Arabian Tongue Institute Blog (History of Arabic language)

History of Arabic language

Arabic is ranked fifth in the world’s league table of languages with more than 200 million native speakers, most of who live in the Middle East and North Africa. It is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Arabic is the language of the Qur’an and is used throughout the Muslim world. It’s the official language of 22 countries

Arabic is a very rich language. It has a history as complex as the history of the Arabic speaking countries that use the language.

Arabic has its roots in the Semitic family of languages. The earliest known example of Arabic is an inscription found in the Syrian desert dating back to the fourth century A.D. The pre-Islamic Arab tribes who lived in the Arabian peninsula and neighboring regions had a thriving oral poetic tradition. But it was not systematically collected and recorded in written form until the eighth century A.D. This poetic language, probably the result of the fusion of various dialects, came to be regarded as a literary or elevated style which represented a cultural bond among different tribes.

The origin of Arabic, and especially that of Arabic script, is a hotly contested topic even until today. Some believe Arabic script originated in the north between the 4th and 7th centuries in Al Hirah, Mesopotamia. Another camp say it originated anywhere in between 110 B.C. and 525 A.D. from the south of ­Arabia near Himyar. A recent discovery by a French-Saudi expedition would seem to support the latter.

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