Paleo-Arabic

Paleo-Arabic (or Palaeo-Arabic, sometimes also referred to as pre-Islamic Arabic or Old Arabic) is a script that represents a pre-Islamic phase in the evolution of the Arabic script at which point it becomes recognizably similar to the Islamic Arabic script. It comes prior to Classical Arabic, but it is also a recognizable form of the Arabic script, emerging after a transitional phase of Nabataean Arabic as the Nabataean script slowly evolved into the modern Arabic script. It appears in the late fifth and sixth centuries and, though was originally only known from Syria and Jordan, is now also attested in several extant inscriptions from the Arabian Peninsula, such as in the Christian texts at the site of Hima in South Arabia. More recently, additional examples of Paleo-Arabic have been discovered near Taif in the Hejaz and in the Tabuk region of northwestern Saudi Arabia.

The term "Paleo-Arabic" was first used by Christian Robin in the form of the French expression "paléo-arabe".

Classification
Paleo-Arabic refers to the Arabic script in the centuries prior to the standardization Arabic underwent in the Islamic era. According to Ahmad Al-Jallad and Hythem Sidky, Paleo-Arabic can be distinguished from the script that occurs in later periods by a number of orthographic features, including:


 * Wawation
 * Use of Arameograms
 * Absence of alif to represent the long ā
 * Occasional phonetic spelling of the definite article
 * Occasional relic use of dots to distinguish the dāl from rē

Genres
Known Paleo-Arabic inscriptions fall into one of three categories:


 * simple signatures with no confessional statements
 * monotheist invocations
 * specifically Christian texts

As such, they reflect the dominance attained by the spread of monotheism in pre-Islamic Arabia from the fourth to sixth centuries in the pre-Islamic period.

God
Paleo-Arabic inscriptions most commonly refer to "God" as al-ʾilāh or by its orthographic variant illāh, though the term Rabb for "Lord" also appears as is seen in the Abd Shams inscription, Jabal Dabub inscription, and the Ri al-Zallalah inscription.

Introductory formulae
The present corpus of Paleo-Arabic inscriptions attests the following introductory formulae:


 * b-sm-k rb-nʾ / In your name, our lord
 * brk-[k]m rb-nʾ / May our lord bless you
 * b-sm-k ʾllhm / In your name, O God
 * b-sm lh rḥmn / In the name of Allāh, the Raḥmān

Calendar
Several Paleo-Arabic inscriptions, including the Jebel Usays inscription and the Hima Paleo-Arabic inscriptions typically date events according to the Bostran era, whose beginning is the equivalent of the year 106 in the Gregorian calendar. However, at least one, the Zabad inscription (known from Syria) uses the Seleucid era.

List of Paleo-Arabic inscriptions
The current list of known Paleo-Arabic texts and inscriptions is given in a table and appendix of a paper jointly written by Ahmad Al-Jallad and Hythem Sidky.