Old Arabic Minutiae I: ḥattā, laysa, and More from the Inscriptions of the Syro-Jordanian Ḥarrah

Abstract

Abstract This is the inaugural paper of a series on material attested in ancient North Arabia inscriptions that is of particular importance to the history of Arabic, its linguistic context, and its development and classification. The article edits eleven Safaitic inscriptions, inscribed on seven stones, discovered during the 2019 Badia Survey in Northeastern Jordan. Most of these texts attest new grammatical and lexical features that shed important light on this shadowy phase of Arabic’s pre-Islamic history, including attestations of the subordinating particle ḥt (= ḥattV), the negator ls (= laysa), possible nūnation, and idioms that appear later in the Qurʾān, e.g. tmny h-mt ‘he wished for death (in combat)’ (cf. Qurʾān tamannūna l-mawta).