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Ri Al-Zallalah Inscription
The Rīʿ al-Zallālah inscription is a pre-Islamic Paleo-Arabic inscription, likely dating to the 6th century, located near Taif, in a narrow pass that connects this city to the al-Sayl al- Kabīr wadi. History The rock art the inscription is located on was first described by James Hamilton in 1845, although he did not include the inscriptions he saw in his publication. The inscription itself was only noticed with during the 1951–1952 Philby-Ryckmans-Lippens expedition by Adolf Grofmann, and, though he supplied a reading of the inscription, a copy was still not made. The Ṭāʾif- Mecca epigraphic survey led by Ahmad Al-Jallad and Hythem Sidky returned to the site in August 2021 and produced new photographs of the inscription, which was finally published with a new edition in 2022. Content The inscription reads:Transcription: ''brk- rb-nʾ'' ''ʾnʾ .rh'' ''br sd'' Arabic: ىركم رىىا اىا .ره ىر سد English: may our Lord bless you I am rh son o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paleo-Arabic
Paleo-Arabic (or Palaeo-Arabic, previously called pre-Islamic Arabic or Old Arabic) is a pre-Islamic Arabian script used to write Arabic. It began to be used in the fifth century, when it succeeded the earlier Nabataeo-Arabic script, and it was used until the early seventh century, when the Arabic script was standardized in the Islamic era. Evidence for the use of Paleo-Arabic was once confined to Syria and Jordan. In more recent years, Paleo-Arabic inscriptions have been discovered across the Arabian Peninsula including: South Arabia (the Christian Hima texts), near Taif in the Hejaz and in the Tabuk region of northwestern Saudi Arabia. Most Paleo-Arabic inscriptions were written by Christians, as indicated by their vocabulary, the name of the signing author, or by the inscription/drawing of a cross associated with the writing. The term "Paleo-Arabic" was first used by Christian Robin in the form of the French expression "paléo-arabe". Classification Paleo-Arabic ref ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taif
Taif ( ar, , translit=aṭ-Ṭāʾif, lit=The circulated or encircled, ) is a city and governorate in the Makkan Region of Saudi Arabia. Located at an elevation of in the slopes of the Hijaz Mountains, which themselves are part of the Sarat Mountains, the city has a 2020 estimated population of 688,693 people, making it the 6th most populous city in the kingdom. There is a belief that Taif is indirectly referred to in Quran 43:31. The city was visited by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, sometime in the early 7th century, and was inhabited by the tribe of Banu Thaqif. It is still inhabited to this day by their descendants. As a part of the Hejaz, the city has seen many transfers-of-power throughout its history, with the last being during the Saudi conquest of Hejaz in 1925. The city has been called the unofficial summer capital of Saudi Arabia and has also been called the best summer destination in Saudi Arabia as it enjoys a moderate weather during summer, unlike most of the Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wadi
Wadi ( ar, وَادِي, wādī), alternatively ''wād'' ( ar, وَاد), North African Arabic Oued, is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some instances, it may refer to a wet ( ephemeral) riverbed that contains water only when heavy rain occurs. Etymology The term ' is very widely found in Arabic toponyms. Some Spanish toponyms are derived from Andalusian Arabic where ' was used to mean a permanent river, for example: Guadalcanal from ''wādī al-qanāl'' ( ar, وَادِي الْقَنَال, "river of refreshment stalls"), Guadalajara from ''wādī al-ḥijārah'' ( ar, وَادِي الْحِجَارَة, "river of stones"), or Guadalquivir, from ''al-wādī al-kabīr'' ( ar, اَلْوَادِي الْكَبِير, "the great river"). General morphology and processes Wadis are located on gently sloping, nearly flat parts of deserts; commonly they begin on the distal portions of alluvial fans and extend to inland sabkhas or dry lakes. In basi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ahmad Al-Jallad
Ahmad Al-Jallad is a Jordanian-American philologist, epigraphist, and a historian of language. Some of the areas he has contributed to include Quranic studies and the history of Arabic, including recent work he has done on pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions written in Safaitic and Paleo-Arabic. He is currently Professor in the Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies at Ohio State University at the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures. He is the winner of the 2017 Dutch Gratama Science Prize. Biography Al-Jallad was born in Salt Lake City. As an undergraduate, he attended the University of South Florida. He entered Harvard University for his doctoral program in Semitic philology and received his Ph.D. in 2012. One of his mentors during his studies was Michael C. A. Macdonald from the University of Oxford and John Huehnergard from Harvard University. One of his earliest achievements was reconstructing a previously unknown Arabian zodiac from pre-Islamic Arabia. He i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monotheism In Pre-Islamic Arabia
Monotheism, the belief in a supreme Creator being, existed in pre-Islamic Arabia. This practice occurred among pre-Islamic Christian, Jewish, and other populations unaffiliated with either one of the two major Abrahamic religions at the time. Monotheism became a religious trend in pre-Islamic Arabia in the fourth century CE, when it began to supplant the polytheism that had been the common form of religion until then. Transition from polytheism to monotheism in this time is documented from inscriptions in all writing systems on the Arabian Peninsula (including those in Nabataean, Safaitic, and Sabaic), where polytheistic gods and idols cease to be mentioned. Epigraphic evidence is nearly exclusively monotheistic in the fifth century, and from the sixth century and until the eve of Islam, it is solely monotheistic. Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry is also monotheistic or henotheistic. An important locus of pre-Islamic Arabian monotheism, the Himyarite Kingdom, ruled over South Arabia, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jabal Dabub Inscription
The Jabal Ḏabūb inscription (also known as Jabal Ḏabūb 1) is a South Arabian graffito inscription composed in a minuscule variant of the late Sabaic language and dates to the 6th century, notable for the appearance of a pre-Islamic variant of the Basmala. It was found on a rocky facade at the top of the eastern topside of mount Thaboob in the Dhale region of Yemen and first published in 2018 by M.A. Al-Hajj and A.A. Faqʿas. Content The inscription is two lines long. The ''editio princeps'' reads:bs¹mlh , rḥmn , rḥmn , rb , s¹mwt rn , mfḍlk , wʾṯrn , mḫh , s²kmt ʾymn Dating The inscription is paleographically dated to the latest phase of South Arabian documentation, in the 6th century or early 7th century, but is considered pre-Islamic or paleo-Islamic given its lack of standardized Arabic phraseology known from early Islamic inscriptions, especially in the early Islamic graffiti. Interpretation and significance The ''editio princeps'' interprete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Umm Burayrah Inscription
The Umm Burayrah inscription (also known as the Abd Shams inscription) is a Paleo-Arabic inscription discovered in the Tabuk Province of northwestern Saudi Arabia. Among Paleo-Arabic inscriptions it contains a unique invocation formula, a prayer for forgiveness, and the personal name ʿAbd Shams (ʿAbd Šams). It was originally photographed and published by Muhammed Abdul Nayeem in 2000, and was recently redocumented by the amateur archaeologist Saleh al‐Hwaiti. Though no date is found on the inscription, one proposal places it in the late sixth or early seventh century. Text The following transliteration and translation comes from the 2023 edition of the inscription. The text can be divided into three parts: the opening formula, the personal pronoun "I" (''anā'') plus the personal name, and the closing formula.Vocalized transliteration bi‐smika Allāhumma anā ʿAbd Šams br al‐Muġīrah, yastaġfir Rabbahu Translation In your name, God, I, ʿAbd Šams, son of al‐Muġ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad and Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, elevated prose and oratory, and is also the liturgical language of Islam. The first comprehensive description of ''Al-ʿArabiyyah'' "Arabic", Sibawayh's ''al''-''Kitāb'', was upon a corpus of poetic texts, in addition to the Qurʾān and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ''ʿarabiyya''. Modern Standard Arabic is its direct descendant used today throughout the Arab world in writing and in formal speaking, for example prepared speeches, some radio and TV broadcasts and non-entertainment content. Whilst the lexis and stylistics of Modern Standard Arabic are different from Classical Arabic, the morphology and syntax have remained basically unc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Namara Inscription
The Namara inscription ( ar, نقش النمارة ' is a 4th century inscription in the Arabic language, making it one of the earliest. It has also been interpreted as a late version of the Nabataean Aramaic language in its transition to Arabic. It has been described by Irfan Shahid as "the most important Arabic inscription of pre-Islamic times" and by Kees Versteegh as "the most famous Arabic inscription". It is also an important source for the relationships between the Romans and the Arabs in that period. Differences from Arabic The inscription is written in the Nabatean Aramaic script, but there are ambiguities, as the script has only 22 signs (some with added annotations), and the Arabic dialect had 28 or 29 consonants. The script has ligatures between some letters that show a transition towards an Arabic script. Some of the terms used in the text are closer to Aramaic than Arabic; for example, it uses the Aramaic patronymic "b-r", rather than the Arabic term "b-n". Howeve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
6th-century Inscriptions
The 6th century is the period from 501 through 600 in line with the Julian calendar. In the West, the century marks the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire late in the previous century left Europe fractured into many small Germanic kingdoms competing fiercely for land and wealth. From the upheaval the Franks rose to prominence and carved out a sizeable domain covering much of modern France and Germany. Meanwhile, the surviving Eastern Roman Empire began to expand under Emperor Justinian, who recaptured North Africa from the Vandals and attempted fully to recover Italy as well, in the hope of reinstating Roman control over the lands once ruled by the Western Roman Empire The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pre-Islamic Arabia
Pre-Islamic Arabia ( ar, شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام) refers to the Arabian Peninsula before the emergence of Islam in 610 CE. Some of the settled communities developed into distinctive civilizations. Information about these communities is limited and has been pieced together from archaeological evidence, accounts written outside of Arabia, and Arab oral traditions which were later recorded by Islamic historians. Among the most prominent civilizations were the Thamud civilization, which arose around 3000 BCE and lasted to around 300 CE, and the earliest Semitic civilization in the eastern part was Dilmun, which arose around the end of the fourth millennium and lasted to around 600 CE. Additionally, from the second half of the second millennium BCE,Kenneth A. Kitchen The World of "Ancient Arabia" Series. Documentation for Ancient Arabia. Part I. Chronological Framework and Historical Sources p.110 Southern Arabia was the home to a number of kingdom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arabic Inscriptions
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; Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston, 2011. Having emerged in the 1st century, it is named after the Arab people; the term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula, as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece. Since the 7th century, Arabic has been characterized by diglossia, with an opposition between a standard Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige language—i.e., Literary Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Classical Arabic—and diverse vernacular varieties, which serve as First language, mother tongues. Colloquial dialects vary significantly from MSA, impeding mutual intelligibility. MSA is only acquired through formal education and is not spoken natively. It is the language of literatur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
