Paleo-Arabic (or Palaeo-Arabic, sometimes called pre-Islamic Arabic or Old Arabic[1]) is a script that represents a pre-Islamic phase in the evolution of the Arabic script at which point it becomes recognizably similar to the Islamic Arabic script. It comes prior to Classical Arabic, but it is also a recognizable form of the Arabic script, emerging after a transitional phase of Nabataean Arabic as the Nabataean script slowly evolved into the modern Arabic script.[2][3][4] It appears in the late fifth and sixth centuries AD and, though was originally only known from Syria and Jordan, is now also attested in several extant inscriptions from the Arabian Peninsula, such as in the Christian texts at the site of Hima in South Arabia.[5] More recently, additional examples of Paleo-Arabic have been discovered near Taif in the Hejaz[6] and in the Tabuk region of northwestern Saudi Arabia.[7]
The term "Paleo-Arabic" was first used by Christian Robin in the form of the French expression "paléo-arabe".[8]
- ^ Lindstedt 2023, p. 49–50.
- ^ Nehmé 2010, p. 47–48.
- ^ Robin, al-Ghabbān & al-Saʿīd 2014.
- ^ Nehmé 2020.
- ^ Fisher 2020, p. 186–187.
- ^ Al-Jallad & Sidky 2021.
- ^ Alhatlani & Al-Otibi 2023.
- ^ Robin, al-Ghabbān & al-Saʿīd 2014, p. 1039.