Old Arabic

Old Arabic
Epitaph of Mrʾlqys (328 AD)
Region	Northwestern Arabia and the southern Levant
Era	9th century BC to 7th century AD
Language family	Afroasiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Arabic Old Arabic
Writing system	Safaitic, Hismaic, Dadanitic, Nabataean, Arabic, Greek
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	None

Old Arabic is the earliest attested stage of the Arabic language, beginning with the first attestation of personal names in the 9th century BC, and culminating in the codification of Classical Arabic beginning in the 7th century AD. Originally the primary language of the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions, it came to be expressed primarily in a modified Nabataean script after the demise of the Nabataean kingdom. In addition, inscriptions in Old Arabic are attested in the Dadanitic and Greek scripts, the latter of which have proved indispensable in the reconstruction of the language's phonology.

Old Arabic and its descendants are Central Semitic languages and are most closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the languages of the Dadanitic, Taymanitic inscriptions, the poorly understood languages labeled 'Thamudic', and the ancient languages of Yemen written in the Ancient South Arabian script. Old Arabic, is however, distinguished from all of them by the following innovations:

The earliest attestations of Arabic are personal names dating back to the Assyrian period. From the second century BC onwards, personal names are attested in Nabataean inscriptions and Arabic substratal influence can be demonstrated in the Nabataean language. Dating to the first century BC, the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions concentrated in Hawran and Hisma, respectively, attest to the forms of Arabic used by the nomads of those regions.

The collapse of the Palmyrene Empire in AD 273 saw the rapid rise of the Saracens in the Syrian desert, the rapid decline of Ancient North Arabian scripts, and the proliferation of Arabic inscriptions composed in transitional Nabataeo-Arabic script referring to tribal groupings with demonstrable relation to those mentioned in later Muslim historiographical sources. Perhaps the most well-known of these inscriptions is the Namara inscription (328).