Safaitic

#Behind_the_scenes: The first inscriptions from the #Mecca region are going into #OCIANA. They are not public now, but you can get an idea of the distribution here! Can you see what I see? More coming very soon. (yellow are inscriptions not available to the public yet). Photo - wadi nu'man (#7)

If only! Haha, greetings!

#Updated on #OCIANA - The first Ancient South Arabian inscription from the Ḥarrah, from Zalaf, Syria! Was it carved by a North Arabian who learned the script or a wandering South Arabian trader? Impossible to know! But its irregularities tell a story.

Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

DhI 8 | OCIANA dhr: 'Fate-time'; the etymology of the word has to do with 'burning' and 'destruction' (Beeston et al. 1982: 35).

The composition is beautiful too. Dahr derives from terms of destruction and fire and so the verb šabba 'to burn fiercely' is appropriate! The epithet lord of plunder and fear has a poetic balance - rabb ḥōś wa-hōl.

What secrets remain unread...

Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

#New on #OCIANA - The #Dhofari Script 2 inscriptions documented by Dr. Al-Mashikhi, many thanks for his hard work. DhI 8 is simply remarkable. The Mušrikīn of the Quran state: 'nothing dooms us but Fate (ad-dahr)'. DhI 8 states: 'Dahr, lord of plunder and fear, burned fiercely'.

Those are lovely hearts but they are not early Islamic inscriptions! One is dated to 2002 :).

The evolution of the Arabic script was set into motion well before the spread of Christianity, so it isn't really comparable to Armenian, etc. Hoyland supposed that the spread of Christianity across Arabia played a roll in the script's spread. I am not sure.

An important 'time out' by a very clear thinker. Much of what Shoemaker claims about the Hijaz on the eve of Islam is conclusively disproved by material evidence, which grows by the year. I have a surprise, too, from my last survey mission (May 2025) between Taif-Mecca and Medina

shorturl.at/8IG8f

I say this because there are all sorts of cultural reasons why the name could be concealed and replaced by a title, or even if these commemorate the death of babies. Such tombstones elsewhere may just say 'infant'. Also does w have to mean son? or maybe a genitive marker? (sorry for my ignorance!)

Does WRM(H)Z ever occur in second position, or always first, in genealogies?

I know a Bedouin in Saudi Arabia from the ʿUtaybī tribe whose father was named rūmī, similar to turkī.

Thanks! Absolutely not a response to anything you have claimed, but just a PSA as name = language = ethnicity seems to be a super common assumption!

A brilliant thread by my brilliant friend @bnuyaminim.bsky.social. But let's think about this circumstantial evidence a bit more. Are names really indicative of one's language or ethnicity (hard to pin that down actually)? This Nabataean from NW Arabia belongs to the clan of Banī Baʿlnatan...

Nabataean cosmopolitanism allowed names to permeate etymological boundaries just as it enabled the widespread use of its written language, Aramaic, in areas far beyond where Aramaic was natively spoken.

Names are extremely important and can provide lots of information, but in this particular area and period, I do not think having a name with an Aramaic or Canaanite etymology tell us much about the ethnicity or language of its bearer. Think of all the Arabic speakers called Yusef and Sarah today!

There is an unpublished Dhofari inscription (Oman) by a man called Rbʾl (popular name)! Nabataean territory was diverse and people of various linguistic backgrounds surely identified as subjects of the Nabataean king. Here's a beautiful example of this diversity: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Even names like Rbʾl are not decisive. Here is a local nomad from the Ḥarrah, belonging to the nomadic tribe of Nġbr, writing in Safaitic, who is the son of a man called Rabb-ʾEl: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions.... The diminutive Rbbʾl occurs as far away as Qaryat al-Fāw in the famous Rbbʾl epitaph.

Here is a fantastic text, an Arabic speaker who says he belongs to the people (lit. tribe ʾāl) of Rm /rūm/ Rome.

l ʾkzm bn ġṯ ḏ ʾl rm w ws¹qt -h ṯmd mn- {s¹}bl
By ʾkzm son of Ġṯ of the people of Rm and the Ṯamūd drove him away from (the) road

ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

My favorite: this fellow, Bayān son of Taym, belongs to the tribe of Titus! ḏ ʾl tts. He records spending the dry season in this place, qyẓ. ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions.... Maybe the tribe's eponymous ancestor was a runaway Roman, or maybe just a local whose parents gave him a Roman name.

This graffito is by a guy called Ntn. His inscription, however, is not in Canaanite or Aramaic, but Safaitic. Ntn son of Ḫlf and he pastured (w rʿy) so, O Allāt, grant abundance (f h lt ġny{t})). There are also non-Arabic tribal names among the nomads.

Is the etymology of this name suggestive that he was not an Arabic speaker or an "Arab" (whatever that meant in this period)? True, Ntn is not Arabic, but so what? Here is a Dadanitic txt by a man in the mirror: Natan-Baʿl, whose father had an Arabian name, wny. ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

A brilliant thread by my brilliant friend @bnuyaminim.bsky.social. But let's think about this circumstantial evidence a bit more. Are names really indicative of one's language or ethnicity (hard to pin that down actually)? This Nabataean from NW Arabia belongs to the clan of Banī Baʿlnatan...

#OCIANA Update! GIS info is now available for the #Dhofari inscriptions! More of these texts will be inserted soon so keep you eye on the 'last updated' page.

YouTube video by Near East by Midwest Podcast Anthony origins, Islamic origins, and a career between tradition and revision | Prof. Sean Anthony

What is the threshold of evidence required to 'revise' our understanding of history? And how do we use sources to know about the past? Prof. Sean Anthony gives us his origin story and then a story about the origins of Islam, and how we know what we think we know.

youtu.be/UkybqiiRLg8?...

The choices tell us much about the sounds of both languages. They also reveal an interesting level of metalinguistic thinking. See the updated OCIANA card here: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Why is this interesting? The ancient Arabs east of Ḥawrān were well acquainted with Greek. Their own Safaitic script did not have a fixed letter order. This biliteral writer decided to map Safaitic on the Greek order he learned from somewhere.

Pre-Islamic Arabic and Greek! The #Safaitic abecedary we posted earlier this week was far more interesting than originally thought. A close re-reading of the stone revealed the entire Safaitic alphabet in the Greek letter order!
See the study here: www.academia.edu/144853577/Al...

laughing at the idea of "deux, trois, quatre cinq six sept" becoming a mysterious exegetical puzzle in some far future

And this isn't the first time we observe such a thing. This Thamudic B text from the Ḥarrah records the erection of a cult stone hnṣb, a prayer, and then is followed by a partial halḥam abecedary (not in ociana yet).

Read here: t.co/7Euu6Cqxo9

The Quran displays various arrangements of mysterious, disconnected letters. The magico-sacred aspect of the alphabet stretches far into the pre-Islamic past. This Safaitic text begins with a prayer to Allāt followed by a partial abecedary.

Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...