HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Old Hijazi, or Old Higazi, is a variety of Old Arabic attested in Hejaz (the western part of
Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
) from about the 1st century to the 7th century. It is the variety thought to underlie the
Quran The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...
ic Consonantal Text (QCT) and in its later iteration was the
prestige Prestige refers to a good reputation or high esteem; in earlier usage, ''prestige'' meant "showiness". (19th c.) Prestige may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Films * ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnet ...
spoken and written
register Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...
of Arabic in the
Umayyad Caliphate The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE; , ; ar, ٱلْخِلَافَة ٱلْأُمَوِيَّة, al-Khilāfah al-ʾUmawīyah) was the second of the four major caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. The caliphate was ruled by th ...
.


Classification

Old Ḥijāzī is characterized by the innovative
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the r ...
''ʾallaḏī'' ( ar, ٱلَّذِي), ''ʾallatī'' ( ar, ٱلَّتِي), etc., which is attested once in the inscription JSLih 384 and is the common form in the QCT, as opposed to the form ''ḏ''- which is otherwise common to Old Arabic. The infinitive verbal complement is replaced with a subordinating clause ''ʾan yafʿala'', attested in the QCT and a fragmentary
Dadanitic Dadanitic is the script and possibly the language of the oasis of Dadān (modern Al-'Ula) and the kingdom of Liḥyān in northwestern Arabia, spoken probably some time during the second half of the first millennium BCE. Nomenclature Dadanitic ...
inscription. The QCT along with the papyri of the first century after the
Islamic conquests The early Muslim conquests or early Islamic conquests ( ar, الْفُتُوحَاتُ الإسْلَامِيَّة, ), also referred to as the Arab conquests, were initiated in the 7th century by Muhammad, the main Islamic prophet. He estab ...
attest a form with an l-element between the demonstrative base and the distal particle, producing from the original proximal set ''ḏālika'' and ''tilka''. The emphatic interdental and lateral were realized as voiced, in contrast to Northern Old Arabic, where they were voiceless.


Phonology


Consonants

The sounds in the chart above are based on the constructed phonology of
Proto-Semitic Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language ancestral to the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic '' Urheimat''; scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant ( ...
and the phonology of Modern Hejazi Arabic. Notes: # The consonants and were voiced, in contrast with Northern Old Arabic, where they may have been voiceless # The glottal stop was lost in Old Hejazi, except after word-final ː It is still retained in Modern Hejazi in few positions. # Historically, it is not well known in which stage of Arabic the shift from the Old Hejazi phonemes , , and to Modern Hejazi , , and occurred. However, the change in and has been attested as early as the eighth century CE, and it can be explained by a
chain shift In historical linguistics, a chain shift is a set of sound changes in which the change in pronunciation of one speech sound (typically, a phoneme) is linked to, and presumably causes, a change in pronunciation of other sounds as well. The soun ...
→ → . (See Hejazi Arabic)


Vowels

In contrast to Classical Arabic, Old Hejazi had the phonemes [] and [], which arose from the contraction of Old Arabic [aja] and [awa], respectively. It also may have had short [e] from the reduction of [] in closed syllables: The QCT attests a phenomenon of pausal final long -''ī'' dropping, which was virtually obligatory.


Example

Here is an example of reconstructed Old Hejazi side-by-side with its classicized form, with remarks on phonology: Notes: * Basmala: final short vowels are lost in context, the /l/ is not assimilated in the definite article * Line 2: the glottal stop is lost in /qurʾān/ (> /qurān), proto-Arabic */tišqaya/ collapses to /tašqē/ * Line 3: /taḏkirah/ < */taḏkirat/ < */taḏkirata/. The feminine ending was probably diptotic in Old Hejazi, and without nunation * Line 4: /tanzīlā/ from loss of nunation and subsequent lengthening. Loss of glottal stop in /alarḍ/ has evidence in early scribal traditions and is supported by Warsh * Line 5: Elision of the definite article's vowel in /lʿarš/ is supported by similar contextual elision in the Damascus psalm fragment. /astawē/ with fixed prothetic /a-/ is considered a hallmark of Old Hejazi, and numerous examples are found in the Damascus psalm fragment and support for it is found as well in Judeo-Christian Arabic texts. The word /ʿalay/ contains an uncollapsed final diphthong. * Line 8: Old Hejazi may have had /huww/ < */huwwa/ < */hūwa/ < */hūʾa/ with an originally long vowel instead of /huwa/ < */huʾa/ as in Classical Arabic. This is supported by its spelling هو which indicates a consonantal /w/ rather than هوا had the word ended in a /ū/. * Line 10: The orthography indicates /rāʾ/ , from */rāʾa/ < */rāya/ < */raʾaya/


Grammar


Proto-Arabic

Proto-Arabic nouns could take one of the five above declensions in their basic, unbound form.


Notes

The definite article spread areally among the Central Semitic languages and it would seem that Proto-Arabic lacked any overt marking of definiteness.


Old Hejazi (Quranic Consonantal Text)

The Qur'anic Consonantal Text presents a slightly different paradigm to the Safaitic, in which there is no case distinction with determined triptotes, but the indefinite accusative is marked with a final /ʾ/.


Notes

In JSLih 384, an early example of Old Hejazi, the Proto-Central Semitic /-t/ allomorph survives in ''bnt'' as opposed to /-ah/ < /-at/ in ''s1lmh''. Old Ḥejāzī is characterized by the innovative relative pronoun ''ʾallaḏī'', ''ʾallatī'', etc., which is attested once in JSLih 384 and is the common form in the QCT. The infinitive verbal complement is replaced with a subordinating clause ''ʾan yafʿala'', attested in the QCT and a fragmentary Dadanitic inscription. The QCT along with the papyri of the first century after the Islamic conquests attest a form with an l-element between the demonstrative base and the distal particle, producing from the original proximal set ''ḏālika'' and ''tilka''.


Writing systems


Dadanitic

A single text, JSLih 384, composed in the Dadanitic script, from northwest Arabia, provides the only non-Nabataean example of Old Arabic from the Ḥijāz.


Transitional Nabataeo-Arabic

A growing corpus of texts carved in a script in between Classical Nabataean Aramaic and what is now called the Arabic script from Northwest Arabia provides further lexical and some morphological material for the later stages of Old Arabic in this region. The texts provide important insights as to the development of the Arabic script from its Nabataean forebear and are an important glimpse of the Old Ḥejāzī dialects.


Arabic (Quranic Consonantal Text and 1st c. Papyri)

The QCT represents an archaic form of Old Hejazi.


Greek (Damascus Psalm Fragment)

The Damascus Psalm Fragment in Greek script represents a later form of prestige spoken dialect in the Umayyad Empire that may have roots in Old Hejazi. It shares features with the QCT such as the non-assimilating /ʾal-/ article and the pronominal form /ḏālika/. However, it shows a phonological merger between [] and [aClose-mid front unrounded vowel, ː] and the development of a new front allophone of [a(Close-mid front unrounded vowel, ː)] in non-emphatic contexts, perhaps realized [e(Close-mid front unrounded vowel, ː)]. (citation?)


See also

*
Arabic language Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
*
Varieties of Arabic The varieties (or dialects or vernacular languages) of Arabic, a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family originating in the Arabian Peninsula, are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. There are considerable variati ...
* Hejazi Arabic *
Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...


References


External links

{{Semitic languages Arabic languages History of the Arabian Peninsula Languages attested from the 1st century Languages extinct in the 7th century