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Notes on the language of the Hismaic Inscriptions and a re-reading of Line 4 of the Madaba Hismaic Inscription

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2020

AHMAD AL-JALLAD
AHMAD AL-JALLAD*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State [email protected]
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Abstract

One of the longest Hismaic inscriptions yet discovered comes from the region of Madaba, Jordan. It was published first in an Arabic article by Khraysheh in 2000 and was re-edited by Graf and Zwettler four years later. Both editions remark on the striking similarity in language and style between this text and Classical Arabic. Indeed, this inscription and a closely related text from Uraynibah West, also published by Graf and Zwettler in the same article, are among the best witnesses to the Arabic of this region during the Nabataean period. This article will offer a few remarks on the language of the Hismaic inscriptions and then provide a new reading of line 4 of the Madaba inscription, which had previously evaded satisfactory interpretation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 561 - 569
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2020

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Michael C. A. Macdonald and Jérôme Norris for their helpful comments and corrections on an earlier draft of this article. All mistakes are my own.

References

2 al-Khraysheh, F., “An Arabic Inscription Written in Thamudic Scrip[t] from Jordan”, Adumatu 2 (2000), pp. 59–70Google Scholar.

3 Zwettler, M. J. and Graf, D. F., “The North Arabian ‘Thamudic E’ Inscription from Uraynibah West”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 335 (2004), pp. 53–89Google Scholar.

4 Winnett, F. V., A Study of the Liḥyanite and Thamudic Inscriptions (Toronto, 1937)Google Scholar.

5 Winnett, F. V. and Reed, W. L.. Ancient Records from North Arabia. Near and Middle East (Toronto, 1970)Google Scholar.

6 G. M. H. King, Early North Arabian Hismaic (Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1990).

7 Zwettler and Graf, “Uraynibah West”, pp. 57-58.

8 See Macdonald, M. C. A. “Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia”, Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 11 (2000), pp. 28–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the nomenclature of the Ancient North Arabian scripts.

9 The only dated inscription is MNM 3, from the Karak region, which states snt kbnsqyrʿrbt; the divisions of the words after snt are unclear so I have not posited word boundaries. Two texts in a mixed Safaitic-Hismaic hand are dated. The first, from northern Saudi Arabia, is dated to snt ngʾ (DHH 25), which provides no chronological information. The second is from southern Jordan, published by al-Salameen, Z., “A new Ancient North Arabian inscription with a reference to the Nabataean king Aretas”, Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 22 (2011), pp. 215-218CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and is likely to be dated to 40 ce.

10 King, ‘Hismaic’, §8.A.

11 Late Nabataean pronunciation in Greek transcription as Αβδοαρθα = /ʿabdo-ḥārṯah/. See Meïmaris, Y. E., Kalliope, and I., Inscriptions from Palaestine Tertia, Vol. 1b. The Greek Inscriptions from Ghor Es-Safi, Byzantine Zoora (Athens, 2008), inscr. #21Google Scholar.

12 Late Nabataean pronunciation in Greek transcription as Αβδοοβδας = /ʿabdo-ʿobdah/. See Gatier, P.-L., Inscriptions greques et latines de la Syrie XXI/2: Inscriptions de la Jordanie: Région centrale (Amman, Hesban, Madaba, Main, Dhiban), (Paris, 1986), inscr. #37Google Scholar.

13 Hayajneh, Hani, “A Preliminary Investigation of an Ancient North Arabian Invocation from the Madaba Region of Central Jordan”, in Languages, Scripts and Their Uses in Ancient North Arabia. (Supplement to Volume 48 of the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies), (ed.) Macdonald, M. C. A. (Oxford, 2018), pp. 95–100Google Scholar.

14 al-Jallad, A., “What Is Ancient North Arabian?”, in Re-Engaging Comparative Semitic and Arabic Studies, (eds.) Pat-El, N. and Birnstiel, D. (Wiesbaden, 2018), pp. 1–45Google Scholar.

15 Hayajneh, H., “Ancient North Arabian-Nabataean Bilingual Inscriptions from Southern Jordan”, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 39 (2009), pp. 203–222Google Scholar, shows that the author of one of these texts renders the Nabataean name ʿbdʾlʾyb as ʿbdʾyb in Hismaic, lacking the ʾl-article.

16 On this and the history of the definite article in Arabic, see al-Jallad, “What Is Ancient North Arabian?”, pp. 10–16.

17 This verb is sometimes reanalysed as a geminate, producing the form dʿʿ, perhaps [daʕʕaʕa].

18 Most Safaitic inscriptions, however, merge III-w and III-y roots to the III-y class just as in modern dialects of Arabic.

19 This is attested in a new Hismaic inscription from the Madaba region edited recently by Hayajneh, “Invocation from Madaba”.

20 Zwettler and Graf, “Uraynibah West”.

21 Note that vowels, both long and short, are not represented in Hismaic orthography, in any position.

22 al-Jallad, A., “‘Safaitic’”, in The Semitic Languages, 2nd edition, (eds.) Huehnergard, J. and Pat-El, N. (London, 2019), p. 353Google Scholar.

23 Macdonald, M. C. A., “Clues to How a Nabataean May Have Spoken from a Hismaic Inscription”, in Near Eastern and Arabian Essays Studies in Honour of John F. Healey, (eds.) Curtis, A. A. H. W., al-Hamad, M. and Smith, G. R., Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 41 (Oxford, 2018), pp. 231–239Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., p. 253.

25 A. al-Jallad, “One Wāw to Rule Them All: The Origins and Fate of Wawation in Arabic”, in Scripts and Scripture, (eds.) F. M. Donner and R. Hasselbach (Chicago, forthcoming).

26 Diem, W., “Die nabatäischen Inschfirten und die Frage der Kasusflexion im Altarabischen”, ZDMG 123 (1973), pp. 227–237Google Scholar.

27 For the most recent edition of this text, fully explaining the case inflection, see al-Jallad, “One Wāw”.

28 What is more, this variety of Hismaic has clearly merged the interdental fricative ḏ with d, suggesting a variety of Arabic that, on the one hand, preserved case inflection while on the other had lost at least the voiced interdental. Macdonald, “Clues”, suggested that this text was written by an Aramaic speaker because of the loss of the interdental, but also gives the possibility that this could be an Arabic-internal change. Neither interpretation of course affects the status of the w at the end of allāt being a case ending.

29 This value was first identified by Knauf, E. A., “Südsafaitisch”, Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 27 (1983), pp. 587–596Google Scholar.

30 See the script chart in Macdonald, “Reflections”.

31 Knauf, E. A., “Arabo-Aramaic and ʿArabiyya: From Ancient Arabic to Early Standard Arabic, 200 ce-600 ce”, in The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, (eds.) Neuwirth, A., Sinai, N. and Marx, M. (Leiden & Boston, 2010), pp. 216–219Google Scholar.

32 Voigt, R. M., “Notes on South Safaitic”, Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 28 (1984), pp. 311–314Google Scholar.

33 Knauf, “Arabo-Aramaic” does not use IPA notation in his reconstruction of these phonemes so it is unclear from the article itself what their phonetic values must have been. Assuming that Knauf follows Voigt, as he states, it seems that ĵ is meant to represent the voiced palato-alveolar sibilant [ʒ]. I assume y, given on p. 219 is meant to represent the voiced palatal approximant [j]; this is the value given on p. 216.

34 al-Jallad, A., “Graeco-Arabica I: The Southern Levant”, in Arabic in Context: Celebrating 400 Years of Arabic at Leiden University, (ed.) al-Jallad, A. (Leiden, 2017), pp. 99–186CrossRefGoogle Scholar, §3.6”

35 The value of g as [g] is especially clear in Safaitic as it is used to transcribe Greek and Latin [g], grfṣ = Agrippa; lgyn = Legion.

36 Graf and Zwettler, “Uraynibah West”, vocalised the personal names, giving all possible identifications. I have modified their translation to keep simply the consonantal skeleton, to help make their already difficult-to-read translation easier to follow.

37 al-Jallad, A. and al-Manaser, A., “New Epigraphica from Jordan II: Three Safaitic-Greek Partial Bilingual Inscriptions”, Arabian Epigraphic Notes 2 (2016), pp. 55–66Google Scholar.

38 For a discussion on the position of the t in the T-stems, see Weninger, S., “Reconstructive Morphology”, in The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, (eds.) Weninger, S., Khan, G., Streck, M. and Watson, J., (Boston-Berlin, 2011), p. 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 On the historical background of this ending, see Van Putten, “Feminine Endings *-Ay and *-Āy”.

40 Robin, C. J., Inabbaʾ, Haram, al-Kāfir, Kamna et al-Ḥarāshif. Fasc. A: Les documents. Fasc. B: Les planches. Inventaire des inscriptions sudarabiques, 1 (Paris, 1992)Google Scholar.

41 For example, Haram 40 which records the confession of a man who had intercourse with a menstruating woman and ends with f-hḍrʿ w-ʿnw w-yḥl<ʾ>n w-l-yṯwbn ‘and he showed submission and distress and will pay a fine so may he be generous’ (trans. CSAI).

42 Al-Khraysheh, “An Arabic in Thamudic”.

43 This meaning also better fits the two attestations of saqīm in the Quran (37:89, 145).

44 Asceticism is a common religious ritual across the world. In the Arabian context, we need only think to the story of Mohammad's first revelation. Tradition relates that he had withdrawn from the city to meditate in the cave of Ḥirāʾ, where he had his first encounter with the angel Gabriel.

45 Zwettler and Graf interpret a flaw on the stone as the letter n. We have accepted Khraysheh's original reading of the final word as ḏ ‘this’.