160-554: The Nabataean Agriculture ( Arabic : كتاب الفلاحة النبطية , romanized : Kitāb al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya , lit. 'Book of the Nabataean Agriculture';), also written The Nabatean Agriculture , is a 10th-century text on agronomy by Ibn Wahshiyya (born in Qussīn, present-day Iraq ; died c. 930 ). It contains information on plants and agriculture, as well as on magic and astrology . It
320-601: A German one, according to Dr Antal Endrey in an article published in 1979). The 16th-century Hungarian prelate Nicolaus Olahus claimed that Attila took for himself the title of Descendant of the Great Nimrod . The hunter god or spirit Nyyrikki , figuring in the Finnish Kalevala as a helper of Lemminkäinen , is associated with Nimrod by some researchers and linguists. The Nimrod Fortress (Qal'at Namrud in Arabic) on
480-485: A chariot driven by birds. The story attributes to Abraham elements from the story of Moses ' birth (the cruel king killing innocent babies, with the midwives ordered to kill them) and from the careers of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who emerged unscathed from the fire. Nimrod is thus given attributes of two archetypal cruel and persecuting kings – Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh . Some Jewish traditions also identified him with Cyrus , whose birth according to Herodotus
640-562: 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
800-435: 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
960-1077: 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
1120-483: 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
1280-516: A man named Ibn Wahshiyya from Qussīn, a village near Kufa in present-day Iraq. It includes a preface in which he gives an account of its origin. This preface states that he found the book in a collection of books from the Chaldeans, and that the original was a scroll with 1500 parchment sheets. The original bore the lengthy title Kitāb iflāḥ al-arḍ wa-iṣlāḥ al-zarʽ wa-l-shajar wa-l-thimār wa-dafʽ al-āfāt ʽanhā (“Book of Cultivation of
1440-677: 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
1600-549: A new star in heaven. A herald is then said to have appeared in the land announcing "the coming of Abraham". Nimrod is also mentioned in one of the earliest writings of the Báb (the herald of the Baháʼí Faith). Citing examples of God's power, he asks: "Has He not, in past days, caused Abraham, in spite of His seeming helplessness, to triumph over the forces of Nimrod?" The story of Abraham's confrontation with Nimrod did not remain within
1760-578: A pre-Islamic Arabian deity. Ibn Washiyya's description of the Tammuz ritual is particularly valuable, as it is more detailed than any other Arabic source. In this ritual, people would weep for Tammuz, who was "killed time after time in horrible ways," during the month of the same name . Ibn Wahshiyya also explains that the Christians of the region had a very similar practice, the Feast of Saint George , and speculates that
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#17328523634371920-576: 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
2080-462: 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",
2240-409: A single author (Quthama), probably in the sixth century or soon after... 3. Translation of the putative Syriac text into Arabic by Ibn Wahshiyya (10th c.), who added his own glosses, usually marked as such in the text. Reconstructing the sources used in the first stage is difficult because the author translated them loosely, added his own material and commentary, and used oral informants to supplement
2400-465: 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
2560-659: A synonym for Assyria or Mesopotamia , is mentioned in the Micah 5 :6: Who will shepherd Assyria’s land with swords, The land of Nimrod in its gates. Thus he will deliver [us] From Assyria, should it invade our land, And should it trample our country. Genesis 10:10 says that the "mainstays of his kingdom" ( רֵאשִׁית מַמְלַכְתּוֹ rēšit̲ mamlak̲to ) were Babylon , Uruk , Akkad and Calneh in Shinar ( Mesopotamia )—understood variously to imply that he either founded these cities, ruled over them, or both. Owing to an ambiguity in
2720-400: A synonym of 'Nabataean' by Ibn Wahshiyya and al-Mas'udi. However, in contrast to both earlier Hellenic authors and later Arabic authors such as Sa'id al-Andalusi (1029–1070), Ibn Wahshiyya was in direct contact with a living Mesopotamian tradition, making his "Chaldaeans" or "Nabataeans" more firmly rooted in empirical reality. Ibn Wahshiyya took great pride in his 'Nabataeans', as well as in
2880-503: 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
3040-610: A tyrannical king. In rabbinical writings up to the present, he is almost invariably referred to as "Nimrod the Evil" ( Hebrew : נמרוד הרשע ). Nimrod is mentioned by name in several places in the Baháʼí scriptures , including the Kitáb-i-Íqán , the primary theological work of the Baháʼí Faith . There it is said that Nimrod "dreamed a dream" which his soothsayers interpreted as signifying the birth of
3200-499: 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
3360-660: A version similar to that in the Cave of Treasures , but the crown maker is called Santal , and the name of Noah's fourth son who instructs Nimrod is Barvin . However, Ephrem the Syrian (306–373) relates a contradictory view, that Nimrod was righteous and opposed the builders of the Tower. Similarly, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (date uncertain) mentions a Jewish tradition that Nimrod left Shinar in southern Mesopotamia and fled to Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, because he refused to take part in building
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#17328523634373520-470: 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
3680-417: Is "sober," and that he appears as a "learned and perspicacious observer." The ecologist Karl Butzer described the organization of the work as "perplexing", even "baffling", as when a treatise on corpses washed out of a cemetery interrupts the section on soils. Then I translated this book...after I had translated some other books...I gave a complete and unabridged translation of it because I liked it and I saw
3840-727: 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
4000-507: Is a biblical figure mentioned in the Book of Genesis and Books of Chronicles . The son of Cush and therefore the great-grandson of Noah , Nimrod was described as a king in the land of Shinar ( Lower Mesopotamia ). The Bible states that he was "a mighty hunter before the Lord [and] ... began to be mighty in the earth". Some later (non-biblical) traditions, interpreting the story of Jacob's dream in
4160-585: 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
4320-542: 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
4480-505: Is also found in the Talmud , and in rabbinical writings in the Middle Ages . In some versions, such as Flavius Josephus , Nimrod is a man who sets his will against that of God. In others, he proclaims himself a god and is worshipped as such by his subjects, sometimes with his consort Semiramis worshipped as a goddess at his side. A portent in the stars tells Nimrod and his astrologers of
4640-469: 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
4800-678: Is considered the leader of those who built the Tower of Babel in the land of Shinar, although the Bible never states this. Nimrod's kingdom included the cities of Babel, Uruk, Akkad, and perhaps Calneh, in Shinar (Gen 10:10). Josephus believed that it was likely under his direction that the building of Babel and its tower began; in addition to Josephus, this is also the view found in the Talmud ( Hullin 89a, Pesahim 94b, Erubin 53a, Avodah Zarah 53b), and later midrash such as Genesis Rabba . Several of these early Judaic sources also assert that
4960-408: 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
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5120-468: 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
5280-430: Is divided into approximately 150 chapters on olive trees, irrigation , flowers, trees, estate management, soils, legumes , and grains. Amidst its extensive agricultural material the text also contains religious, folkloric , and philosophical content. The style is "repetitive" and "not always completely lucid," according to Hämeen-Anttila; at the same time, Hämeen-Anttila notes that the author's attitude towards agriculture
5440-596: Is like looking at the higher world, and it acts on the souls in a similar manner as the Universal Soul acts on those particular souls that are in us. In various passages the book describes the religious practices of rural Iraq, where paganism persisted long after the Islamic conquest. Some of the book's descriptions suggest links between these Iraqi pagans, whom Ibn Wahshiyya called ' Sabians ', and ancient Mesopotamian religion . The cult recognized seven primary astral deities :
5600-566: 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
5760-597: Is now called Nisibis; and in Chalanne [Calneh], which was later called Seleucia after King Seleucus when its name had been changed, and which is now in actual fact called Ctesiphon." However, this traditional identification of the cities built by Nimrod in Genesis is no longer accepted by modern scholars, who consider them to be located in Sumer , not Syria . The Ge'ez Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (c. 5th century) also contains
5920-836: 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
6080-433: Is philosophically "semi-learned". One of the key philosophical passages is a treatise on the soul , in the section on vineyards, in which the author expresses doctrines very similar to those of Neoplatonism. Why, when oak-headed snakes see pure emeralds, will they shed their eyes in less than the wink of an eye and remain eyeless? Is that caused by the primary qualities or by a special property?...What else could this be than
6240-417: Is said to have taken place. Some stories bring them both together in a cataclysmic collision, seen as a symbol of the confrontation between Good and Evil, or as a symbol of monotheism against polytheism . Some Jewish traditions say only that the two men met and had a discussion. According to K. van der Toorn and P. W. van der Horst, this tradition is first attested in the writings of Pseudo-Philo . The story
6400-419: Is sometimes interpreted as an escape from Nimrod's revenge. Accounts considered canonical place the building of the Tower many generations before Abraham's birth (as in the Bible, also Jubilees ); however in others, it is a later rebellion after Nimrod failed in his confrontation with Abraham. In still other versions, Nimrod does not give up after the Tower fails, but goes on to try storming Heaven in person, in
6560-506: 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
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6720-584: 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
6880-413: 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
7040-516: 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
7200-453: The Sawād , now central and southern Iraq . However, it was also used by scholars like Ibn Wahshiyya (died c. 930 ) and the historian al-Mas'udi (died 956) to refer to the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia . These scholars believed that the ancient Mesopotamians had spoken Syriac , a prestige form of Eastern Aramaic during the 10th century which in reality goes back no further than
7360-445: 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
7520-584: The Babylonian captivity . Judaic interpreters as early as Philo and Yohanan ben Zakkai in the 1st century interpreted "a mighty hunter before the Lord" ( גבר ציד לפני יהוה gibbor-ṣayiḏ lip̄nē Yahweh , lit. "in the face of Yahweh ") as signifying " in opposition to the Lord"; a similar interpretation is found in Pseudo-Philo , as well as later in Symmachus . Some rabbinic commentators have also connected
7680-851: The Genesis Rabbah (Chapter 38, 13), is considered to date from the sixth century. נטלו ומסרו לנמרוד. אמר לו: עבוד לאש. אמר לו אברהם: ואעבוד למים, שמכבים את האש? אמר לו נמרוד: עבוד למים! אמר לו: אם כך, אעבוד לענן, שנושא את המים? אמר לו: עבוד לענן! אמר לו: אם כך, אעבוד לרוח, שמפזרת עננים? אמר לו: עבוד לרוח! אמר לו: ונעבוד לבן אדם, שסובל הרוחות? אמר לו: מילים אתה מכביר, אני איני משתחוה אלא לאוּר - הרי אני משליכך בתוכו, ויבא אלוה שאתה משתחוה לו ויצילך הימנו! היה שם הרן עומד. אמר: מה נפשך, אם ינצח אברהם - אומַר 'משל אברהם אני', ואם ינצח נמרוד - אומַר 'משל נמרוד אני'. כיון שירד אברהם לכבשן האש וניצול, אמרו לו: משל מי אתה? אמר להם: משל אברהם אני! נטלוהו והשליכוהו לאור, ונחמרו בני מעיו ויצא ומת על פני תרח אביו. וכך נאמר: וימת הרן על פני תרח אביו. (בראשית רבה ל"ח, יג) (...) He [Abraham]
7840-522: The Golan Heights - actually built during the Crusades by Al-Aziz Uthman , the younger son of Saladin - was anachronistically attributed to Nimrod by later inhabitants of the area. There is a very brief mention of Nimrod in the Book of Mormon : "(and the name of the valley was Nimrod, being called after the mighty hunter)". In Jewish and Islamic traditions, a confrontation between Nimrod and Abraham
8000-538: The Great Flood . After the catastrophic failure of that most ambitious endeavour and in the midst of the confusion of tongues , Nimród the giant moved to the land of Evilát , where his wife, Enéh gave birth to twin brothers Hunor and Magyar (aka Magor ). Father and sons were, all three of them, prodigious hunters, but Nimród especially is the archetypal, consummate, legendary hunter and archer. Hungarian legends held that twin sons of King Nimród, Hunor and Magor were
8160-754: The Kitab al-Magall , except that Nisibis, Edessa and Harran are said to be built by Nimrod when Reu was 50, and that he began his reign as the first king when Reu was 130. In this version, the weaver is called Sisan , and the fourth son of Noah is called Yonton . Jerome , writing c. 390, explains in Hebrew Questions on Genesis that after Nimrod reigned in Babel, "he also reigned in Arach [Erech], that is, in Edissa; and in Achad [Accad], which
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#17328523634378320-533: The Levant " (the term apparently used by Arabic authors for the ancient Nabataeans of Petra) and "Nabataeans of Iraq". Generally speaking, the term 'Nabataean' was strongly associated with a rural, sedentary way of life, which was perceived as backwards and as thoroughly opposed to the noble, nomadic lifestyle of the Arabs. The term 'Nabataeans of Iraq' was used to refer to the rural, Aramaic -speaking, native inhabitants of
8480-567: The White Stag [ Fehér Szarvas ] or Silver Stag), King Nimród ( Ménrót ), often described as "Nimród the Giant" or "the giant Nimród", descendant of Noah, is the first person referred to as forefather of the Hungarians. He, along with his entire nation, is also the giant responsible for the building of the Tower of Babel—construction of which was supposedly started by him 201 years after the biblical event of
8640-561: 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
8800-546: The eggplant will disappear for 3000 years. The author explains that this is a symbolic expression in which the 3000 years signify three months, during which eating eggplant would be unhealthy. The Nabataean Agriculture is the most influential book on agriculture in Arabic. Dozens of writers used it as a source, from the Middle Ages until the 18th century. It was the first agronomical work to reach al-Andalus (modern Spain and Portugal ), and became an important reference for
8960-638: The fourth son of Noah . In the Recognitions (R 4.29), one version of the Clementines, Nimrod is equated with the legendary Assyrian king Ninus , who first appears in the Greek historian Ctesias as the founder of Nineveh. However, in another version, the Homilies (H 9:4–6), Nimrod is made to be the same as Zoroaster . The Syriac Cave of Treasures (c. 350) contains an account of Nimrod very similar to that in
9120-494: 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
9280-419: 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
9440-920: 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. Nimrod Nimrod ( / ˈ n ɪ m r ɒ d / ; Hebrew : נִמְרוֹד , Modern : Nīmrōd , Tiberian : Nīmrōḏ ; Classical Syriac : ܢܡܪܘܕ ; Arabic : نُمْرُود , romanized : Numrūd )
9600-574: The 'Nabataean' culture of Iraq, Ibn Wahshiyya believed all human knowledge to go back on 'Nabataean' foundations. This idea itself was not exactly a new one: already in the Hellenistic period a secret knowledge was often attributed to the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia, referred to in Greek as "Chaldaeans" (compare, for example, the Chaldaean Oracles ), a term used (Arabic: Kaldānī ) more or less as
9760-454: 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
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#17328523634379920-565: The 16th century Sefer haYashar , which adds that Nimrod had a son named Mardon who was even more wicked. In the History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th century Muslim historian al-Tabari , Nimrod has the tower built in Babil, God destroys it, and the language of mankind, formerly Syriac , is then confused into 72 languages. Another Muslim historian of the 13th century, Abu al-Fida , relates
10080-562: 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
10240-762: 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
10400-456: The Arabic-Islamic world from Yemen to Spain . The non-agricultural material in The Nabataean Agriculture paints a vivid picture of rural life in 10th-century Iraq. It describes a pagan religion with connections to ancient Mesopotamian religion tempered by Hellenistic influences. Some of this non-agricultural material was cited by the Andalusian magician and alchemist Maslama al-Qurtubi (died 964) in his Ghayat al-Hakim ("The Goal of
10560-476: The Bible (Genesis 28:11–19), identified Nimrod as the ruler who had commissioned the construction of the Tower of Babel or of Jacob's Ladder , and that identification led to his reputation as a king who had been rebellious against God. There is no evidence that Nimrod was an actual historical person in any of the non-biblical historic records, registers, or king lists (including any of the Mesopotamian ones, which are considerably older and more comprehensive than
10720-448: The Biblical characters are altered from their customary forms. The tales are often related to agriculture, as when Adam teaches the Chaldeans to cultivate wheat, or King Dhanamluta plants so many water lilies in his castle that "the overabundance of water lilies around him, both their odour and their sight, caused a brain disease which proved fatal to him." There are some references to poetry, and fragments of debate poetry which are among
10880-401: The Christians may have adapted their custom from the Tammuz ritual. The philosophical views of the author are similar to those of the Syrian Neoplatonist school founded by Iamblichus in the 4th century. The author believed that through the practice of esoteric rituals, one could achieve communion with God. However, the worldview of the text contains contradictions and reflects an author that
11040-439: The Classical literature." For when we see plants, crops, running water, beautiful flowers, verdant spots and pleasing meadows, our souls are often delighted and pleased by this and are relieved and distracted from the sorrows that came to the souls and covered them, just as drinking wine makes one forget one's sorrows. As this is so, then when the vine climbs up the palm tree in such a soil as we have described before, looking at it
11200-435: The Earth, east and west, two believers and two disbelievers. The two believers were Solomon ( Sulayman in Islamic texts) and Dhul Qarnayn , and the two disbelievers were Nebuchadnezzar II and Nimrod. No one but they gained power over it." The following version of the confrontation between Abraham and Nimrod appears in the Midrash Rabba , a major compilation of Jewish Scriptural exegesis . The part in which this appears,
11360-407: The Islamic lunar calendar . The eventual decipherment of cuneiform showed conclusively that The Nabataean Agriculture was not based on an ancient Mesopotamian source. 20th and 21st centuries Interest in the book was slight for the first half of the 20th century. Martin Plessner was one of the few scholars to devote attention to it, in an article published in 1928. Toufic Fahd began studying
11520-510: The Islamic era), several sites of ruins in the Middle East have been named after Nimrod. The first biblical mention of Nimrod is in the Generations of Noah . He is described as the son of Cush , grandson of Ham , and great-grandson of Noah ; and as "a mighty one in the earth" and "a mighty hunter before the Lord". This is repeated in the 1 Chronicles 1 :10, and the "Land of Nimrod" used as
11680-584: The Land, the Care of Cereals, Vegetables and Crops, and their Protection”), which Ibn Wahshiyya abbreviated to Book of the Nabataean Agriculture . Ibn Wahshiyya claimed that he translated the work from an "ancient Syriac" (" al-Suryāniyya al-qadīma ") original, written c. 20,000 years ago by the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. In Ibn Wahshiyya's time, Syriac was thought to have been the primordial language used at
11840-412: 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
12000-609: The Nimrod of biblical texts and real historically attested figures in Mesopotamia. No king named Nimrod or with a similar name appears anywhere on any pre-biblical, extra-biblical or historic Sumerian , Akkadian , Assyrian or Babylonian king list, nor does the name Nimrod appear in any other writings from Mesopotamia itself or its neighbours in any context whatsoever during the Bronze Age , Iron Age or pre-Christian Classical Age . Since
12160-672: 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
12320-839: The Roman Emperor Titus , destroyer of the Temple in Jerusalem ). In some versions, Nimrod repents and accepts God, offering numerous sacrifices that God rejects (as with Cain ). Other versions have Nimrod give to Abraham, as a conciliatory gift, the giant slave Eliezer , whom some accounts describe as Nimrod's own son (the Bible also mentions Eliezer as Abraham's majordomo , though not making any connection between him and Nimrod; Genesis 15:2). Still other versions have Nimrod persisting in his rebellion against God, or resuming it. Indeed, Abraham's crucial act of leaving Mesopotamia and settling in Canaan
12480-561: 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
12640-714: The Sun up from the East, and so he asks the king to bring it from the West. The king is then perplexed and angered. The commentaries on this Surah offer a wide variety of embellishments of this narrative, one of which by Ibn Kathir , a 14th-century scholar, adding that Nimrod showed his rule over life and death by killing a prisoner and freeing another. Whether or not conceived as having ultimately repented, Nimrod remained in Jewish and Islamic tradition an emblematic evil person, an archetype of an idolater and
12800-659: The Sun, the Moon, and the five known planets ( Jupiter , Saturn , Mercury , Venus , and Mars ). Of these Jupiter and Venus were good (the Auspicious Ones), while Saturn and Mars were evil (the Nefarious Ones). The gods are all subordinated to the Sun, the supreme being. There are other gods besides the seven; the text describes the fixed stars such as Sirius as gods, and refers to the Mesopotamian god Tammuz as well as to Nasr ,
12960-532: The Syriac. The Nabataean Agriculture has not been translated into a European language in full, but Fahd translated parts of it in to French in his articles, and Hämeen-Anttila translated other parts into English. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
13120-649: The Tower—for which God rewarded him with the four cities in Assyria, to substitute for the ones in Babel. Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer (c. 833) relates the Jewish traditions that Nimrod inherited the garments of Adam and Eve from his father Cush, and that these made him invincible. Nimrod's party then defeated the Japhethites to assume universal rulership. Later, Esau (grandson of Abraham ), ambushed, beheaded, and robbed Nimrod. These stories later reappear in other sources including
13280-626: The Wise", Latin: Picatrix ), while other parts were discussed by the Jewish philosopher Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190). The French Orientalist Étienne Marc Quatremère introduced the work to the European scholarly community in 1835. Most 19th-century scholars dismissed it as a forgery, but from the 1960s onward several researchers have shown increased interest in its authenticity and impact. The word 'Nabataean' ( Arabic : Nabaṭī ) in
13440-778: The ancestors of the Huns and the Magyars (Hungarians) respectively, siring their children through the two daughters of King Dul of the Alans , whom they kidnapped after losing track of the silver stag whilst hunting. Both the Huns' and Magyars' historically attested skill with the recurve bow and arrow are attributed to Nimród. ( Simon Kézai , personal "court priest" of King Ladislaus the Cuman , in his Gesta Hungarorum , 1282–1285. This tradition can also be found in over twenty other medieval Hungarian chronicles, as well as
13600-485: The area of hydrology and irrigation , the text offers "a treasure trove of information, ideas and subtle symbolism." This includes material on how to dig and line wells and canals, and description of norias (water wheels). Finally, there is a section on farm management, which shows evidence of Roman influence. Overall, the agronomic contributions of The Nabataean Agriculture are "substantial and far-ranging, including both agronomic and natural history data unknown in
13760-586: The authenticity of The Nabataean Agriculture has changed over time (see below ). While it certainly does not date back to the Babylonian era as Ibn Wahshiyya himself claimed, scholars now believe that the work may actually have been an authentic translation from a pre-Islamic Syriac original. The Finnish scholar Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila proposed a three-stage textual history in 2006: 1. Free paraphrases of passages known from Graeco-Roman agricultural works . 2. Translation into Syriac either by several authors or by
13920-423: The biblical King Nimrod. An early Arabic work known as Kitab al-Magall or the Book of Rolls (part of Clementine literature ) states that Nimrod built the towns of Hadāniūn, Ellasar , Seleucia , Ctesiphon , Rūhīn, Atrapatene , Telalān, and others, that he began his reign as king over earth when Reu was 163, and that he reigned for 69 years, building Nisibis , Raha ( Edessa ) and Harran when Peleg
14080-434: The biblical texts). Historians have failed to match Nimrod with any historically attested figure, or to find any historical, linguistic or genetic link between Mesopotamia and the kingdom of Cush, although in 2002 one scholar suggested that there might be a connection between the biblical Nimrod and one of the exclusively Mesopotamian historical figures, Naram-Sin of Akkad, grandson of Sargon . In more recent times (during
14240-431: The biggest bonfire the world had ever seen. Yet when the fire is lit, Abraham walks out unscathed. In some versions, Nimrod then challenges Abraham to battle. When Nimrod appears at the head of enormous armies, Abraham produces an army of gnats which destroys Nimrod's army. Some accounts have a gnat or mosquito enter Nimrod's brain and drive him out of his mind (a divine retribution which Jewish tradition also assigned to
14400-488: The bodies of animals and repelling calamities from trees and plants with the help of each of the plants. The overall structure of the agricultural information in The Nabataean Agriculture does not match the agricultural context of Mesopotamia, suggesting that the author modeled the work on texts from a Mediterranean environment. For example, the work provides limited coverage of sugar, rice, and cotton, which were
14560-479: The book in his Kitab al-Fihrist ("The Book Catalogue") of 987, showing that the book was circulating in Iraq by the end of the 10th century. Ibn Wahshiyya said that the book was the product of three "ancient wise Kasdanian men", of whom "one of them began it, the second added other things to that, and the third made it complete." These three compilers were named Saghrith, Yanbushad, and Quthama. Scholarly opinion as to
14720-618: The book was also cited by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. In the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun mentioned the work in his Muqaddimah , although he believed that it had been translated from Greek. Traces of Ibn Wahshiyya's influence also appear in Spanish literature . Alfonso X of Castile (1221–1284) commissioned a Spanish translation of an Arabic lapidary (book about gemstones) by someone named Abolays. This lapidary cites The Nabataean Agriculture (calling it The Chaldaean Agriculture ), and Abolays claims, like Ibn Wahshiyya, to have translated
14880-486: The botany portions of Pliny 's 1st-century Natural History . In soil science , The Nabataean Agriculture was more advanced than its Greek or Roman predecessors, analyzing the different soil types of the Mesopotamian plains ( alluvial , natric , and saline ), Syria ( red clay ), and the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq ( mountain soil). It provided accurate and original recommendations on soil fertilizer . In
15040-489: The central Iraqi lowlands near Kufa. The book describes 106 plants, compared to 70 in the contemporary Geoponica , and offers thorough information on their taxonomic characteristics and medicinal uses. The section on the cultivation of the date palm was an important contribution and wholly original, and the extremely detailed treatment of vineyards goes on for 141 pages. The list of exotic plants, some of which are native only to India or Arabia , may have been based on
15200-409: The city of Akkad was destroyed and lost with the destruction of its Empire in the period 2200–2154 BC ( long chronology ), the much later biblical stories mentioning Nimrod seem to recall the late Early Bronze Age . The association with Erech ( Sumero-Akkadian Uruk ), a city that lost its prime importance around 2000 BC as a result of struggles between Isin , Ur , Larsa and Elam , also attests
15360-509: The confines of learned writings and religious treatises, but also conspicuously influenced popular culture. A notable example is " Quando el Rey Nimrod " ("When King Nimrod"), one of the most well-known folksongs in Ladino (the Judeo-Spanish language), apparently written during the reign of King Alfonso X of Castile . Beginning with the words: "When King Nimrod went out to the fields/ Looked at
15520-567: 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
15680-406: The determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon
15840-519: The earliest in Arabic literature . Debate poetry is a genre in which two natural opposites such as day and night dispute their respective virtues. The examples in the text include boasts by olive trees and palm trees, and are similar in style to the Persian Drakht-i Asurig , a debate between a goat and a palm tree. At times, the stories conceal a hidden inner meaning, as in a text purporting that
16000-420: The early 4th century, noting that the Babylonian historian Berossus in the 3rd century BC had stated that the first king after the flood was Euechoios of Chaldea (in reality Chaldea was a small state historically not founded until the late 9th century BC), identified him with Nimrod. George Syncellus (c. 800) also had access to Berossus, and he too identified the also historically unattested Euechoios with
16160-518: The early provenance of the stories of Nimrod. Several Mesopotamian ruins were given Nimrod's name by invading 8th-century AD Muslim Arabs , including the ruins of the Assyrian city of Kalhu (the biblical Calah ), which contrary to biblical claims was in reality built by Shalmaneser I (1274–1244 BC) A number of attempts to connect him with historical figures have been made without any success. The Christian Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea as early as
16320-438: The effects of things through their special properties? What would be the (material) cause for the effect of the special properties? The author often describes magic in a negative light ("All the operations of the magicians are to me odious") and sometimes identifies magicians with a rival religious group, the "followers of Seth ". Magic for the author consists of prayers to the gods, the creation of talismans , and manipulation of
16480-577: 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
16640-480: The eminent German scholar Theodor Nöldeke agreed with Gutschmid that the work was originally written in Arabic, going as far as to argue that Ibn Wahshiyya himself was a fiction, and that the true author was Abu Talib al-Zayyat. Nöldeke emphasized the Greek influences in the text, the author's knowledge of the calends (a feature of the Roman calendar), and his use of the solar calendar of Edessa and Harran rather than
16800-728: 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
16960-593: 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
17120-519: The first century AD, and that this supposedly Syriac-speaking people had ruled over Mesopotamia from the legendary times of Nimrod until the advent of the Sasanian Empire in the 3rd century. Unlike the term 'Nabataeans of the Levant' then, the term 'Nabataeans of Iraq' did not refer to a historical people, but to an 'Aramaized' understanding of the Mesopotamian heritage. Given the perceived antiquity of
17280-594: The first king of Babylon, and states that he dug great canals and reigned 60 years. Still elsewhere, he mentions another king Nimrod, son of Canaan , as the one who introduced astrology and attempted to kill Abraham. In Armenian legend, the ancestor of the Armenian people, Hayk , defeated Nimrod (sometimes equated with Bel ) in a battle near Lake Van. In the Hungarian legend of the Enchanted Stag (more commonly known as
17440-453: 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
17600-427: The furnace and survived, Haran was asked: "Whose [follower] are you?" and he answered: "I am Abraham's!". [Then] they took him and threw him into the furnace, and his belly opened and he died and predeceased Terach, his father. [The Bible , Genesis 11:28, mentions Haran predeceasing Terach, but gives no details.]|— Historians, Orientalists , Assyriologists and mythographers have long tried to find links between
17760-421: The government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if He should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers. Now the multitude were very ready to follow
17920-551: The great benefits in it and its usefulness in making the earth prosper, caring for the trees and making the orchards and fields thrive and also because of the discussions in it on the special properties of things, countries and times, as well as on the proper times of labors during the seasons, of the differences of the natures of [different] climates, on their wondrous effects, the grafting of trees, their planting and care, on repelling calamities from them, on making use of plants and herbs, on curing with them and keeping back maladies from
18080-417: The heavens and at the stars/He saw a holy light in the Jewish quarter/A sign that Abraham, our father, was about to be born", the song gives a poetic account of the persecutions perpetrated by the cruel Nimrod and the miraculous birth and deeds of the savior Abraham. The Quran states, "Have you not considered him who had an argument with Abraham about his Lord, because God had given him the kingdom (i.e. he
18240-491: The impending birth of Abraham, who would put an end to idolatry . Nimrod therefore orders the killing of all newborn babies. However, Abraham's mother escapes into the fields and gives birth secretly. At a young age, Abraham recognizes God and starts worshipping him. He confronts Nimrod and tells him face-to-face to cease his idolatry , whereupon Nimrod orders him burned at the stake. In some versions, Nimrod has his subjects gather wood for four whole years, so as to burn Abraham in
18400-579: 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
18560-474: The king Amraphel , who wars with Abraham later in Genesis, is none other than Nimrod himself. Josephus wrote: Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed
18720-608: 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
18880-567: The lapidary from an ancient language ("Chaldaean"). In the 15th century, Enrique de Villena also knew of The Nabataean Agriculture and referenced it in his Tratado del aojamiento and Tratado de lepra . 19th century The Nabataean Agriculture was first introduced to European scholarship in 1835 by the French scholar Étienne Quatremère . Daniel Chwolson popularized it in his studies of 1856 and 1859, believing that it provided authentic information about ancient Assyria and Babylonia . He dated
19040-599: 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)
19200-420: 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
19360-427: The lute. Then a big watermelon spoke to him: “You there, you and other cultivators of watermelons strive for the watermelons to be big and sweet and you tire yourselves in all different ways, yet it would be enough for you to play wind instruments and drums and sing in our midst. We are gladdened by this and we become cheerful so that our taste becomes sweet and no diseases infect us.” The author frequently digresses from
19520-401: The main theme to tell folkloric tales, saying that he includes these both to instruct the reader and for entertainment, because "otherwise fatigue would blind [the reader's] soul." Many of the tales concern fantastical concepts such as talking trees or ghouls . Others are about Biblical characters or ancient kings, although the names of the kings are not those of any known historical kings, and
19680-883: 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
19840-417: The most important local crops in the 9th and 10th centuries. Sesame oil was more common in the region than olive oil , but Ibn Wahshiyya writes about the olive tree for 32 pages, compared to one page for sesame. Nevertheless, the geographic references and detailed information about weather, planting schedules, soil salinity , and other topics show that the author had firsthand knowledge of local conditions in
20000-515: The multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion ... Since Akkad was destroyed and lost with the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the period 2200–2154 BC ( long chronology ),
20160-512: The name Nimrod with a Hebrew word meaning 'rebel'. In Pseudo-Philo (dated c. 70 CE), Nimrod is made leader of the Hamites, while Joktan as leader of the Semites, and Fenech as leader of the Japhethites, are also associated with the building of the Tower. Versions of this story are again picked up in later works such as Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius (7th century). The Book of Jubilees mentions
20320-413: The name of "Nebrod" (the Greek form of Nimrod) only as being the father of Azurad , the wife of Eber and mother of Peleg (8:7). This account would thus make Nimrod an ancestor of Abraham, and hence of all Hebrews . The Babylonian Talmud ( Gittin 56b) attributes Titus 's death to an insect that flew into his nose and picked at his brain for seven years in a repetition of another legend referring to
20480-768: 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
20640-426: The nobility of peasants more generally. Written at a time when ancient Mesopotamian culture was in danger of disappearing due to the Arab conquests, his work can be interpreted as part of the shuʽubiyya , a movement by non-Arab Muslims to reassert their local identities. In this view it is an attempt to celebrate and preserve the 'Nabataean' heritage of Mesopotamia. The work purports to have been compiled by
20800-424: 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
20960-509: The original Hebrew text, it is unclear whether it is he or Ashur who additionally built Nineveh , Resen , Rehoboth-Ir and Nimrud (Kalaḥ) ; both interpretations are reflected in various English versions . Walter Raleigh devoted several pages in his History of the World (1614) to reciting past scholarship regarding the question of whether it had been Nimrod or Ashur who built the cities in Assyria. In Jewish and Christian tradition , Nimrod
21120-482: The original text to the 14th century BC at the latest. However, his views provoked a "violent reaction" in the scholarly community, and a series of scholars set out to refute him. The first of these was Ernest Renan in 1860, who dated the work to the 3rd or 4th century. He was followed by Alfred von Gutschmid , who showed inconsistencies in the text and declared it a forgery of the Muslim era. In an article published in 1875,
21280-549: 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
21440-410: 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
21600-458: 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
21760-471: The same story, adding that the patriarch Eber (an ancestor of Abraham) was allowed to keep the original tongue, Hebrew in this case, because he would not partake in the building. The 10th-century Muslim historian Masudi recounts a legend making the Nimrod who built the tower to be the son of Mash, the son of Aram, son of Shem , adding that he reigned 500 years over the Nabateans . Later, Masudi lists Nimrod as
21920-458: 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
22080-500: The special properties of things. These special properties depend on the configuration of the astral bodies and can produce effects such as making someone invisible or attracting goats and pigs to someone. The effects are specific to certain items, so broad beans are capable of curing "agonizing love," while ten dirhams of ground saffron mixed with wine will cause anyone who drinks it to laugh until they die. Some magical procedures rely on sympathetic magic instead of astrology, such as
22240-556: 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
22400-421: The stories mentioning Nimrod seem to recall the late Early Bronze Age . The association with Erech (Babylonian Uruk ), a city that lost its prime importance around 2000 BCE as a result of struggles between Isin , Larsa and Elam , also attests the early provenance of the stories of Nimrod. According to some modern-day theorists, their placement in the Bible suggests a Babylonian origin—possibly inserted during
22560-429: The technique for restoring a spring which is running dry by having young, beautiful women play music and sing near the spring. The most spectacular instance of magic is the case of a Nabataean magician who succeeded in creating an artificial man, in a story similar to the golem traditions of Kabbalistic Judaism. They say, for example, that a farmer woke up on a moonlit night and started singing, accompanying himself on
22720-456: The time of creation. In reality, however, Syriac is a dialect of Eastern Aramaic that only emerged in the 1st century, although by the 9th century, it had become the carrier of a rich literature, including many works translated from the Greek. Ibn Wahshiyya said that he translated the text to Arabic in 903/4, and then dictated the translation to his student Abu Talib al-Zayyat in 930/1. These dates are probably accurate, because Ibn al-Nadim lists
22880-451: The title Picatrix . In the 12th century Maimonides quoted The Nabataean Agriculture in his Guide for the Perplexed , as a source on pagan religion. Later translations of Maimonides into Latin mistranslated the name of the work as De agricultura Aegyptiorum ("On Egyptian Agriculture"), which caused readers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Purchas to refer to the book by this erroneous title. According to Ernest Renan ,
23040-454: The title of the work does not refer to the ancient Nabataeans , the northern Arab people who established a kingdom at Petra during the late Hellenistic period ( c. 150 BCE – 106 AD ). Rather, 'Nabataean' is a term used by Arabic authors of the early Islamic period to designate the non-Arabic speaking, rural population of various conquered territories. Thus, we hear of "Nabataean" Kurds and Armenians , as well as of "Nabataeans of
23200-501: 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
23360-419: The view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, He did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but He caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through
23520-401: The west." This causes the king to exile him, and he leaves for the Levant . Although Nimrod's name is not specifically stated in the Quran, Islamic scholars hold that the "king" mentioned was him. Other traditional stories also exist around Nimrod, which have resulted in him being referenced as a tyrant in Muslim cultures. According to Mujahid ibn Jabr , "Four people gained control over
23680-527: The wind! [Abraham] said to him: And shall we worship the human, who withstands the wind? Said [Nimrod] to him: You pile words upon words, I bow to none but the fire—in it shall I throw you, and let the God to whom you bow come and save you from it! Haran [Abraham's brother] was standing there. He said [to himself]: what shall I do? If Abraham wins, I shall say: "I am of Abraham's [followers]", if Nimrod wins I shall say "I am of Nimrod's [followers]". When Abraham went into
23840-417: The work from the standpoint of Mesopotamian agriculture, publishing a monograph on the subject in 1995. Despite the fact that several scholars had now argued for the work's authenticity, Nöldeke's views still had the most currency in the early 21st century. This changed when Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, in his monograph published in 2006, extensively argued that the work may well have been an authentic translation from
24000-469: The work in the late 1960s, and wrote many articles on it in which he defended the idea that the text was not a forgery by Ibn Wahshiyya, but was rather based on a pre-Islamic original. Fuat Sezgin also defended the work's authenticity as a translation from a 5th- or 6th-century work, and published a facsimile of the manuscript in 1984, while Fahd completed his critical edition of the text between 1993 and 1998. Mohammad El-Faïz supported Fahd's views and studied
24160-480: The work is ultimately based on Greek and Latin agricultural writings, heavily supplemented with local material. The work consists of some 1500 manuscript pages, principally concerned with agriculture but also containing lengthy digressions on religion, philosophy, magic, astrology, and folklore. Some of the most valuable material on agriculture deals with vineyards, arboriculture , irrigation and soil science . This agricultural information became well known throughout
24320-496: The work of al-Malik al-Afdal al-Abbas (d. 1376). The Nabataean Agriculture also had a far-reaching impact on Arabic and Latin occult literature, through the fragments quoted in the Ghayat al-hakim ("The Goal of the Wise") by the Cordoban magician , alchemist and hadith scholar Maslama al-Qurtubi (died 964), an influential work on magic which was later translated into Latin under
24480-451: 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
24640-529: The writers of the Andalusi agricultural corpus . Ibn al-Awwam in his Kitab al-filaha cited it over 540 times. Others who cited it include Jamāl al-Dīn al-Waṭwāṭ , Ibn Hajjaj , Abu l-Khayr , and al-Tighnari , and it influenced Ibn Bassal . The agricultural history of Yemen is not well known, but The Nabataean Agriculture must have reached Yemen by the era of the Rasulid dynasty , as demonstrated by quotations in
24800-660: The written sources. However, they must have included a Syriac or Arabic translation of the 4th-century writer Vindonius Anatolius . The author may also have used local sources from outside the Graeco-Roman tradition, such as the lost Rusticatio of Mago the Carthaginian . The Nabataean Agriculture was the first book written in Arabic about agriculture, although it was preceded by several books on botany and translations of foreign works on agriculture. The book contains valuable information on agriculture and its associated lore. It
24960-498: Was 50. It further adds that Nimrod "saw in the sky a piece of black cloth and a crown". He called upon Sasan the weaver and commanded him to make him a crown like it, which he set jewels on and wore. He was allegedly the first king to wear a crown. "For this reason people who knew nothing about it, said that a crown came down to him from heaven ." Later, the book describes how Nimrod established fire worship and idolatry, then received instruction in divination for three years from Bouniter,
25120-504: Was accompanied by portents, which made his grandfather try to kill him. A confrontation is also found in the Quran , between a king, not mentioned by name, and Ibrahim (Arabic for "Abraham"). Some Muslim commentators assign Nimrod as the king. In the quranic narrative Ibrahim has a discussion with the king, the former argues that God is the one who gives life and causes death, whereas the unnamed king replies that he gives life and causes death. Ibrahim refutes him by stating that God brings
25280-418: Was frequently cited by later Arabic writers on these topics. The Nabataean Agriculture was the first book written in Arabic about agriculture, as well as the most influential. Ibn Wahshiyya claimed that he translated it from a 20,000-year-old Mesopotamian text. Though some doubts remain, modern scholars believe that the work may be translated from a Syriac original of the 5th or 6th century. In any case,
25440-456: Was given over to Nimrod. [Nimrod] told him: Worship the Fire! Abraham said to him: Shall I then worship the water, which puts off the fire! Nimrod told him: Worship the water! [Abraham] said to him: If so, shall I worship the cloud, which carries the water? [Nimrod] told him: Worship the cloud! [Abraham] said to him: If so, shall I worship the wind, which scatters the clouds? [Nimrod] said to him: Worship
25600-402: Was prideful)?" Abraham says, "My Lord is He Who gives life and causes death." The king answers, "I give life and cause death". At this point some commentaries add new narratives like Nimrod bringing forth two men, who were sentenced to death previously. He orders the execution of one while freeing the other one. Then Abraham says, "Indeed, God brings up the sun from the east, so bring it up from
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