Gerry asked
> Does the possibility exist that perhaps the Arabic letters were
taken
> from the written Hebrew language, only mirror-imaged? But since I
have
> no dates for written Hebrew, I cannot substantiate.
Hebrew written during the Monarchy period was using a script almost
identical to the Phoenicians. Like Phoenician it was written from
Ledt to Right (like its daughter scripts, Greek and Latin). Aramaic
scripts, based originally on the same Phoenician alef-beth, was
written from the right to the left. As Aramaic became the lingua
franca of the western part of the Persian Empire, its script
influenced the Modern Israeli and post exilic Hebrew scripts.
A South Arabian script used at Saba and throughout Yemen, influencing
Ethiopic scripts seems to have developed independently, partly as a
result of early contact with either Phoenician or Aramaic scripts.
Arabic script has a completely different origin. Aramaic, with the
addition of a few Greek characters, became Syriac, used by
Monophysite
and Nestorian Christians to this day. Arabic language was used
intermittently in a Syriac adapted script from the 4th century AD,
long after Hebrew as a spoken or textual language had disappeared.
Mohammed, in his Quranic utterances, did not write Arabic, although a
number of his followers did write down some of what he said,
reputedly
on leaves and stones. It appears, on the basis of the evidence that
the pre-Islamic Arabia, memnonic arts were cultivated with some of
the
same skills associated with other pre or semi-literate peoples as
Homeric Bards, Celtic Druids or Polynesians.
It was during the reign of Caliph Othman third after Muhammed, that
concern was expressed about the death of a number of those who had
memorised the Quran in the civil wars that were springing up. He
ordered that an authorised text be produced and all others be
destroyed.
In the first centuries of the Islamic Era, different scripts
developed. A North Arabian script around Damascus was usually
accepted as the dominant one. Kufa, in Southern Iraq developed a
square script that was influential in the development of modern
Persian, whilst in the Magrib, another script developed. These
developments are somewhat similar to the different fonts used in
typefaces (Uncial, Majiscule, Miniscule etc).
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99jan/koran.htm
has an interesting discussion on the relation of script and scripture
in the case of Islam.
> Thanks, Dennis. Very illuminating. If Kamal Salibi is right, Arabic
> could almost be called a daughter language of Hebrew?
> Marc Verhaegen
>
> I too find it highly unlikely that Hebrew and Arabic split about
> 600BCE. As Mark says, Hebrew was virtually a dead language by this
date,
> and Arabic had yet to be born.
> What I mean by that, is that prior to the Quran, one cannot
speak of
> an Arabic language, just a collection of Arabian dialects spoken by
the
> various tribes.
That is not strictly true. Aribi tribes are recorded as desert
nomads
from the late Assyrian and Neo Babylonian times. In fact Nabidonus
is
supposed to have settled at the Tayma Oasis in Saudi Arabia. As
Camel
nomads, Arab nations developed in Roman times as the Nabateans (with
their capital at Petra), and at Palmyra in the Syrian desert.
Zenobia, the Queen of Palmyra even challenged the might of Rome.
Some
Arabs even became Roman Emperors (Eglabalus).
With the collapse of the Yeminite dam and the reversion of many
agriculturists to a pastoral way of life, the powerful Kindah
confederacy in Arabia drove two particular tribes in opposite
directions - the Qays and the Kalb emerged as traditional enemies,
and
on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, pre-Islamic
Arabia was polarised by dynastic and other allegiences in the
Qaysite-Kalbite wars. Because the Romans took one side as clients
while the Sassanids took the other side, it was a real cold war
situation that developed that Muhammed succeeded in ending, building
a
pan-Arab solidarity in the Dar-ul-Islam. All that survives of the
pre-Islamic Arab, apart from Nabatean and other inscriptions, are the
epic poems resulting from the collapse of Kindah and the wars and
love
songs that followed. These have proved popular down to modern times
(and may have even been a stimulus during the crusades, and via
Muslim
Spain, for the medieval "cult" of "courtoisie" - courtly love.
> Arabic is said to be very conservative, so the resemblances
probably
> go way back to common proto-Semitic. In addition, Jews were very
active
> in western Arabia before Islam. In fact, three of the five tribes
> settled in Medina at the time of the Prophet's migration were
Jewish.
> Muhammad went there to mediate in a feud between the two non-Jewish
> tribes. Much of the Quran must come from Jewish sources. And of
course,
> Abraham's child by Hagar, Ismail is the legendary father of the
Arabs.
> There were also various ephemeral client states that arose on the
> borders of the Fertile Crescent and the great Syrian desert, and
many
> trading links. So all in all, there are many possible reasons for
the
> resemblances in the languages and parallels in names.
The Jews that were present in Arabia at Yathrib (later Medina) spoke
Arabic like the Arab tribes of the city. For them Hebrew would have
been an extinct spiritual language, in the same way as it was until
it
was revived in modern Israel.
Once again, it argues for a late arrival, and a rather late splitting
of the Semitic languages. Too late to have influenced the
development
of PIE.
Hope this helps
John