History of the Arabic alphabet
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The history of the Arabic alphabet shows that this abjad has changed since it arose. It is thought that the Arabic alphabet is a derivative of the Nabataean variation (or perhaps the Syriac variation) of the Aramaic alphabet, which itself descended from the Phoenician alphabet, which among others gave rise to the Hebrew alphabet and the Greek alphabet, (and therefore the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets, etc).
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An innovating alphabet
The Arabic alphabet's alphabetical order is different from in the Phoenician, Hebrew, Syriac, and Greek alphabets:-
Compare_Arabic_Hebrew_etc.png
Image:Compare Arabic Hebrew etc.png
(Greek waw = digamma)
The old alphabetical order, as in the other alphabets shown here, is known as the Levantine order. If the letters are arranged by their numeric order, the Levantine order is restored:-
Compare_Arabic_Hebrew_etc2.png
Image:Compare Arabic Hebrew etc2.png
(Greek waw = digamma)
(Note: here "numeric order" means the traditional values when these letters were used as numbers. See Arabic numerals, Greek numerals and Hebrew numerals for more details)
This order is much the oldest. The first written records of the Arabic alphabet shw why the order was changed.
Archaic model
The first recorded text in the Arabic alphabet was written in 512 AD. It is a trilingual dedication in Greek and Syriac and Arabic found at Zabad in Syria. This version of the Arabic alphabet used includes only 22 letters, of which only 15 are different, being used to note 28 phonemes:-
Aram_nabat_arab_syriac.png
Image:Aram nabat arab syriac.png
Origins
The Arabic alphabet evolved either from the Nabataean, or (less widely believed) from the Syriac. This table shows changes undergone by the shapes of the letters from the Aramaic original to the Nabataean and Syriac forms. Arabic is placed in the middle for clarity and not to mark a time order of evolution.
It seems that the Nabataean alphabet became the Arabic alphabet thus:
- In the 6th and 5th centuries BC, north-Semitic tribes immigrated and founded a kingdom centered around Petra, in what is now Jordan. These people (now named Nabataeans from the name of one of the tribes, Naba?u), spoke probably a form of Arabic.
- In the 2nd century AD, the first known records of the Nabataean alphabet were written, in the Aramaic language (which was the language of communication and trade), but including some Arabic language features: the Nabataeans did not write the language which they spoke. They wrote in a form of the Aramaic alphabet, which continued to evolve; it separated into two forms: one intended for inscriptions (known as "monumental Nabataean") and the other, more cursive and hurriedly written and with joined letters, for writing on papyrus. This cursive form influenced the monumental form more and more and gradually changed into the Arabic alphabet.
Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions
A fair number of Arabian inscriptions survive from the pre-Islamic era, but, very few are in the Arabic alphabet. Some are in the Arabic language, or its closest relatives including:-
- The Thamudic, Lihyanic, and Safaitic inscriptions in the north.
- The Epigraphic South Arabian (Sabaean, Himyaritic, etc.) inscriptions in the south.
- Both of these are in variants of the South Arabian musnad alphabet.
- Nabataean inscriptions in Aramaic and Arabic.
- Inscriptions in other languages, such as Syriac.
- Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet: these are very few; only 5 are known for certain. These mostly do not use dots, making them sometimes difficult to interpret, as many letters are the same shape as other letters.
Here are listed the inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet, and the inscriptions in the Nabataean alphabet that show the beginnings of Arabic-like features.
| Name | Whereabouts | Date | Language | Alphabet | Text & notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| En Avdat | Negev in Israel | between 88AD and 150AD | 4 lines Aramaic, then 2 lines Arabic | Nabataean with a little letter-joining | prayer of thanks to the god Obodas for saving someone's life |
| Umm al-Jimāl | west of Hauran plateau in Syria | roughly end of 3th century AD | Aramaic-Nabataean | Nabataean, much letter-joining # | also Greek |
| Raqush (this is not a place-name) | Mada'in Salih in Saudi Arabia | 267 AD | mixture of Arabic and Aramaic | Nabataean, some letter-joining. Has a few diacritic dots. | Last inscription in Nabataean language. Epitaph to one Raqush, including curse against grave-violaters. |
| an-Namāra | 100km SE of Damascus | 328-329 AD | Arabic | Nabataean, more letter-joining than previous # | a long epitaph for the famous Arab poet and war-leader Imru'ul-Qays, describing his war deeds |
| Jabal Ramm | 50 km east of Aqaba | 3rd or likelier late 4th century AD | 3 lines in Arabic, 1 bent line in Thamudic | Arabic. Has some diacritic dots. | In a temple of Allat. Boast or thanks of an energetic man who made his fortune. |
| Sakakah | in Saudi Arabia | undated | Arabic | Arabic, some Nabataean features, & dots | short; reading unclear |
| Sakakah | in Saudi Arabia | 3rd or 4th century AD | Arabic | Arabic | "Hama son of Garm" |
| Sakakah | in Saudi Arabia | 4th century AD | Arabic | Arabic | "B-`-s-w son of `Abd-Imru'-al-Qais son of Mal(i)k" |
| Umm al-Jimāl | west of Hauran plateau in Syria | 4th or 5th century AD | Arabic | similar to Arabic # | "This was set up by colleagues of 'Ulayh son of `Ubaydah, secretary of the cohort Augusta Secunda Philadelphiana; may he go mad who effaces it." |
| Zabad | in Syria, south of Aleppo | 512 AD | Arabic | Arabic # | Also Greek and Syriac. Christian dedicatory. The Arabic says "Allah's help" & 6 names. Here, Allāh is spelt phonetically as الاه. |
| Jabal Usays | in Syria | 528 AD | Arabic | Arabic | Record of a military expedition by one Ibrahim ibn Mughirah on behalf of the king al-Harith (presumably al-Harith ibn Jabalah (Aretas in Greek), king of the Ghassanid vassals of the Byzantines) |
| Harrān | in Leija district, south of Damascus | 568 AD | Arabic | Arabic # | Also Greek. Christian dedicatory, in a martyrium. It records Sharahil ibn Zalim building the martyrium a year after the destruction of Khaybar. |
Cursive Nabataean writing changed into Arabic writing, likeliest between the dates of the an-Namāra inscription and the Jabal Ramm inscription. Most writing would have been on perishable materials, such as papyrus. As it was cursive, it was liable to change. The epigraphic record is extremely sparse, with only five certainly pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions surviving, though some others may be pre-Islamic.
See http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/ for copies of these inscriptions (note: Islamic point of view on that web site.)
See http://home.student.uva.nl/rogier.visser/ac/nabatean.html for pictures (without transcriptions or translations) of the inscriptions marked # in the table.
The Nabataean alphabet was designed to write 22 phonemes, but Arabic has 28 phonemes; thus, when used to write the Arabic language, 6 of its letters must each represent two phonemes:
d also represented ð,
H also represented kh %,
T also repressnted Z,
ayin also represented gh %,
S also represented D,
t also represented þ.
: In the cases marked %, the choice was influenced by etymology, as Common Semitic kh and gh became Hebrew H and ayin respectively.
As cursive Nabataean writing evolved into Arabic writing, the writing became largely joined-up. Some the letters became the same shape as other letters, producing more ambiguities, as in the table at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Arabe_arch.png .
There the Arabic letters are listed in the traditional Levantine order but are written in their current forms, for simplicity. The letters which are the same shape have coloured backgrounds. The second value of the letters that represent more than one phoneme is after a comma. In these tables, ğ is j as in English "June".
In the Arabic language, the g sound seems to have changed into j in fairly late pre-Islamic times, and seems not to have happened in those tribes who invaded Egypt and settled there.
When a letter was at the end of a word, it often developed an end loop, and as a result many Arabic letters have two or more shapes.
b and n and t became the same.
y became the same as b and n and t except at the ends of words.
j and H became the same.
z and r became the same.
s and sh became the same.
After all this, there were only 17 letters which are different in shape. One letter-shape represented 5 phonemes (b t th n and sometimes y), one represented 3 phonemes (j H kh), and 4 each represented 2 phonemes. Compare the Hebrew alphabet, as in the table at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hebreu_hist_arabe.png .
(An analogy can be the Roman alphabet uppercase letters I and J: in the German Fraktur font they look the same but are officially different letters.)
Early Islamic changes
In the 7th century AD, the Arabic alphabet is attested in its classical form.
See PERF 558 for the first surviving Islamic Arabic writing.
In the 7th century AD, probably in the early years of Islam while writing down the Koran, it was realized that deciding by context in each case did not solve all the various ambiguities that resulted when reading Arabic text, and a proper cure was needed. Writings in the Nabataean and Syriac alphabets already had sporadic examples of dots being used to distinguish letters which had become identical, for example as in the table at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:D_r_nabat_syriaque.png .
By analogy of this, a system of dots was added to the Arabic alphabet to make enough different letters for Classical Arabic's 28 phonemes. Sometimes the resulting new letters were put in alphabetical order after their un-dotted originals, and sometimes at the end.
The first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also the first surviving Arabic papyrus (PERF 558), dated April 643 AD. The dots did not become obligatory until much later. Important texts like the Koran were frequently memorized; this practice, which survives even today, probably arose partially to avoid the great ambiguity of the script, as well as the scarcity of books in times when printing was unheard-of and every copy of every book had to be written by hand.
The alphabet then had 28 letters, and so could be used to write the numbers 1 to 10, then 20 to 100, then 200 to 900, then 1000 (see Arabic Numerals). In this numerical order, the new letters were put at the end of the alphabet. This produced this order: alif (1), b (2), j (3), d (4), h (5), w (6), z (7), H (8), T (9), y (10), k (20), l (30), m (40), n (50), s (60), ayn (70), f (80), S (90), q (100), r (200), sh (300), t (400), sh (500), kh (600), dh (700), D (800), Z (900), gh (1000).
The lack of vowel signs in Arabic writing created more ambiguities: for example, in Classical Arabic ktb could be kataba = "he wrote" or kutiba = "it was written". Later, vowel signs and hamzas were added, beginning some time in the last half of the sixth century, at about the same time as the first invention of Syriac and Hebrew vocalization. Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned by an Umayyad governor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf: a dot above = a, a dot below = i, a dot on the line = u, and doubled dots gave tanwin. However, this was cumbersome and easily confusable with the letter-distinguishing dots, so about 100 years later, the modern system was adopted. The system was finalized around 786 by al-Farahidi.
When new signs were added to the Arabic alphabet, they took the alphabetical order value of the letter which were an alternative for: tā' marbūta took the value of ordinary t, and not of h.. In the same way, the many diacritics do not have any value: for example, a doubled consonant indicated by shadda, does not count as two letters.
Some features of the Arabic alphabet arose because of differences between Koran spelling (which followed the Meccan dialect pronunciation used by Muhammad and his first followers) and the standard Classical Arabic. These include:-
- tā' marbūta: This arose because the -at- ending of feminine nouns was often pronounced as -ah and written as h. To avoid altering Koran spelling, the dots of t were written over the h.
- y used to spell ā at the ends of some words: This arose because ā arising from contraction where single y dropped out between vowels, was in some dialects pronounced at the ends of words with the tongue further forward than for other ā vowels, and as a result in the Koran it was written as y.
- ā not written as alif in some words: The Arabic spelling of Allāh was decided before the Arabs started using alif to spell ā. In other cases (for example the first ā in hāðā = "this"), it may be that the Meccan dialect pronounced those vowels short.
- hamza: Originally alif spelt the glottal stop. But Meccan did not pronounce the glottal stop, but replaced it by w or y or nothing, or lengthened an adjacent vowel, or between vowels dropped the glottal stop and contracted the vowels; and the Koran was written following Meccan pronunciation. The Arabic grammarians invented the hamza diacritic sign and used it to mark the glottal stop. hamza is Arabic for "hook".
Reorganization of the alphabet
Less than a century later, Arab grammarians reorganized the alphabet, for reasons of teaching, putting letters next to other letters which were nearly the same shape. This produced a new order which was not the same as the numeric order, which became less important because it was being competed with by the Indian numerals and sometimes by the Greek numerals.
The Arabic grammarians of North Africa changed the new letters, which explains the differences between the alphabets of the East and the Maghrib.
Adapting the Arabic alphabet for other languages
When the Arabic alphabet spread to countries which used other languages, extra letters had to be invented to spell non-Arabic sounds. Usually the alteration was 3 dots above or below:-
- Persian and Urdu: p : b with 3 dots below.
- Persian and Urdu: ch : j with 3 dots below.
- Persian and Urdu: g : k with a double top.
- Persian: zh : z with 3 dots above.
- in Egypt: g: j. That is because Egyptian Arabic has g where other Arabic dialects have j.
- in Egypt: j: j with 3 dots below, same as Persian and Urdu ch.
- in Egypt: ch: written as t-sh.
- Urdu: retroflex sounds: as the corresponding dentals but with a small sign like a Roman b letter above. (This problem in adapting a Semitic alphabet to write Indian languages also arose long before this: see Brahmi.
- In South-East Asia: ng as in "sing": kh with 3 dots above; or gh with 3 dots above.
related articles
Arabic alphabet
diacritics of the Arabic alphabet
Arabic numerals
abjad
Levantine order
writing
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