Al-Jallad's New Article On Conquest-Era Arabic

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- Zaotar
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Al-Jallad's New Article On Conquest-Era Arabic
OP - May 04, 2016, 01:25 AM

Fantastic new draft article from Al-Jallad on the Arabic of the First Century, as revealed by contemporary transcriptions (rather than later Islamic tradition). Note the section on Muhammad's name, suggesting that its transcription into Greek potentially suggests that it was pronounced in the form of an Aramaic causative-stem participle, for rather unclear reasons.

https://www.academia.edu/24938389/The_Arabic_of_the_Islamic_Conquests_Notes_on_Phonology_and_Morphology_based_on_the_Greek_Transcriptions_from_the_First_Islamic_Century_draft_submitted_for_review_
- hatoush
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Al-Jallad's New Article On Conquest-Era Arabic
Reply #1 - May 04, 2016, 05:14 AM

damn too technical, does it tell anything about the Arabic of the Quran ?
- Zaotar
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Al-Jallad's New Article On Conquest-Era Arabic
Reply #2 - May 04, 2016, 05:54 AM

I guess if I could summarize some of the more interesting Qur'an related points ....

Alif maqsurah was pronounced like a long e, not like a long a as it is recited in Classical Arabic. which deviates from Qur'anic Arabic in this respect.

Case was largely already eradicated by the conquest era, except in some narrow contexts. In the Qur'an, case seems to already have been lost except in a narrow class of situations where the noun is in construct state or where the case is designated by a final long vowel. This suggests that the Qur'an was written in language rather closer to the modern dialects/northern Arabic than the type of Arabic that later Islamic tradition reads and recites it as.

During the first century, the prophet's name was usually pronounced in a curious way that parallels an Aramaic causative stem participle .... not in the Arabic fashion. In other words, even in Arabic speech of the first century, he seems to have been called something more like "mahmet," and not "muhammad." This is difficult to explain.

There are very few Yemenite names, which is inconsistent with Islamic tradition's claims about the role of the Yemenites in the conquests.

Those are the main points of interest that jumped out at me relative to the Qur'an and early Islam.
- hatoush
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Al-Jallad's New Article On Conquest-Era Arabic
Reply #3 - May 04, 2016, 06:30 AM

thanks Zaotar

it is quite hard for me to read an article about old Arabic in "English" , that's really shameful nearly all written articles in Arabic are either about theology or apologetic :(
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