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Old Hijazi: Difference between revisions
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It’s been taken for granted by both academics and Muslim scholars that Classical Arabic was the language of the Quran and Arabs before Islam and during the first three centuries of Islam. This is reflected in the way Muslims recite the Quran and Hadith today. It’s even reflected in all Arabic historical movies and TV works depicting the early centuries of Islam such as the movie “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDVe6EZ4-Xo Al-Risālah]” about the life of Muhammad where all the actors are shown speaking in Classical Arabic with its two main hallmarks: full case inflection (final short vowels and nunation or Tanwīn) and full use of the Hamzah (glottal stop). This belief is reinforced by the popular claim by Muslim scholars that the readings tradition of the Quran, which the Quran is recited based on, were transmitted to us verbatim from the mouth of Muhammad. And all of these readings employ a full case system and heavily use the Hamzah. But recent academic research pioneered by Ahmad Al-Jallad of Ohio University and Marijn Van Putten of the University of Leiden, shows that the Quran was actually composed in a different language, which they call Old Hijazi, the ancient vernacular dialect of the Hijaz region which includes Makkah and Medina. | It’s been taken for granted by both academics and Muslim scholars that Classical Arabic was the language of the Quran and Arabs before Islam and during the first three centuries of Islam. This is reflected in the way Muslims recite the Quran and Hadith today. It’s even reflected in all Arabic historical movies and TV works depicting the early centuries of Islam such as the movie “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDVe6EZ4-Xo Al-Risālah]” about the life of Muhammad where all the actors are shown speaking in Classical Arabic with its two main hallmarks: full case inflection (final short vowels and nunation or Tanwīn) and full use of the Hamzah (glottal stop). This belief is reinforced by the popular claim by Muslim scholars that the readings tradition of the Quran, which the Quran is recited based on, were transmitted to us verbatim from the mouth of Muhammad. And all of these readings employ a full case system and heavily use the Hamzah. But recent academic research pioneered by Ahmad Al-Jallad of Ohio University and Marijn Van Putten of the University of Leiden, shows that the Quran was actually composed in a different language, which they call Old Hijazi, the ancient vernacular dialect of the Hijaz region which includes Makkah and Medina. | ||
Old Hijazi differs markedly in pronunciation and grammar from the later classical Arabic that is imposed upon the Quran. This imposition led to the mismatch between the pronunciation and the text, which means the Quran was originally written phonetically in Old Hijazi. Old Hijazi sounds more like most modern Arabic vernacular as most modern Arabic dialects are completely devoid of the case system and devoid of the Hamzah to varying degrees. | Old Hijazi differs markedly in pronunciation and grammar from the later classical Arabic that is imposed upon the Quran. This was due to the formally Hijazi text being analyzed and read in a Southern Mesopotamian environment with different norms influencing its reading. This imposition led to the mismatch between the pronunciation and the text, which means the Quran was originally written phonetically in Old Hijazi. Old Hijazi sounds more like most modern Arabic vernacular as most modern Arabic dialects are completely devoid of the case system and devoid of the Hamzah to varying degrees. | ||
The characteristics of Old Hijazi have been revealed by (1) early Arabic texts written in Greek and Hebrew letters which showed what the early defective Arabic script couldn’t, (2) the investigation into the Quranic Consonantal Text (QCT) which is the underlying consonantal skeleton (in Arabic, rasm رسم) of the Qur'an that originally lacked dots and other signs. | The characteristics of Old Hijazi have been revealed by (1) early Arabic texts written in Greek and Hebrew letters which showed what the early defective Arabic script couldn’t, (2) the investigation into the Quranic Consonantal Text (QCT) which is the underlying consonantal skeleton (in Arabic, rasm رسم) of the Qur'an that originally lacked dots and other signs. | ||
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== Main characteristics of Old Hijazi == | == Main characteristics of Old Hijazi == | ||
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The careful and dispassionate study of Arabia’s ancient epigraphy reveals a picture quite dissimilar from that presented in Muslim historical sources. The Arabic of the grammarians is not met with; instead, the peninsula displays a dazzling degree of linguistic diversity. The Old Arabic dialects differ in ways not recorded by the grammarians, while features that figure prominently in the grammatical manuals are nowhere to be found. Consider nunation (tanwīn)—this is a standard feature of Classical Arabic, but in the consonantal South Semitic writing systems, Greek transcriptions, and the Graeco-Arabic inscription A1, the feature is completely absent. While the absence of nunation in Arabic orthography is usually written off as a convention, there is no reason to assume such conventions when Arabic is written in other scripts, much less before the development of the Arabic script itself. These attestations can mean only one thing: nunation had disappeared in most forms of Old Arabic.}} | The careful and dispassionate study of Arabia’s ancient epigraphy reveals a picture quite dissimilar from that presented in Muslim historical sources. The Arabic of the grammarians is not met with; instead, the peninsula displays a dazzling degree of linguistic diversity. The Old Arabic dialects differ in ways not recorded by the grammarians, while features that figure prominently in the grammatical manuals are nowhere to be found. Consider nunation (tanwīn)—this is a standard feature of Classical Arabic, but in the consonantal South Semitic writing systems, Greek transcriptions, and the Graeco-Arabic inscription A1, the feature is completely absent. While the absence of nunation in Arabic orthography is usually written off as a convention, there is no reason to assume such conventions when Arabic is written in other scripts, much less before the development of the Arabic script itself. These attestations can mean only one thing: nunation had disappeared in most forms of Old Arabic.}} | ||
=== Why the imposition occurred === | |||
The Hijazi Arabic text of the Qur'an was analyzed and read well outside of the Hijaz after Muhammad and his companions died, particularly in areas covered by modern-day Iraq (where most early Islamic texts (including Quranic exegesis, historical chronicles, genealogical works, and legal texts) emerge from between 750-1000 BCE)<ref>Miller, Nathaniel A. (2024). ''The Emergence of Arabic Poetry: From Regional Identities to Islamic Canonization. pp. 7.'' Kinde Edition. United States: University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated.</ref>, where Nadji linguistic influence reshaped these traditions, transforming a Hijazi text into what became known as “Classical Arabic,” based on grammatical norms developed in Southern Mesopotamia rather than its original environment. | |||
{{Quote|Miller, Nathaniel. (2024). <i>The Emergence of Arabic Poetry: From Regional Identities to Islamic Canonization (pp. 35-36).</i> Kindle Edition. United States: University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated.|The Quran likely formed the first object of study in the early conquest garrison towns. The establishment of a definitive text initially preoccupied Muslims, rather than interpretation per se. <sup>103</sup> According to tradition, the third caliph ʿUthmān had established the consonantal skeleton of the Quranic text and distributed copies to the garrison towns. <sup>104</sup> | |||
This did not settle disagreements, since alternative readings remained in circulation, like those of the blind Quran specialist Ibn Masʿūd (d. ca. 653), who settled in Kufa in 642 and spent most of the rest of his life there. <sup>105</sup> | |||
More crucially, since any given set of consonants in Arabic can be vocalized in multiple forms, disagreement arose over the correct one (most of these, it should be noted, will appear very minor to non-specialists). | |||
<i>Reading systems proliferated but were pared down in time to seven canonical systems (al-qirāʾāt). The latest founder of such a system was al-Kisāʾī of Kufa (d. 804). <sup>106</sup> Of the seven systems, three were Kufan and one was Basran. Not only did the Basran and Kufan systems draw more extensively on Najdi dialects in reading the Quran, but the Hijazi and Syrian systems (one each from Mecca, Medina, and Damascus) were eventually heavily influenced by Iraqi/ Najdi reading traditions in the late 700s. <sup>107</sup> The result was synthetic and remained polyphonous, but in essence a Hijazi text was recast as “classical Arabic,” conforming to grammatical norms drawn up in a southern Mesopotamian milieu. <sup>108</sup></i> | |||
By the second half of the eighth century, there were clearly independent (but also interlinked) disciplines of tafsīr (exegesis), grammar (naḥw), and philology/ lexicography. The case that the early interest in grammar developed from the qurrāʾ (Quran reciting specialists) is the clearest, <sup>109</sup> but the earliest exegetes (mufassirūn) and philologists also emerged from the same milieu. Exactly how is unclear. The first extant written lexicon (al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad’s [d. Basra 791] Kitāb al-ʿAyn), the first grammatical text (Sībawayhi’s [d. Basra, 793] Kitāb), and the first extant tafsīr (that of Muqātil ibn Sulaymān [d. Basra, 767]) all demonstrate such methodological and terminological sophistication that a major embryonic period must be posited. The geographical nexus of Basra in particular was critical for interrelated developments, but there was, nevertheless, also independent development elsewhere.}} | |||
== Early transcriptions of Arabic in Greek and Hebrew scripts == | == Early transcriptions of Arabic in Greek and Hebrew scripts == | ||