Old Arabic

Old Arabic
የበ𐪇Ⲟ
Epitaph of Imru al-Qays I ibn Amr (328 AD)
Pronunciation[ʕr͇b]
RegionNorthwestern Arabian Peninsula and the southern Levant
EraEarly 1st millennium BCE to 7th century CE
Early form
Safaitic
Hismaic
Dadanitic
Nabataean
Phoenician
Arabic
Greek
Language codes
ISO 639-3None (mis)
GlottologNone

Old Arabic is the name for any Arabic language or dialect continuum before Islam.[1] Various forms of Old Arabic are attested in scripts like Safaitic, Hismaic, Nabatean, and even Greek.[2]

Alternatively, the term has been used synonymously with "Paleo-Arabic" to describe the form of the Arabic script in the fifth and sixth centuries.[3]

  1. ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2020), A Manual of the Historical Grammar of Arabic, 2020-1, Academia:38100372
  2. ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2018). "The earliest stages of Arabic and its linguistic classification". The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics. Routledge. ISBN 9781315147062. Academia:18470301.
  3. ^ Lindstedt, Ilkka (2023). Muhammad and his followers in context: the religious map of late antique Arabia. Islamic history and civilization. Leiden Boston: Brill. pp. 49–50. ISBN 978-90-04-68712-7.