The Origins of Arabic

arabic is according to estimates the fifth most widely spoken language in the world today it serves as an official language across the middle east and north africa even if it is spoken in a number of different dialects arabic also serves as a liturgical language within the religion of islam being the language of the quran and thus imbued with a lot of religious significance as such it is directly linked to divine revelation and has a significant role to play in history muslims across the world read the quran in arabic daily even if they don't understand the words themselves it goes without saying that arabic therefore has a lot of legend associated with it because it is the language of the quran god's unmediated speech according to the majority of muslims it has almost a divine status some muslims historically have considered arabic to be the one language with which god communicates with mankind and that arabic is the language spoken by the angels in heaven thus being somehow eternal but if we approach things from a historical and archaeological perspective looking at material that we can date study and scrutinize what picture emerges then about the origins and development of the arabic language where did it come from who spoke it and what can that tell us about the ancient world [Music] [Applause] [Music] arabic is a semitic language this means that it is closely related to other languages in that family including hebrew aramaic and syriac and egyptian for example and anyone who speaks these languages will know how many similarities and points of overlap there can be between them just look at a word like salam and shalom in arabic and hebrew for example both meaning peace so we know that arabic comes from the semitic family of languages and that it developed alongside other languages in that category but where does arabic in particular come from well this is a pretty difficult question to answer because languages are always changing and evolving now i am not a linguist and so i am venturing somewhat outside of my field of knowledge here more so than i usually am so even more so in this case than in my other videos i highly suggest and and recommend that you check out the literature and the sources that i will leave in the description for a more proper run through a proper studies in this field by actual experts many have tried to explain the origins of the arabic language there have been many mythical accounts for example in ibn al-khelbi the writer of the kitab al-assam or book of idols who we talked about in the episode about pre-islamic arabia he writes that it was the amalier giants who came from babylon who first spoke arabic and took it with them to arabia putting aside these mythical accounts one very pervasive theory and widely accepted idea is that arabic originates in southern arabia and around modern day yemen and then it later from that spread northward across the peninsula but in fact recent revolutionary scholarship has suggested that this is actually false indeed it seems that the situation was instead reversed but let's not get ahead of ourselves and back up a little bit as i mentioned in the episode about pre-islamic arabia and its religious traditions we are really witnessing a incredibly fruitful and interesting period in the academic study of pre-islamic rabia or ancient arabia generally there is huge new finds and discoveries being made all the time which is giving us new perspectives on this culture and this material shows that in ancient arabia there were a whole host of different languages spoken across the arabian peninsula in no way was there a universal arabic spoken across the region until basically after the arrival of islam indeed the languages that were spoken and written in what is today yemen was as far removed from modern arabic as hebrew is not only was there a myriad of different languages spoken but also a lot of different scripts or alphabets some of these alphabets can be read by scholars today while others remain undeciphered we have in southern arabia scripts like sabaic and hadramitik and in northern arabia there is the themudic languages so themudik bc etc and then there is also scripts like hismaik and sapphiretic and if we look at any of those alphabets none of them look anything like the arabic script that we know and love so this is the first picture we need to have in mind ancient arabia was a multilingual place filled with various languages and scripts in which those languages were expressed but where is our arabic then did it even exist in the ancient world some scholars have argued that arabic as a language really only arrives very shortly before the birth of islam and the prophet muhammad but this is really only true if we connect the arabic language itself specifically with the arabic script because indeed like when we talk about cultures or religions languages too are always constantly evolving it's always changing and if we accept that less narrow view of the arabic language things start to open up a little bit more and we can start to see traces of arabic further back in history no one language just arrives out of nowhere completed and then just stays that way instead languages are always transforming reacting to other languages interacting with neighboring ways and finding new ways of expression it would be foolish to expect to find classical arabic as we know it today back in 500 bc or whatever and the same goes for any other language but as i said if we accept this broader and more nuanced way of looking at language the door opens up a little bit more because indeed even as far back as the second half of the first millennium bc we find a few inscriptions and examples of language expression that does have strong characteristics of arabic and which probably is an earlier form of that very language the difference here is that these examples of proto-arabic are not written in the arabic script which wasn't invented yet but in various different alphabets it is only when we read them out loud so to say that we recognize its character as being essentially an arabic or close to arabic now interestingly all of these examples basically of the earliest forms or examples of arabic do not come from southern arabia as has been presumed before but is that all of the examples are from the northernmost part of arabia in places like syria and jordan now this makes a lot of sense of course since arabic is so closely related to languages like hebrew and aramaic which were languages that were widely spoken in that general region the more northern parts of arabia the middle east and the levant and so on in other words arabic is clearly developing at this time in a diverse environment both culturally religiously and linguistically and it's developing alongside its sister languages like hebrew and aramaic which are very closely related to it now this might be a good time to dispel a very common myth that the ancient arabs were illiterate indeed there are thousands upon thousands of inscriptions from this region that shows us that the arabs had a very high rate of literacy especially in the northern parts of arabia the scholar of languages michael mcdonald writes quote literacy seems to have been extraordinarily widespread not only among these settled populations but also among the nomads indeed the scores of thousands of graffiti on the rocks of the syria-arabian desert suggests that it must have been almost universal among the latter by the roman period it is probable that a higher proportion of the population in this region was functionally literate than in any other area of the ancient world so as i said we have a few examples of arabic or proto-arabic from very early on so close to a thousand bc but it's really only when we get much closer to the turn of that millennium around year one basically that we start to see a real abundance of examples of arabic especially in the period between the 2nd century bc to around the 4th century a.d there are thousands and thousands of inscriptions in northern arabia that contain early forms and examples of the arabic language most of these inscriptions are in the safayitic and hismaic scripts which were used primarily in southern syria jordan and the most northern parts of modern saudi arabia but even so the arabic we find in these texts are sometimes a bit different from the arabic that we know in its classical form these differences have led some scholars to argue that this language shouldn't be categorized as arabic but as one form of the wider group known as ancient north arabian for example one of the most distinguishing features of arabic is its use of the definite article al as in al-kitab meaning the book or al-quran meaning the quran but the majority of sapphiretic and his make inscriptions instead use the definite article ha similar to in hebrew like in the following example called li hamlet bin salem hallest so we can see that the the particular character characteristic form of arabic the different article doesn't really appear in most of the inscriptions even though there are examples of that too and this has led some scholars to say that it shouldn't be considered arabic but again if we accept the less narrow view of language and recognize that languages change and that they are diverse and varied and also look at all the other similarities to arabic that we find in these inscriptions i think it's safe to say that this is in some ways at least an earlier form of that language so that's the general picture in the earliest period arabic appears in northern arabia written by people who were most likely referred to as arabs as arab either by themselves or by others and this language was written in various different scripts in the region including sapphiatic hismaik and even greek for example sometime after this period it seems that the arabic language started to spread southward into the arabian peninsula it is in the first couple of centuries a.d that we see the first examples of the word arab being used in southern arabia although at the same time there is no evidence that the arabic language was spoken here until really the post-islamic period so with this general picture in mind the natural follow-up question is well okay the arabic language seemed to exist in northern arabia but when did the arabic script appear and when did arabic the language take the form that we know it as today to answer those questions it's time to talk about one of the most important factors in the development of the arabic language that is the nabateans the nabatean kingdom was an arab state that ruled in northern arabia and the southern levant from the 3rd century bc to the 1st century a.d when it was annexed by the romans the nebateans were a rich and flourishing culture that built magnificent cities and monuments they are most famous for their capital city petra in modern day jordan which was a major point in trade routes across the middle east in antiquity now the nebatean spoke arabic as their everyday language the kind of arabic that we can see in the ancient inscriptions which have talked about varied as it was but for all their official documents and business correspondences they used aramaic the kind of lingua franca of the region at the time and wrote this aramaic in a unique script now what happens here is that we see over the course of time how the nabataean script primarily used to write aramaic gradually started to be used to write arabic after the nabateans were conquered by the romans and their kingdom ended as such people still continue to write in the inhabitant script and when we look at this script especially as it develops and changes during the first couple of centuries a.d we see a script that really start to resemble the later arabic script take a look at these nebatean inscriptions from the early 4th century for example and once we move even further forward into history we can see how the evolving nabataean script not only is used further south in arabia it is spreading as his script used to write it's becoming more popular across the peninsula but also how it becomes a script for writing the arabic language proper and that by around the late 5th century or early 6th century we finally have examples of the arabic that we all know so well both in style and in script there is for example the famous hard on inscription from 568 a.d but notice how late this is in history by the time we get a complete arabic language and script we are only about a century before the life of the prophet muhammad now that isn't to say that arabic didn't exist prior to this as we have seen we have seen that arabic did exist but that it evolved and changed and existed in various different forms it is really only this form of the language that had developed by the early 6th century that was later canonized into official classical arabic but given the fact that we've seen arabic and the language evolved so much over the centuries and the millennia how come that this particular form was the one that survived and this is of course where the religion of islam makes its very dramatic entrance as we all know the quran is in arabic being god's word and divine revelation according to muslims its contents had immediate sacred status it was important for reciters and readers of the quran to be able to pronounce and understand it properly and to safeguard the language that it contains it is for this reason that we see grammarians in the post-islamic period starting to create a system of grammar linguistic rules and other technical aspects of the language when it comes to the arabic script in particular the situation is similar the earliest manuscripts of the quran did not contain any short vowels it basically only had consonants the short vowels of the arabic language known as fatha kasra and dhamma and corresponds to the sounds respectively was developed in the centuries after the quran was written down or had been revealed in order to fix its pronunciation and meaning since small vowel differences can change the meaning of words and whole sentences so in a lot of ways the quran is the primary source for the classical arabic language it was the quran and its language that determined what became official arabic and has served as its kind of gold standard ever since through the quran the post-islamic arabs took a language that was diverse and evolving and created a system of grammar that remains basically identical today anyone who understands standard arabic or fusha can pick up the quran and read it without any major things like this so the arrival of the religion of islam played a central and important role in the development of the arabic language which is also what justifies me making a video about it on this channel we can also of course see how this event the prophet muhammad and the revelation of the quran affected the geographical spread of the language as well it seems that it was only after the prophet muhammad and his successors had unified arabia into a unified state that we see the arabic language being adopted universally across the peninsula it may even be after this fact that the whole identity of arab became a universal point of identification for people in this region and of course with the later conquests of the rashidun and umayyad caliphates the geographical spread of arabic became even more significant it is said that it was the umayyad caliph abdul malik who made arabic the official language of the empire thus beginning the process that created the situation as it stands today with arabic being spoken as a primary language across the middle east north africa and in the middle ages in southern spain but despite the systematization of the arabic language and its script as well as its official use across the empire it seems that some of the native languages and scripts that were used in pre-islamic periods in the in arabia continued to exist and perhaps also be used for a while afterwards a couple of centuries in the post-islamic period thus even though the quranic arabic became widespread as an official arabic the assimilation was a gradual one even in the heart of the peninsula of course the linguistic map is diverse today just as it was in antiquity and arabic as most of you probably know is spoken in a variety of different dialects across the arabic speaking world to the point that a person from iraq often has a very hard time understanding someone from morocco and vice versa but the official arabic of the quran the liturgical language of islam and official language of the early caliphates remain in what is known as fusha or standard arabic this is a form of the language that basically everyone learns in school at least in arabic speaking countries some newspapers use fosa in in their in their papers poetry is written in it and some news channels like al jazeera also use it but it's never really spoken in everyday conversation still the fact that fusa has survived even to this day even though its modern standard arabic form has a lot of loan words and and innovations to it the core aspect of language survives pretty much intact which shows you the central importance and role played by the quran and the religion of islam for the general development of the whole arabic language in this episode we have gone on a journey from antiquity up until the modern day we have seen how the arabic language started in the northern parts of arabia probably been spoken here and also written in various different alphabets and scripts including hismaik safayitik and even scripts like the greeks script it then spread further south into the arabian peninsula as far as places like hijaz and gradually became more widespread in the region and just more popular as a language we also saw how the nabataean kingdom and their official script that was used to write administrative documents in aramaic gradually became used to write the arabic language even after the nebatean kingdom ended and that as it developed over the first few centuries a.d this script eventually became what we know as the arabic script today finally we saw that by the 6th century the final quote-unquote form of arabic had developed a form of arabic that was expressed in the sacred scripture of islam and thus canonized and you could say frozen into its classical form even if it always continues to evolve of course clearly then arabic is a language that has a long and deep history its mysterious yet fascinating origins can help us better appreciate the ways that it persists even today remaining one of the most widely spoken and significant languages in the world i hope you like this video if you want to support this channel and its attempts to give you free and scholarly uh content about the world's different religious traditions you can support us on patreon through a monthly donation or three one-time donation on paypal you are also free of course to subscribe like and leave a comment and i will see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 846,812

Keywords: The Origins of Arabic, Arabic, Arabic language, Early Arabic, Arabic Islam, Arabic Qur'an, Development of Arabic, Arabic History, History of Arabia, Arabic documentary, Arabic explained, Arabic alphabet, Semitic language, Semitic languages, Ancient Arabia, Ancient middle east, arabic language and islam, arabic language history, ancient world

Id: jWTB59TrNqQ

Length: 21min 40sec (1300 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/1Dragon_]

a lot of words like Medina are from hebrew