Old Hijazi Arabic Explained

Old Hejazi Arabic
Also Known As:Qurayshi Arabic
Region:Hejaz (Saudi Arabia)
Era:1st century to 7th century
Familycolor:Afro-Asiatic
Fam1:Afroasiatic
Fam2:Semitic
Fam3:West Semitic
Fam4:Central Semitic
Fam5:North Arabian?
Fam6:Arabic
Fam7:Old Arabic
Script:Dadanitic, Arabic, Greek
Iso3:none
Imagescale:1.45
Glotto:none

Old Hijazi, is a variety of Old Arabic attested in Hejaz (the western part of Saudi Arabia) from about the 1st century to the 7th century. It is the variety thought to underlie the Quranic Consonantal Text (QCT) and in its later iteration was the prestige spoken and written register of Arabic in the Umayyad Caliphate.

Classification

Old Ḥijāzī is characterized by the innovative relative pronoun ʾallaḏī (Arabic: ٱلَّذِي), ʾallatī (Arabic: ٱلَّتِي), etc., which is attested once in the inscription JSLih 384 and is the common form in the QCT,[1] as opposed to the form - 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 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.

The emphatic interdental and lateral were realized as voiced, in contrast to Northern Old Arabic, where they were voiceless.

Phonology

Consonants

 ! rowspan="2"
LabialDentalDenti-alveolarPalatalVelarPharyngealGlottal
 plain emphatic plain emphatic
Nasalpronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/     
Stopvoicelesspronounced as /link/ ف pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ ق pronounced as /link/1
voicedpronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ ج  
Fricativevoicelesspronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/ʃpronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/
voiced pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/ðˤ pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/ 
Lateralpronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ ض
Flap / Trill  pronounced as /link/     
Approximant  pronounced as /link/  pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/  
The sounds in the chart above are based on the constructed phonology of Proto-Semitic and the phonology of Modern Hejazi Arabic.

Notes:

  1. The consonants (ض) and (ظ) were voiced, in contrast with Northern Old Arabic, where they may have been voiceless[2]
  2. The glottal stop pronounced as //ʔ// was lost in Old Hejazi, except after word-final [aː].[3] It is still retained in Modern Hejazi in few positions.
  3. Historically, it is not well known in which stage of Arabic the shift from the Old Hejazi phonemes pronounced as //p//, pronounced as //g//, pronounced as //q// and pronounced as //ɮˤ// to Modern Hejazi pronounced as //f// (ف), pronounced as //d͡ʒ// (ج), pronounced as //g// (ق) and pronounced as //dˤ// (ض) occurred. However, the change in pronounced as //g// and pronounced as //kʼ ~ q// has been attested as early as the eighth century CE, and it can be explained by a chain shift pronounced as // kʼ ~ q // → pronounced as //g// → pronounced as //d͡ʒ//.[4] (See Hejazi Arabic)

Vowels

! colspan="2"
ShortLong
FrontBackFrontBack
Closepronounced as /i/pronounced as /u/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/
Mid(e)pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/
Openpronounced as /a/pronounced as /link/
In contrast to Classical Arabic, Old Hejazi had the phonemes [{{IPA link|eː}}] and [{{IPA link|oː}}], which arose from the contraction of Old Arabic [aja] and [awa], respectively. It also may have had short [e] from the reduction of [{{IPA link|eː}}] in closed syllables:[5]

The QCT attests a phenomenon of pausal final long -ī dropping, which was virtually obligatory.[6]

QCT (Old Hejazi)!Classical Arabic
  • -awv-
dáʿawa دعاdáʿā dáʿā
sánawun سناsánāsánan
nájawatun نجوهnajáwatu > najṓh nájātun
nájawatu-ka نجاتكnajawátu-ka > najātu-k nájātu-ka
  • -ajv-
hádaya هدىhádēhádā
fátayun فتىfátēfátan
túqayatunتقىهtuqáyatu > tuqḗh túqātun
túqayati-hu تقاتهtuqayáti-hu > tuqāt́i-h tuqāt́i-hi

Example

Here is an example of reconstructed Old Hejazi side-by-side with its classicized form, with remarks on phonology:

Notes:

Grammar

Proto-Arabic

Nominal inflection!!Triptote!Diptote!Dual!Masculine Plural!Feminine Plural
Nominative-un-u-āni-ūna-ātun
Accusative-an-a-ayni-īna-ātin
Genitive-in
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)

Triptote!Diptote!Dual!Masculine Plural!Feminine Plural
Nominative-∅ʾal-...-∅-(ʾal-)...-ān(ʾal-)...-ūn(ʾal-)...-āt
Accusative(ʾal-)...-ayn(ʾal-)...-īn
Genitive-∅
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.[1]

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

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 [{{IPA link|eː}}] and [a[[Close-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]])].

See also

Notes and References

  1. Book: Al-Jallad, Ahmad. An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions. 2015-03-27. Brill. 9789004289826. 48.
  2. Al-Jallad. Ahmad. On the Voiceless Reflex of *ṣ́ and *ṯ ̣ in pre-Hilalian Maghrebian Arabic. Journal of Arabic Linguistics . 62 . 88–95. 2015. en.
  3. Putten. Marijn van. The *ʔ in the Quranic Consonantal Text - Presented at NACAL45 (9-11 June 2017, Leiden). en.
  4. Book: Cantineau, Jean. Cours de phonétique arabe. Libraire C. Klincksieck. 1960. Paris, France. 67. fr.
  5. Putten. Marijn van. The development of the triphthongs in Quranic and Classical Arabic . Arabian Epigraphic Notes . 3 . 2017 . 47–74. en.
  6. Stokes. Phillip. Putten. Marijn van. M. Van Putten & P.W. Stokes - Case in the Quranic Consonantal Text. en.
  7. Al-Jallad. Ahmad. One wāw to rule them all: the origins and fate of wawation in Arabic and its orthography. en.
  8. Web site: The people of the Thicket: Evidence for multiple scribes of a single Archetypal Quranic Text. Phoenix's blog. 2017-06-01.
  9. Web site: Can you see the verb 'to see'?. Phoenix's blog. 2017-08-14.