Letter from Lhasa, number 194. (Healey 2009): A Brief Introduction to the Arabic Alphabet
by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi
Healey, J. F., and G. R. Smith, A Brief Introduction to the Arabic Alphabet. Its Origins and Various Forms, SAQI, 2009.
(Healey 2009).
John F. Healey
G. Rex Smith
“This book has the modest ambition of presenting an easily accessible account of the origins and history of the Arabic script.”
(Healey 2009, p. 11)
“The main languages of the Middle East which are involved in the early history of the alphabet belong to the Semitic language group, which includes, apart from Arabic and Hebrew, such languages as Aramaic and Syriac, Phoenician and Moabite, Sabaic and related languages in south Arabia (Yemen) and the languages of Ethiopia. There are also some ancient Semitic languages of Ethiopia. There are also some ancient Semitic languages for which cuneiform or an adapted alphabetic cuneiform were used (Akkadian and Ugaritic respectively). The term “Semitic” for these languages derives from an eighteenth-century European interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, which has Shem or Sem as the ancestor of the speakers of the languages in question.”
(Healey 2009, p. 20)
“The ancient Israelites – we use the term broadly, though it disguises a host of historical problems about whether the United Kingdom under David and Solomon ever existed as a unitary state – appear to have borrowed the alphabet from the Phoenicians along with much else. The Bible itself tells us that the first Israelites depended for iron-working technology on the Phoenicians and David and Solomon are said to have imported Phoenician craftsmen to build the palace and temple.”
(Healey 2009, p. 31)
“Alongside the Israelites there were other kingdoms emerging at the same time: the Ammonites in the area east of the Jordan and including modern Amman, the Moabites a little further south, and the Edomites at the southern end of the Dead Sea in the area including Petra. These people too adopted the Phoenician alphabet. The only one of the three for which we have substantial evidence is Moabite: a lengthy Moabite inscription, dated to c. 850 BCE, records the victories of a Moabite king, Mesha. The script is clearly derived from the Phoenician, but as in the case of the Palaeo-Hebrew script, it gradually diversified from it, developing its own peculiarities.”
(Healey 2009, p. 33)
Alphabets are political-economic devices: “The Greeks at this date [[1200-800 BCE]] did not have a unified state and the alphabet varied in different regions.” (Healey 2009, p. 33)
“Although the Greeks borrowed, and standardized in their own way, the forms of the letters, they introduced one major innovation: they decided to use some letters to represent vowels. This was made easier by the fact that there were some letters of the Phoenician alphabet which were not needed for Greek since Greek did not have the corresponding consonant.”
(Healey 2009, p. 34)
“We will see later that users of other scripts, especially Syriac and Hebrew and Arabic, were aware of the difficulties involved in a consonant-only writing system and made their own attempts to compensate for this by making vowels above and below the line of writing, but the Greeks solved the problem in a more radical way by inventing letters to represent the vowels alongside the consonants.
(...) “The Greek alphabet was transmitted to the Etruscans and Romans and as a result of the extent of the Roman Empire in the West (from the first century CE onwards), the Latin-type alphabet came to be used universally in the West.”
(Healey 2009, p. 35)
“The Aramaeans emerged in the late second millennium BCE, in part filling a power vacuum after the collapse of earlier empires (especially the Hittite Empire) and before the rise of Assyria. They formed kingdoms centred on cities like Damascus and Hamath (Hama), and are frequently mentioned in connection with events in ancient Israel, which was intermittently allied with or subordinated to them. Like Israel, they came later under Assyrian pressure and eventually their independent kingdoms disappreared.
“The language used by the Aramaeans is called Aramaic. It is related to the other Semitic languages of the area, though it is quite distinct from them. Like the Israelites, the Aramaeans borrowed the Phoenician alphabet and made it their own. (...)
“When the Assyrians became fully engaged in empire-building in the western part of the Middle East they made use of Aramaic for diplomatic and practical purposes, employing Aramaean scribes. Aramaeans also spread into Mesopotamia and insinuated themselves into high positions of power. When the Babylonians took over from the Assyrians, for a short time after 612 BCE, Aramaic was even more widespread than before.”
(Healey 2009, p. 37-38)
Where does the Arabic alphabet come from?
“The predominant view is that the Arabic alphabet is best explained as a development from the Nabataean alphabet of the first few centuries CE. (...) The other view is that the Syriac alphabet had a central role in the creation of the Arabic alphabet.”
(Healey 2009, p. 51)
At page 59, one may find a useful table of Nabataean, Aramaic and Syriac scripts.
(Healey 2009) is a small book to be read and also to be studied.
Healey, J. F., and G. R. Smith, A Brief Introduction to the Arabic Alphabet. Its Origins and Various Forms, SAQI, 2009.
