Old South Arabian

Old South Arabian (or Epigraphic South Arabian, or Sayhadic) is the term used for four closely related languages spoken in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. However, there is no doubt that there were a number of other Sayhadic lanhuages (e.g. Awsanic), of which very little evidence survived, however. All those languages were quite distinct from Classical Arabic. There is a hypothesis, that among the Semitic groups who did not migrate to the north, a distinct language type developed which is called Southwest Semitic. The four main Old South Arabian languages are the most ancient representatives of this language type.

The four main Old South Arabian languages are Sabaic, Minaeic (or Madhabic), Qatabanic, and Hadramitic. According to some semitologists, together with Ethiopian Semitic languages (such as the contemporary Ge'ez language) and the Modern South Arabian languages (not descended from Old South Arabian but from a sister language), they form the western branch of the South Semitic languages.

Old South Arabian had its own writing system, the South Arabian alphabet, concurrently used for proto-Ge'ez in the Kingdom of D`mt, ultimately sharing a common origin with the other Semitic abjads, the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet.

The arrival of Islam virtually disintegrated Old South Arabian, as Classical Arabic became the lingua franca of the region. Today, Old South Arabian exists in a few ancient texts and inscriptions. It has contributed to the local Arabic dialects of the region in much the same way that Coptic has contributed to the Egyptian dialect of Arabic.

Bibliography

• Alfred Felix Landon Beeston: Sabaic Grammar, Manchester 1984 ISBN 0-9507885-2-X.
• Maria Höfner: Altsüdarabische Grammatik (Porta Linguarum Orientalium, Band 24) Leipzig, 1943.
• Leonid Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: Sayhadic Languages (Epigraphic South Arabian). Semitic Languages. London: Routledge, 1997, p. 157-183.
• N. Nebes, P. Stein: Ancient South Arabian, in: Roger D. Woodard (Hrsg.): The Cambridge encyclopedia of the World's ancient languages Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004 ISBN 0-521-56256-2 S. 454-487 (neuester grammatischer Überblick mit Bibliographie).

See also

• Modern South Arabian

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