Old South Arabian

Old South Arabian (also known as Ancient South Arabian (ASA), Epigraphic South Arabian, Ṣayhadic, or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related extinct languages (Sabaean/Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramitic, Minaic) spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest preserved records belonging to the group are dated to the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE. They were written in the Ancient South Arabian script.

There were a number of other Old South Arabian languages (e.g. Awsānian), of which very little evidence has survived, however. A pair of possible surviving Sayhadic languages is attested in the Razihi language and Faifi language spoken in far north-west of Yemen, though these varieties of speech have both Arabic and Sayhadic features, and it is difficult to classify them as either Arabic dialects with a Sayhadic substratum, or Sayhadic languages that have been restructured under pressure of Arabic.

Classification issues
It was originally thought that all four members of this group were dialects of one Old South Arabian language, but in the mid-twentieth century, linguist A.F.L. Beeston finally proved that they did in fact constitute independent languages.

The Old South Arabian languages were originally classified (partly on the basis of geography) as South Semitic, along with Modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic; more recently however, a new classification has come in use which places Old South Arabian, along with Arabic, Ugaritic, Aramaic and Canaanite/Hebrew in a Central Semitic group; leaving Modern South Arabian and Ethiopic in a separate group. This new classification is based on Arabic, Old South Arabian and Northwest Semitic (Ugaritic, Aramaic and Canaanite) sharing an innovation in the verbal system, an imperfect taking the form *yVqtVl-u (the other groups have *yVqattVl); Nebes showed that Sabaean at least had the form yVqtVl in the imperfect.

Even though it has been now accepted that the four main languages be considered independent, they are clearly closely related linguistically and derive from a common ancestor because they share certain morphological innovations. One of the most important isoglosses retained in all four languages is the suffixed definite article -(h)n, another proposed common innovation being the formation of 1st and 2nd person perfect verbal forms with -k (which is also a feature of Yemeni Arabic attributable to a Sayhadic substrate). There are however significant differences between the languages, so much so that Stein proposes a relationship between Sabaic and Aramaic, with a primary split setting it apart from the other Sayhadic languages on the basis of the h/s isogloss in the formation of the personal pronouns and the causative stem further positing a closer relationship between Minaic and Hadramitic with the Ethiopian Semitic and Modern South Arabian branches.

The four main Sayhadic languages were: Sabaean, Minaeic (or Madhabic), Qatabanic, and Hadramitic.

Sayhadic had its own writing system, the Ancient South Arabian Monumental Script, or Ms3nd, consisting of 29 graphemes concurrently used for proto-Geʿez in the Kingdom of Dʿmt, ultimately sharing a common origin with the other Semitic abjads, the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. Inscriptions in another minuscule cursive script written on wooden sticks have also been discovered.

The last inscription of these languages has been dated to 554 CE, 60 years before the appearance of Islam.

Languages
Old South Arabian comprised a number of languages; the following are those that have been preserved in writing (the dates follow the so-called long chronology). Besides these, at least Razihi may be a surviving Old South Arabian language.


 * Sabaean: the language of the kingdom of Saba and later also of Ḥimyar; also documented in the Ethiopian kingdom of Da'amot; very well documented, ca. 6,000 Inscriptions
 * Old Sabaean: 8th until 2nd century BC.
 * Middle Sabaean: 1st century BC until the 4th century AD (the best documented language)
 * Ḥaramitic: the language of the area to the north of Ma'īn
 * Central Sabaean: the language of the inscriptions from the Sabaean heartland
 * South Sabaean: the language of the inscriptions from Radman and Ḥimyar
 * "Pseudo-Sabaean": the literary language of Arabian tribes in Najrān, Haram and Qaryat al-Fāw
 * Late Sabaean: 5th and 6th centuries AD.


 * Minaean: (also called Madhabian): the language of the city states in al-Jawf − with the exception of Haram − especially the later sparsely populated state of Ma'in (recorded from the 8th until 2nd century BC). Inscriptions have also been found outside Ma'īn in the commercial colonies of Dedan and Madā'in Ṣāliḥ, in Egypt and also on Delos. (ca. 500 inscriptions)


 * Qatabānian: the language of the kingdom of Qatabān, recorded from the 5th century BC until the 2nd century (barely 2,000 inscriptions)
 * Awsānian: the language of the kingdom of Awsān, poorly recorded (ca. 25 inscriptions, 8th/ 1st century BC until about the 1st century AD). Indistinguishable from Qatabānian.
 * Other varieties such as the language of the tribe of Radmān


 * Hadramautic (or Ḥaḑramitic): the language of Ḥaḑramaut, with an additional inscription from the Greek island of Delos. 5th century BC until the 4th century AD, with ca. 1,000 inscriptions.

Written records
Old South Arabian was written in the Old South Arabian script, a consonantal abjad deriving from the Phoenician alphabet. Compared with other parts of the ancient world, Palestine for instance, the number of surviving inscriptions is very high. Something in the region of 10,000 inscriptions exist. The Sabaean lexicon contains about 2,500 words.

Categories of written records

 * 1) Inscriptions in stone
 * 2) Votive inscriptions, which often preserve historical accounts of the events that led to the dedication
 * 3) Inscriptions on buildings: give the names of the person who commissioned the work and the historical circumstances among other things
 * 4) Laws and legislation
 * 5) Protocols and deeds
 * 6) Inscriptions written for atonement or repentance
 * 7) Graffiti on rocks
 * 8) Literary texts: if large numbers of any such texts ever existed, they have been almost completely lost
 * 9) Inscriptions on wooden cylinders (only Middle Sabaean and Hadramite). There are about 1,000 so far; very few published, mostly from Nashshān, in Wādī Madhāb.
 * 10) Private texts
 * 11) Contracts and orders
 * 12) Inscriptions on everyday objects

The inscriptions on stone display a very formal and precise wording and expression, whereas the style of the wooden inscriptions written in the cursive script is much more informal.

History of research and teaching
Although the inscriptions from ancient South Arabia were already known by the 18th century, it was Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842) and his student Emil Rödiger who finally undertook the deciphering of the script, actually independently of each other, in the years 1841/42. Then in the second half of the 19th century Joseph Halévy and Eduard Glaser brought hundreds of Old South Arabian inscriptions, possible tracings and copies back to Europe. On the basis of this large amount of material Fritz Hommel prepared a selection of texts in 1893 along with an attempt at a grammar. Later on the Sabaean expert Nikolaus Rhodokanakis made especially important steps towards understanding Old South Arabian. A completely new field of Old South Arabian script and texts has opened up since the 1970s with the discovery of wooden cylinders on which Sabaean has been written with a pen. The unknown script and numerous incomprehensible words present Sabaean studies with new problems, and to this day the wooden cylinders are not completely understood.

In the German-speaking world, Old South Arabian is taught in the framework of Semitic Studies, and no independent university chair has been dedicated to Old South Arabian (or Sabaean) Studies. Learning Old South Arabian at least furthers the student’s knowledge of the characteristics of Semitic by introducing him or her to a less well-preserved example of the group. Students normally begin to learn the grammar of Old South Arabian and then they finally read a few of the longer texts.