![Southarabian somali](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Southarabian_somali.gif)
Old South Arabian
(or Ṣayhadic or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related
extinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if the language has no living descendants. In contrast, a dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any community, even if it is still in use, l ...
s spoken in the far
southern portion of the
Arabian Peninsula. They were written in the
Ancient South Arabian script
The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian 𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵 ''ms3nd''; modern ar, الْمُسْنَد ''musnad'') branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE. It was used for writing the Old Sout ...
.
There were a number of other Old South Arabian languages (e.g. Awsānian), of which very little evidence has survived, however. A pair of possible surviving Sayhadic languages is attested in the
Razihi language
Razihi (), originally known to linguists as "''Naẓīri''", is a Central Semitic language spoken by at least 62,900 people in the vicinity of Mount Razih (Jabal Razih) in the far northwestern corner of Yemen.Watson, Glover-Stalls, Al-razihi, & W ...
and
Faifi language
Faifi is a possible Old South Arabian language spoken by about 50,000 people in the vicinity of Mount Faifa (Jebel Fayfa) in the southwestern corner of Saudi Arabia, and across the border in Jebel Minabbih, Yemen. Along with Razihi, it is possi ...
spoken in far north-west of
Yemen
Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...
, though these varieties of speech have both Arabic and Sayhadic features, and it is difficult to classify them as either Arabic dialects with a Sayhadic
substratum, or Sayhadic languages that have been restructured under pressure of Arabic.
Classification issues
It was originally thought that all four members of this group were dialects of one Old South Arabian language, but in the mid-twentieth century, linguist
A.F.L. Beeston
Alfred Felix Landon Beeston, FBA (23 February 1911 – 29 September 1995) was an English Orientalist best known for his studies of Arabic language and literature, and of ancient Yemeni inscriptions, as well as the history of pre-Islamic Arabia. H ...
finally proved that they did in fact constitute independent languages.
The Old South Arabian languages were originally classified (partly on the basis of geography) as South Semitic, along with Arabic,
Modern South Arabian
The Modern South Arabian languages (MSALs), also known as Eastern South Semitic languages, are a group of endangered languages spoken by small populations inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen and Oman, and Socotra Island. Together with the ...
and
Ethiopian Semitic
Ethiopian Semitic (also Ethio-Semitic, Ethiosemitic, Ethiopic or Abyssinian) is a family of languages spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan. They form the western branch of the South Semitic languages, itself a sub-branch of Semitic, part of ...
; more recently however, a new classification has come in use which places Old South Arabian, along with Arabic, Ugaritic, Aramaic and
Canaanite/
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
in a Central Semitic group; leaving
Modern South Arabian
The Modern South Arabian languages (MSALs), also known as Eastern South Semitic languages, are a group of endangered languages spoken by small populations inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen and Oman, and Socotra Island. Together with the ...
and Ethiopic in a separate group. This new classification is based on Arabic, Old South Arabian and
Northwest Semitic
Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze A ...
(Ugaritic, Aramaic and Canaanite) sharing an innovation in the verbal system, an imperfect taking the form *''yVqtVl-u'' (the other groups have ''*yVqattVl''); Nebes showed that
Sabaean at least had the form ''yVqtVl'' in the imperfect.
Even though it has been now accepted that the four main languages be considered independent, they are clearly closely related linguistically and derive from a common ancestor because they share certain morphological innovations. One of the most important isoglosses retained in all four languages is the suffixed definite article ''-(h)n''. There are however significant differences between the languages.
The four main Sayhadic languages were:
Sabaean,
Minaeic (or Madhabic),
Qatabanic, and
Hadramitic.
Sayhadic had its own writing system,
the Ancient South Arabian Monumental Script, or ''Ms
3nd'', consisting of 29
grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system.
The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphemi ...
s concurrently used for proto-Geʿez in the Kingdom of
Dʿmt
D mt ( Ge'ez: ደዐመተ, ''DʿMT'' theoretically vocalized as ዳዓማት, ''Daʿamat'' or ዳዕማት, Daʿəmat) was a kingdom located in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia that existed between the 10th and 5th centuries BC. Few inscriptions ...
, ultimately sharing a common origin with the other
Semitic abjads
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowel ...
, the
Proto-Sinaitic alphabet
Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian ...
. Inscriptions in another minuscule cursive script written on wooden sticks have also been discovered.
The last inscription of these languages dates back to 554 CE, 60 years before the appearance of Islam.
Languages
Old South Arabian comprised a number of languages; the following are those that have been preserved in writing (the dates follow the so-called long chronology). Besides these, at least
Razihi may be a surviving Old South Arabian language.
*
Sabaean: the language of the kingdom of
Saba Saba may refer to:
Places
* Saba (island), an island of the Netherlands located in the Caribbean Sea
* Şaba (Romanian for Shabo), a town of the Odesa Oblast, Ukraine
* Sabá, a municipality in the department of Colón, Honduras
* Saba (river), ...
and later also of
Ḥimyar; also documented in the Eritrean kingdom of
Da'amot; very well documented, ca. 6000 Inscriptions
**
Old Sabaean
Old or OLD may refer to:
Places
*Old, Baranya, Hungary
*Old, Northamptonshire, England
*Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD)
*OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Mai ...
: 8th until 2nd century BC.
**
Middle Sabaean
Middle or The Middle may refer to:
* Centre (geometry), the point equally distant from the outer limits.
Places
* Middle (sheading), a subdivision of the Isle of Man
* Middle Bay (disambiguation)
* Middle Brook (disambiguation)
* Middle Creek (di ...
: 1st century BC until the 4th century AD (the best documented language)
***
Ḥaramitic: the language of the area to the north of Ma'īn
***
Central Sabaean
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
: the language of the inscriptions from the Sabaean heartland
***
South Sabaean
South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...
: the language of the inscriptions from
Radman and
Ḥimyar
*** "
Pseudo-Sabaean": the literary language of Arabian tribes in
Najrān
Najran ( ar, نجران '), is a city in southwestern Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen. It is the capital of Najran Province. Designated as a new town, Najran is one of the fastest-growing cities in the kingdom; its population has risen f ...
,
Haram
''Haram'' (; ar, حَرَام, , ) is an Arabic term meaning 'Forbidden'. This may refer to either something sacred to which access is not allowed to the people who are not in a state of purity or who are not initiated into the sacred knowle ...
and
Qaryat al-Fāw
Qaryat Al Faw ( ar, قرية الفاو) was the capital of the first Kindah kingdom. It is located about 100 km south of Wadi ad-Dawasir, and about 700 km southwest of Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, off ...
***
Late Sabaean
Late may refer to:
* LATE, an acronym which could stand for:
** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia
** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law
** Local average treatment effect, ...
: 5th and 6th centuries AD.
*
Minaean
The Minaean people were the inhabitants of the kingdom of Ma'in ( Minaean: ''Maʿīn''; modern Arabic ''Maʿīn'') in modern-day Yemen, dating back to the 10th century BCE-150 BCE. It was located along the strip of desert called Ṣayhad by ...
: (also called ''Madhabian''): the language of the city states in
al-Jawf − with the exception of
Haram
''Haram'' (; ar, حَرَام, , ) is an Arabic term meaning 'Forbidden'. This may refer to either something sacred to which access is not allowed to the people who are not in a state of purity or who are not initiated into the sacred knowle ...
− especially the later sparsely populated state of
Ma'in
The Minaean people were the inhabitants of the kingdom of Ma'in (Minaean language, Minaean: ''Maʿīn''; modern Arabic ''Maʿīn'') in modern-day Yemen, dating back to the 10th century BCE-150 BCE. It was located along the strip of desert cal ...
(recorded from the 8th until 2nd century BC). Inscriptions have also been found outside Ma'īn in the commercial colonies of
Dedan and
Madā'in Ṣāliḥ, in Egypt and also on
Delos. (ca. 500 inscriptions)
*
Qatabānian: the language of the kingdom of
Qatabān, recorded from the 5th century BC until the 2nd century (barely 2000 inscriptions)
**
Awsānian: the language of the kingdom of
Awsān, poorly recorded (ca. 25 inscriptions, 8th/ 1st century BC until about the 1st century AD). Indistinguishable from Qatabānian.
** Other varieties such as the language of the tribe of Radmān
*
Hadramautic (or Ḥaḑramitic): the language of
Ḥaḑramaut, with an additional inscription from the Greek island of Delos. 5th century BC until the 4th century AD, with ca. 1000 inscriptions.
Written records
Old South Arabian was written in the Old South Arabian script, a consonantal abjad deriving from the Phoenician alphabet. Compared with other parts of the ancient world, Palestine for instance, the number of surviving inscriptions is very high. Something in the region of 10,000 inscriptions exist. The Sabaean lexicon contains about 2,500 words.
Categories of written records
# Inscriptions in stone
## Votive inscriptions, which often preserve historical accounts of the events that led to the dedication
## Inscriptions on buildings: give the names of the person who commissioned the work and the historical circumstances among other things
## Laws and legislation
## Protocols and deeds
## Inscriptions written for atonement or repentance
## Graffiti on rocks
# Literary texts: if large numbers of any such texts ever existed, they have been almost completely lost
# Inscriptions on wooden cylinders (only Middle Sabaean and Hadramite). There are about 1000 so far; very few published, mostly from Nashshān, in Wādī Madhāb.
## Private texts
## Contracts and orders
# Inscriptions on everyday objects
The inscriptions on stone display a very formal and precise wording and expression, whereas the style of the wooden inscriptions written in the cursive script is much more informal.
Phonology
History of research and teaching
Although the inscriptions from ancient South Arabia were already known by the 18th century, it was
Wilhelm Gesenius
Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (3 February 178623 October 1842) was a German orientalist, lexicographer, Christian Hebraist, Lutheran theologian, Biblical scholar and critic.
Biography
Gesenius was born at Nordhausen. In 1803 he became ...
(1786-1842) and his student
Emil Rödiger who finally undertook the deciphering of the script, actually independently of each other, in the years 1841/42. Then in the second half of the 19th century
Joseph Halévy __NOTOC__
Joseph Halévy (15 December 1827, in Adrianople – 21 January 1917, in Paris) was an Ottoman born Jewish-French Orientalist and traveller.
His most notable work was done in Yemen, which he crossed during 1869 to 1870 in search of Saba ...
and
Eduard Glaser brought hundreds of Old South Arabian inscriptions, possible tracings and copies back to Europe. On the basis of this large amount of material
Fritz Hommel
Fritz Hommel (31 July 1854 – 17 April 1936) was a German Orientalist.
Biography
Hommel was born in Ansbach. He studied in Leipzig and was habilitated in 1877 in Munich, where in 1885, he became an extraordinary professor of Semitic languag ...
prepared a selection of texts in 1893 along with an attempt at a grammar. Later on the Sabaean expert
Nikolaus Rhodokanakis
Nicholas is a male given name and a surname.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Churches celebrate Saint Nicholas every year on December 6, which is the name day for "Nicholas". In Greece, the name and its ...
made especially important steps towards understanding Old South Arabian. A completely new field of Old South Arabian script and texts has been opened up since the 1970s by the discovery of wooden cylinders on which Sabaean has been written with a pen. The unknown script and numerous incomprehensible words presented Sabaean studies with new problems, and to this day the wooden cylinders are not completely understood.
In the German-speaking world, Old South Arabian is taught in the framework of Semitic Studies, and no independent university chair has been dedicated to Old South Arabian (or Sabaean) Studies. Learning Old South Arabian at least furthers the student’s knowledge of the characteristics of Semitic by introducing him or her to a less well-preserved example of the group. Students normally begin to learn the grammar of Old South Arabian and then they finally read a few of the longer texts.
See also
*
Ancient North Arabian
*
Old Arabic
*
Undeciphered -k language of ancient Yemen
Himyaritic is an unattested or sparsely attested Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Yemen, by the Himyarites, Himyarite tribal confederacy. It was a Semitic languages, Semitic language but either did not belong to the Old South Arabian (' ...
*
Modern South Arabian languages
The Modern South Arabian languages (MSALs), also known as Eastern South Semitic languages, are a group of endangered languages spoken by small populations inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen and Oman, and Socotra Island. Together with the ...
References
Bibliography
Short introductions and overviews
* N. Nebes, P. Stein: ''Ancient South Arabian'', in: Roger D. Woodard (Hrsg.): ''The Cambridge encyclopedia of the World's ancient languages'' Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004 S. 454-487 ''(Up to date grammatical sketch with Bibliography)''.
* Peter Stein: Ancient South Arabian. In: Stefan Weninger (Hrsg.): The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin 2011, , pp. 1042–1073.
Grammars
*
A. F. L. Beeston: ''Sabaic Grammar'', Manchester 1984 .
* Maria Höfner: ''Altsüdarabische Grammatik'' (Porta Linguarum Orientalium, Band 24) Leipzig, 1943.
*
* N. Nebes, P. Stein: ''Ancient South Arabian'', in: Roger D. Woodard (Hrsg.): ''The Cambridge encyclopedia of the World's ancient languages'' Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004 S. 454-487 (most recent grammatical overview with bibliography).
* Mounir Arbach: Le madhabien: lexique, onomastique et grammaire d'une langue de l'Arabie méridionale préislamique. (Tomes 1-3) Aix-en-Provence, 1993 (Includes a grammar, a lexicon and a list of Minaean personal names)
Dictionaries
* A. F. L. Beeston, M. A. Ghul, W. W. Müller, J. Ryckmans: Sabaic Dictionary / Dictionnaire sabéen /al-Muʿdscham as-Sabaʾī (Englisch-Französisch-Arabisch) Louvain-la-Neuve, 1982
* Joan Copeland Biella: Dictionary of Old South Arabic. Sabaean dialect Eisenbrauns, 1982
* S.D. Ricks: Lexicon of Inscriptional Qatabanian (Studia Pohl, 14), Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome 1989
Collections of texts
* Alessandra Avanzini: Corpus of South Arabian Inscriptions I-III. Qatabanic, Marginal Qatabanic, Awsanite Inscriptions (Arabia Antica 2). Ed. PLUS, Pisa 2004.
* Barbara Jändl: Altsüdarabische Inschriften auf Metall (Epigraphische Forschungen auf der Arabischen Halbinsel 4). Tübingen, Berlin 2009.
* Jacques Ryckmans, Walter W. Müller, Yusuf M. Abdallah: Textes du Yémen antique. Inscrits sur bois (Publications de l'Institut Orientaliste de Louvain 43). Institut Orientaliste, Louvain 1994.
* Peter Stein: Die altsüdarabischen Minuskelinschriften auf Holzstäbchen aus der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München 1: Die Inschriften der mittel- und spätsabäischen Periode (Epigraphische Forschungen auf der Arabischen Halbinsel 5). Tübingen, 2010.
{{Authority control
Languages attested from the 8th century BC
Semitic languages
South Arabia