| Old Arabic | |
|---|---|
| የበ𐪇Ⲟ | |
 Epitaph of Imru al-Qays I ibn Amr (328 AD) | |
| Pronunciation | [ʕr͇b] |
| Region | Northwestern Arabian Peninsula and the southern Levant |
| Era | Early 1st millennium BCE to 7th century CE |
Early form | |
| Safaitic Hismaic Dadanitic Nabataean Phoenician Arabic Greek | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | None |
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]
- ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2020), A Manual of the Historical Grammar of Arabic, 2020-1, Academia:38100372
- ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2018). "The earliest stages of Arabic and its linguistic classification". The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics. Routledge. ISBN 9781315147062. Academia:18470301.
- ^ 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.