Arabic Linguistics. A Historiographic Overview

Abstract

The study of Arabic language seems to have started under the driving need to establish a correct reading and interpretation of the Qur’ān. Notwithstanding the opinions of some writers about its origins one should stress that the script and spelling of the Holy Writ derives directly from the Nabataean cursive. Aramaic Nabataean script was used to write Old Arabian since the first century A.D., also at Taymā’ and Madā’in Ṣaliḥ, in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Variant readings and divergent interpretations of Qur’ānic sentences, based on ancient Arabic dialects, are not expected to disturb the Arabic grammatical tradition, which was possibly influenced to some extent by Indian theories and Aristotelian concepts. It served as foundation to modern European studies and was then expanded to Middle Arabic, written mainly by Jews and Christians, and to the numerous modern dialects. From the mid-19th century onwards, attention was given also to pre-classical North-Arabian, attested by Ṣafaitic, Ṯamūdic, Liḥyanite, and Ḥasaean inscriptions, without forgetting the North-Arabian background and the loanwords of Nabataean Aramaic, as well as the dialectal information from the 7th–8th centuries, preserved in Arabic sources.