Saudi Arabia relief location map (cropped)

Hismaic is a variety of the

Ancient North Arabian Ancient North Arabian (ANA)http://e-learning.tsu.ge/pluginfile.php/5868/mod_resource/content/0/dzveli_armosavluri_enebi_-ugarituli_punikuri_arameuli_ebrauli_arabuli.pdf is a collection of scripts and possibly a language or family of languages (o ...

script and the language most commonly expressed in it. The Hismaic script may have been used to write

Safaitic Safaitic ( ''Al-Ṣafāʾiyyah'') is a variety of the South Semitic scripts used by the nomads of the basalt desert of southern Syria and northern Jordan, the so-called Ḥarrah, to carve rock inscriptions in various dialects of Old Arabic and ...

dialects of

Old Arabic Old Arabic is the name for the pre-Islamic Arabic language or dialect continuum. Various forms of Old Arabic are attested in many scripts like Safaitic, Hismaic, Nabatean, and even Greek. Classification Old Arabic and its descendants are classi ...

, but the language of most inscriptions differs from Safaitic in a few important respects, meriting its classification as a separate dialect or language. Hismaic inscriptions are attested in the Ḥismā region of Northwest

Arabia The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plat ...

, dating to the centuries around and immediately following the start of the

Common Era Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...

Characteristics

Phonology

There are clear instances of ''d'' being used for /ḏ/ in the variant spellings of the divine name Ḏū l-S²arā as ''ds²r'' or ''ds²ry'' – as against classical ''ḏs²r'' or ''ḏs²ry''. The spelling ''ʿbdmk'' for ''ʿbdmlk'' suggests an interchange of ''n'' for ''l'' (with unvocalised ''n'' assimilated to the following ''k''), similar to that found in Nabataean where the name of the kings named Malichos occurs as both ''mlkw'' and ''mnkw'' and the compound as both ''ʿbdmlkw'' and ''ʿbdmnkw''.

Grammar

Perhaps the most salient distinction between Safaitic and Hismaic is the attestation of the definite articles ''h''-, ''hn''-, ''ʾ''-, and ''ʾl''- in the former. A prefixed definite article is not attested in Hismaic. Nevertheless, Hismaic seems to attest a suffixed -''ʾ'' on nouns and ''hn'' in personal names. The use of the morpheme ''h''- as a demonstrative is attested.Al-Jallad, A. (2015). ''An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions''. Brill.

References

{{Varieties of Arabic Arabic languages History of Saudi Arabia Ancient North Arabian