Arabic language and the great reading

Wakas

peace be upon you brother Ayman,

Thanks for the read.
I would like to add the following information, taken from Lane's Lexicon

LANE'S LEXICON on kaf-ayn-ba (root of kabba)

(If one wishes to study the full Lane's Lexicon entry for Kaf-Ayn-Ba, please see the following pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.)

AND

LANE'S LEXICON on the idol Al-Lat = 1, 2, 3.

Wakas

ayman

Peace brothers truth, beatnik, nexus, Hussein, Ash Shuura, Wakas, all

Thank you all for your kind comments and encouragement.

A most excellent endeavour with some very important results. One only hopes that such knowledge becomes more widely known. Have you sent copies of this article (and previous) to academics in Islamic history at universities etc. Your ideas are worthy of broader attention.

I think that serious orientalists, archeologists, and linguists would be interested in such ideas. However, it is not going to be easy because without the hearsay reports, the history of pre-quranic Arabic seems very dull and not interesting. Hence, most orientalists have made a career out of analyzing highly entertaining hearsay.

May I just say that in regards to "Dhu al shaaara" that it may not be the Sun but rather 'Sirius' the 'dog-star' that Egyptians and other ancient cultures had regarded as an object of religious worship.

The etymology of the word even is more fitting than 'shams'.

5349 He is the Lord of Sirius.

Waannahu huwa rabbu alshshiAAra

As another heavenly body, Sirius is definitely a possibility. However, the celebration of the birth of Dhu Al-Shaara happened on the winter solstice (when the sun is "reborn" and the days gradually start to get longer) and not on the day of the rising of Sirius (I think in July). This points more to the sun. I am not sure how they got the meaning of "shaara" to mean Sirius in the above translation.

The initials idea has been around already. The Ahmaddiya translators have considered the initials to have known meanings. It is not unreasonable to think that they represent words and look forward to your assault on the other 18 combinations before I can make a full assessment.

I think the other combinations need more collaboration, which takes me to your first point. I started to look at pre-quranic inscriptions to see if any of those words appear. This would be better if we got some archeologists and linguists interested in helping.

Did you use the hijri to gregorian conversion to determine there was 20 yrs difference between the birth of the prophet and the written inscriptions? Or did you use another method?

The dates are discussed in Lawrence Conrad, "Abraha and Muhammad Some Observations Apropos of Chronology and Literary Topoi in the Early Arabic Historical Tradition," BSOAS 50 no.2 (1987) and A. F. L. Beeston, ABRAHA in Encyclopedia of Islam (1960). See also A.F.L. Beeston, Epigraphic South Arabian Calendars and Dating. London Luzac (1956) and Beeston A.F.L. Old South Arabian era datings. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, Vol 11, (1981).

The dating of the inscription correlates well with other inscriptions such as one on the Maarib dam which records the quelling of an insurrection backed by a son of the deposed ruler Esimiphaeus in the year 657 of the Sabaean era, which is about 547AD.

Secondly, the letters on the inscription, what alphabet are they? How do they codify this into the Arabic letters we know? How did you go about verifying the accuracy of this translation?

They are in a script called Musnad script.

http//www.mnh.si.edu/epigraphy/figs-stones/x-large/color_xl_jpeg/fig02.jpg

Arabic inscriptions in Musnad script until the early seventh century AD when it went out in favor of the now familiar Kufic script.

My suggestion is for comments such as these

the Nabataeans represented their deities with geometric forms such as square stone blocks, sacred meteorites, or square shapes carved into a stone wall and sometimes enhanced with schematic eyes and nose.

This may be obvious to yourself but for me who has no knowledge of archeology would you be able to cite references to help us verify this information? Actually, it might be an idea that each logical assertion is maybe indexed and referenced. This should help readers a little more, as often for the more knowledgable things may seem obvious but for those with less knowledge it can be daunting.

You are absolutely right. I would say that in this case what is better are pictures which are worth a thousand words. I sent the article in HTML format to brother Layth to publish with pictures showing such information, so people can see for themselves what I am talking about.

This is very interesting writing. One question How do you decipher the letters that change with the dots? Example Ha vs KHA s Jeem
Ta vs THA
Sad vs DAD
Seen vs Sheen
Ya vs Ta vs Ba vs Noon in
Ain vs GHayn

It is a myth that early copies of the great reading didn't have any dotting. While it is true that some of the early copies of the great reading were not fully dotted, there are many early copies that are fully dotted. Here is a very early example that even predates the Tashkent copy

http//faculty.washington.edu/wheelerb/quran/maili.html

Moreover, the great reading refers to itself as "kitab marqum". According to Classical Arabic dictionaries, marqum means dotted.

The dotting started very early and Arabs were dotting even mundane documents such as business letters. For example, see the following manuscript

http//www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Papyri/PERF558.html

It is analyzed by Alan Jones, "The Dotting Of A Script And The Dating Of An Era The Strange Neglect Of PERF 558", in Islamic Culture, 1998, Volume LXXII, No. 4, pp. 95-103.

http//www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Papyri/jones.html

Thanks for the read.
I would like to add the following information, taken from Lane's Lexicon

LANE'S LEXICON on kaf-ayn-ba (root of kabba)

(If one wishes to study the full Lane's Lexicon entry for Kaf-Ayn-Ba, please see the following pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.)

AND

LANE'S LEXICON on the idol Al-Lat = 1, 2, 3.

Lexicons are best at seeing how meanings connect and figuring out the etymology of words. The purpose of dictionaries is not to recount history. Keeping the limitations of dictionaries in mind, one can use them and safely say that Lane has no business giving historical analysis of what the idol Al-Lat is. The archeological evidence gives a totally different picture

Given the evidence from "pre-quranic" times, I don't think that the meanings given by Lane of "A girl's swelling breasts", "a girl's virginity" or a "cube shrine" make any sense. For example, we know that in pre-quranic times the name Ka3b was a very popular name for Arab male Jews. There is no way that so many parents would name their newborn son something that has a connotation with women's breasts or virginity. Also, there is no way that Jews would have named their sons after something that they consider a pagan shrine.

As far as "k3b"/"k3b(t)" goes, Lane gives a few reasonable meanings such as "swift", "heel", and glory.

Although it may not seem so at first, but those meanings are etymologically related. "Heel" is the "base" of the foot and we walk swiftly on our heels so one can see how "swift" could have originated from "heel/base". Furthermore, someone who is swift and arrives first gets the glory (or is at the forefront) so one can see how the meaning of "glory/forefront" came about.

Now given the fact that Lane is based on works such as Lisan Al-3arab, which date to over 600 years after the revelation of the great reading, one can see that "base" is the most likely primary meaning that the other meanings branched from over several hundred years.

Peace and all best wishes,

Ayman

savage_carrot

Peace brother Ayman,

Thank you for posting your article, it is a very interesting and thought provoking read...

The only things that appeared to me a bit out of place was the "hey man", and the pollination bit in 421-3. They don't gel imo of the 'feel', for lack of better words, in the reading...it is a personal thing, so i personally would hold my judgement on those words.

Located in the Tareq Rajab Museum in Kuwait.

Surprisingly, i just visited this museum today and looked at the script in the link...it is a very good museum with a lot of examples of scripts, I would recommend it to everyone.

Best Regards,
Nadia

edited to add

A question, are there early manuscripts in arabic and of the quran with no dots? In which case, is it fair to say the dots were added later in arabic texts as opposed to earlier texts that did not have dots?

I came across this site

http//www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Papyri/jones.html

The year 22 is the first Islamic year for which any dated documents written in Arabic survive, and there are only two of those P Berol 15002, which is unfortunately fragmentary, and PERF 558, the first complete Arabic document of the Muslim era.

Despite its age PERF 558 is relatively easy to read. There are two reasons for this it is written in a clear cursive hand; and it contains a fair sprinkling of dots.*** As will be seen, there are dotted forms of six letters ; there are some long vowels ; and there are some examples of alif maqsurah.

truth

Peace all,

I looked at Wakas' post in relation to K3b and I must say that the meanings of swelling, ankle etc suggested to me the word PROMINENCE to be the correct translation.

prominence

n 1 the state of being prominent widely known or eminent
2 relative importance
3 something that bulges out or is protuberant or projects from a form

The ankle for example is a prominence, and many bones have anatomical names which includes 'prominence' and the word has also come to mean widely known.

This also fits with the usage as a Jewish name, a name that would confer a sense of importance which is certainly how traditional names are used commonly.

The translation would thus be

The God has made prominent the system of restrictions for the refuge of people as well as the month of restriction and the gift (of guidance) and the restraint so that you know that The God knows what is in the heavens and the earth and that The God is knowledgeable with everything.

The grammar could be improved but that would be my take on it.

Regards.

Layth

Peace Ayman,

Interesting article, but I find the conclusions reached were based on incorrect reasoning.

You 'assumed' that because they were speaking of the people of the book teaching him, and that since the people of the book are refered to as having a different language, that the Arabic language has two forms (religious & common).

This is not a correct understanding of the verse as it only means what it says...That the people who are accused of teaching him the Quran were not of an Arabic toungue.

Arabic has both common and religous aspects to it...The only issue is that their religious aspects were all idolatrous refering to Al-Llat and Uzza and Manat as examples in the Quran.

Hence, since Mohammed was not preaching a new form of idolatry (which they would have welcomed and accepted) they said he was being taught by the 'foreigners' who were knowon to be preaching about the One God.

Finally, your conclusion to the 'initials' being words is unsubstantiated since the example of H.M., ASQ is deliberetly seperated to indicate two sets rather than the same set of initials.

savage_carrot

Peace brother Ayman,

Layth's post raises an interesting point though, which is that if the language of the religious elite was nabatean (aramaic?) and that of the common people was arabic, why would the disbelievers/religious clergy/pagans etc accuse him of being taught by a nabatean (aramaic?) speaking religious cleric/elite? especially since the quran was in arabic and they knew it...

Nadia

truth

Peace,

I don't think that it's necessarily obvious which language is being referred to in 16103 apart from Arabic.

There are several candidate languages; Aramaic/Greek (Christians), Nabatean, Hebrew amongst others (? Sabians etc also). I would imagine that the Nabatean elite would have been preaching idolatry so I don't think 16103 refers to them as the teachers.

I think the verse refers to either the Jews, Christians, or Sabians as the possible foreign teachers. 16103 is most likely indicating that the messenger was not bilingual, in that he would not have understood the language of the alleged teacher - and that the revelations were clear and in the native Arabic language of the messenger who was amongst them 622.

Regards.

savage_carrot

Peace,

Yes i wanted to add that

I would imagine that the Nabatean elite would have been preaching idolatry so I don't think 16103 refers to them as the teachers.

So the possibilities would include a person of a mainly monotheistic religion.

Nadia

hlatif

Salam Ayman,

Thank you for sharing the articles that talk about the dotting of some of the early manuscripts of the Qur'an. The question will remain whether they were old enough or whether the dots were added later. One question that comes to minds is this Since you investigated the few preislamic arabic inscriptions on rocks and elsewhere, did you find any dots on them?

Related to the nabateans, I visited Petra several times and I remember many statues of Gods and Goddesses. I did however see obelisks that are used as a sign of the god THu Shara. Also, the most important find related to writing of the mundane life of the city were the Petra Papyri that were in greek and were found in a burned church. The doucments were related to people with clear semitic names and were not religious in nature at All (inheritance and land issues) and they were in Greek.

Take care and I thank you for sharing

Hussein

savage_carrot

Peace Hussein,

Thank you for sharing that information, I always thought of obelisks associated with sun worship because of the shadows that they would throw etc but it's very interesting...

Since you investigated the few preislamic arabic inscriptions on rocks and elsewhere, did you find any dots on them?

I too would like to know this...

Rgds,
Nadia

ayman

Peace sister Nadia, all,

Thank you for your comments.

The only things that appeared to me a bit out of place was the "hey man", and the pollination bit in 421-3. They don't gel imo of the 'feel', for lack of better words, in the reading...it is a personal thing, so i personally would hold my judgement on those words.

Why are they out of place?

The "hey man" is natural in any informal common people language such as "pre-quranic" Arabic. It is shocking now because we are not used of thinking of Classical Arabic as an informal language used by the common people.

As for "pollination", 423 starts with the word "kathalika/like that" so it points out that what is before it is an allegory.

Layth's post raises an interesting point though, which is that if the language of the religious elite was nabatean (aramaic?) and that of the common people was arabic, why would the disbelievers/religious clergy/pagans etc accuse him of being taught by a nabatean (aramaic?) speaking religious cleric/elite? especially since the quran was in arabic and they knew it...

Exactly, that is the same response that The God gives them

And indeed We know that they say "It is but a human that is teaching him." The language of the one they falsely attribute to is non-Arabic, while this is a clarifying Arabic language.

Peace and all best wishes,

Ayman

ayman

Peace brother truth, all,

I looked at Wakas' post in relation to K3b and I must say that the meanings of swelling, ankle etc suggested to me the word PROMINENCE to be the correct translation.

I agree and I think that "glory/forefront/prominence" and "base" are two alternative possible equally valid meanings that fit in the context.

ayman

Peace bother Layth,

You 'assumed' that because they were speaking of the people of the book teaching him, and that since the people of the book are refered to as having a different language, that the Arabic language has two forms (religious & common).

Brother, I apologize if I was not clear but I never suggested that Arabic has two forms (religious and common). I conclude that Arabic only has one form, which is "common". Arabic at the time of the revelation of the great reading was an informal common people language not a formal religious one.

The people of the book did not use Arabic at all in religious teachings. If you disagree then it is very easy to prove me wrong. Please refer me to even ONE pre-quranic formal religious inscription in Arabic or ONE pre-quranic formal religious manuscripts in Arabic.

This is not a correct understanding of the verse as it only means what it says...That the people who are accused of teaching him the Quran were not of an Arabic toungue.

The verse doesn't talk of specific people or accuse specific people. It talks of a "bashar"/human in general that is teaching the prophet. Thus, Arabic was not a human language for teaching religion in general.

I merely pointed out that 16103 is confirmed by the fact that there are no pre-quranic formal religious inscriptions or manuscripts in Arabic.

Arabic has both common and religous aspects to it...The only issue is that their religious aspects were all idolatrous refering to Al-Llat and Uzza and Manat as examples in the Quran.

Those idols are Nabataean idols. Those names are Nabataean proper names that are meaningless labels. They don't reflect the true nature of those idols.

Please give an example of even one 100% religious Arabic term in the great reading. By "religious" I mean pertaining to organized religion.

Hence, since Mohammed was not preaching a new form of idolatry (which they would have welcomed and accepted) they said he was being taught by the 'foreigners' who were knowon to be preaching about the One God.

No they didn't say that he was taught by "foreigners". They said he was taught by a human. The God response is that the language of the human teaching that they falsely attribute to is foreign. Thus, it is any human, both foreigners and bilingual Arabs who teach religion exclusively in a foreign language.

Moreover, Christianity is also a form of idolatry (idolizing a trinity) and so are the majority of Judaic sects (idolizing their clergy and the Temple). Why would any idolater welcome a new form of idolatry? Would Sufis who idolize the prophet and their dead saints welcome idolizing the pope instead? It seems that you are reading too much that is not in the verse but is in the traditional understanding.

We know from archeological evidence that there were a large and growing number of Christian and Jewish Arabs at the time of the prophet. For example, the Arab Ghassanids were Christians. In fact, the majority of Arabs living in areas of Northern Arabia around Jerusalem were Christians.

Finally, your conclusion to the 'initials' being words is unsubstantiated since the example of H.M., ASQ is deliberetly seperated to indicate two sets rather than the same set of initials.

They are two words not two sets of initials. Luckily in Arabic separate initials take a completely different shape than letters which are part of a word. Can you see the difference between the following initials and words? Which are words and which are initials?

I hope that this can help you read the difference.

Peace and all best wishes,

Ayman

ayman

Peace brother Hussein,

Since you investigated the few preislamic arabic inscriptions on rocks and elsewhere, did you find any dots on them?

The pre-quranic inscriptions that I have seen are in Musnad script, which doesn't have a similar dotting system like the Kufic script. It seems that the Kufic script doesn't become popular until after the revelation of the great reading.

Peace and all best wishes,

Ayman

ayman

Peace all,

The article has been posted here

http//www.free-minds.org/articles/science/language.htm

Thank you to brother Layth for his efforts in posting it (with pictures).

Hopefully, if The God willed the article will be beneficial in generating interest and debate to serve The God/The Truth.

Peace and all best wishes,

Ayman

savage_carrot

Peace brother Ayman,

Thank you for the reply!

Why are they out of place?

The "hey man" is natural in any informal common people language such as "pre-quranic" Arabic. It is shocking now because we are not used of thinking of Classical Arabic as an informal language used by the common people.

It would help me if you would point out any other examples of slang like this in the reading. I realise that slang must be common in any language including arabic, but it's the usage of slang like this in the quran i'm specifically referring to here. I have not come across this type of slang before, therefore it just feels out of place to me in the reading. As it is, it is not shocking, just strange.

As for "pollination", 423 starts with the word "kathalika/like that" so it points out that what is before it is an allegory.

423 Thus does Allah, the Mighty, the Wise, reveal to you, and (thus He revealed) to those before you.

It could also be referring to the word/s being a source of inspiration, inclusive of the ayats and/or the entire quran? It doesn't need the pollination imo to make sense. That's why personally it feels like an add on/strange...

Exactly, that is the same response that The God gives them

Yes i agree, my purpose of that observation was to help eliminate one set of people who it could not be referring to )

Best Regards,
Nadia

Wakas

peace be upon you all,

in relation to K3b and I must say that the meanings of swelling, ankle etc suggested to me the word PROMINENCE to be the correct translation.

Nice. I also thought this was its core meaning.

Another thing I wanted to point out by the Lane references was that it gives an example in which the word bayt is used to refer to a system, when it states "The Kabbeh of the House/bayt (of God)", traditionists may be confused by such a statement because they have kabbeh = house/bayt, thus "kabbeh/house of the house" doesn't make much sense. Thus far, from my studies, I have bayt = establishment (in specific usage only) thus a literal meaning of this phrase would have been "the prominence of the establishment (of God)".

Secondly, Lane states that k3b shares the same name as a house/temple which was circuited/compassed by the tribe of Rabee'ah, and suggests Al-Lat was also circuited/compassed, thus it is extremely unlikely that The God would condemn one and install an almost exact practice for another.

Wakas

ps - similar topics to this thread were discussed briefly on the following thread if anyone is interested (see from brother Aaron's post)
http//www.free-minds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=997

savage_carrot

Peace brother Ayman, all

There are some inscriptions and parchments that are in what is called 'Old Arabic'...

The paper is called "Reflections on the linguistic map of Pre-Islamic Arabia" by M.C.A. MacDonald.

Texts in ?pure? Old Arabic

The earliest document which is indisputably in Old Arabic is the inscription of cglbn Hfcm, written in the Sabaic script,which was found at Qaryat al-Faw (156)and may date from the end of the first century BC (157). This text uses the article $l- (15, the*bana?, rather than *banaya, form of the 3 m.sg. of the suffix stem of verbs tertiae w/7 (159), the $f cl form of the causative stem,and the preposition mn rather than bn (160). On the other hand, it has certain Sabaic features such as the form of the 3 m.sg. enclitic pronoun -hw which alternates with -h (161) and the sporadic attachment of -m to the end of words, possibly attempting to imitate Sabaic mimation without understanding its purpose (162).

W. W. Muller (163) has recognized that JSLih 384 should also be classed as Old Arabic rather than Dadanitic, since it contains the Arabic relative pronoun $allat? in the form $lt. The text also contains an example of the *bana? rather than *banaya form of the 3 m.sg. of the suffix stem of verbs tertiae w/7. Dadanitic is the only ANA script in which matres lectionis are employed (164) and the letter -h is used to represent final /a?/ (165). Thus *bana? appears in this text as bnh (166), as opposed to Dadanitic (and other ANA) bny, (ie. *banaya) (167).

The other documents which can be said to be in more or less ?pure? Old Arabic are the Nama?ra inscription (AD 32 (16, lines 4?5 of the cE n cAvdat inscription (169) (of uncertain date) (170), both in the Nabataean
script; and the inscriptions of Umm al-Jima?l (of uncertain date), Zebed (AD 512), Jabal Usays (AD 52, and Harra?n (AD 56 all of which are in what is recognizably the Arabic script (171).

In addition, there are two leaves of parchment from a Psalter found in the genizah of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus. They bear part of the Septuagint text of Psalm 78 (LXX, 77) with an Arabic gloss in Greek transliteration, set out in parallel columns. Following a detailed study of this text I am convinced that it is pre-Islamic (172). This is the most valuable text in Old Arabic so far discovered since the Greek transliteration seems to have been made with great care and consistency from an oral source, and thus is uncomplicated by the orthographic conventions of another script. It also, of course, provides the vowels and has the additional advantage that there can be no doubt as to the meaning.

He also touches on the subject of whether Nabateans used arabic as a spoken language

Nabataean (133)

For many years it has been widely held that the Nabataeans wrote in Aramaic but spoke Arabic. This view is based on the presence of Arabic loan-words in the Nabataean inscriptions and on the claim that the
vast majority of the names in Nabataean inscriptions are ?Arabic? (134). However, if one excepts the Nama?ra inscription, which is in Old Arabic, and JSNab 17, which is in Nabataeo-Arabic (see below), only a small number of Arabic loan-words can be identified in the Nabataean inscriptions. I have counted a maximum of twenty-eight, six of which could also be Aramaic (135). Moreover, with two exceptions (136), these
words occur only in the texts from Hw egra? or Rawwa?fa exactly where some Old Arabic and Ancient North Arabian influence is to be expected. If these loans provide evidence of an ?Arabic substrate? in Nabataean
Aramaic, it is therefore only in the language used in North Arabia from the first century AD onwards, not in the Nabataean of Petra or the other parts of the kingdom. It cannot therefore be used as evidence that
Arabic was the spoken language of ?the Nabataeans? in general. This demonstrates the danger of treating as a homogeneous corpus all the inscriptions which we label ?Nabataean?.

Turning to the onomastic evidence, it is first necessary to distinguish what we mean by ?Nabataean? names. Generally, this is taken to mean all names found in Nabataean inscriptions unless there is a particular reason for attributing them to another group (eg. ?Greek? or ?Jewish? names).
However, we use the term ?Nabataean? for texts in a number of local varieties of the Aramaic script from the H w awra?n to Arabia, Sinai and Egypt, and while it may sometimes be helpful to use the label in this flexible way, we should not allow it to mislead us into assuming that the authors of all these texts belonged to a single homogeneous
group, the ?Nabataeans?.

Names which are clearly of Arabic form, eg. those containing the definite article $l, or the word $bn ?son? (as opposed to Aramaic br), or the $f cal nominal form, occur very largely in Sinai. But the script of these texts
from Sinai has its own characteristics and internal development, which is distinct from that of the Nabataean heartland around Petra. It is therefore misleading to refer to them as ?Nabataean? and to use them as evidence for ?the Nabataeans?. It would be wiser to return to the practice of earlier
scholars and refer to them as ?Sinaitic?. Moreover, while the vast majority of these texts consist simply of names accompanied by slm, dkyr, bryk, b-tw b, etc. (137) the language of the few statements which do occur is always Aramaic, not Arabic.

It seems to me probable that someone writing a graffito would express himself in his language of normal use, rather than a literary tongue (13, and therefore the case for spoken Arabic even in Sinai seems to me unproven.

Certainly, the widespread use of names which are linguistically Arabic is no evidence for the spoken language at the time the texts were carved. Names have an extraordinary record of survival and it is usually impossible to guess at the reasons for using, retaining, or discarding them in any particular society at any particular period. Just as my name ?Michael? has been preserved through the survival of two religions,
so the popularity of certain names in Sinai, or among the Nabataeans, could in some cases have been connected with the worship of deities who were also venerated by speakers of Old Arabic. Unfortunately, however, we do not know which of these cults, if any, were ancestral among the Nabataeans and which were later introductions.

It is usually assumed that the Nabataeans came from Arabia, but I know of no argument for this origin that will stand scrutiny (139). In the earliest reference to the Nabataeans, when they were nomadic, they were
already in southern Transjordan, which remained their heartland throughout their history and I know of no clear evidence that they came from anywhere else. Given their geographical position and their involve-
ment in the frankincense trades they naturally had links with peoples in northwest Arabia and eventually came to rule that area. They worshipped many of the same deities as their neighbours in that region. But if their chief deity, Dushara, was the god of the Petra mountains, as is generally believed, this surely suggests a very old and close attachment to this area. It is interesting hat in the Hismaic graffiti from the area of Wa?d? Ramm, not far from Petra, invocations to Dushara outnumber by approximately 62% to 38% those to Lt/$lt (140), despite the fact that there was a major temple to $lt at Ramm (141) and that in the Safaitic graffiti, written by the nomads to the north and east of the area, she is by far the most popular deity. Moreover, the N.Div. ?Dushara? in these inscriptions is most often spelt in its North Arabian form D-s2ry (142), which contrasts with the entirely Aramaized form (ds2r) normally found in the Safaitic inscriptions.

This may contribute a small piece of evidence to the debate on which language the Nabataeans spoke. If, as is commonly believed, D s2ry/Dwsr $ means ?He of the Shara? (the mountains, north of Petra(143), he was presumably a local deity for the population of the H w isma of southern Jordan, which produced the Hismaic inscriptions. The meaning of the epithet would have been obvious to them and it would not be surprising, therefore, that they spelt it in its etymological form. On
the other hand, it is also unsurprising that it should appear as a loan-form in the Safaitic texts, written several hundred kilometres away, in an area where most people would be unaware of the geographical reference (144).

What is significant is that the loan in Safaitic is from Aramaic. It seems to me out of the question that ds2r in Safaitic could be a spelling pronunciation, since this would require that all those writers of Safaitic inscriptions who invoked Dushara as ds2r had read his name in an Aramaic text, without ever hearing it from a North Arabian speaker. This is obviously preposterous. However, the only alternative is that they received the cult from Aramaic speakers. It is, of course, likely that they came into contact with the cult of Dushara in the Hw awra?n, rather than at Petra, and it is generally assumed, though there is virtually no evidence one way or the other, that the spoken language of the H w awra?n was Aramaic (145). But the cult of Dushara was a vital and distinctive element of Nabataean communal identity. Other deities in Syria
had important cult centres (eg. Bacalsham?n at S?c) but were also worshipped elsewhere (eg. Bacalsham?n at Palmyra).

Dushara was one of the very few to be uniquely associated with a particular people or state. It therefore seems likely that Nabataeans, from the heartland, would have been involved in his cult even in the H
w awra?n, indeed one might expect them to have dominated it. If these were speakers of Old Arabic there would have been no point in their communicating with the nomads in Aramaic, since Old Arabic and Safaitic would have been mutually intelligible.

In this case, the name Dushara would have come into Safaitic with an initial /d/ and a final, consonantal /y/. Instead, it was borrowed in its Aramaic form with an initial /d/ and (presumably) a final vowel, and this suggests that those Nabataeans from whom the cult was adopted spoke a dialect of Aramaic. Needless to say, this is very far from being conclusive.
It is intended simply as a small contribution to a continuing debate.

Incase, you have read this before, i would like your comments/observations please.

In any case, i do not think that even if any pre islamic religious manuscripts in old arabic (like the one above in damascus) were found, that this would discredit your research which concludes that arabic (old?) was not the preferred text for religious purposes. The reasons that this would be so are many...and also detailed in the article. And it is a well established fact as it is. I do think though, to rule out religious documents/inscriptions in old arabic existing could be problematic. There is no need to do that imo, as your research still stands on the major premise as to arabic not being a text for religious purposes commonly.

I think it also may depend on that the scriptures came down in the language of the majority...and with time, the languages evolved until the old text became inaccessible and alien to the masses leading it to be preserved in an elitist clergy...them reserving the right to translate/mediate as they saw fit. I think that it might be fair to say, that maybe the majority of desert nomads (common arabs?) were not literate in these scriptures, maybe even in their own language except that they could speak it as mentioned in the article

As we have seen, there are remarkably fewdocuments in Old Arabic, and until the sixth century AD there was no single script associated with it. This implies that, until the period immediately before the rise of Islam, it remained a vernacular in societies which were either non-literate or which
wrote in other languages ? Sabaic, Ancient North Arabian, Aramaic, Greek.

In the late first millennium BC and the early first millennium AD, it was presumably the vernacular of groups which were basically non-literate, perhaps primarily nomadic, which when they moved into situations where literacy was necessary ? eg. contact with settled peoples ? found writing systems associated with other languages already established. Those who
wanted to write would therefore have had to learn the rudiments of the language associated with the script, or simply have had their texts written for them by scribes and masons. Only in very special circumstances
would an individual have insisted on his text being expressed in the
vernacular, and the problems that this caused the scribes and masons in adapting the orthographic conventions of one language to an unfamiliar tongue, can be seen both in the true and mixed Old Arabic texts
and in the Undifferentiated-North-Arabian
inscriptions.

It goes on to explain how the script developed...It is a very interesting paper and gives much food for thought regarding the evolution of arabic...

If anyone needs the above article in it's full form, pls let me know.

Best Regards,
Nadia

edited to include proper text

ayman

Peace sister Nadia,

Thank you for posting the above excerpts from the article. Here are my comments.

Texts in ?pure? Old Arabic

The earliest document which is indisputably in Old Arabic is the inscription of cglbn Hfcm, written in the Sabaic script,which was found at Qaryat al-Faw (156)and may date from the end of the first century BC (157). This text uses the article $l- (15, the*bana?, rather than *banaya, form of the 3 m.sg. of the suffix stem of verbs tertiae w/7 (159), the $f cl form of the causative stem,and the preposition mn rather than bn (160). On the other hand, it has certain Sabaic features such as the form of the 3 m.sg. enclitic pronoun -hw which alternates with -h (161) and the sporadic attachment of -m to the end of words, possibly attempting to imitate Sabaic mimation without understanding its purpose (162).

W. W. Muller (163) has recognized that JSLih 384 should also be classed as Old Arabic rather than Dadanitic, since it contains the Arabic relative pronoun $allat? in the form $lt. The text also contains an example of the *bana? rather than *banaya form of the 3 m.sg. of the suffix stem of verbs tertiae w/7. Dadanitic is the only ANA script in which matres lectionis are employed (164) and the letter -h is used to represent final /a?/ (165). Thus *bana? appears in this text as bnh (166), as opposed to Dadanitic (and other ANA) bny, (ie. *banaya) (167).

The other documents which can be said to be in more or less ?pure? Old Arabic are the Nama?ra inscription (AD 32 (16, lines 4?5 of the cE n cAvdat inscription (169) (of uncertain date) (170), both in the Nabataean script; and the inscriptions of Umm al-Jima?l (of uncertain date), Zebed (AD 512), Jabal Usays (AD 52, and Harra?n (AD 56 all of which are in what is recognizably the Arabic script (171).

The author discusses the linguistic aspects of the inscriptions but unfortunately doesn't discuss the contents of the inscriptions. The contents provide the context which can often give us valuable clues about the inscriptions.

For instance, the somewhat Arabic Namara inscription recounts the achievements of a popular Arab king for all to see at the entrance to his grave. It is not a religious inscription.

In Northern Arabia, formal religious inscriptions cannot be found in Arabic. I will come to the parchment with the Greek transliteration below.

On the other hand, we do see some Sabaic religious inscriptions in South Arabia. So there seems to be less of a language barrier in Southern Arabia. In general, from the archeological evidence the common South Arabians seem to be more enlightened than their northern brethrens. This would be more evidence for the prophet's migration from North Arabia to South Arabia where the message would have been more accepted.

In addition, there are two leaves of parchment from a Psalter found in the genizah of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus. They bear part of the Septuagint text of Psalm 78 (LXX, 77) with an Arabic gloss in Greek transliteration, set out in parallel columns. Following a detailed study of this text I am convinced that it is pre-Islamic (172). This is the most valuable text in Old Arabic so far discovered since the Greek transliteration seems to have been made with great care and consistency from an oral source, and thus is uncomplicated by the orthographic conventions of another script. It also, of course, provides the vowels and has the additional advantage that there can be no doubt as to the meaning.

I agree with the author that this is indeed a very important find. Unfortunately, the content of the inscription is not discussed here in detail. However, he says that the Greek transliteration is not of the religious text but is a footnote or explanation (gloss) of the religious text. Now the question is why is the text a Greek transliteration of Arabic and not directly an Arabic text?

I think that two deductions can be made

The person doing the reading knows Greek (since it is in Greek letters).
The audience for the explanation is Arabic speakers.

Perhaps, this parchment was used in sermons to Arab parishioners. Hence, the Greek speaking clergy put footnotes in Arabic transliteration so that they can use it to explain to Arab listeners.

If these loans provide evidence of an ?Arabic substrate? in Nabataean Aramaic, it is therefore only in the language used in North Arabia from the first century AD onwards, not in the Nabataean of Petra or the other parts of the kingdom. It cannot therefore be used as evidence that Arabic was the spoken language of ?the Nabataeans? in general. This demonstrates the danger of treating as a homogeneous corpus all the inscriptions which we label ?Nabataean?.
...
Names which are clearly of Arabic form, eg. those containing the definite article $l, or the word $bn ?son? (as opposed to Aramaic br), or the $f cal nominal form, occur very largely in Sinai. But the script of these texts from Sinai has its own characteristics and internal development, which is distinct from that of the Nabataean heartland around Petra.

The author focuses on the differences between language at Petra and other locations but doesn't consider the following question

Is the language different because the people are not Nabataean or because Petra is different?

Petra is a very special place that has puzzled archeologists. For example, they can only find temples, palaces, and tombs in Petra. No average people houses are found in Petra. Thus, many archeologists now believe that Petra was not an inhabited city but was a religious center. It doesn't seem that the author considered this factor as contributing to the difference in the language.

But if their chief deity, Dushara, was the god of the Petra mountains, as is generally believed, this surely suggests a very old and close attachment to this area.

As far as I know, there is no evidence for this belief. I explain in the article why this belief is unfounded based on the archeological evidence.

It is interesting hat in the Hismaic graffiti from the area of Wa?d? Ramm, not far from Petra, invocations to Dushara outnumber by approximately 62% to 38% those to Lt/$lt (140), despite the fact that there was a major temple to $lt at Ramm (141) and that in the Safaitic graffiti, written by the nomads to the north and east of the area, she is by far the most popular deity. Moreover, the N.Div. ?Dushara? in these inscriptions is most often spelt in its North Arabian form D-s2ry (142), which contrasts with the entirely Aramaized form (ds2r) normally found in the Safaitic inscriptions.

This may contribute a small piece of evidence to the debate on which language the Nabataeans spoke. If, as is commonly believed, D s2ry/Dwsr $ means ?He of the Shara? (the mountains, north of Petra(143), he was presumably a local deity for the population of the H w isma of southern Jordan, which produced the Hismaic inscriptions. The meaning of the epithet would have been obvious to them and it would not be surprising, therefore, that they spelt it in its etymological form. On the other hand, it is also unsurprising that it should appear as a loan-form in the Safaitic texts, written several hundred kilometres away, in an area where most people would be unaware of the geographical reference (144).

What is significant is that the loan in Safaitic is from Aramaic. It seems to me out of the question that ds2r in Safaitic could be a spelling pronunciation, since this would require that all those writers of Safaitic inscriptions who invoked Dushara as ds2r had read his name in an Aramaic text, without ever hearing it from a North Arabian speaker. This is obviously preposterous. However, the only alternative is that they received the cult from Aramaic speakers.

This is a very interesting observation that confirms what 16103 is saying and the findings in article. The Arabs (including the pagans) received their religious teachings from non-Arabic speakers (in this case Aramaic (Nabataean Aramaic)).

Dushara was one of the very few to be uniquely associated with a particular people or state. It therefore seems likely that Nabataeans, from the heartland, would have been involved in his cult even in the H w awra?n, indeed one might expect them to have dominated it. If these were speakers of Old Arabic there would have been no point in their communicating with the nomads in Aramaic, since Old Arabic and Safaitic would have been mutually intelligible.

In this case, the name Dushara would have come into Safaitic with an initial /d/ and a final, consonantal /y/. Instead, it was borrowed in its Aramaic form with an initial /d/ and (presumably) a final vowel, and this suggests that those Nabataeans from whom the cult was adopted spoke a dialect of Aramaic. Needless to say, this is very far from being conclusive. It is intended simply as a small contribution to a continuing debate.

The point is that when it came to religious matters, they communicated in Aramaic. They must have seen that Aramaic is a "sacred" language much like Muslims view Arabic today as a "sacred" language and don't translate Allah into The God.

If anyone needs the above article in it's full form, pls let me know.

Sister, I would very much appreciate the article in full form. Please feel free to email it to me. I would like to read the full article so that I may share my comments with the author, unless The God wills otherwise.

Peace and all best wishes,

Ayman

savage_carrot

Peace brother Ayman,

Thank you for the comments, I will send you the article.

Best Regards,
Nadia