIMME 1936: H. GRIMME, 'Quelques graffites du temple de Ramm', RB 45.JAMME 1962: A. JAMME,Sabaean Inscriptions rom Mahram BilqTs,Baltimore.

1966: id., Sabaean and Hasaean Inscriptionsfrom Saudi Arabia (Studi semitici 23)Roma.

JAUSSEN1914: RR. PP. JAUSSENet SAVIGNAC,Mission archeologiqueen Arabie, II. Paris.LITTMANN1912: E. LITTMANN, Osseri'a-ioni sulle iscriziionidi Harrcan di Zebed', RSO4.

1949: ib., Semitic Inscriptions, Sect. D, Arabic inscriptions. (Syria, Publ. PrincetonUniv. arch. exp. Div 4) Leiden.MANDAVILLE1963: J. P. MANDAVILLE,Jr., Thaj,a pre-Islamic site, BASOR 72.

MULLER 1974: W. W. MOLLER,Eine sabaische Gasandschaft, NESE 2.RABIN 1951: C. RABIN, Ancient West-Arabian, London.AL-'UAS: M. ABU AL-FARAJAL-TUgS, in al-Abhctt 17, Beirut.VAN DEN BRANDEN 1960: A. VAN DEN BRANDEN, Histoire de Thamoud.Beyrouth.CIH: Corpus Inscriptionumsemiticarum, pars IV, Inscriptioneshimyariticas...RES: Repertoire des inscriptionssemitiques.

languages of pre-islamic arabia

Documents