Topic summary
Arabian tribe
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Tribes of Arabia.
Identities, settlements, and languages
The Nabataeans and Qedarites were Arabian tribes on the edges of the fertile Crescent who expanded to Northern Arabia from the southern Levant establishing Arab cities like Hegra in Saudi Arabia. Their inscriptions were predominantly in Aramaic, but it is assumed their native spoken language was a variant of Old Arabic, one of many Ancient North Arabian languages, which is attested in inscriptions as early as the 1st century, the same period in which the Nabataean alphabet slowly evolved into the Arabic script by the 6th century. This is attested by Safaitic inscriptions (beginning in the 1st century BCE) and the many Arabic personal names in other Nabataean inscriptions. From about the 2nd century BCE, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw reveal a dialect no longer considered proto-Arabic, but pre-classical Arabic. Five Syriac inscriptions mentioning Arabs have been found at Sumatar Harabesi, one of which dates to the 2nd century CE.