Old Hijazi

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Old Hijazi is the underlying Language of the Qur'an, as revealed by investigation into the Quranic Consonantal Text (QCT), the underlying consonantal skeleton (in Arabic, rasm رسم) of the Qur'an. This language differs markedly in pronunciation and grammar from the later classical Arabic that is imposed upon the text by modern day Muslims and scholars who follow the Muslim tradition of Quranic readings.

Introduction to the I'Arab

In order to understand how the language of the QCT differs from the later classical Arabic it is now read in, it's important to understand the i'arab.

The i'arab system in Arabic is a set of grammatical endings attached to words to convey aspects such as case, mood, and voice in a sentence. This system has its origin in classical Arabic as formulated by the classical Arabic grammarians after the 8th century, and it continues to be used, with very little change, in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), known in Arabic as fusha, the lingua franca of the Arab world and the language of books and official media such as government proclamations and news media.

In Classical Arabic and MSA, nouns (asma') can be marked for three grammatical cases: nominative (marfu'), accusative (mansub), and genitive (majrur). The markings consist of either a short vowel, a short vowel and an “n” sound, or (occasionally) a long vowel. Nouns can also be in the state of definiteness or indefiniteness, which each take different endings. The system of i'arab specifies the vowel endings for nouns in these different states (Fischer, 86).

It should be noted that Classical Arabic had a sentence structure of VSO: verb, subject, object, with some variation for emphasis and other reasons. MSA has moved (along with the Arabic dialects) to use more of an SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) system, although VSO is still more common in literature (kamal hasan, 7). In Classical Arabic and sometimes in MSA the case system was essential to understanding the meaning of some sentences; as MSA has changed to mirror the dialects, though, the importance of the system for understanding has diminished. Arabic has become a more “analytical” language relying on the positions of words in sentences to convey meaning, whereas classical Arabic was a more “synthetic” language that used the i’arab system to convey this information.

Here is a basic outline of i'arab for singular nouns:

1. Nominative case (marfu'): the noun takes a short -u for definite and -un for indefinite nouns. This case is typically used for the subject of a sentence.

2. Accusative case (mansub): the noun takes a short -a for definite and -un for indefinite nouns. This case is often used for the direct object of a sentence.

3. Genitive case (majrur): the noun takes a short -i for definite and -in for indefinite nouns. This case is commonly used for objects of prepositions and to express ownership or relation of one noun to another (Karing Ryding, 183-184).

These are the basic form for regular, singular nouns, there are other variations on these three cases for other types and classes of noun.

As for verbs (afa'al), they can take different endings based on tense, mood, and voice.

Present tense (al-mudari') verbs can have different endings based on the mood:

1. Indicative mood (marfu'): The verb ends in -u. This is used when the verb is in an independent clause.

2. Subjunctive mood (mansub): The verb ends in -a. This is used after certain particles or in clauses beginning with “that” id est “I wish that I was a swimmer” or “I wish that he goes” (in Arabic, it is normal to say “I want that he goes” or “I wish that he goes” rather than “I want him to go” or “I wish him to go” with an infinitive, as infinitive verbs strictly speaking do not exist; the closest equivalent to the infinitive is the verbal noun (“going” “being” etc), but most forms of Arabic prefer the subjunctive to the verbal noun).

3. Jussive mood (majzum): The verb ends in a sukun, indicating a full stop/lack of vowel. This is used in certain negative commands or after certain particles (Karin Ryding, 445).

The endings for nouns are thus u, a, and i, and for verbs they are u, a, and sukun (full stop, silent, no vowel). As with the nouns, modern Arabic dialects have completely lost these endings, and MSA may be spoken with or without them and be understood. They were, however, essential for understanding classical Arabic. All of the classical Islamic reading traditions feature full use of the I’arab system, for nouns and verbs. Despite the presence of the diacritical markings on every word indicating the presence of these short vowels, these endings are not pronounced at the end of a line of Quranic recitation. If the i’arab were to be pronounced at the end of all lines, the Qur’an would cease to rhyme; meanwhile, if the Qur’an is read without the i’arab, hundreds of new rhymes emerge.

The Quranic Consonantal Text

The Qur’anic consonantal text (QCT) is the original consonantal skeleton of the text of the Qur’an. It is derived from two sources, the vast Uthmanic corpus of copies of the Qur’an created after the Uthmanic recension and the Sana’a palimpsest that provides us our only glimpse as a manuscript tradition which differs markedly from the Uthmanic tradition. Both the Uthmanic corpus and Sana’a palimpsest derive from an underlying text of the Qur’an and the two traditions do not differ greatly in their transmission of this underlying text. The QCT was written without many (but not without all) of the diacritical marks and dots which now typify Arabic texts, including inter alia short vowel marks, hamzahs, (many) consonant dot, and differs significantly from modern Arabic texts in the markings of some long vowels, particularly at the end of words.

The QCT shows a number of differences from both the later interpretation of it in the Islamic tradition and later medieval norms around writing Arabic.

Final Yaa’

In later Arabic, some words such as رأى and قهوى are spelled with the letter “y”, “yaa’”, but pronounced with a long “a” sound. This letter, the so-called Alif Maqsurah, is not always represented as such in the QCT. In some cases, the sound is written out as a regular alif ا and in other cases it is written as would be later expected, with a yaa’ ى. The difference between these spellings is likely meaningful. The instances in which the yaa’ is spelled out likely had an original long e sound, whereas those written with an alif likely represented a pronounced long a. These sounds were later merged into a single long “a” realization. (Marijn van Putten Dissimilation of ē to ā in the Qurʾānic Consonantal Text).

The Hamzah

In most cases where later forms of Arabic and interpretations of the QCT would have a hamzah (the letter ء, in later Arabic used to represent the glottal stop) the Qur’an does not spell word with a hamzah in any position. The orthography of the QCT seems to indicate a total lack of the glottal stop in all cases save one:

1. Post consonantal mid-word hamzahs are just not written: يسأل “he asks” is spelled يسل with no hamzah, أفئدة “benefits” is written افده.

2 The sequence u/a ‘ u with a long u is written with a single waw و:

رؤوس “heads” is written روس

رؤوف “compassionate” is written روف

3. Final long a followed by a hamzah is written without the hamzah, so أبناء “sons” is written ابنا .

Unlike with the other hamzahs, where rhyme seems to indicate the glottal stop was not pronounced, the rhyms involving these words seem to indicate the hamzah may have been pronounced in this position, though it was never written

Ta Marboutah

In later Arabic, the final a sound indicating a feminine noun, the ta marboutah, is written as haa’ ه with two dots over it, the so-called ta marboutah: ة . The QCT never has these two dots. When it does appear, the pronunciation was not with a t followed by the I’rab ending, but rather a consonantal, breathy haa’ that would have rhymed with the third person attached pronoun -hu.

Nunation Lost

The QCT never writes out the tanwiin, the addition of a nun to the I’arab ending of a noun, with one exception, where the expression k’ayyin min “oh how many of” is written كأين من . Otherwise the 3rd person masculine accusative an is written just as a long a ا or else the tanwin is not written at all. All other forms of grammatical nunation, the addition of a nun to a word to mark a grammatical structure, have also been lost in the orthography of the QCT. The loss of nunation is such that in the majzum or jussive for the word kaana “to be” is written without final nunnation in several spots: 1sg. ak اك (Q19:20) 3sg.m yak ىك (Q8:53; Q9:74; Q16:120, Q19:67; Q40̈:28, 85; Q75:37) 3sg.f. tak تك (Q4:40; Q11:17, 109; Q16:127; Q19:9; Q31:16; Q40:50) 1pl. nak نك (Q74:43, 44) This also extends to the “energetic” verbal ending -an: Q96:15 (later Arabic: )la-nasfa’an لنفسعا ‘We will surely drag’Q12:32 Q12:32 (later Arabic: ) la-yakunan لىكونا ‘he will surely be’

Enforcement of Classical Arabic on Early Arabic Texts

Modern scholars have generally taken for granted the antiquity and universality of the Arabic of the grammarians (Classical Arabic). Earlier written texts, such as the papyri from the seventh and early eighth centuries ce and the Quran, the earliest manuscripts of which precede the grammatical tradition by more than a century, are conventionally interpreted according to much later norms, without the need for justification. Any reader of these texts will notice that the oral component differs from the written in significant ways. To illustrate, consider the word ملىكه in Q66:6. All reading traditions instruct that this word should be pronounced as [malāʔikatun]; these traditions go back to the middle of the eighth century at the earliest, while the true seventh-century form is the written artifact, mlykh, lacking the final syllable tun. Despite the fact that the written in these cases is demonstrably older than the reading traditions, the oral is given default preference, and the differences are a reduced to orthographic convention. Indeed, most scholars have assumed that the language behind the most ancient component of the Quran, its Consonantal Text (QCT), is more or less identical to the language recited in the halls of Al-Azhar today.


The careful and dispassionate study of Arabia’s ancient epigraphy reveals a picture quite dissimilar from that presented in Muslim historical sources. The Arabic of the grammarians is not met with; instead, the peninsula displays a dazzling degree of linguistic diversity. The Old Arabic dialects differ in ways not recorded by the grammarians, while features that figure prominently in the grammatical manuals are nowhere to be found. Consider nunation (tanwīn)—this is a standard feature of Classical Arabic, but in the consonantal South Semitic writing systems, Greek transcriptions, and the Graeco-Arabic inscription A1, the feature is completely absent. While the absence of nunation in Arabic orthography is usually written off as a convention, there is no reason to assume such conventions when Arabic is written in other scripts, much less before the development of the Arabic script itself. These attestations can mean only one thing: nunation had disappeared in most forms of Old Arabic.
Ahmad Al-Jallad, The Damascus Psalm Fragment, p.2,5

Early transcriptions of Arabic in Greek and Hebrew scripts

Since that short vowels aren’t represented in Arabic writing, early Arabic texts written in non-Arabic scripts provide important pronunciation details as these scripts are free from Arabic spelling rules and do show short vowels.

One of the great challenges of understanding the linguistic history of Arabic in the early Islamic period is the highly defective spelling of early Arabic. It is ambiguous in terms of phonetic features such as the short vowels, the hamzah, and a general disagreement whether a written text is supposed to represent the vernacular or rather a form approximating Classical Arabic, or something in between, make it difficult to establish much of a baseline of expectations of the Arabic of this period. Historically, scholars interested in the history of Arabic have relied on the descriptions of the language by the Arab Grammarians who started their effort to standardize a high Arabic language around the end of the 8th century. The form of Arabic they describe, however, is highly idealized, and certainly rather artificial. Any data there is about the spoken vernacular in such works is, as Rabin (1951, p. 4) put it, seen “only through the veil of the literary Arabic used by their speakers”. Recent advances in the field of Arabic historical linguistics, spearheaded by Ahmad Al-Jallad, have made it clear that in the Pre-Islamic period, Arabic was much more diverse than was previously thought.
Marijn Van Putten, Copto-Arabica, p.1
The lack of explicit prescriptivism in the early grammatical tradition concerning a large amount of phonological, morphological and syntactic variation should not be understood as evidence that the data presented by the grammarians is an uncurated representation of the dialects of Arabic. In fact, if we compare what the grammarians describe to contemporary Arabic texts written in scripts other than Arabic, we find one very striking difference: The Arabic of this period, not filtered through the grammarian lens, lacks the full ʔiʕrāb and tanwīn system which so quintessentially marks Classical Arabic.
Marijn Van Putten, Quranic Arabic, p.44

First Islamic century Greek transcriptions

These texts are mainly official documents belonging to the Umayyad caliphate which was founded by Muʕāwiyah, a companion of Muhammad. Although the Greek texts in these documents contain short Arabic phrases (mainly names and titles), they reveal that the documented dialect has the following features:

1-The loss of final short vowels and nunation.[1]

e.g.: The name banī saʕd بني سعد is written without the final short vowel ‘i’ and without nunation (tanwīn):

Β(ανι) Σααδ β(εν) Μαλεχ / B(ani) saad b(en) malek / بني سعد بن مالك Classical Arabic pronunciation: Banī saʕdin ibni mālik You can view the papyri here.

  1. ↑ [https://www.academia.edu/24938389/Al_Jallad_2017_The_Arabic_of_the_Islamic_Conquests_Notes_on_Phonology_and_Morphology_based_on_the_Greek_Transcriptions_from_the_First_Islamic_Century Ahmad Al-Jallad, The Arabic of the Islamic conquests, 2017, p11]
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