Old Hijazi Arabic
Old Hijazi, or Old Higazi, is a variety of Old Arabic attested in Hejaz the western part of Saudi Arabia from about the 1st century to the 7th century. It is the variety thought to underlie the Quranic Consonantal Text (QCT) and in its later iteration was the prestige spoken and written register of Arabic in the Umayyad Caliphate. Classification. Old Ḥijāzī is characterized by the innovative relative pronoun "ʾallaḏī" (), "ʾallatī" (), etc., which is attested once in the inscription JSLih 384 and is the common form in the QCT, as opposed to the form "ḏ"- which is  otherwise common to Old Arabic. The infinitive verbal complement is replaced with a subordinating clause "ʾan yafʿala", attested in the QCT and a fragmentary Dadanitic inscription. The QCT along with the papyri of the first century after the Islamic conquests attest a form with an l-element between the demonstrative base and the distal particle, producing from the original proximal set "ḏālika" and "tilka". The emphatic interdental and lateral were realized as voiced, in contrast to Northern Old Arabic, where they were voiceless. Phonology. Consonants. The sounds in the chart above are based on the constructed phonology of Proto-Semitic  and the phonology of Modern Hejazi Arabic. Notes: Vowels. In contrast to Classical Arabic, Old Hejazi had the phonemes  and , which arose from the contraction of Old Arabic [aja] and [awa], respectively. It also may have had short [e] from the reduction of  in closed syllables: The QCT attests a phenomenon of pausal final long -"ī" dropping, which was virtually obligatory. Example. Here is an example of reconstructed Old Hejazi side-by-side with its classicized form, with remarks on phonology: Notes: Grammar. Proto-Arabic. Notes. The definite article spread areally among the Central Semitic languages and it would seem  that Proto-Arabic lacked any overt marking of definiteness. Old Hejazi (Quranic Consonantal Text). Notes. In JSLih 384, an early example of Old Hejazi, the Proto-Central Semitic /-t/ allomorph survives in "bnt" as opposed to /-ah/ < /-at/ in "slmh". Old Ḥejāzī is characterized by the innovative relative pronoun "ʾallaḏī", "ʾallatī", etc., which is attested once in JSLih 384 and is the common form in the QCT. The infinitive verbal complement is replaced with a subordinating clause "ʾan yafʿala", attested in the QCT and a fragmentary Dadanitic inscription. The QCT along with the papyri of the first century after  the Islamic conquests attest a form with an l-element between the demonstrative base and the distal particle, producing from the original proximal set "ḏālika" and "tilka". Writing systems. Dadanitic. A single text, JSLih 384, composed in the Dadanitic script, from northwest Arabia, provides the only non-Nabataean example of Old Arabic from the Ḥijāz. Transitional Nabataeo-Arabic. A growing corpus of texts carved in a script in between Classical Nabataean Aramaic and what is now called the Arabic script from Northwest Arabia provides further lexical and some morphological material for the later stages of Old Arabic in this region . The texts provide important insights as to the development of the Arabic script from its Nabataean forebear and are an important glimpse of the Old Ḥejāzī dialects. Arabic (Quranic Consonantal Text and 1st c. Papyri). The QCT represents an archaic form of Old Hejazi. Greek (Damascus Psalm Fragment). The Damascus Psalm Fragment in Greek script represents a later form of prestige spoken dialect in the Umayyad Empire that may have roots in Old Hejazi. It shares features with the QCT such as the non-assimilating /ʾal-/ article and the pronominal form /ḏālika/. However, it shows a phonological merger between  and  [aː] and the development of a new front allophone of [a(ː)] in non-emphatic contexts, perhaps realized [e(ː)].