Re: [TIED] Hebrew and Aramaic

----- Original Message -----
From: John Croft <jdcroft@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, 18 May, 2000 5:46 PM
Subject: Re: [TIED] Hebrew and Aramaic

I wrote :

> >
> > 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.
>

John replied :
> 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).
>

This begs the question of what language the Aribi spoke. The term "arab"
prior to the rise of Arab Nationalism in the 19th century, was (and is
still) used by the sedentary people of the region as a general term for the
desert dwelling nomads. The "arab" nomads don't use the term, but call
themselves by their tribal names.
The use of "Arab nations" here is anachronistic. These were ephemeral desert
kingdoms that arose, usually as client states, on the edges of the great
empires of Rome and Persia, and waxed and waned depending on the relative
strength and weakness of these empires.

> 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.
>

The Qais-Kalb thing was largely fictitious, depending on fabricated
genealogies and served mainly as a pretext for the pre-Islamic Arabs to
indulge in their favourite pastime - mutual raiding.
Muhammad didn't build a pan-Arab anything, as the concept just did not
exist. What he built was a community (Umma) of the faithful. This "Umma"
largely fell apart on his death, especially among the more remote tribes,
and was only reconstituted by force (the War of the Ridda or Apostasy) by
the Muslim army under Khalid ibn al-Walid. The Umma was then cemented by the
Conquest of Persia and Syria (al-fath) which followed on directly from the
War of the Ridda.
Pre-Islamic poetry was very important in the forging of Arabic. The poets,
who would recite their poems in competitions at the many religious festivals
in Mecca, and could expect enormous rewards, not least in prestige, created
a largely artificial poetic koine that was understood by everyone. Quranic
Arabic called on this language and its poetic conventions of rhyme,
repetition, assonance etc., combining it with the Quraishi dialect of Mecca,
to produce a language which was to know a huge literary flowering in the
centuries ahead. This literature consciously referred back to the Quran for
its grammatical and lexical basis. This is why I said that the Arabic
language cannot be said to have existed as such before the Quran.
I followed your link - very interesting, although I fear that western
criticism of the Quran will only be seen in the Islamic world as yet another
Christian attack . Nevertheless, whatever the historical truth is re the
Quran, this does not affect the linguistic aspect.

> 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.
>

I wasn't implying that the Jews of Yathrib spoke Hebrew. I was just making
the case that Jewish ideas, concepts, stories and myths were current in
western Arabia in Muhammad's time.


> 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.
>

Non sequitur.


Cheers
Dennis