Pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions are inscriptions that come from the

Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula (, , or , , ) or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At , comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the ...

dating to before the rise of Islam. They were written in both

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

and other languages, including

Sabaic Sabaic, sometimes referred to as Sabaean, was a Old South Arabian, Sayhadic language that was spoken between c. 1000 BC and the 6th century AD by the Sabaeans. It was used as a written language by some other peoples of the ancient civilization of ...

, Hadramautic,

Minaic The Minaean language (also Minaic, Madhabaic or Madhābic) was an Old South Arabian or Ṣayhadic language spoken in Yemen in the times of the Old South Arabian civilisation. The main area of its use may be located in the al-Jawf region of Nort ...

, Qatabanic. These inscriptions come in two forms:

graffiti Graffiti (singular ''graffiti'', or ''graffito'' only in graffiti archeology) is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written "monikers" to elabor ...

, "self-authored personal expressions written in a public space", and monumental inscriptions, commissioned to a professional

scribe A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of Printing press, automatic printing. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as ...

by an elite for an official role. Unlike modern graffiti, the graffiti in these inscriptions are usually signed (and so not anonymous) and were not illicit or subversive. Graffiti are usually just scratchings on the surface of rock, but both graffiti and monumental inscriptions could be produced by painting, or the use of a

chisel A chisel is a hand tool with a characteristic Wedge, wedge-shaped cutting edge on the end of its blade. A chisel is useful for carving or cutting a hard material such as woodworking, wood, lapidary, stone, or metalworking, metal. Using a chi ...

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ca ...

brush A brush is a common tool with bristles, wire or other filaments. It generally consists of a handle or block to which filaments are affixed in either a parallel or perpendicular orientation, depending on the way the brush is to be gripped during u ...

, or other tools. These inscriptions are typically non-portable (being lapidary) and were engraved (and not painted). Both graffiti and monumental inscriptions were also intended for public display. Pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions are an important source for the learning about the history and culture of pre-Islamic Arabia. In recent decades, their study has shown that the

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...

evolved from the

Nabataean script The Nabataean script is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) that was used to write Nabataean Aramaic and Nabataean Arabic from the second century BC onwards.pre-Islamic Arabian monotheism was the prevalent form of religion by the fifth century. They have also played a role in

Quranic studies Quranic studies is the academic study of the Quran, the central religious text of Islam. Like in biblical studies, the field uses and applies a diverse set of Academic discipline, disciplines and methods, such as philology, textual criticism, lex ...

. More than 65,000 pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions have been discovered. These inscriptions are found on many surfaces, including stone, metal, pottery, and wood. They indicate the existence of highly literate nomadic and settled populations in pre-Islamic Arabia. Most of these inscriptions are from North Arabia, where 50,000 inscriptions are known. The remaining 15,000 are from South Arabia.

Scripts

There are three scripts that were used to write down pre-Islamic inscriptions. # Ancient South Arabian (ASA): includes

, Qatabanic, and Ḥaḍramitic #

Ancient North Arabian Languages and scripts in the 1st Century Arabia Ancient North Arabian (ANA) is a collection of scripts and a language or family of languages under the North Arabian languages branch along with Old Arabic that were used in north and central Ara ...

(ANA): includes all

South Semitic scripts The South Semitic scripts are a family of alphabets that had split from Proto-Sinaitic script by the 10th century BC. The family has two main branches: Ancient North Arabian (ANA) and Ancient South Arabian (ASA). The scripts were exclusive to Ar ...

not covered by ASA, such as

Taymanitic Taymanitic was the language and script of the oasis of Taymāʾ in northwestern Arabia, dated to the second half of the 6th century BC. Classification Taymanitic does not participate in the key innovations of Proto-Arabic, precluding it from b ...

Thamudic B Thamudic B is a Central Semitic language and script concentrated in northwestern Arabia, with attestations in Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. As a poorly understood form of Ancient North Arabian, it is included in the Thamudic category. Mentions of th ...

Nabataean The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Levant. Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petr ...

(which evolved into the

) The ASA script was written in one of two forms, known as the monumental (''musnad'') and the minuscule (''zabūr'') form. The monumental form was created on hard surfaces such as bronze or rock. The minuscule form was created on perishable surfaces such as palm-bark or sticks and used for day-to-day purpose documents. The minuscule form was only discovered in the 1970s and was deciphered in the late 1980s. It is only known from

South Arabia South Arabia (), or Greater Yemen, is a historical region that consists of the southern region of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia, mainly centered in what is now the Republic of Yemen, yet it has also historically included Najran, Jazan, ...

. Unlike ASA, ANA is not a homogeneous group. The designation refers to a wide number of scripts representing many languages which have yet to be properly classified and distinguished.

Languages

South Arabian

is the best attested language in South Arabian inscriptions, named after the

Kingdom of Saba Sheba, or Saba, was an ancient South Arabian kingdoms in pre-Islamic Arabia, South Arabian kingdom that existed in Yemen (region), Yemen from to . Its inhabitants were the Sabaeans, who, as a people, were indissociable from the kingdom itself f ...

, and is documented over a millennium. In the linguistic history of this region, there are three main phases of the evolution of the language: Late Sabaic (10th–2nd centuries BC), Middle Sabaic (2nd century BC–mid-4th century AD), and Late Sabaic (mid-4th century AD–eve of Islam). The final Sabaic inscription discovered is from the mid-5th century AD, during the final years of the

Himyarite Kingdom Himyar was a polity in the southern highlands of Yemen, as well as the name of the region which it claimed. Until 110 BCE, it was integrated into the Qataban, Qatabanian kingdom, afterwards being recognized as an independent kingdom. According ...

. Some Sabaic inscriptions have also been found in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

, and these are classified as Ethiopic Sabaic. Sabaic and Arabic may have been mutually intelligible. Hadramitic is attested in hundreds of inscriptions over a millennium, and is known from the region of Hadramaut, or modern eastern Yemen. Qatabanic is more seldom attested, including on some pottery shards. Inscriptions in this language are found from the Qataban kingdom, principally at its capital Timna and the surrounding

necropolis A necropolis (: necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'' (). The term usually implies a separate burial site at a distan ...

, known from the

Ma'in Ma'in (; ) was an ancient South Arabian kingdom in modern-day Yemen. It was located along the strip of desert called Ramlat al-Sab'atayn, Ṣayhad by medieval Arab geographers, which is now known as Ramlat al-Sab'atayn. Wadd was the national ...

kingdom of the Minaeans, is first documented in the 8th century BC. Although the primary site of attestation is at the kingdom, Minaic inscriptions have also been discovered in northwestern Arabia and

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

, and this has been linked to a flourishing Minaean trade.

Nabataean and Arabic

In the Nabataean kingdom, both Aramaic and Arabic were used as spoken languages. The

Nabataean script The Nabataean script is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) that was used to write Nabataean Aramaic and Nabataean Arabic from the second century BC onwards.Nabataean Aramaic Nabataean Aramaic is the extinct Aramaic variety used in inscriptions by the Nabataeans of the Transjordan_(region), East Bank of the Jordan River, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula. Compared with other varieties of Aramaic, it is notable for ...

language, which was originally derived from

Imperial Aramaic Imperial Aramaic is a linguistic term, coined by modern Aramaic studies, scholars in order to designate a specific historical Variety (linguistics), variety of Aramaic language. The term is polysemic, with two distinctive meanings, wider (socioli ...

. Over the centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into a

Nabataean Arabic Nabataean Arabic was the dialect of Arabic spoken by the Nabataeans in antiquity. In the first century AD, the Nabataeans wrote their inscriptions, such as the legal texts carved on the façades of the monumental tombs at Mada'in Salih, ancient ...

intermediary, and this script evolved into Paleo-Arabic, which is when the

entered its recognizably current form in the pre-Islamic era. Arabic was spoken as early as the early 1st millennium BC attested by

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

inscriptions). Pre-Islamic Arabic is called

Old Arabic Old Arabic is the name for any Arabic language or dialect continuum before Islam. Various forms of Old Arabic are attested in scripts like Safaitic, Hismaic, Nabataean alphabet, Nabatean, and even Greek alphabet, Greek. Alternatively, the term ha ...

. Old Arabic was mainly written down in these scripts:

Safaitic Safaitic ( ''Al-Ṣafāʾiyyah'') is a variety of the South Semitic scripts used by the Arabs in southern Syria and northern Jordan in the Harrat al-Sham, Ḥarrah region, to carve rock inscriptions in various dialects of Old Arabic and Ancient N ...

Hismaic Hismaic () is a variety of the Ancient North Arabian script and the language most commonly expressed in it. The Hismaic script may have been used to write Safaitic dialects of Old Arabic, but the language of most inscriptions differs from Safaiti ...

Nabataean Aramaic Nabataean Aramaic is the extinct Aramaic variety used in inscriptions by the Nabataeans of the Transjordan_(region), East Bank of the Jordan River, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula. Compared with other varieties of Aramaic, it is notable for ...

, Nabataean Arabic, and Paleo-Arabic. Other scripts were used to write Arabic much more occasionally, including: the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

script, Ancient South Arabian scripts, and

Dadanitic Dadanitic is the script and possibly the language of the oasis of Dadān (modern Al-'Ula) and the kingdom of Lihyan, Liḥyān in northwestern Arabia, spoken probably some time during the second half of the first millennium BCE. Nomenclature Dad ...

Ethiopic

Six inscriptions in Ethiopic ( Ge'ez) have been found in pre-Islamic Arabia. All six appear to have been written in South Arabia during the reign of Kaleb of Aksum in the early 6th century, and it is Kaleb's speech that they all narrate. These inscriptions describe Kaleb's military invasion and conquest of Himyar and contain many religious references, including mentions of biblical figures like Jesus, Mary, and David, and several scriptural quotations (including

Isaiah Isaiah ( or ; , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "Yahweh is salvation"; also known as Isaias or Esaias from ) was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named. The text of the Book of Isaiah refers to Isaiah as "the prophet" ...

22:22–23,

Psalms The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament. The book is an anthology of B ...

65:16 and 68:2, Matthew 6:33, and with less certainty,

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Religion * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of humankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Bo ...

15:7).

South Arabia

Number and geography

There are 15,000 inscriptions known from pre-Islamic South Arabia. Of these, 7,500 have been digitized into the Corpus of South Arabian Inscriptions (CSAI) project. In total, the number of published inscriptions has been given as 10,000 or over 12,000. Of all South Arabian languages,

is represented by the largest number of inscriptions (6,500). The single most important site or building from which South Arabian inscriptions have been discovered is the Temple of Awwam, where over 800 have been found. Another 700 are known from the

Marib Marib (; Ancient South Arabian script, Old South Arabian: 𐩣𐩧𐩨/𐩣𐩧𐩺𐩨 ''Mryb/Mrb'') is the capital city of Marib Governorate, Yemen. It was the capital of the ancient kingdom of ''Saba’, Sabaʾ'' (), which some scholars beli ...

oasis. The number of inscriptions continues to grow rapidly: in the Jawf in South Arabia, the corpus of known inscriptions doubled roughly between the years 2000 to 2020, with over a thousand new ones coming to light. Geographically, the vast majority of these inscriptions come from modern-day Yemen. However, some inscriptions composed in the Ancient South Arabian script also come from southwestern

Oman Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia and the Middle East. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman’s coastline ...

, northern Arabia,

, and even the Aegean island of

Delos Delos (; ; ''Dêlos'', ''Dâlos''), is a small Greek island near Mykonos, close to the centre of the Cyclades archipelago. Though only in area, it is one of the most important mythological, historical, and archaeological sites in Greece. ...

, off the coast of

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. The minuscule ''zabūr'' script, only known from Yemen, is attested in about 900 published inscriptions, with a large number still unpublished. The South Arabian corpus of inscriptions is more extensive than that of

Ugarit Ugarit (; , ''ủgrt'' /ʾUgarītu/) was an ancient port city in northern Syria about 10 kilometers north of modern Latakia. At its height it ruled an area roughly equivalent to the modern Latakia Governorate. It was discovered by accident in 19 ...

Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...

Punic The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' ...

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

, and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

. It is second only in size to Akkadian, but remains behind in the field of Semitic studies due to a lack of accessible tools. These inscriptions suggest a copious literature once existed in the area, but it has not survived, likely because it was written on perishable materials.

Types

Most South Arabian inscriptions are short or fragmentary. The largest number are graffiti. On the other hand, several thousand more elaborate inscriptions. The longest of them, J 576+577, has over 1,300 word units. The longer inscriptions are characterized by their purpose and the formulae they utilize. They can be divided into the following categories: * ''Dedicatory or votive inscriptions''. Number around 2,500, half are in Sabaic. The content regularly has the scheme ''PN hqny GN X'', "PN has dedicated to (the deity) GN (the object) X". The formula is often followed by circumstantial content with a lengthy historic account concerning the cause surrounding the erection of the structure that the inscription is associated with. They are a major source for the reconstruction of the political history of South Arabia. * ''Building inscriptions''. Number about 1,000, with three fourths in Sabaic. The building inscriptions employ the formula ''bny'' or ''brʾ'', meaning "(NN) has built". * ''Public announcements of decrees and legal affairs.'' Numbering about 400 (70% Sabaic). Content is usually relates to social and religious life. * ''Commemorative inscriptions.'' Fewer in number than any other category. Among these are some of the longest "Res gestae", or ''things done'' types of accounts, produced by kings to document what was accomplished during their reign.

Context

All South Arabian languages, despite their linguistic differences, used a common monumental, alphabetic script with 29 consonants. The monumental script was designed to use simple geometric forms and be placed on texts for public display, mostly in sanctuaries, but also on house walls, altars, wells, irrigation works, and prominent places on rock outcrops. This public display, in turn, greatly shaped the content that was placed onto them. These texts can be extremely long and detailed and lay the foundations for understanding the history of the South Arabian kingdoms: they tell us about the organization of their polities, their economic and legal foundations, they offer an understanding of the social groups in the region, including kings, tribal leaders, functionaries, tribal members, and client associations. They document the gods worshiped and represent an invaluable source for the history of political events and the topography. The minuscule script, by contrast, was written on palm leaf ribs and other types of wood. They offer little resemblance to the monumental scripts. About 870 of them have been published, but only 350 translated, as the individual letters are ambiguous and the vocabulary remains mostly unknown. Minuscule scripts were not intended for public display, but instead for rapid notation and archiving, as their content shows. They pertain to everyday legal and economic life. They include certificates, receipts, writing exercises, and some cultic records. The minuscule inscriptions are comparable to Mesopotamian clay tablets or Egyptian papyri. The fact that they were written on wood makes it possible to chronologically organize them using

radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for Chronological dating, determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of carbon-14, radiocarbon, a radioactive Isotop ...

. The beginning of the study of the minuscule script is very recent, having been deciphered in the 1980s.

Poetry

To date, eight pre-Islamic poems are known from inscriptions discovered in Yemen. Summarized by Daum, Abdullah, and Mutahhar ibn al-Iryani:

"Six have been published: ZI 11 from Mārib, the Hymn to the Sun from Qāniya (dated by Stein to the late first century AD), a building text from Wadi Šurjān—so pronounced, not Širjān (van Lessen 24 = Jamme 2353), a cursive text from the Munich collection (X. BSB 187—Stein, 2010, p. 607ss.), an inscription from Ḫawlān al‐ Ṭiyāl (MS‐Šiǧā’ 2), engraved together with other inscriptions that deal with the ritual hunt, and inscription MA 16 from Mārib (Multhoff, 2021, p. 315s.). Two more texts from the Awām temple, discovered in 2004 by the AFSM, numbered MB 2004 I‐95 and MB 2004 SI‐8 (personal communication of Mohammed Maraqten), remain unpublished. The poems span the period from the fifth or third century BC to the third century AD."

One of the earliest is the Hymn of Qāniya, a first century poem addressed to the goddess Shams that is 27 lines long. Every line in the poem ends in the rhyme ''-hk''. Another poem comes from a Middle Sabaic vote inscription Zaid Inan 11 (ZI 11) from

. A rock inscription VL 24 = Ja 2353 from Wadi Shirjān contains a rhymed poem 10 lines long. The first line is introductory, followed by nine lines of text. Beyond South Arabia, a Safaitic poem has been discovered by Ahmad Al-Jallad. According to Al-Jallad, the poem is six lines long and is a war song. Aside from this text, only one other literary composition is known in Safaitic, which is a fragment of the Baal Cycle.

Limitations

Certain challenges exist in studying pre-Islamic Arabia with inscriptions. First, not all communities expressed themselves through a culture of inscribing their writings on rock. Second, the content of inscriptions is often formulaic. Nevertheless, many formula were used and the phrasings become formula (widely employed) because they help encode the beliefs and attitudes of the authors. Third, inscriptions can be destroyed by weather or human activity. Therefore, inscriptions known today may not be a full representation of those originally created.

References

Citations

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

DASI
(Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions)
DiCoNab
(The Digital Corpus of the Nabataean and Developing Arabic Inscriptions)
OCIANA
(Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia) {{Pre-Islamic Arabia, state=collapsed Epigraphy Inscriptions by region Pre-Islamic Arabia Pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions