Ancient North Arabian

Classification

Many scholars believed that the various ANA alphabets were derived from the ASA script, mainly because the latter was employed by a major civilization and exhibited more angular features. Others believed that the ANA and ASA scripts shared a common ancestor from which they both developed in parallel. Indeed, it seems unlikely that the various ANA scripts descend from the monumental ASA alphabet, but that they collectively share a common ancestor to the exclusion of ASA is also something which has yet to be demonstrated.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6X29BwAAQBAJ|title=An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions|last=Al-Jallad|first=Ahmad

The hypothesis that all ANA alphabets derive from a single ancestor gave rise to the idea that the languages which these scripts express constitute a linguistic unity, a so-called ANA language. As a hypothetical language or group of languages, Ancient North Arabian forms one branch of the North Arabian group, the other being Proto-Arabic. They are distinguished from each other by the definite article, which in Arabic is ʾal-, but in ANA is h-. They belong to a different branch of the Semitic languages than the Ancient South Arabian languages.

The validity of this hypothesis has been called into question. This is particularly the case for Taymanitic, which has been determined to be a Northwest Semitic language. Safaitic and Hismaic are also now considered forms of Old Arabic due to shared features.

Geographical distribution

The Ancient North Arabian scripts were used both in the oases (Dadanitic, Dumaitic, Taymanitic) and by the nomads (Hismaic, Safaitic, Thamudic B, C, D, and possibly Southern Thamudic aka Thamudic F) of central and northern Arabia. The most ancient examples of the script recently discovered date back to the 9th-8th BCE and were found in Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Luristan.

Table of letters

Main article: Old North Arabian (Unicode block)}}Ancient North Arabian script has a one-to-one correspondence with the Arabic alphabet except for 𐪏‎ and 𐪊‎ which correspond to {{Script, Arab, س

Unicode

Main article: Old North Arabian (Unicode block)

Old North Arabian script was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

The Unicode block for Ancient North Arabian is U+10A80–U+10A9F:

Notes

Literature

• Lozachmeur, H., (ed.), (1995) Presence arabe dans le croissant fertile avant l'Hegire (Actes de la table ronde internationale Paris, 13 novembre 1993) Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations.
• Macdonald, M.C.A., (2000) "Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia" Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 11(1), 28–79
• Scagliarini, F., (1999) "The Dedanitic inscriptions from Jabal 'Ikma in north-western Hejaz" Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 29, 143-150
• Winnett, F.V. and Reed, W.L., (1970) Ancient Records from North Arabia (Toronto: University of Toronto)
• Woodard, Roger D. Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia. Cambridge University Press 2008.

References

1. (2018). "What is Ancient North Arabian?". [[The Ohio State University]].
2. "Archived copy".
3. (2010). "Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World". Elsevier.
4. (2005-11-24). "Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics". Elsevier.
5. Macdonald, M. C. A.. (2004). "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages". Cambridge University Press.
6. Ahmad Al-Jallad, [https://www.academia.edu/download/57982729/Al-Jallad_2018_what_is_ANA_1.pdf What is Ancient North Arabian?]{{Dead link. (August 2023)
7. Kootstra, Fokelien. (2016-09-06). "The Language of the Taymanitic Inscriptions and its Classification". Arabian Epigraphic Notes.
8. Al-Jallad, Ahmad. (January 2018). "Al-Jallad. 2018. What is Ancient North Arabian?". Re-engaging Comparative Semitic and Arabic Studies Edited by Daniel Birnstiel and Na'ama Pat-El; Harrassowitz Verlag. Wiesbaden.
9. dan. "The Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia - The Ancient North Arabia scripts".
10. (2017). "Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorff".
11. "Official Unicode Consortium code chart".