History and Development of the Arabic Language is a general introduction for students to the history of the Arabic language. It is divided into two parts; the pre-Islamic language up to the emergence of the first well-known works of Classical Arabic. Secondly, the transition from the pre-Islamic situation to the complex Arabic language forms after the emergence of Islam and the Arab conquests, both in Arabia and in the diaspora. The book focuses on the pre-Islamic linguistic situation, where the linguistic geography and relevant demographic aspects of pre-Islamic Arabia will be introduced. In addition, the book will also discuss the communicative contexts and varieties of Modern Arabic. The book includes readings, discussion questions and data sets to provide a complete textbook and resource for teachers and students of the history of Arabic.

New results and interpretations challenging the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean Ancient Western Asia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200–900 BCE) presents select essays originating in a two-year research collaboration between New York University and Paris Sciences et Lettres. The contributions here offer new results and interpretations of the processes and outcomes of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age in three broad regions: Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, and the Levant. Together, these challenge the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, followed by the regeneration of political powers. Current research on newly discovered or reinterpreted textual and material evidence from Western Asia instead suggests that this transition was characterized by a diversity of local responses emerging from diverse environmental settings and culture complexes, as evident in the case studies collected here in history, archaeology, and art history. The editors avoid particularism by adopting a regional organization, with the aim of identifying and tracing similar processes and outcomes emerging locally across the three regions. Ultimately, this volume reimagines the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition as the emergence of a set of recursive processes and outcomes nested firmly in the local cultural interactions of western Asia before the beginning of the new, unifying era of Assyrian imperialism.

Preliminary Material /M. M. BRAVMANN -- PREFACE /M. M. BRAVMANN -- PHONOLOGICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL STUDIES /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE VOWEL I AS AN AUXILIARY VOWEL /M. M. BRAVMANN -- A PHONETIC LAW IN THE JUDEO-ARABIC DIALECT OF BAGHDAD /M. M. BRAVMANN -- SOME ASPECTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SEMITIC DIPHTHONGS /M. M. BRAVMANN -- BI-CONSONANTAL NOUNS OF ROOTS III W ('AB, 'AḪ, ḤAM) /M. M. BRAVMANN -- A CASE OF QUANTITATIVE ABLAUT IN SEMITIC /M. M. BRAVMANN -- ON TWO CASES OF CONSONANT CHANGE IN MODERN ARABIC DIALECTS /M. M. BRAVMANN -- HEBREW ŠTAYIM ('TWO'), SYRIAC ŠTĀ ('SIX') AND A TURKIC ANALOGUE /M. M. BRAVMANN -- CONCERNING THE BORDER-LINE BETWEEN CONSONANT AND VOWEL /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE HEBREW PERFECT FORMS: QĀṬELĀ, QĀṬELŪ /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE 3RD PERS. SING. FEM. OF THE PERFECT OF ROOTS III Y/W IN ARABIC /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE ARAMAIC NOMEN AGENTIS QĀTŌL AND SOME SIMILAR PHENOMENA OF ARABIC /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE PLURAL ENDING -ŪT- OF MASCULINE ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVES IN AKKADIAN /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE ORIGIN OF SOME ARABIC PRONOUNS /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE FORMS OF THE IMPERATIVE (AND JUSSIVE) IN THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE SEMITIC CAUSATIVE-PREFIX Š/SA /M. M. BRAVMANN -- SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC STUDIES /M. M. BRAVMANN -- GENETIC ASPECTS OF THE GENITIVE IN THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE SYNTACTIC BACKGROUND OF SEMITIC NOUNS WITH PREFIX MA- AND OF PARTICIPLES WITH PREFIX MU- /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE INFINITIVE IN THE FUNCTION OF “PSYCHOLOGICAL PREDICATE” IN SYRIAC /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE EXPRESSION OF INSTANTANEOUSNESS IN ARABIC /M. M. BRAVMANN -- SOME SPECIFIC FORMS OF HYPOTAXIS IN ANCIENT ARABIC /M. M. BRAVMANN -- SYRIAC DALMĀ “LEST”, “PERHAPS” AND SOME RELATED ARABIC PHENOMENA /M. M. BRAVMANN -- ARABIC LĀKIN(NA) AND RELATED EXPRESSIONS /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE ORIGIN OF ARABIC BA'DA “AFTER” /M. M. BRAVMANN -- AN ARABIC SENTENCE-TYPE EXPRESSING “INNER COMPULSION” /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE IDEA OF “POSSESSION” IN LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION /M. M. BRAVMANN -- ARABIC PARALLELS TO THE ENGLISH PHRASE /M. M. BRAVMANN -- EXPRESSIONS BASED ON THE NOUN YAWM- “DAY” /M. M. BRAVMANN -- ARABIC ASLAMA (ISLĀM) AND RELATED TERMS /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE ORIGIN OF THE PRINCIPLE OF 'IṢMAH: MUḤAMMAD'S “IMMUNITY FROM SIN” /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE “COMPLETION” OR “IMPROVEMENT” OF A LAUDABLE DEED: AN ANCIENT ARAB ETHICAL MOTIF /M. M. BRAVMANN -- SEMITIC INSTANCES OF “LINGUISTIC TABOO” /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE ONOMATOPOETIC ORIGIN OF SOME TERMS FOR THE CONCEPT “SUDDEN” /M. M. BRAVMANN -- “SATISFYING” AND “RESTRAINING”: ARABIC KAFĀ (KFY) > KAFFA /M. M. BRAVMANN -- ARABIC MA'TAM “MOURNING ASSEMBLY” AND RELATED ETYMA /M. M. BRAVMANN -- AKKADIAN KIPRU( M), PL. KIPRĀTU( M) AND ETHIOPIC KANFAR /M. M. BRAVMANN -- ARAMAIC MESAR, NEO-HEBRAIC MĀSAR “TO SURRENDER (SOMEONE) ” /M. M. BRAVMANN -- AN ARABIC PARALLEL TO BENEDICERE /M. M. BRAVMANN -- NORTH-SEMITIC ḤAYYĪM/N “LIFE” IN THE LIGHT OF ARABIC /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE BIBLICAL CONCEPT “THE TREASURE OF LIFE” AND ITS SURVIVAL IN MANDAEAN AND CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES /M. M. BRAVMANN -- THE ROOT HWY “TO BE”, A PROTO-SEMITIC VERB /M. M. BRAVMANN.

In these studies Michael Macdonald examines the extraordinary flowering of literacy in both the settled and nomadic populations of western Arabia in the 1500 years before the birth of Islam, when a larger proportion of the population could read and write than in any other part of the ancient Near East, and possibly any other part of the ancient world. Even among the nomads there seems to have been almost universal literacy in some regions. The scores of thousands of inscriptions and graffiti they left paint a vivid picture of the way-of-life, social systems, and personal emotions of their authors, information which is not available for any other non-élite population in the ancient Near East outside Egypt. This abundance of inscriptions has enabled Michael Macdonald to explore in detail some of the - often surprising - ways in which reading and writing were used in the literate and non-literate communities of ancient Arabia. He describes the many different languages and the distinct family of alphabets used in ancient Arabia, and discusses the connections between the use of particular languages or scripts and expressions of personal and communal identity. The problem of how ancient perceptions of ethnicity in this region can be identified in the sources is another theme of these papers; more specifically, they deal from several different perspectives with the question of what ancient writers meant when they applied the term 'Arab' to a wide variety of peoples throughout the ancient Near East.

A Linguistic History of Arabic presents a reconstruction of proto-Arabic by the methods of historical-comparative linguistics. It challenges the traditional conceptualization of an old, Classical language evolving into the contemporary Neo-Arabic dialects. Professor Owens combines established comparative linguistic methodology with a careful reading of the classical Arabic sources, such as the grammatical and exegetical traditions. He arrives at a richer and more complexpicture of early Arabic language history than is current today and in doing so establishes the basis for a comprehensive, linguistically-based understanding of the history of Arabic. The arguments are set out in a concise, case by case basis, making it accessible to students and scholars of Arabic and Islamicculture, as well as to those studying Arabic and historical linguists.

A riveting, comprehensive history of the Arab peoples and tribes that explores the role of language as a cultural touchstone This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia. Mackintosh-Smith reveals how linguistic developments—from pre-Islamic poetry to the growth of script, Muhammad’s use of writing, and the later problems of printing Arabic—have helped and hindered the progress of Arab history, and investigates how, even in today’s politically fractured post–Arab Spring environment, Arabic itself is still a source of unity and disunity.