History of the Arabic alphabet

The history of the Arabic alphabet shows numerous changes during their formation. It is believed that the Arabic alphabet was originally borrowed from the Nabataean, a variant of the Aramaic (or perhaps the Syrian ) font, which is originated from the Phoenician alphabet. From the Phoenician in turn gave rise to the Hebrew and the Greek alphabet and from the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet.

Origins

The Arabic alphabet evolved either from the Nabataean, or ( regarded as less likely ) from the Syriac alphabet. The table illustrates the changes of the letters starting from the Aramaic original way to Nabatean and Syriac form. Arabic is centrally located, not in chronological order for language development.

It seems that the Arabic alphabet developed from the Nabataean alphabet:

  • In the 6th and 5th centuries BC immigrated north Semitic tribes and founded a kingdom to the city of Petra, in present-day Jordan. These strains (now called Nabataeans, after the name of a tribe, NABAU ) probably spoke a form of Arabic.
  • In the 2nd century AD, the first known writing finds of the Nabataean alphabet arose in Aramaic ( the former lingua franca ), but with some Arabic language features: the Nabataeans did not write the language that they spoke. They wrote in a form of the Aramaic alphabet, which developed continuously; it separated into two forms: the first was used primarily for inscriptions (known as " Monumentalnabatäisch ") and the other was a script that was faster and easier with the characters joined suitable for writing on papyrus. This script influenced the monumental form more and more and gradually changed to the Arabic script.

Pre-Islamic inscriptions

The first Arabic script finds date from the year 512 AD The oldest find is a trilingual inscription in Greek, Syriac and Arabic, found in Zabad in Syria. This version of the Arabic alphabet, used only 22 letters, with only 15 different graphemes to write 28 phonemes:

A sufficient number of Arabic inscriptions survived the pre-Islamic era, but very few use the Arabic alphabet. Some are written in Arabic or in the closely related sister languages:

  • Thamudic, lihyanische, and safaitische inscriptions in the north.
  • Nabataean inscriptions in Aramaic and Arabic.
  • Inscriptions in other languages ​​, such as Syriac.
  • Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic script: these are very few; only five are considered safe. These usually do not use any phone cheerfully outgoing points, which makes the translation is very difficult, as many letters coincide in a grapheme.

The table shows a list of Arab and Nabatean inscriptions which illustrate the beginnings of Arabic.

The Nabataean cursive gradually changed in the Arabic script. This happened probably in the time between the on - Namara inscription and the Jabal Ramm - inscription. Most testimonies were probably on perishable materials, such as papyrus. Since it was a script, it was subject to major changes. Font finds from this period are very rare: only five pre-Islamic inscriptions regarded as certain, some others are controversial.

These inscriptions are shown below http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/.

The Nabataean script was designed to write down about 22 phonemes; but has the Arabic 28 phonemes. Therefore, six letters of the Nabataean for the presentation had to be used by two Arabic phonemes:

  • D stands for d,
  • H stands for H1,
  • T stands for Z,
  • ʿ Ain is also available for G1,
  • S also stands for d,
  • T stands for t.

1 Note: The assignment was strongly influenced etymologically, as were derived from the Semitic sounds ch and gh in Hebrew H and ayin.

The written Nabataean script developed towards the Arabic script, the letters were increasingly interwoven. Some of the letters are identical to other characters, leading to considerable confusion, as illustrated in the graph.

There, the Arabic letters are listed in the traditional Abdschad arrangement, but are, for simplicity, shown in the present form. Letters with the same grapheme are marked with a colored background. According to the second value of a character that expresses more than one phoneme follows after the decimal point. In this table, which stands for English Ǧ j ( dsh ), such as in "June".

In the Arabic language has changed dsch in the late pre-Islamic period of the g -sound very way to. This appears when the two tribes who conquered Egypt and settled there to be not yet been the case. In Egyptian Arabic, the letter Dschim still stands today for the g sound.

Letters at the end of a word often received a final loop so that have evolved for many Arabic letters two or more graphemes.

  • B, n and t are the same.
  • Y was the same as b, n and t except at the end of the word.
  • Were equal dsch and h.
  • Z and r are the same.
  • S and sh are the same.

This resulted in only 17 letters with different typefaces. A grapheme set up to 5 phonemes is ( bt th n and sometimes y), one represented ( j h ch) 3 phonemes, and each 4 set 2 phonemes dar. Compare also the Hebrew alphabet, as in the table:

.

( A similar situation arose in the Latin script in uppercase letters I and J in the German Fraktur sentence: There are both characters in popular publications the same typeface, but are officially different letters (such as sort order ). )

Early Islamic changes

In the 7th century AD, the Arabic alphabet in its classical form is demonstrated. PERF 558 is the earliest existing Islamic- Arabic document.

In the 7th century AD, probably in the early years of Islam, while the Quran was written down, it was found that alone all ambiguities could not be resolved in reading the Arabic script from the context. A good solution had to be found. Writings in the Nabataean and Syriac alphabet had already partially diacritical points to distinguish those letters that had fallen together in the grapheme. An example is shown in the table opposite Similarly, a system was introduced diacritical points to distinguish the 28 letters of the classical Arabic can also go for the Arabic script. Some of the resulting new letters are in alphabetical order sorted by the non- dotted original letters and sometimes at the end.

The oldest surviving witness of scripture, the undisputed used these diacritical points, is also the oldest surviving Arabic papyrus, dated April 643 AD. The points were initially not mandatory, that came much later. Important texts such as the Quran were frequently recited; to this practice, which is alive even today, the many ambiguities of the ancient writing are likely to be due; as well as to the lack of writing materials, in times when the printing press was still completely unknown and each copy of a book still had to be done by hand.

The alphabet had 28 letters then in a fixed order and could be also used for the numbers from 1 to 10, then from 20 to 100, then from 200 to 900, and finally 1000 ( see Abdschad ). For this numerical arrangement, the new letters at the end of the alphabet were arranged, this resulted in the order: alif (1 ), b ( 2), dsch (3 ), d ( 4 ), h ( 5), w ( 6), z (7 ), H ( 8 ), t ( 9), Y (10 ), k (20 ), L ( 30 ), M ( 40), s (50) s ( 60), ayn (70 ), f (80 ), S ( 90), q (100 ), r ( 200) beautiful (300 ), t ( 400), th (500), ch (600 ), ie ( 700 ), D ( 800 ), Z (900), GH ( 1000).

The absence of vowels in Arabic script led to further ambiguities: eg ktb in classical Arabic, both kataba ( " he wrote" ), Kutiba ( " it was written " ) as also mean kutub ( "books" ).

Later, beginning in the latter half of the 6th century AD, vowel signs and Hamza were added. Vowel signs have also been introduced in the Syrian and Hebrew writing at the same time. Originally a system with red dots was used, which is to the Umayyad governor of Iraq, al - Hajjaj ibn Yūsuf returned: a dot above = a, a dot below = i, a dot on the line = u; double dots indicate a nunation. However this was very tedious and easily confused with the diacritical points to distinguish the letters. Therefore, the present system was introduced and brought to 786 of al - Farahidi to complete about 100 years later.

Before the historic decree of al - Hajjaj ibn Yūsuf all important administrative texts ( documents ) of the Persian writers were written Middle Persian and in Pahlavischrift. But many of the orthographic variants of the Arabic alphabet could have been proposed and implemented by the same writers.

As soon as new characters are added to the Arabic alphabet, they take the place of the character, of which they constitute a new alternative: ta marbuta takes the place of the normal t and not of h. In the same way, the diacritical marks do not affect the arrangement: for example, a double consonant, characterized by the Shadda, does not count as two separate letters.

Some peculiarities of the Arabic alphabet originated from the differences between the pronunciation according to the Koran (which rather the dialect of Mecca and the pronunciation of the Prophet Muhammad and his first followers equivalent ) and that of the standard classical Arabic. These include, for example:

  • Ta marbuta: Emerged as the -at- ending feminine nouns (ta marbuta ) but was often pronounced as ah - h as was written. In order to avoid a change in the pronunciation of the Koran, the points of t on the h were written.
  • Y ( alif maqsura ) was used to write an a at the end of a word: This arose because a of contraction, where simple y failed between two vowels was pronounced in some dialects the word end on the tongue further forward than other a vowel. This resulted in the Qur'an the spelling y.
  • A is not written in a few words with alif: The Arabic spelling of Allah was before the Arabs started an alif as a to pronounce. In other cases ( eg, the first in a hada = " the " ) was the reason probably is that the vowel is pronounced short in the dialect of Mecca.
  • Hamza: The original Alif called the glottal stop. But in the dialect of Mecca, the glottal stop is not pronounced, but replaced by w or y or completely omitted or extended the corresponding vowel. Between vowels, the glottal stop was completely omitted and the vowels allied themselves. And the Koran was written in the dialect of Mecca. The Arab grammarians introduced the diacritics for Hamza and used them to characterize the glottal stop. Hamza in Arabic means " tick ".

Reorganization of the Arabic alphabet

Nearly a century later arranged Arab grammarians the alphabet again. Characters with similar typeface were arranged one after the other in order to teach the writing more easily. This resulted in a new arrangement which no longer corresponded to the old numerical arrangement, but this was rarely used over time, as now mainly Indian numerals and sometimes Greek numerals are used.

The Arab grammarians in North Africa changed the new letter, which explains the differences between the alphabets in the Middle East and the Maghreb countries.

( Greek waw = digamma )

The old order of the Arabic, as in the other illustrated alphabets, is known as Abdschadanordnung. If the letters arranged in numerical order, the original Abdschadreihenfolge is restored:

1 ( Greek waw = digamma )

(Note: with numerical order here is the original letter sequence meant when they are used as numerical values ​​See also Indo- Arabic numerals, Greek and Hebrew numbers numbers.)

This arrangement is the most original.

Adaptation of the Arabic alphabet for other languages

As the Arabic alphabet spread to other countries with different languages ​​, had letters are introduced to express non- Arabic lute. Usually, new characters were also introduced with three points or less:

  • Persian and Urdu: p: b with three dots underneath.
  • Persian and Urdu: ch: dsch with three dots underneath.
  • Persian and Urdu: g: k with double underscore.
  • Persian and Urdu: voiced sh: z ( voiced s ) with three dots over it.
  • In Egypt: g: dsch. The reason is that is used in Egyptian Arabic g, whereas in other Arabic dialects dsch.
  • In Egypt: dsch: dsch with three dots below, is the same as Persian and Urdu Cz
  • In Egypt: ch: written as t- sh.
  • Urdu: retroflex sounds: as the corresponding dentals, but with a little character, similar to a Latin letter b above. ( The same problem was already long ago in the adoption of the Semitic alphabet for Indian language: see Brahmi. )
  • In Southeast Asia: ng as in "sing" ch or gh, each with three points about it instead of one.
  • The book shows an example of ch (Polish cz) written as s with three dots below, in an Arab- Polish bilingual Quran for Muslim Tatars who live in Poland.

Abolition of the Arabic script in non-Arab countries

Since the beginning of the 20th century, various non-Arab countries have ceased to use the Arabic script, and are usually switched to the Latin alphabet. Examples are:

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