Nabataeo-Arabic

The so-called Nabataeo-Arabic script developed in northwest Arabia between the late 3rd and the mid-5th centuries CE. It is a precursor of Arabic.

Nabataeo-Arabic is the name of a category of script which is transitional between Nabataean and Arabic. It is the predecessor of the so-called pre-Islamic Arabic script which, in turn, is the immediate precursor of the post-Hijra Arabic script. For conveniency, Nabataeo-Aarabic and pre-Islamic Arabic will be grouped, in the forthcoming corpus of these texts, into one category labelled “Developing Arabic”. On the basis of the development of the letter forms attested in the inscriptions and thanks to a few precisely dated texts, it is possible to date the Nabataeo-Arabic script to the interval between the last quarter of the 3rd and the mid-5th centuries CE, and the pre-Islamic Arabic script to between the mid-5th and the early 7th centuries CE (Fig. 1).

The basic typology proposed above only applies to the scripts and not to the language they express. The latter is indeed either Aramaic, Arabic, or a mixture of both. As the contents of the texts are limited, in some cases, it is impossible to determine whether the language is Aramaic or Arabic.

Nabataeo-Arabic script is now considered to have developed in northwest Arabia, in the region between the city of Medina to the south (ancient Yathrib) and Wadi Ram in southern Jordan, to the north, with a concentration in the areas of al-ʿUlā (Dadān), Tabūk, and Dūmat al-Jandal (ancient Adumatu). Note that some pre-Islamic Arabic 6th-century texts were also discovered in 2014 in Ḥimā, 100 km north of the city of Najrān in Saudi Arabia.

The number of inscriptions attributable to the Nabataeo-Arabic script category in 2021 reaches 210, a large proportion of which is unfortunately still unpublished. Less than twenty of these have been dated, yet they allow for the identification of the main characteristics of the script. Contrary to most of the pre-275 CE texts, only a few characters of which show a tendency to evolve towards Arabic (y, h, ḥ, g, and combinations of letters such as ʿbw, lʿn, etc.), most post-275 CE inscriptions contain letters showing signs of development (Nehmé 2010a).

The main differences between Nabataeo-Arabic and pre-Islamic Arabic concern seven letters: d, h, z, ḥ, final k, final m, and final t. The most striking difference is between the final m which, in all Nabataeo-Arabic texts, even 5th century CE ones, retains its typical Nabataean form, even in the examples of the extremely widespread word šlm (“may he be safe”) where the š is almost already Arabic. To give another example, the difference between the Nabataeo-Arabic h and the pre-Islamic Arabic h is that the loop of the letter of the former is not closed to the left, as if it had not achieved its development towards a fully cursive form, and had been written without lifting the writing instrument.

The contents of the inscriptions written in Nabataeo-Arabic are extremely limited. They are almost all graffiti (simple signatures) written by individuals, and no monumental texts have been discovered so far. They use the same formulas as comparable Nabataean texts. The majority start indeed with dkyr, “May be remembered” and end with b-ṭb, “in well-being”. When dated, they indicate the era of the Roman province of Arabia, which starts in 105/106 CE. There are also a few dedicatory texts and more elaborate signatures.

The majority of the authors of the inscriptions written in the Nabataeo-Arabic script bear names not previously attested in the Nabataean onomasticon. This may either reflect a change in the population of these regions in the centuries between the end of the Roman period in northwest Arabia (end of the 3rd century CE at the latest) and the late pre-Islamic period (6th century), or the existence of people who did not write much before the late 3rd century and were therefore not visible to us. Another possibility is that these differences in the onomasticon reflect cultural changes among unchanged populations. The latter may, for instance, have stopped using theophoric names built with pagan theonyms under the influence of growing monotheisms. Only a complete index of the personal names contained in these texts will tell us more.

Historically, the rise of the Nabataeo-Arabic script can be explained as follows: the end of the Roman military presence in northwest Arabia and the fact that the Byzantine empire never extended thus far, left a vacuum which was filled by the chiefs of Arabic-speaking tribes who bore the title “king” in some inscriptions and who were at the head of what could be named “principalities”. The need for communication in a script of their own on soft material (as opposed to stone) led them to choose the only script of prestige which had survived in the region, the Nabataean one, and to develop more cursive forms of it which ultimately gave rise to the Arabic script.

Laïla Nehmé

References and suggested reading

• Macdonald, M.C.A. 2009. ARNA Nab 17 and the transition from the Nabataean to the Arabic script, in W. Arnold, M. Jursa, W. Müller & St. Procházka (eds) Philologisches und Historisches zwischen Anatolien und Sokotra. Analecta Semitica In Memoriam Alexander Sima: 207–240. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
• Macdonald, M.C.A. 2015. The Emergence of Arabic as a Written Language; in G. Fisher (ed.) Arabs and Empires Before Islam: 395–417. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Nehmé, L. 2010a. A Glimpse of the Development of the Nabataean Script into Arabic Based on Old and New Epigraphic Material, in M.C.A. Macdonald (ed.) The Development of Arabic as a Written Language (Supplement to the PSAS, 40): 47–88. Oxford: Archaeopress.
• Nehmé, L. 2010b. Between Nabataean and Arabic: ‘Transitional’ Nabatao-Arabic Texts, in G. Fisher (ed.) Arabs and Empires Before Islam: 417–421. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Nehmé, L. 2017. Aramaic or Arabic? The Nabataeo-Arabic Script and the Language of the Inscriptions Written in this Script, in A. al-Jallad (ed.) Arabic in Context. Celebrating 400 years of Arabic at Leiden University (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 89): 75–98. Leiden: Brill.
• Nehmé, L. 2017. New Dated Inscriptions (Nabataean and pre-Islamic Arabic) from a Site Near al-Jawf, ancient Dūmah, Saudi Arabia. AEN 3: 121–164. https://hdl.handle.net/1887/54231
• Nehmé, L. (dir.) with contributions by F. Briquel-Chatonnet, A. Desreumaux, A.I. Ghabban, M.C.A. Macdonald, L. Nehmé and F. Villeneuve 2018. The Darb al-Bakrah. A Caravan Route in North-West Arabia Discovered by Ali I. al-Ghabban. Catalogue of the inscriptions (Series of Archaeological Refereed Studies, 50). Riyadh: Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage.
• Robin, Ch.J., A.I. al-Ghabban & S.F. Al-Saʿīd 2014. Inscriptions antiques de la région de Najrān (Arabie Séoudite méridionale) : nouveaux jalons pour l’histoire de l’écriture, de la langue et du calendrier arabes. CRAI 2014 (III): 1033–1128. DOI: 10.3406/crai.2014.94960.

_{Alternate spellings: Late Nabataean, Transitional, Nabateo-Arabic, Nabatao-Arabic}