104-518: Deir Yassin ( Arabic : دير ياسين , romanized : Dayr Yāsīn ) was a Palestinian Arab village of around 600 inhabitants about 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) west of Jerusalem . Deir Yassin declared its neutrality during the 1948 Palestine war between Arabs and Jews. The village was razed after a massacre of around 107 of its Arab residents on April 9, 1948, by the Jewish paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi . The village buildings are today part of
208-523: A Muslim village, located in the Beni Malik area, west of Jerusalem. Robinson hired muleteers from Lifta, noting that in Lifta "every peasant keeps his mule and usually accompanies it". In 1863 Victor Guérin described Lifta as being surrounded by gardens of lemon-trees, oranges, figs, pomegranates, alms and apricots. An Ottoman village list of about 1870 indicated 117 houses and a population of 395, though
312-485: A 20-pages article describing the marriage celebrations and religious festivals in Lifta. In 1917, Lifta surrendered to the British forces with white flags and, as a symbolic gesture, the keys to the village. In the 1922 census of Palestine , Lifta had a population 1,451, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census (when Lifta was counted with " Shneller's Quarter "), to 1,893; 1,844 Muslims, 35 Jews and 14 Christians, in
416-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
520-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
624-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
728-457: A high spot, dominating the surrounding area. The village guesthouse, or Madafeh , was located opposite the shrine. Edward Robinson noted the village in 1838, and by 1870, an Ottoman village list indicated 13 houses and a population of 48, though the list only counted men. In 1896 the population of Deir Yassin was estimated to be about 138 persons. In the late 19th century, the houses of Deir Yassin were built of stone. Two springs—one located in
832-525: A legal petition to preserve the village as a historic site. Lifta was the last remaining Arab village that was depopulated to have not been either completely destroyed or re-inhabited. In 2012, the plans to rebuild the village as an upscale neighborhood were rejected by the Jerusalem District Court. By 2011, three books about the Palestinian village history had been published. In June 2017
936-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
1040-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
1144-534: A municipal nature reserve under the auspices of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority . In 1984, one of the abandoned buildings in the village was occupied by the "Lifta gang", a Jewish group plotting the blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount , who were stopped at the gates of the site with 250 pounds of explosives, hand grenades, and other armaments. Following the departure of the Jewish residents, some of
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#17328475904141248-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
1352-628: A ring road that has been constructed around the village hill. One tall cypress tree still stands at the center of the cemetery. The killings at Deir Yassin are regarded as one of two pivotal events that led to the exodus of around 700,000 Palestinians from their towns and villages in 1948, along with the defeat of the Palestinians in Haifa . News of the killings, amplified by Arab media broadcasts of atrocity, triggered fear and panic among Palestinians, who in turn increasingly evacuated their homes. Deir Yassin
1456-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
1560-413: A second mosque built by Mahmud Salah, an affluent resident. Many inhabitants were employed outside the village in the nearby British Army camps as waiters, carpenters, and foremen; others as clerks and teachers in the mandatory civil service. By this time, no more than 15% of the population was engaged in agriculture. Relations between Deir Yassin and its Jewish neighbors had started reasonably well under
1664-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
1768-569: A total of 4,800 akçe . All of the revenue went to a waqf . In 1834, a battle took place here, during the revolt of that year . The Egyptian Ibrahim Pasha and his army fought and defeated local rebels, led by Shaykh Qasim al-Ahmad , a prominent local ruler. However, the Qasim al-Ahmad family remained powerful and ruled the region southwest of Nablus from their fortified villages of Deir Istiya and Bayt Wazan some 40 kilometers (25 mi) due north of Lifta. In 1838 Edward Robinson noted Lifta as
1872-514: A total of 410 houses. During the 1929 Palestine riots , according to one Israeli source, some villagers from Lifta were among gangs that participated in a number of robberies and attacks on nearby Jewish communities. In the 1945 statistics the population of Lifta was 2,250; 2,230 Muslims and 20 Christians, and the total land area was 8,743 dunams , according to an official land and population survey. 3,248 dunams were for cereals, while 324 dunams were built-up (urban) land. Prior to 1948,
1976-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
2080-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
2184-928: A victory parade, with some sources describing further violence by Lehi soldiers. Four Irgun or Lehi men were killed. The incident became known as the Deir Yassin massacre . On April 10, 1948, one day after the Deir Yassin massacre, Albert Einstein wrote a critical letter to the American Friends of Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (the U.S chapter of Lehi) refusing to assist them with aid or support to raise money for their cause in Palestine. On December 2, 1948, many prominent American Jews signed and published an op-ed article in The New York Times critical of Menachem Begin and
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#17328475904142288-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
2392-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
2496-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
2600-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
2704-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
2808-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
2912-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
3016-495: Is estimated that Deir Yassin had 610 Muslim inhabitants in the 1945 statistics . The five hamulas (clans) of Deir Yassin were the Shahada, 'Aql, Hamidad, Jabir and Jundi. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
3120-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
3224-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
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3328-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
3432-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
3536-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
3640-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
3744-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
3848-460: The sanjak (district) of Jerusalem. It had a population of seven Muslim households, who paid taxes on wheat, barley, and olive trees; a total of 4,522 akçe . All of the revenue went to a waqf . It is unknown precisely when settlement shifted to Deir Yassin. The village was named in honor of a certain Sheikh Yassin whose tomb was in a mosque , or shrine located just outside the village, on
3952-568: The British Mandate period transformed the basis of its economy. Deir Yassin's inhabitants prospered from mining, its main source of employment. A rich vein of hard yellow limestone, known as mizi yahudi was prized for its resistance to the rigors of Jerusalem's climate. The quarry ( hajar yasinik or "Yasin's stone") supplied the Jerusalem market, and the wealth allowed the village to develop spacious housing, two elementary schools and mosques. By
4056-596: The Crusaders referred to it as Clepsta . The remains of a court-yard home from the Crusader period remains in the centre of the village. In 1596, Lifta was a village in the Ottoman Empire , nahiya (subdistrict) of Jerusalem under the liwa' (district) of Jerusalem , and it had a population 72 Muslim households, an estimated 396 persons. It paid taxes on wheat , barley , olives , fruit orchards and vineyards;
4160-527: The Israelite tribes of Judah and Benjamin , and was the northernmost demarcation point of the territory of the Tribe of Judah . Other scholars hold the identification to be plausible but by no means certain. Kitchener and Conder found the identification with Nephtoah unsatisfactory, and preferred to identify Lifta with Eleph of Benjamin (Joshua 18:28). The Romans and Byzantines called it Nephtho , and
4264-623: The Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center , an Israeli public psychiatric hospital. The first part of the village's name Deir is defined as "monastery" in Arabic . According to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi , this was a common occurrence in Palestinian village names especially those so close to Jerusalem. A large ruin that lay at the southwestern edge of Deir Yassin was known simply as "Deir". Deir Yassin has been identified as one of
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4368-529: The Middle Bronze Age II and Iron Age II periods were uncovered. Archaeological remains dating as far back as Iron Age II have been found in the village. The site is considered by some to be identical with biblical Hebrew : מי נפתוח Mei Neftoach . It was populated since ancient times; "Nephtoah" (Hebrew: נפתח, lit. spring of the corridor) is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the border between
4472-561: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
4576-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
4680-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
4784-743: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Lifta Lifta ( Arabic : لفتا ; Hebrew : ליפתא )
4888-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
4992-562: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
5096-812: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
5200-511: The British Mandate, Deir Yassin had no school of its own and its children attended the school at Lifta or in Qalunya . By 1943, two elementary schools were built—one for boys and one for girls. The girls' school had a resident headmistress from Jerusalem. At that time, Deir Yassin also had a bakery, two guesthouses, and a social club—the "Renaissance Club", a thrift fund, three shops, four wells and
5304-401: The Jewish inhabitants of Lifta chose to leave as part of a compensation program by Amidar . Holes were drilled in the roofs of the evacuated buildings to make them less inhabitable, so that squatters wouldn't take up residence. 13 families, who lived in the portion of the village close to Highway 1 and didn't suffer from transportation issues chose to remain. In the 1980s, Lifta was declared
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#17328475904145408-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
5512-542: The Ottomans, particularly early on when Arabic-speaking Sephardic Yemenite Jews comprised much of the surrounding population. Relations rapidly deteriorated with the growth of Zionism in Palestine and reached their apex during the Arab revolt in 1936-1939 . Relations picked up again during the economic boom years of full employment of World War II . Thus, in 1948, Deir Yassin was a prosperous, expanding village at relative peace with its Jewish neighbors with whom much business
5616-556: The Palestinian Arab majority as 'excellent'. During the 1948 Palestine war , a massacre occurred on 28 December 1947, when a Jewish militia launched a machine-gun and grenade assault on a cafe in Lifa. The mukhtar 's home was also incinerated by the Zionist forces and 20 buildings were blown up as the village was put under siege. The village's Palestinian Arab inhabitants were expelled, and
5720-672: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
5824-561: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
5928-432: The abandoned village was later repopulated by Jewish immigrants until 1970s. In July 2017, Israel declared Lifta (called Mei Neftoach ) as a national nature reserve. It has been referred to as the "Palestinian Pompeii ". A perennial spring located in the channel's upper section is believed to be the site where the village first developed. Surrounding this spring, artifacts including a burial cave and pottery shards from
6032-413: The buildings in the village were used for Lifta drug abuse rehabilitation center for adolescents, which was closed in 2014, and from 1971 for the Lifta high school, an open education school, which relocated to German Colony, Jerusalem in 2001. In 2011, plans were announced to demolish the village and build a luxury development consisting of 212 luxury housing units and a hotel. Former residents brought
6136-567: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
6240-577: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
6344-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
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#17328475904146448-488: The expulsion of its Palestinian villagers, of Lifta's 410 homes, 60 stone houses, some three stories high, remained, together with its mosque, an olive press, and a tiled pathway to a spring. It is listed by Unesco as a potential World Heritage Site , and in 2018, the World Heritage Fund registered the village among a list of 24 heritage sites that were endangered. Lifta was used for Jewish refugee housing during
6552-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
6656-453: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
6760-579: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
6864-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
6968-599: The last Jewish residents left the village following a settlement with the government who acknowledged they were not squatters but rather resettled in Lifta by the appropriate authorities. In July 2017 Mei Neftoach was declared a national nature reserve. 55 out of 450 pre-1948 stone houses are still standing. In 2021, the Israel Land Administration , without informing beforehand the Jerusalem Municipality authorities, announced on Jerusalem Day that it
7072-410: The late 1940s, there were four stone crushers functioning in the village. The business encouraged the wealthier inhabitants to invest in trucking while others became truck drivers. In 1935, a local bus company was established in a joint venture with the neighboring Arab village of Lifta . As Deir Yassin prospered, houses radiated from the Hara uphill and eastward, towards Jerusalem. In the early days of
7176-550: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
7280-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
7384-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
7488-459: The massacre at Deir Yassin. Following the war, the area was incorporated into the State of Israel . A year later, the Jewish neighborhood of Givat Shaul Bet was built on Deir Yassin's land, despite Israeli scholars' protests to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion . In 1951, the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center was built within the village itself, using some abandoned village buildings themselves. In 1980,
7592-409: The mentally ill that was established on the site. Some houses outside the fence of the hospital grounds are used for residential and commercial purposes, or as warehouses. Outside the fence, there are carob and almond trees and the stumps of olive trees. Several wells are located at the southwestern edge of the site. The old village cemetery, southeast of the site, is unkempt and threatened by debris from
7696-768: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
7800-470: The north and another in the south—supplied water to the village. Most of its houses, strongly built with thick walls, were clustered in a small area known as the Hara meaning "Quarter" or "Neighborhood". All residents were Muslims. In 1906, a Jewish suburb of Jerusalem, Givat Shaul , was built across the valley from Deir Yassin. The secondary road linking the village to Jerusalem and the road to Jaffa ran through
7904-481: The northern rim of the valley ran a secondary road linking Deir Yassin to the suburbs and to the main Jaffa Road which was about 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) to the north. The total land area of the village consisted of 2,857 dunams (286 hectares), of which 94.5% was Arab-owned, 5.3% was Jewish-owned and the remainder was public property. Cultivable land amounted to a total of 866 dunams (30%) (87 hectares), all of which
8008-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
8112-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
8216-477: The plan for Lifta's demolition before changing his mind, opposing the development plans after visiting the site. Currently, Lifta is still on the list of UNESCO 's tentative World Heritage Sites . In 2010, an archaeological survey was conducted at Lifta by Mordechai Heiman on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Lifta was among the wealthiest communities in the Jerusalem area, and
8320-463: The population count included men, only. The PEF 's Survey of Western Palestine in 1883 described it as a village on the side of a steep hill, with a spring and rock-cut tombs to the south. In 1896 the population of Lifta was estimated to be about 966 persons. In 1907 the German historian Gustav Rothstein was invited to Lifta by his Arabic language teacher, Elias Nasrallah Haddad. Rothstein wrote
8424-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
8528-411: The remaining ruins of the village were bulldozed to clear the ground for new Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. In the early 1980s, most of the Deir Yassin cemetery was bulldozed and a new highway to Givat Shaul Bet was paved in its place. In 1992, Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi wrote: Many of the village houses on the hill are still standing and have been incorporated into an Israeli hospital for
8632-451: The road leaving Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv , were an operational priority for Jewish forces. Some families had already left the village after a decision had been made somewhat earlier on 4 December, to evacuate its women and children, in order to host a military company, and on 4 December 1947 some Arab families left. By mid-December irregular Arab militia took up positions in Lifta to defend the site. Hagannah patrols engaged in firefights with
8736-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
8840-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
8944-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
9048-493: The suburb. During World War I , the Ottomans fortified the hilltop of Deir Yassin as part of the defense system of Jerusalem, but on December 8, 1917, these fortifications were stormed by the Allied Forces under Edmund Allenby . The following day Jerusalem fell to the British . Until the 1920s, Deir Yassin's inhabitants mostly depended on agriculture and livestock for income, but the extensive building projects in Jerusalem in
9152-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
9256-401: The village had orchards, several olive presses, a winepress, in addition to a modern clinic, two coffeehouses, two carpentry shops, barbershops, a butcher, and a mosque. In the 1945 statistics the population of Lifta was 2,250; 2,230 Muslims and 20 Christians. In addition, a small number of Jews resided in the village, and one former Jewish inhabitant described the relationship her family and
9360-473: The village militiamen while Irgun and Lehi were even more aggressive. On 28 December 1947, the village suffered from what survivors called the “Lifta massacre” when a Jewish militia launched a machine-gun and grenade assault on the café of Salah Eisa. In order to warn residents that they should evacuate, the mukhtar 's home was incinerated, and 20 buildings blown up as the village was put under siege. The attack left seven dead, and more women and children left
9464-609: The village was abandoned by the irregular militia. Benny Morris lists the cause of the depopulation of the village as being a military assault on the settlement. According to one resident, interviewed in 2021, there were are around 40,000 descendants of the original refugee population, dispersed in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Jordan and the Palestinian diaspora . Several families still retain their Ottoman period property deeds, attesting to their ownership of parts of Lifta. After
9568-568: The village, with a population of some 2,500 people, had orchards, several olive presses, a winepress, in addition to a modern clinic, two coffeehouses, two carpentry shops, barbershops, a butcher, and a mosque. A small number of Jews resided in the village, and one former Jewish inhabitant described the relationship her family and the Palestinian majority as 'excellent'. In the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine Lifta, Romema , and Shaykh Badr which were strategically located on
9672-422: The village. The village was suffering from food shortages in the beginning of January. Subsequently, a number of the villagers returned home, with Benny Morris reporting "some, or most" doing so. Subsequently, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni , while visiting the village, ordered the women, children and elderly to evacuate and the men to stay put. On 29 January, a Lehi raid blew up 3 houses in the village. By early February
9776-656: The villages given as a fief to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the 12th century. However, in 1136 Fulk, King of Jerusalem confirmed it was a casale under the Knights Hospitallers . It has been suggested that a vaulted building in the center of the village could have been of Crusader or Mamluk origin. Tawfiq Canaan noted that a yellow stone, popular in the Jerusalem Mamluk ablaq building decorations,
9880-479: The war, and following the war the Jewish Agency and the state of Israel settled Jewish immigrants from Yemen and Kurdistan in the village, totaling 300 families. However ownership of the houses was not registered in their name. Living conditions in Lifta were difficult, the buildings were in poor repair, poor roads and transport, and lack of electricity, water, and sanitation infrastructure. In 1969-71 most of
9984-551: The women were known for their fine embroidery Thob Ghabani bridal dresses were sewn in Lifta. They were made of ghabani , a natural cotton covered with gold color silk floral embroidery produced in Aleppo , and were narrower than other dresses. The sleeves were also more tapered. The sides, sleeves and chest panel of the dress were adorned with silk insets. The dresses were ordered by brides in Bethlehem . The married women of Lifta wore
10088-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
10192-594: Was a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem . The village's Palestinian Arab inhabitants were expelled by Zionist paramilitary forces during the 1948 Palestine war . During the Ottoman period, the village was recorded to have a population of 400 Arabs, all Muslim households. In 1834, a battle took place in the village during the Palestinian Peasants' Revolt . A British 1922 census registered Lifta's population at 1,451, all Muslims. Prior to 1948,
10296-461: Was apparently quarried at Deir Yassin towards the end of the fifteenth century. During the Ottoman era, which began in 1517, the nucleus of settlement activity in the area was Khirbet Ayn al-Tut ("The Ruin of the Mulberry Spring")—some 500 meters (1,600 ft) west of the 1948 village site. In 1596, this village was under the administration of the nahiya (subdistrict) of Jerusalem, part of
10400-434: Was built on the eastern slopes of a hill, with an elevation of roughly 800 meters (2,600 ft) above sea level and commanding a wide view all around it. The village faced the western suburbs of Jerusalem which were 1 kilometer (0.62 mi) away. The city center of Jerusalem was about 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) to the east. It was separated from the city by a terraced valley planted with fig, almond, and olive orchards. Along
10504-466: Was done. When hostilities erupted in 1948, the villagers of Deir Yassin and those of the nearby Jewish village of Giv'at Shaul signed a pact, later approved at Haganah headquarters, to maintain their good relations, exchange information on movement of outsiders through village territory, and ensure the safety of vehicles from the village. The inhabitants of Deir Yassin upheld the agreement scrupulously, resisting infiltration by Arab irregulars. Though this
10608-419: Was grown with grains and owned mostly by Arabs. The built-up area of the village was 12 dunams. Khirbet Ayn al-Tut had a population of 39 in 1596, during early Ottoman rule. In the 1922 British Mandate census , Deir Yassin had a population of 254. Its population had increased from 429 in the 1931 census to 750 in 1948 and its houses from 91 in the former year to 144 in the latter. Before its ravage in 1948, it
10712-496: Was known to the Irgun and Lehi forces, they attacked the village on April 9, 1948. The assault was beaten off initially, with the attackers suffering 40 wounded. Only the intervention of a Palmach unit, using mortars, allowed them to occupy the village. Houses were blown up with people inside and people shot: 107 villagers, including women and children, were killed. The survivors were loaded on trucks that were driven through Jerusalem in
10816-499: Was reported to be preparing a tender for the construction of a luxury neighborhood on the village's ruins, projected to consist of 259 villas, a hotel, and a mall. On 11 August 2022, the plan to demolish Lifta and build luxury housing was shelved, with new Jerusalem mayor Moshe Lion seeking to preserve the village of Lifta and transform it into a UNESCO World Heritage Site . The previous Mayor of Jerusalem , Israeli businessman and politician Nir Barkat , had initially approved
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