Friday, August 5, 2022

Arabia in late February

Ahmad al-Jallad bolsters Marijn van Putten inasmuch as Qâric Arabic took its Aramaisms from... Aramaic, and not from Christian sources like Syriac. (Pace Mingana, and Margoliouth and Jeffery.) Al-Jallad cares more for Safaitic - Qâric is more Nabati, by script. But Safaitic is earlier, and south of the Nabataea, so the same rule should apply down there.

As usual the occasion is a burial, or a commemoration anyway (wgm not ngm), by one Ghayyarel for his grandfather also Ghayyarel. This he did "bi-Adar". The Safaitic script knows G from Gh and is careful to use Gh for these two guys, and G for the wgm. Al-Jallad is aware from elsewhere that Safaitic also knew a D from a Dh. You know who didn't? The Christians in upper Syria, that's who didn't. The Nabatis and the Qurrâ - famously - had to make do, with diacritic dots.

Al-Jallad notes that Safaitic Arabs had their own months and (more to the point) their own reckoning ("parapegma"), so flags this "Adar" as a rare Babylonism. Or, possibly - a Canaanism, even a Hebraism. Ghayyarel's family venerates El, not Allah.

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