Old Hijazi: Difference between revisions

It’s been taken for granted by both academics and Muslim scholars that Classical Arabic was the language of the Quran and Arabs before Islam and during the first three centuries of Islam. This is reflected in the way Muslims recite the Quran and Hadith today. It’s even reflected in all Arabic historical movies and TV works depicting the early centuries of Islam such as the “Al-Risālah” movie about the life of Muhammad where all the actors are shown speaking in Classical Arabic with its two main hallmarks: full case inflection (final short vowels and nunation or Tanwīn) and full use of the Hamzah (glottal stop). This belief is reinforced by the popular claim by Muslim scholars that the readings tradition of the Quran, which the Quran is recited based on, were transmitted to us verbatim from the mouth of Muhammad. And all of these readings employ a full case system and heavily use the Hamzah. But recent academic research pioneered by Ahmad Al-Jallad of Ohio University and Marijn Van Putten of the University of Leiden, shows that the Quran was actually composed in a different language, which they call Old Hijazi, the ancient vernacular dialect of the Hijaz region which includes Makkah and Medina.