Arabic language and the great reading
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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
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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 -
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 -
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 ismaof 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,
Nadiaedited to include proper text
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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 ismaof 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
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Peace brother Ayman,
Thank you for the comments, I will send you the article.
Best Regards,
Nadia -
Peace brother Ayman,
Have sent you the article on your email addy listed on the article posted.
I hope you can receive large files.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.
There is a book regarding this, i think it's in german? "Ein zweisprachiges Psalmfragment aus Damaskus, by Bruno Violet. Berlin 1902". I'm sure this has additional details...But, I agree that to make an assessment is very difficult not knowing the actual content.
I also think that the psalm fragment might denote the clergy wanting to teach/explain to the arabic speaking people in their own language...and to make it easier of course for them to understand...this at least denotes some move on their part to make them understand religion in the arabic language. They obviously could not teach them in Greek. So they took this route.
On the otherhand, it could be a slim probability but still possible that this was a personal Psalter of an arabic speaker who also knew Greek? It's not impossible to deduce that such people might exist who wanted to have the explanations in their own language of preference, while the original would still be next to it. Maybe like the english commentary of the quran with the arabic next to it?
Maybe given enough time, for the evolution of the script to be complete and well established... and a push for more literacy (demand for such texts), if the quran had not come down in the arabic language at the time it did, people might have had translations done of the other scriptures in their own language (arabic)?
Rgds,
Nadia -
Peace be upon you Ayman,
FANTASTIC Article!!
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salams br ayman,
i saw you posted an article, so i knew it had to be good. that was a great article bro. lots of hard work put into it. I do have some questions for you though.
Given that Arabic at the time of the great reading was an informal common people language with many slang words, it is not surprising that the first scholars to codify the language were not Arabs but were Persians. No scholar who is a native speaker would codify what they consider to be informal "street talk".
Here you seem to be ignoring the depth and power of the Arabic language. It is unknown to what extent the pre-Islamic Arabs codified the language, since writing was not widely practiced nor do a large number of items exist until today... but the Persians did not CREATE the language that exists today as Arabic, nor did they have anything to do with the Arabic of the Quran. This is a language with a thousand words to describe a sword! The richness of depth and almost algebraic grammatic construction, cannot be deemed "street talk."
Furthermore, slang and informal talk is looked down upon not just for the hell of it, but because of its INACCURACY or its AMBIGUITY. This is inconsistent with the description of arabic as "mubeen."
I certainly am no expert in jahiliyya poetry, nor do I have any evidence of the supposed poetry competitions that were annually held... but what I DO have in front of me is what must be the result of a TREMENDOUS amount of linguistic work... now either the language decended from the heavens, or it was created by none other than great linguists and poets. And if the history IS true that poets and linguists came together yearly to "battle," that would explain why despite their different dialects they might have had a standard format for their poetry. (This part of my reply is pure conjecture obviously, just food for thought.) Basically, I think you had a lot of good points but you seem a bit biased in your conclusions, not allowing alternative explanations.
Also, about Makkah and the Kaaba. You didn't provide any idea of when they would have been built? Clearly if it was "unIslamic" and shirk, the Prophet would not have allowed it and neither would the sahaba... so when was it constructed and where's the record of that?? Clearly there is no suggestion whatsoever, either by historical record or archeological that Makkah is a NEW city, so why do you jump to that conclusion so readily? And what were Ptolemy/Diodorus etc etc referring to.. if "Macoraba" is not makkah, then what? Dearth of record can be explained by MANY things other than lack of existence.
wassalam
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Salam All,
I would like to touch base on certain areas of discussion.
1-Sister Nadia, related to the obelisks in Petra, they are different from the obelisks that you find in Egypt and other places and therefore have served a different function. The obelsiks of Petra are usually thicker with a flat top and usually carved from the rock. The best known are two obelisks that face each other on top of one of the mountains in Petra, near the great place of Sacrifice.
2- I thought that is was interesting that the document that was found in Damascus had the Psalms in Greek and Arabic, yet the Aramaic was absent. This is interesting since Damascus would be a city where one would expect the people to speak Aramaic at some point in it's past history. This find suggests that there were Arabic speaking people in or around Damascus.
3- The notion of a holy language that was used for liturgy is interesting but I have a feeling that Aramaic was not considered a holy language, at least in the early AD centuries. The languages that had holy significance were Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Aramaic was the language that Jesus spoke, yet the bible that is in Aramaic now, is actually a translation from Greek. When the Byzantines adopted Christainity, they made the offical religion Orthodxy and the langauge of the liturgy was in GREEK rather than in Aramiac. The christian communities that used Aramiac as the langauge of liturgy were the Eastern churches that spoke that language in their daily lives and that were considered Heretic churches due to the fact that they looked as Jesus as a ONE nature Monophysites and those are the Syrian Orthodox Church of today. The others are the Duophysites who believed that Jesus had two natures, divine and human. Those are the ones that are the Assyrians of Iraq and Iran. The idea is that the holy language from the third century AD, and onwards in what is now Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine was GREEK.
4- Petra being absent of dwellings. This is an interesting and highly debatable issue. Now, there is more evidence of finds of houses in Petra. This is proven by the Ceramic shreds that dot the place and point to some domestic use of ceramics, and lately the finds of home. It is thought that people built, rather than sculpted their homes, which later disappeared. This is part of the explanation of why there are not many dwellings in the city.
5- Archaeology is a field that is very dear to my heart. However, one very important observation that I see is that Archeaolgists rarely say THS IS THE PROOF. They mainly say This is My Theory. This is because it is not an exact science and has lots of holes in it. One example is the Abraha inscription, and the absence of the elephants in it. One explanation is that there were no elephants. One can point to other theories as well, that may explain the absence of the elephants. To limit oneself to one theory, can be short sighted.
6- I did enjoy reading about all those issues and I do think that Ayman worked hard on this and that sharing this info is both enjoyable, thought provoking and enriching.Hussein
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Peace Hussein,
1-Sister Nadia, related to the obelisks in Petra, they are different from the obelisks that you find in Egypt and other places and therefore have served a different function. The obelsiks of Petra are usually thicker with a flat top and usually carved from the rock. The best known are two obelisks that face each other on top of one of the mountains in Petra, near the great place of Sacrifice.
So they are not thin/needle like but more stout or like the menirs in asterix and obelisk? Or like stonehenge? They too had something to do with mapping stars and the equinoxes...Or maybe some culture somewhere probably thought them decorative without taking into account the real purpose...
The languages that had holy significance were Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Aramaic was the language that Jesus spoke, yet the bible that is in Aramaic now, is actually a translation from Greek. When the Byzantines adopted Christainity, they made the offical religion Orthodxy and the langauge of the liturgy was in GREEK rather than in Aramiac.
Thats a good point...
It is thought that people built, rather than sculpted their homes, which later disappeared. This is part of the explanation of why there are not many dwellings in the city.
I agree that could be a reason also what was touched on in the discovery documentary regarding the city.
Archeaolgists rarely say THS IS THE PROOF. They mainly say This is My Theory.
Absolutely...a theory based on evidence present as of yet.
Thank you for the information on greek/aramaic...i have to look into this further..
Best Regards,
Nadia -
Peace brother Ayman, all...
I have corresponded with the author of the paper M.C.A. Macdonald and am posting the parts of the relevant reply here, I sent him the link to the article in question and asked him if there were any examples of religious inscriptions/manuscripts in old arabic amongst some other questions.
No, as far as I know, there has not been any more research on the Psalm fragment. However, two of the pre-islamic inscriptions in the Arabic script ? those at Zebed (in northern Syria) and Harran (in the Leja) are on the lintels of churches and contain the names of those who helped to found the churches.
It also rather depends in what sense this author is using the term "Old Arabic". If he includes the Ancient North Arabian inscriptions (Safaitic, Hismaic, Dadanitic and Thamudic), then they are full of prayers to a wide variety of pagan deities. If, on the other hand, he limits the term (as I do) to those pre-Islamic dialects which used ?l-, rather than h-, for the definite article, then JSLih 276, which contains a prayer to the Lihyanite god Dhu-Ghabit, is an example of an Old Arabic inscription with religious content. In my "Reflections", I rather conservatively called this text "Dadabo-Arabic", rather than "pure Old arabic", because, apart from the ?l-, the rest of the text was indistinguishable from a Dadanitic inscription (HE 1), but it is perfectly possible that its author was writing in Old Arabic and that the lack of signs for medial vowels in the writing system obscures any distinctions between this and Dadanitic.
The Arabic part of the ?En ?Avdat inscription (Reflections p. 50) is in praise of the deified Nabataean king Obodas, and so would count as a pure Old Arabic text with religious content, while JSNab 17 (admitted Aramaeo-Arabic), contains an invocation to the "Lord of the worlds", and the Safaeo-Arabic text CIS V 2446 (Reflections p. 51) also contains invocations to a list of deities.
Would be interested in your thoughts...
Best Regards,
Nadia -
Peace brother Shuaib,
It is good to hear from you.
Here you seem to be ignoring the depth and power of the Arabic language. It is unknown to what extent the pre-Islamic Arabs codified the language, since writing was not widely practiced nor do a large number of items exist until today...
All languages have strengths and weaknesses like the numans who mad them. Arabic is no different. The two statements that I underlined reflect the contradiction that is in the traditional view. Languages that are not used for formal writing but for just everyday speaking are not codified. Hence, no one codifies the Egyptian Arabic spoken street dialect. Hence, you will find that Shaaban Abd Al-Rehim' songs do not conform to any code. This would have been the same situation with Arabic over 1400 years ago.
but the Persians did not CREATE the language that exists today as Arabic, nor did they have anything to do with the Arabic of the Quran.
They formalized an informal language. Hence, their formalized language differs somewhat from the language of the great reading.
Hence, there are expressions in the great reading that don't sound grammatical. Some well-known examples include 569 where "Sabi'una" should be "Sabi'ina" according to the rules of so-called Classical Arabic. "Moqimin" should be "moqimun" in 4162. In 2177 "sabirin" should be "sabirun". According to Classical Arabic grammar rules, "yakun" in 359 is in the wrong tense. There are many more. You don't see those sorts of "errors" in Hadith or poetry, which conform the the Persian rules.
Is the great reading wrong or is what is called Classical Arabic not reflecting the real language of the great reading?
This is a language with a thousand words to describe a sword! The richness of depth and almost algebraic grammatic construction, cannot be deemed "street talk."
Actually, the variety of words to describe one thing is more of a feature of informal fluid languages. Hence, money, cash, dough, change, bread, ... and probably hundeds of terms are used to describe monetary instruments on the street.
Furthermore, slang and informal talk is looked down upon not just for the hell of it, but because of its INACCURACY or its AMBIGUITY. This is inconsistent with the description of arabic as "mubeen."
ALL human communication languages have inconsistencies. If a language is too rigid, like Classical Arabic, then it turns into a language of the few. How many people do you know speak Classical Arabic at home? My guess is none. So as a language, Classical Arabic is wholly inadequate for human communication.
That is the amazing thing about the great reading. It shows that The God can take an inconsistent human language and use it in a clarifying way.
I certainly am no expert in jahiliyya poetry, nor do I have any evidence of the supposed poetry competitions that were annually held... but what I DO have in front of me is what must be the result of a TREMENDOUS amount of linguistic work...
Work that mostly took place during the Abassid era.
now either the language decended from the heavens, or it was created by none other than great linguists and poets. And if the history IS true that poets and linguists came together yearly to "battle," that would explain why despite their different dialects they might have had a standard format for their poetry. (This part of my reply is pure conjecture obviously, just food for thought.)
Yes, there is zero evidence of that.
Basically, I think you had a lot of good points but you seem a bit biased in your conclusions, not allowing alternative explanations.
I am just starting the discussion. If someone has a better alternative explanation, especially for 16103 then I am all for it.
Also, about Makkah and the Kaaba. You didn't provide any idea of when they would have been built?
They were built before the great reading but Makka was named something else and Kaaba was named Dhu-Alshaara. They were not named Makkah and Kaaba as they are today.
Clearly if it was "unIslamic" and shirk, the Prophet would not have allowed it and neither would the sahaba...
No one, including the prophet can go inside people's hearts and stop "shirk". Idolizing Jesus is equally shirk and yet the prophet didn't stop it as evident from the continuity of Christians in Arab land. Why should other shirk be any different?
As for the "sahaba", they are refered to as a collective in the great reading when they are told not to think that the prophet was crazy (see 3436). Thus, the "sahaba" are not exactly the "saints" that they are made out to be.
so when was it constructed and where's the record of that??
The Kaaba was last constructed in 1996. Archeological evidence shows that black stones have been idolized for 29,000 years.
The practice of idolizing stones, especially black stones, predates Arab paganism. Black stones have been regarded as sacred in China, India, Indonesia and Tibet for at least 2500 years. The black stone continues to be sacred to Tibetan monks and lamas, who call it "the Stone of Shambala". Hindu mythology speaks of the black stone as a magical gem formed from the moon's rays.
Attributing talismanic energy to black stones is a very ancient pagan custom. For example, a Cro-Magnon site dated at 29,000 years of age contained a black stone amulet. A black stone known as "The Phrygian Stone" was adored for over five centuries in the Roman period. Many of the American Indian tribes have conducted pilgrimages to adore black stones and carried small black stones in their medicine pouches. The ancient Semites revered black stones. They are said to have chosen a black stone to represent a triple-aspected mother goddess to whom they made human sacrifices.
Clearly there is no suggestion whatsoever, either by historical record or archeological that Makkah is a NEW city, so why do you jump to that conclusion so readily? And what were Ptolemy/Diodorus etc etc referring to.. if "Macoraba" is not makkah, then what? Dearth of record can be explained by MANY things other than lack of existence.
I didn't say that it was new. All I said is that it was renamed to Makkah to match the common noun in 4824.
Peace and all best wishes,
Ayman
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Peace brother Hussein,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
4- Petra being absent of dwellings. This is an interesting and highly debatable issue. Now, there is more evidence of finds of houses in Petra. This is proven by the Ceramic shreds that dot the place and point to some domestic use of ceramics, and lately the finds of home. It is thought that people built, rather than sculpted their homes, which later disappeared. This is part of the explanation of why there are not many dwellings in the city.
The problem is that they found ceramics and utensils but no foundations of average houses. The best theory available suggests that people lived in tents in the city. This would indicate seasonal events such as pilgrimages.
5- Archaeology is a field that is very dear to my heart. However, one very important observation that I see is that Archeaolgists rarely say THS IS THE PROOF. They mainly say This is My Theory. This is because it is not an exact science and has lots of holes in it. One example is the Abraha inscription, and the absence of the elephants in it. One explanation is that there were no elephants. One can point to other theories as well, that may explain the absence of the elephants. To limit oneself to one theory, can be short sighted.
But we only hear about elephants from hearsay stories that came to us a few hundred years after the fact. Any archeological evidence, even with holes in it is at least some evidence. Hersay is ZERO evidence.
Peace and all best wishes,
Ayman
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Peace sister Nadia,
I am still trying to find time to finish reading Dr. Macdonald's article. Things have been very busy and I will have less time on the forum the next few months because of travel.
Let me briefly comment on the following
No, as far as I know, there has not been any more research on the Psalm fragment. However, two of the pre-islamic inscriptions in the Arabic script ? those at Zebed (in northern Syria) and Harran (in the Leja) are on the lintels of churches and contain the names of those who helped to found the churches.
This may confirm that the parisheners were Arab. However, "names" are not "religious texts". What would contradict my theory is a fragment of the Bible or an equivalent religious text in Arabic.
It also rather depends in what sense this author is using the term "Old Arabic". If he includes the Ancient North Arabian inscriptions (Safaitic, Hismaic, Dadanitic and Thamudic), then they are full of prayers to a wide variety of pagan deities. If, on the other hand, he limits the term (as I do) to those pre-Islamic dialects which used ?l-, rather than h-, for the definite article, then JSLih 276, which contains a prayer to the Lihyanite god Dhu-Ghabit, is an example of an Old Arabic inscription with religious content. In my "Reflections", I rather conservatively called this text "Dadabo-Arabic", rather than "pure Old arabic", because, apart from the ?l-, the rest of the text was indistinguishable from a Dadanitic inscription (HE 1), but it is perfectly possible that its author was writing in Old Arabic and that the lack of signs for medial vowels in the writing system obscures any distinctions between this and Dadanitic.
Again, prayers by common people is not "formal religious texts". As far as I know, there are no formal Arabic inscriptions on pagan temple walls in northern arabia.
The Arabic part of the ?En ?Avdat inscription (Reflections p. 50) is in praise of the deified Nabataean king Obodas, and so would count as a pure Old Arabic text with religious content, while JSNab 17 (admitted Aramaeo-Arabic), contains an invocation to the "Lord of the worlds", and the Safaeo-Arabic text CIS V 2446 (Reflections p. 51) also contains invocations to a list of deities.
The Arabic part was the explanation of the people of why they loved their king. Hence, the language changed from Nabataean to Arabic. This actually confirms that Arabic was a common people language and not a formal one like Nabataean.
Peace and all best wishes,
Ayman
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Peace,
http//www.pbs.org/speak/
http//www.pbs.org/speak/words/sezwho/change/
Interesting series on the changes in languages with lots of references.
Most language change actually starts subtly and unconsciously among the lower classes and spreads. Extremes in social strata, for example, the highest and the lowest classes, tend to be marginal to this process. Instead, the middle-class groups, who have the strongest loyalty to the local community while being connected to other groups, are the most sensitive to language innovation.
The other side of language innovation is resistance
On the other side of language innovation lies resistance. Even when certain changes seem natural and reasonable, they are resisted by socially dominant classes who want to avoid being affiliated with subordinate groups that have already adopted these changes. The regularization of irregular past forms such as knowed and growed or the regularization of such as hisself and theirselves, which have made some inroads among vernacular speakers of English, tend to be resolutely resisted by the middle classes despite their linguistic reasonableness. Higher-status groups may often suppress natural changes taking place in lower-status groups to maintain their social distinction through language. The acceptance and rejection of language changes are constrained by the social interpretation of those changes and the relationships that exist among social groups.http//www.pbs.org/speak/speech/correct/decline/
Linguists, of course, have been arguing for a long time that the rules of traditional grammar have no scientific or logical justification, and that the only reason grammarians consider certain usages "correct" is that they happen to have been adopted by the privileged classes in the past. As the linguists Anthony Kroch and Cathy Small put it in a recent article, "prescriptivism is simply the ideology by which the guardians of the standard language impose their linguistic norms on people who have perfectly serviceable norms of their own." We will see that this view is not entirely justified. Nonetheless, the linguists have won over a large part of the educational establishment, so that "correct English" has come to mean no more than "standard English," the English spoken by the educated middle class. A few radicals have gone on to argue that traditional grammar, as an instrument of racism and class oppression, has no place in the school curriculum. But more often educators counsel an enlightened hypocrisy standard English should be taught because there are still benighted employers who take stock in such things. This position is put concisely by Jim Quinn, whose American Tongue and Cheek is a lively and informative popularization of the linguists' views.
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Assalamu alaikum br Ayman,
thanks for replying. i wish you safe travels.
Languages that are not used for formal writing but for just everyday speaking are not codified. Hence, no one codifies the Egyptian Arabic spoken street dialect. Hence, you will find that Shaaban Abd Al-Rehim' songs do not conform to any code. This would have been the same situation with Arabic over 1400 years ago.
Well, that is one theory. What we actually KNOW is that there is no extant copy of pre-Islamic Arabic grammar codification. This could be because a) it was too primitive a language to codify b) it was considered too unworthy language to codify or c) it was codified in ORAL form or d) it was codified in written form but lost.
A, obviously is not true considering the depth and power that we see in the Arabic language. As far as B, again, a language does not just serendipitously become one of the most highly structured and organized langauges in the world with an immense vocabulary. It has to be planned.
Hence, there are expressions in the great reading that don't sound grammatical.
Like some brothers pointed out, "grammar" is an artificial idea or science. It comes AFTER the fact of language, not before. And since the fact in this case is a human creation, those facts don't always add up to solid LAWS as we know them... that is why there are so called exceptions to the rule and variations. As far as those verses you pointed out, there are, as you probably know, responses for them based on this very idea.
Actually, the variety of words to describe one thing is more of a feature of informal fluid languages. Hence, money, cash, dough, change, bread, ... and probably hundeds of terms are used to describe monetary instruments on the street.
Well, you probably know that I meant something different. In Arabic, each word used to describe an object has a different and UNIQUE shade of meaning. No 2 roots are identical in meaning. This is not a feature of an informal language, where the depth of meaning is often very shallow. In Arabic, each word can be analyzed in a way that few other languages can. WHY would someone need that much linguistic power for an informal language?
That is why I keep saying, that all of this strength that we see in the Arabic language, MUST have been meant for something.
What you are saying is basically that the prehistoric Arabs built a supercomputer and used it to prop up their feet... and several years later realized what a powerful and unparalleled tool they had created. That just doesn't make any sense.
If a language is too rigid, like Classical Arabic, then it turns into a language of the few. How many people do you know speak Classical Arabic at home? My guess is none. So as a language, Classical Arabic is wholly inadequate for human communication.
Can Ebonics be considered the next evolution of the English language? I think your reasoning here is flawed. There can be MANY reasons for the fall of classical Arabic as a living language... by its very definition it USED to be a living language and for a time was wholly ADEQUATE for human communication. But luckily, it's only half-dead since essentially all WRITTEN Arabic communication is classical... why the duality? Beats me. I write and speak English in the same way, and I dont know why there is so much of a duality for Arabs. But I do know that there is one group of people who SPEAK classical Arabic.. and that's folks like me who have learned it and can't speak the colloquial dialect.
The rest of your comments about black stones is interesting. I suppose it is highly possible that that is a pagan ritual introduced into Islam.. and I certainly don't see what point there is to stoning a pillar... but as far as I know, symbolic actions are not outlawed in Islam and if Muslims as a nation decide that they want to perform certain symbolic actions, then so be it. Of course, the problem is when the symbols become an end in themselves.
wassalam
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Because as far as we know we have always lived in a multilingual society the social implications that certain languages have had has been varied. The higher class among a certain language group will sometimes borrow heavily from the expressions of another group that they are in contact with and admire, changing the language. In other cases the poor come into contact with other language groups and communication between the two facilitates the exchange of foreign expressions, changing the language.
Despite all of the reasons for why a language can change most languages begin as informal. If it is the only language you know and you speak it with your family and your friends the language is informal. A language only becomes formal when it is ONLY used in public addresses or important occassions. That it is when it is viewed as dignified. But even in that case if the language is viewed as dignified, but is the only language that the speaker knows it is both informal and formal, because it is used for both informal and formal purposes.
The dichotomy between formal and informal language only comes about when a language develops different styles of speech, or different ways of communicating the same idea, and one is used among people you are trying to impress and the other used among people you aren't trying to impress. The terms formal language and informal language have nothing to do with the language's ability to communicate ideas, it just has to do with what 'purpose' that langauge is used for. A formal language is used for formal occasions, an informal language is used for informal purposes. But when only one language and one style of language is recognized then that one language serves both formal and informal purposes.
Statements that claim an informal langauge's inability to communicate are usually just judgement calls based on social prejudices, having more to do with the speakers of the language or the occasions in which the language is used instead of the ability of the language to communicate ideas.
I also want to believe that Classical Arabic was an everyday language of Muhammad (God bless him) and his people and I think more evidence points to this then to the opposite camp. There are people that claim that the Classical Arabic of the Koran, the poems and the Hadeeth were developed through the poetry battles of the pre-Islamic days, etc. etc. However, the use of bedouin sources to help codify this language speaks to the fact that it was an everday language (with dialectical differences), and there is no reason to think that the peoms, the Hadeeth and the Koran were not written in the everyday language of the Arabs of that day.
The Koran does belong to a language group that had dialectical differences and the Koran infact shows evidence of some of those differences like 'aatii and haati' and more. It is most likely that the Hejazi dialect of Arabic was a middle ground of understanding between the nothern dialects and the southern dialects of Arabic.
Speaking on dialects of Arabic in this forum I have seen such terms as 'Safaitic, Hismaic, Dadanitic and Thamudic' and Old Arabic mentioned. I have also seen such terms as 'Dadabo-Arabic 'pure Old Arabic' and Arameo-Arabic.' As well I have seen such differences noted as 'ha' used for the definite article (Hebrew phenomenon) in some of these dialects and other grammar distinctions.
However, no one seems to know that there was language mixing in the northern Arabic tribes going on. The very mention of Arameo-Arabic should send warning signals going off for those who know about creoles. Creoles are the full-grown children of pidgeons. A pidgeon is the original result when two or more languages start mixing. After that when that mixing has settled in and created consistent, recognized and extensive patterns for communication it become a creole, which is a full-fledged language.
Sometimes some creoles are mistakenly called pidgeons because of their origins (and the derogatory or sometimes diminutive shade that the word 'pidgeon' carries). In the northern areas it is natural that Arabic hybrids(creoles) that have their origins with different versions of Aramaic, Hebrew and other local languages would have popped up. Whether they should be considered forms of Arabic or not is another issue. I cannot speak about the status of these languages however as I do not know about that. But take for instance people in other parts of the world like NIgeria or Haiti. In a multi-lingual situation the linguistic situation gets quite complicated. Every linguist knows that Haitian creole is not a form a french. Even though it uses french words (as well as African words) as the base of communication it has African and Native American grammar in addition to the French grammar that it carries. The French cannot understand it. Grammar is the basis of language. Haitians depending on where they are and their social status may learn French, Creole and Spanish. Their creole in addition to that may have more spanish words or more french words depending on where the speaker comes from. But no-one would try to say that they are speaking French or Spanish. The grammar and alot of words are completely distinct.
That is the case of these old northern "Arabics" that are being found. They obviously are mixtures between Aramaic dialects and Hebrew dialects and are to be found in areas where these people mixed. To call them Arabic dialects is erroneous. What is the basis on which these languages are said to be forms of Arabic? Naturally a mixture between Aramaic and Arabic would share alot of similarly looking and sounding words with Arabic. And writing conventions would be different between early, pre-Islamic, Aramaic scripts and later Arabic scripts.
Futhermore do the terms Safaitic, Hismaic, Dadanitic and Thamudic refer to scripts or dialects? How does one distinguish a pre-Islamic Arabic script when from what i know there were only different versions of the Aramaic scripts existent at that time? Pre-Islamic Arabs used different versions of these scripts. The Arabic script, besides the southern Arabic one, only took its full form during the Islamic era.
Let it be known also that Semitic linguists have heavy agendas when they study Cl. Arabic and its relative languages. They often try to view Classical Arabic through Hebrew or Aramaic lenses. THrough their credentials and thier ideas they can have an effect on the Muslim world through trying to change the meanings of the Koran. They have often confused Arabic and Aramaic and they often try to confuse Arabic with Hebrew or Aramaic meanings of congnate words or forms. All I have to say is as these inscriptions are unearthed everyone should be wary of how they go about classifying things.
The differences between southern Classical Arabic and Classical Arabic is very minimal. Tamweems instead of tanweens is not that big of a deal, and Southern Classical Arabic uses the definte article 'Al.' However, the differences that these "Old Arabics" have seem not to be dialectical differences. They seem to be innate grammatical differences, that should give way to the recognition of creoles between Aramaic, Classical Arabic and Hebrew, instead of calling these so called "old-Arabics" different Northern dialects of Arabic.
I'm sure the Ghassanids and Lakhmids spoke real Arabic but it was probably a language that they learned to keep up with their more southern brothers who had maintained their language.
Now speaking on codification
The "errors" to be found in the Koran are not errors at all. They are only considered incorrect by people who are only familiar with Modern Arabic grammar (which is a reduction of Classical Arabic). When we say that the grammarians codified Arabic they did not invent its rules, they deduced them by examining usage and then wrote those rules down. The fact that Persians (who were immersed in a multilingual culture encompassing Arabic, Persian and mixtures of the two and who came from a very science-oriented culture) were prominent in this role was only natural.
Furthermore, all languages, even "street talk(s)," have rules. You just can't say anything in "street talk" you still have to make sense of what your saying, whether that be Egyptian colloquial or Spanish colloquials. Making sense of what we say requires grammar rules which every language has. Whether that grammar has been written down in a book or not, every speaker of that particular street talk knows the grammar of his street talk. When he violates the rules he is corrected, what he means is guessed or what he said just goes misunderstood. If he constantly violates the grammar of his street talk he is just looked at as a fool.
The organization and structure of Classical Arabic could have come about through a number of happenings. It didn't have to be planned by those people. I do believe that God used the Classical Arabic language for its specific strengths and other features(which don't have to necesarily be strengths, just unique to Classical Arabic). And God obviously let it evolve into the language that it is for specific reasons. But I would rather not say that it is superior to any other language. I would rather say that it has features specific to itself that other languages don't have, and God wished to use those features to guide our understanding of the message that he wants us to read, study, understand and implement.
Shuaib is right that just because a language dies out that does not mean that it is wholly inadequate for communication, because these languages were once alive and were completely adequate for communication. Their dying out has more to do with situations where many language groups meet in the same place. The expansion of the Arab empire facilatated that. It was already going on among the Ghassanids and the Lakhmids on the boarders of Persian and Roman & Greek (Aramaic/Hebrew speaking) territories.
The reason why we use terms like 'money', cash, 'dough' etc for money has to do with metaphor and exaggeration more than anything. Metaphors and poetry are the sign of living languages. 'Bread,' 'dough,' cheese for money are popular metaphors, nothing more.
Formal talk uses these type of metaphors as well. We might call a puzzle, a maze, a labyrinth. A turn, a bend and there are many more examples of this in the formal language.
Overall, I want to put forth a message of caution. When I speak about pre-Islamic time I am speaking about the time directly before Muhammad's birth and during his pre-koranic life. I would never venture to go more than 200 years before Muhammad was born and speak on that language. There is not alot of evidence about this time. I especially would not venture into the language of those areas bordering the Roman and Persian empires, the linguist frontiers, and try to apply that to the linguistic situation of the Arabs of Muhammad's day.
I really don't know why Ayman has interjected all of these archeological findings and linguistic opinions about languages and peoples that significantly pre-date Muhammad's era. And I really don't know what he is trying to prove by saying that there is no religious text written in Classical Arabic prior to the time of Muhammad. If I can ask you Ayman, what do these theories have to do with anything?
Godbless,
Anwar -
Peace Anwar, all,
Let me answer your question first and then go on to comment on the remaining points.
I really don't know why Ayman has interjected all of these archeological findings and linguistic opinions about languages and peoples that significantly pre-date Muhammad's era. And I really don't know what he is trying to prove by saying that there is no religious text written in Classical Arabic prior to the time of Muhammad. If I can ask you Ayman, what do these theories have to do with anything?
What started me on this study is 16103. The archeological evidence simply confirms what I already knew from 16103.
Because as far as we know we have always lived in a multilingual society the social implications that certain languages have had has been varied. The higher class among a certain language group will sometimes borrow heavily from the expressions of another group that they are in contact with and admire, changing the language. In other cases the poor come into contact with other language groups and communication between the two facilitates the exchange of foreign expressions, changing the language.
Despite all of the reasons for why a language can change most languages begin as informal. If it is the only language you know and you speak it with your family and your friends the language is informal. A language only becomes formal when it is ONLY used in public addresses or important occassions. That it is when it is viewed as dignified. But even in that case if the language is viewed as dignified, but is the only language that the speaker knows it is both informal and formal, because it is used for both informal and formal purposes.
I agree and all the evidence points to the purpose of Arabic prior to the great reading as not being formal (specifically not formal religious). This is confirmed in 16103.
The dichotomy between formal and informal language only comes about when a language develops different styles of speech, or different ways of communicating the same idea, and one is used among people you are trying to impress and the other used among people you aren't trying to impress. The terms formal language and informal language have nothing to do with the language's ability to communicate ideas, it just has to do with what 'purpose' that langauge is used for. A formal language is used for formal occasions, an informal language is used for informal purposes. But when only one language and one style of language is recognized then that one language serves both formal and informal purposes.
The advent of the great reading is the major event that changed Arabic from an informal to a formal language. Because, as you said, the purpose changed. Now suddenly people (especially non-Arabs) saw Arabic as some kind of a "sacred" language worthy of formal codification.
Statements that claim an informal langauge's inability to communicate are usually just judgement calls based on social prejudices, having more to do with the speakers of the language or the occasions in which the language is used instead of the ability of the language to communicate ideas.
I agree. Thank you for answering brother Shuaib's objection.
I also want to believe that Classical Arabic was an everyday language of Muhammad (God bless him) and his people and I think more evidence points to this then to the opposite camp. There are people that claim that the Classical Arabic of the Koran, the poems and the Hadeeth were developed through the poetry battles of the pre-Islamic days, etc. etc. However, the use of bedouin sources to help codify this language speaks to the fact that it was an everday language (with dialectical differences), and there is no reason to think that the peoms, the Hadeeth and the Koran were not written in the everyday language of the Arabs of that day.
That is where there is contradiction. The Arabic of the great reading was an informal language spoken everyday by average common people. On the other hand, the picture we get from so-called Jahiliya poetry and Hadiths is that it is a formal language used in royal courts and by religious authorities. Therefore Hadiths and Jahiliya poetry must be post-quranic inventions.
The Koran does belong to a language group that had dialectical differences and the Koran infact shows evidence of some of those differences like 'aatii and haati' and more. It is most likely that the Hejazi dialect of Arabic was a middle ground of understanding between the nothern dialects and the southern dialects of Arabic.
There is no evidence of a "Hejazi" dialect. There is either Northern Arabic dialects or Southern Arabic dialects. The "Hejaz" was inhabited by Southern Arab tribes and hence spoke Southern Arabic dialects such as Sabaic.
Speaking on dialects of Arabic in this forum I have seen such terms as 'Safaitic, Hismaic, Dadanitic and Thamudic' and Old Arabic mentioned. I have also seen such terms as 'Dadabo-Arabic 'pure Old Arabic' and Arameo-Arabic.' As well I have seen such differences noted as 'ha' used for the definite article (Hebrew phenomenon) in some of these dialects and other grammar distinctions.
Safaitic is the closest to Arabic. As for Thamudic, it is in turn divided into a multitude of dialects some of which are totally unrelated but were grouped there anyway.
Arameo-Arabic is not a language but it is a situation where the script is Aramaic but the language is in Arabic. This is like the Englisho-Arabic phrase below
"Bism Allah AlRahman AlRahim"
However, no one seems to know that there was language mixing in the northern Arabic tribes going on. The very mention of Arameo-Arabic should send warning signals going off for those who know about creoles. Creoles are the full-grown children of pidgeons. A pidgeon is the original result when two or more languages start mixing. After that when that mixing has settled in and created consistent, recognized and extensive patterns for communication it become a creole, which is a full-fledged language.
Script and language are two different things. The mixing of the script has nothing to do with "creoles".
Futhermore do the terms Safaitic, Hismaic, Dadanitic and Thamudic refer to scripts or dialects? How does one distinguish a pre-Islamic Arabic script when from what i know there were only different versions of the Aramaic scripts existent at that time? Pre-Islamic Arabs used different versions of these scripts. The Arabic script, besides the southern Arabic one, only took its full form during the Islamic era.
Exactly, that is why we find Arabic in different scripts. This is not a characteristic of a formal language. You never find Greek (the formal language of the church at the time) in an Arabic script, for instance. But you do find the converse.
Let it be known also that Semitic linguists have heavy agendas when they study Cl. Arabic and its relative languages. They often try to view Classical Arabic through Hebrew or Aramaic lenses. THrough their credentials and thier ideas they can have an effect on the Muslim world through trying to change the meanings of the Koran. They have often confused Arabic and Aramaic and they often try to confuse Arabic with Hebrew or Aramaic meanings of congnate words or forms. All I have to say is as these inscriptions are unearthed everyone should be wary of how they go about classifying things.
I agree.
The differences between southern Classical Arabic and Classical Arabic is very minimal. Tamweems instead of tanweens is not that big of a deal, and Southern Classical Arabic uses the definte article 'Al.' However, the differences that these "Old Arabics" have seem not to be dialectical differences. They seem to be innate grammatical differences, that should give way to the recognition of creoles between Aramaic, Classical Arabic and Hebrew, instead of calling these so called "old-Arabics" different Northern dialects of Arabic.
I disagree. The differences between Southern Arabic dialects and what you call Classical Arabic is substantial. Some linguists even classify Southern Arabic dialects as totally different languages. I disagree with them too.
The definite article in Sabaic is post posed as "nan" while in Arabic it is pre-posed as "al". This difference may have been missed by you because many Arab researchers transcribe terms used in the great reading in Sabaic text in psuedo-Arabic out of piety. For example, they transcribe "rahmanan" as "al-rahman".
The definite article is the most obvious difference. Interestingly, they seem to share a lot in terms of vocabulary.
Now speaking on codification
The "errors" to be found in the Koran are not errors at all. They are only considered incorrect by people who are only familiar with Modern Arabic grammar (which is a reduction of Classical Arabic). When we say that the grammarians codified Arabic they did not invent its rules, they deduced them by examining usage and then wrote those rules down. The fact that Persians (who were immersed in a multilingual culture encompassing Arabic, Persian and mixtures of the two and who came from a very science-oriented culture) were prominent in this role was only natural.
No those "errors" in the great reading are errors according to the rules of Classical Arabic. You NEVER find such errors as the ones I referenced in post-quranic Classical Arabic texts such as Jahiliaya poetry.
Furthermore, all languages, even "street talk(s)," have rules. You just can't say anything in "street talk" you still have to make sense of what your saying, whether that be Egyptian colloquial or Spanish colloquials. Making sense of what we say requires grammar rules which every language has. Whether that grammar has been written down in a book or not, every speaker of that particular street talk knows the grammar of his street talk. When he violates the rules he is corrected, what he means is guessed or what he said just goes misunderstood. If he constantly violates the grammar of his street talk he is just looked at as a fool.
I agree. However, the rules of informal "street talk" are less rigid. It is the artificial rigidity of Classical Arabic imposed in order to turn an infromal language into a formal one that has turned it into a dead language.
The organization and structure of Classical Arabic could have come about through a number of happenings. It didn't have to be planned by those people. I do believe that God used the Classical Arabic language for its specific strengths and other features(which don't have to necesarily be strengths, just unique to Classical Arabic). And God obviously let it evolve into the language that it is for specific reasons. But I would rather not say that it is superior to any other language. I would rather say that it has features specific to itself that other languages don't have, and God wished to use those features to guide our understanding of the message that he wants us to read, study, understand and implement.
Classical Arabic is a formalized language. The Arabic of the great reading is an informal language. They are not the same.
Shuaib is right that just because a language dies out that does not mean that it is wholly inadequate for communication, because these languages were once alive and were completely adequate for communication. Their dying out has more to do with situations where many language groups meet in the same place. The expansion of the Arab empire facilatated that. It was already going on among the Ghassanids and the Lakhmids on the boarders of Persian and Roman & Greek (Aramaic/Hebrew speaking) territories.
If it was adequate, this means that it ceased to be adequate for communication. The "dying" began after the artificial formalization of Arabic.
The reason why we use terms like 'money', cash, 'dough' etc for money has to do with metaphor and exaggeration more than anything. Metaphors and poetry are the sign of living languages. 'Bread,' 'dough,' cheese for money are popular metaphors, nothing more.
Formal talk uses these type of metaphors as well. We might call a puzzle, a maze, a labyrinth. A turn, a bend and there are many more examples of this in the formal language.
The variety of vocabulary and the extensive use of metaphors is more prevalant in fluid, non-rigid, informal languages.
Peace and all best wishes,
Ayman
