Abstract
The article offers insight into a fresh way to utilise hadith collections beyond criticising their material in terms of their authenticity or discussing their implications for Islamic law. It builds on a digital corpus of collections to represent the wealth of canonical Sunni, Shia and Ibadite traditions. In this first exploration of this corpus, the interconnectedness of early Islamic Arabia with other parts of world is highlighted through an analysis of travelling words, proper names, and concrete objects in a few case studies organised into five sections by geographical area. These include translation, a Wanderwort, and contact through commerce and trade. The methods applied to analyse the material are those of historical and comparative linguistics. The results indicate that exploring linguistic aspects of hadith collections—notwithstanding editorial revision and their canonisation—can inform studies of language change in Arabic and set the course to research the standardisation of Arabic. Key words: Hadith Studies, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, Middle Persian, Southern Arabia, Late Antiquity
Highlights
The present article chooses to view hadith collections as worth exploring and studying for what they intend to be, namely collections of texts of the early Islamic world, potentially approximating a spoken form of Arabic.1 it aims to contribute to the linguistic study of hadith collections across sectarian and disciplinary boundaries
Since there are many studies already intersecting with Northwest Semitic languages regarding cultural and linguistic contact, here, the focus will be on Middle Persian and marginalised Ancient South Arabian languages
Hebrew mahi) with an Arabic etymology rather than potentially South Arabian, Judaeo-Arabic or Hebrew as suggested elsewhere. In this preliminary exploration of hadith collections with a view to find linguistic corroboration for the connectedness of Western Arabia with different parts of the world, a few words took us on journeys across time, space, and different languages
Summary
The idea to study cultural contact via foreign words and loan words as well as calquing is not novel or original by any means. All three phrases set in italics and left untranslated in the quotation above mean ‘do not be afraid’, yet, in three different languages, namely Arabic, and perfectly correct Middle Persian and Aramaic respectively This should not come as a surprise since Pahlavi and Syriac were major literary languages widely used across the Near East and the Parthian and succeeding Sasanian Empire that included Eastern Arabia. Afraid’ (cf Luke 1:13 in Peshitta) might have evolved into the circular zero-vowel diacritic sukūn above the ‹d›, yielding lā tadḥal as quoted in the hadith in the above cited edition The reason for this could be the semantic challenge an assumed denominal verb of Arabic dhaḥl ‘seeking retaliation for a crime’ would pose in the context of ‘granting security’ to a defeated enemy. Certainly does not go back to Muḥammad, it indicates awareness of the linguistic reality of the expanding Islamic empire by acknowledging some rudimentary knowledge of Persian and Aramaic, albeit in the context of battle reassuring the opponent of their life (cf. ĀlĪsā 2002: 1098-1099)
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