Last updated: April 16th, 2025 at 9:51 am · Est. Reading Time: 2 minutes
Population groups living in Arabia acquired literacy in the first millennium BCE, as is evident by the inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia written in Hasaean script.1 Since then, Arabia has been rich in preserving the written record of ancient scripts. We know of a myriad of scripts, like Hasaean, Safaitic, Hismaic, Taymanitic, and Dadanitic, etc., from thousands of inscriptions left by the users of these scripts.
Some scholars believe that each of them represents an independent language, while others are of the opinion that they were different dialects of the same language. Whatever the truth, all North Arabian dialects/languages resemble each other and they are collectively given a convenient name of Ancient North Arabian (ANA).
South Arabia had its own scripts. Some of them were Sabaic, Ma’inic, Qatabanic, Hadramitic and Himyaritic. They all collectively form Ancient South Arabian (ASA).
In addition, there are thousands of Thamudic inscriptions still not allotted to any of the script groups.
We can know from the inscriptions how those languages were written, but we do not know how they were vocalized.
Ancient South Arabian languages, though from Semitic family, have no relation with Arabic and are totally independent. Ancient North Arabian languages, on the other hand, have similarities with Arabic. Several common words used in Arabic and Ancient North Arabian languages, and the grammatical similarities among these languages, suggest that they might be mutually intelligible. Actually, some scholars, like Jallad, suggest that Palaeo-Arabic and other Ancient North Arabic languages were not mutually exclusive. Rather, Paleo-Arabic could be a continuation of other Ancient North Arabic dialects.2
Further reading
M. C. A. Macdonald, “Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 11 (2000): 28 – 79.
History of Islam, Social Structure of Pre-Islam Arabs, https://historyofislam.org/social-structure-of-pre-islamic-arabs/
Footnotes
- Many of them are described along with drawings or photographs in: Albert W. F. Jamme, Sabaean and Ḥasaean inscriptions from Saudi Arabia, Rome: Istituto di studi del Vicino Oriente, 1966. See also: Livingstone, A. “Linguistic, tribal and onomastical study of the Hasaean inscriptions,” The Journal of Saudi Arabian Archaeology 8 (1984): 86-108.
- Ahmad al-Jallad, “The Linguistic Landscape of Pre-Islamic Arabia,” in The Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies, eds. M. Shah, M.A.S. Abdel Halim, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 111 – 127, specifically P 114.