BY Dr. Munira A. Al-Azraqi
When we think about Arabia, Arabic often comes to mind. It is a language now commonly used across the Middle East and North Africa, and is officially adopted as the primary language of administration, education, and conversation in Saudi Arabia and various other countries. These include Oman, Yemen, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Chad, Djibouti, and Somalia. It is also used among minority populations in Turkey, Uzbekistan, Malta, Cyprus, and other countries across the world. Arabic is also a liturgical language for more than 1.6 billion Muslims, and is additionally one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
Arabic is one of a number of Semitic languages, which form a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Semitic languages spoken today include Aramaic which is spoken by relatively small communities mostly in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria; Amharic which is the national language of Ethiopia; Tigre which is spoken in Eritrea; and Hebrew. Many other members of this family of languages have disappeared over time. Akkadian, Phoenician and Eblaite are examples of extinct languages of the Semitic group. Akkadian is the earliest attested Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. It used the cuneiform writing system which originally used to write the Ancient Sumerian. Phoenician was spoken in what is today Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine whereas Eblaite, which was used during the third millennium BCE, was used by the East Semitic speaking populations of Northern Syria. Other Semitic languages that are still used but are considered endangered are Mehri and Jibali (spoken in Yemen and Oman). Semitic languages originated in the Arabian Peninsula. Over the course of millennia, these languages spread as different groups left the Arabian Peninsula, carrying their languages with them, into various parts of the Middle East and neighbouring areas.
Biblical, Greek, and Persian texts refer to the presence of Arabs in the geographical area now known as the Arabian Peninsula. Moreover, a number of references telling of dealings with Arabs from the northern desert regions of the peninsula bordering the Fertile Crescent was provided by Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions dated to the ninth century BCE. Many people settled in northern and central regions of the peninsula and became the ancestors of those Arabs who were historical witnesses of the birth of Islam[1].
The south-west region of the peninsula, on the other hand, was home to a high-level material culture during the second millennium BCE. Archaeological finds of temples, dams, and elaborate watercourses confirm its cultural complexity in the ancient world. The language of the south was clearly distinguished from the Classical Arabic employed by the Arabs in northern and central regions of the peninsula. It had also developed a script, which is referred to as Epigraphic South Arabian which is preserved on strong materials such as stone, ceramics, coins, and metals. It is proposed that this script was derived from a proto-Canaanite archetype. The South Arabian script, which originally comprised 29 consonants, adopted a right-to-left format, although there are inscriptions in which a boustrophedon convention is followed, with lines being written alternately in a right-to-left, left-to-right direction. In fact, different languages were used by people in the southern region of the peninsula, some of which are still used today in Oman and Yemen, and in the south of Saudi Arabia.
These southern Arabian states organized the ancient trade routes that crossed the western coast of the Arabian Peninsula and fed into its eastern areas. These routes connected the Mediterranean countries with the Far and Near East. The settlements of Mecca and Medina were both situated near the ancient trade routes, although in the case of the former it was also the home of the Ka’ba, where pilgrims gathered. Bedouin Arabs played a key role in the movement of commodities and goods, settling in oases and trading stations along the ancient routes. The numerous monumental inscriptions and graffiti found along the ancient trade routes and in northern and eastern areas of the Arabian Peninsula therefore use the South Arabian script. These also include inscriptions associated with the Northern Arabian languages of Thamudic, Lihyanite, Hasaean, and lastly Safaitic. Certain correspondences existed between the vocabulary of the northern Arabic languages and Classical Arabic of the late pre-Islamic period. The pre-Islamic Northern languages, which are often designated as Proto-Arabic, are theoretically considered somewhat distant ancestors of Classical Arabic. Some of the Thamudic inscriptions can be dated as early as the sixth century BCE, while the Lihyanite inscriptions have an early origin, dating to around the fifth century BCE.
The Nabataeans and the Palmyrenes are also identified as Arabs who developed a highly sophisticated culture. In 106 CE, The Byzantines annexed Petra (the capital of the Nabataeans), while Palmyra was destroyed in 274 CE. the Nabataeans spoke a variety of Arabic that was a precursor of Classical Arabic, despite employing the Aramaic script and language as their form of communication. This is noteworthy because the Arabic script that appears in later inscriptions was apparently based on a Nabataean–Aramaic model[2].
At the beginning of the 7th century CE, the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). It was described as Arabiyyun ‘Arabic’ and mubinun ‘clear’. It was the Classical Arabic, Al-fusha[3]. It is believed that the Qur’an is the best example of the Arabiyyah, the language of the Arabs, and that furthermore its style and language could not be imitated because of its clarity and correctness.
The Dutch Arabist, Kees Versteegh[4], claims that a language closely related to Classical Arabic was in use from the first century CE onwards. The scarcity of surviving epigraphic and paleographical evidence has led to suggestions that writing was not widespread among the Arabs of the late pre-Islamic period, and that the literary tradition must have remained essentially oral in character although the sophistication and maturity of the Classical Arabic idiom are not in dispute. Many scholars argue that the rudimentary nature of available writing materials discouraged the spread of writing.
Modern scholars are of the view that at the time of Islam’s appearance the Arabic language possessed a highly elevated diction. The stylistic skill displayed in the composition of the holy Qur’an serves as evidence to this fact. Poetry, on the other hand, was important for literary expression among the Arabs at the time. Its composition had reached significant levels of sophistication in the late pre-Islamic period. Verse was intricately rhymed and there existed an impressive range of poetic metres and thematic formats, which poets could use in their compositions. All of this implies that an insightful appreciation of literary refinement existed among Arabs at the time of the holy Qur’an’s revelation. The Qur’an deliberately has a distinct style and arrangement from that of classical poetry, declaring that it was not the “word of a poet”.
Early grammarians and philologists sought out the modes of phrasing and linguistic predilections of Bedouin Arabs, which were then used as one of the sources for the codification of Arabic grammar
After the rise of Islam, Arabs carried their religion of Islam and their language of Arabic out of the Arabian Peninsula into almost all of the Middle East and North Africa, west into the Iberian Peninsula and all the way east to China. Over time, as the incoming Arabs intermarried with indigenous peoples mostly in the Middle East and North Africa, the Arabic language became the prominent language of these regions. Moreover, Arabic established itself as the language of science and culture. From the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, beginning in Baghdad in 750, a large number of documents were written in Arabic, covering many aspects of the known world of science, culture and literature.
The influence of Arabic has been profound in many other countries whose cultures have been influenced by Islam. Arabic has been a major source of vocabulary for other languages. As a result of the contact Arabic has had with other languages over the past fifteen centuries, many languages of the world have borrowed words from Arabic. Some of the most heavily influenced languages are Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Kurdish, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Hindi, Malay, Maldivian, Indonesian, Pashto, Punjabi, Tagalog, Sindhi and Hausa and other African languages. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are also found in ancient languages such as Latin and Greek. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages, in particular in Spanish and Portuguese, owing to both the proximity of Christian European and Muslim Arab civilizations, as well as 800 years of Arabic culture and language in the Iberian Peninsula, referred to in Arabic as al-Andalus. Balkan languages, including modern Greek, have also acquired a significant Arabic vocabulary through contact with Ottoman Turks. Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, Kurdish in medieval times and contemporary European languages in modern times, mostly English and French.
With regard to the writing system, although Arabic inscriptions are much more common after the birth of Islam, the origin of the Arabic alphabet lies further back in time as mentioned above. The Nabataeans wrote with a highly cursive Aramaic-derived alphabet that would eventually evolve into the Arabic alphabet. The Nabataeans endured until the year 106 CE, when they were conquered by the Romans, but Nabataean inscriptions continue to appear until the 4th century CE, coinciding with the first inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet.
Recently, the Arabic alphabet has become one of the most widespread writing systems in the world, found in large parts of Africa and Western and Central Asia, as well as in ethnic communities in East Asia, Europe, and the Americas. While originally used to write the Arabic language, the Arabic alphabet has been adopted by other groups to write their own languages, such as Persian, Pashto, Urdu, and others.
There are two main variants to the Arabic alphabet in general: Kufic and Naskhi. The Kufic script is angular, which was engraved on hard surfaces such as wood or stone, while the Naskhi script is much more cursive. The Kufic script appears the older of the two scripts, given its prominence in the early history of Islam, and its use in the earliest copies of the Qu’ran. By the 11th century CE, the Naskhi script had appeared, however, and gradually replaced the Kufic script as the most popular script for copying the Qu’ran as well as other material and personal writings. It is from the Naskhi script that the modern Arabic script style developed. With the spread of Islam, the Arabic script was established in a vast geographic area with many regions developing their own unique styles. From the 14th Century onward, other cursive styles began to developed in Turkey, Persia, and China such as Nasta’liq, Diwani, and sini[5].
References
Al-Theeb, Sulaiman (200) Al-Mu’jam al-Nabati, Riyadh
Shah, MustafaShah (2008) ‘The Arabic Language.’ In: Rippin, A., (ed.), The Islamic World. New York; London: Routledge, pp. 261-277.
Rabin, Chain. (1951) Ancient West Arabian, London: Taylor’s Foreign Press.
Versteegh, K.ees (2001) The Arabic Language, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Arabic Script and the Art of Calligraphy, http://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/~/media/Files/Learn/For%20Educators/Publications%20for%20Educators/Islamic%20Teacher%20Resource/Unit2.pdf
[1] Mustafa Shah (2008), The Arabic Language
[2] See Al-Theeb (200) for more details about Nabataean lexicon comparison.
[3] See Rabin (1951p. 117-18) for more details about the different views.
[4] Kees Versteegh (2001), The Arabic Language.
[5] See http://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/~/media/Files/Learn/For%20Educators/Publications%20for%20Educators/Islamic%20Teacher%20Resource/Unit2.pdf
