Ahmad Al-Jallad
Biographic Data
| ID | 571924 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ahmad Al-Jallad |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ahmad |
| FAMILY NAME | Al-Jallad |
| SIGNATURE | AL-JALLAD A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5694-2898 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Dated Paleo‐Arabic Inscription Mentioning Al‐Mundhir ( ʾmndr ) the King
This contribution edits a newly discovered Paleo‐Arabic inscription from Wādī al‐Šuwayṭī in the northeastern Jordanian Ḥarrah. The inscription is dated to the reign of a king called ʾmndr , identified by the authors as the Jafnid ruler Al‐Mundhir III ibn al‐Harith. Some remarks on its implications about Arab rulership and identity are also offered
Late Antique Allāh: Ancestral Arabian Religion and the Monotheistic Zeitgeist
This essay addresses the ongoing scholarly tension between the monotheistic interpretations of late pre‐Islamic Arabian religion, pioneered by G. Hawting and P. Crone, and the traditional accounts of rampant Arabian polytheism found in later Islamic literary sources. By integrating the analysis of the Quran and Islamic literary sources with the rapidly growing body of Paleo‐Arabic epigraphy from Late Antique West Arabia, the authors propose a syn…
Seeking refuge and the Ǧinn: Two notes on Safaitic lexicography
This contribution investigates the etymology of two obscure Safaitic terms: the verb ʾlmn and the divine title ḏgn . It is argued that the former means “to seek refuge” and ultimately derives from the Greek word for “harbor”, λιμήν. The latter term, ḏgn , is composed of two elements: the relative pronoun ḏ and the noun gn , which is identified as Ginn or Gānn (Genies). This is substantiated through an investigation of the semantic range of the ve…
Qaṭrāyīṯ and the Linguistic History of Ancient East Arabia
Qaṭrāyīṯ is a Syriac term that refers to the vernacular of east Arabia in the Early Islamic period. This linguistic variety is known from a small collection of lexical glosses in Syriac sources. Recently, Mario Kozah (2021, 2022) collected and examined about 40 Qaṭrāyīṯ lexical items, based on which he declared Qaṭrāyīṯ to be a dialect of Arabic. The purpose of this study is to re-assess the evidence, using a sounder linguistic methodology, to be…
Towards the decipherment of Thamudic D: An Identification of New Glyphs and Phoneme Values
The Thamudic D script is only partially deciphered. This article attempts to advance our understanding of the script by identifying all the Thamudic D glyphs and their phonemic values with varying degrees of certainty. It also discusses the major writing formulae associated with this script type and offers a few notes on the language it inscribes
The Roman annexation of the Nabataean kingdom: A Safaitic witness
This article presents a new Safaitic inscription dated to the year Gaius Claudius Severus was appointed as governor of the former Nabataean kingdom, called mlkt rbʾl “the kingdom of Rabbʾel.” As such, the text is an important witness to the shadowy events surrounding the Roman annexation of Nabataea in ad 106. Beyond its historical value, the inscription contains a number of hapax legomena, thus expanding our knowledge of the Safaitic lexicon, an…
A Paleo-Arabic Inscription of a Companion of Muhammad
Old Arabic Minutiae II: Greek-Safaitic Bilinguals and Language Contact in the Syro-Arabian Ḥarrah
This article publishes a selection of texts discovered during the 2019 Badia Survey that shed light on the complex interactions between the inhabitants of the desert and settled areas. The inscriptions studied here include two new Safaitic-Greek bilingual texts, two new Greek inscriptions, and a Safaitic text composed by an inhabitant of the city of Bosra in the Ḥawrān
The Digraph اى in the Quranic Consonantal Text and the Identification of a New Letter Shape for Final Hē in the 7th to 8th Century Arabic Script
This paper proposes a hitherto unrecognized orthographic practice in the Quranic consonantal text: use of the digraph اى ,that is, alif + denticle, to represent the noninitial glottal stop, most often adjacent to the high vowels i/ī and less commonly in other environments. This feature leads to the identification of a new letter shape for the final hē in the early Islamic Arabic hand, originating in the Nabataeo-Arabic script, which in turn can e…
Old Arabic Minutiae I: Ḥattā, laysa, and More from the Inscriptions of the Syro-Jordanian Ḥarrah
This is the inaugural paper of a series on material attested in ancient North Arabia inscriptions that is of particular importance to the history of Arabic, its linguistic context, and its development and classification. The article edits eleven Safaitic inscriptions, inscribed on seven stones, discovered during the 2019 Badia Survey in Northeastern Jordan. Most of these texts attest new grammatical and lexical features that shed important light …
On the origins of the god Ruḍaw and some remarks on the pre-Islamic North Arabian pantheon
This contribution proposes an interpretation of a newly attested divine title of the ancient Arabian deity Ruḍaw, mkśd ‘(the one) from Chaldea’. It explores what sense this title could have had and its implications on our understanding of Ruḍaw's position in the ancient Arabian pantheon, especially in relation to Allāt. It also examines mentions of Ruḍaw in Islamic-period narrative sources and concludes that his cult likely disappeared by Islamic…
A Paleo‐Arabic inscription on a route north of Ṭāʾif
This paper will produce a new edition of the Rīʿ al‐Zallālah inscription, discussing in detail its paleographic features and content, and the ramifications it has on our understanding of the linguistic and religious milieu of the sixth–early seventh century Ḥigāz
Connecting the Lines between Old (Epigraphic) Arabic and the Modern Vernaculars
This paper investigates three linguistic features-wawation, the 1CS genitive clitic pronoun, and the relative pronoun-that are shared between the ancient epigraphic forms of Arabic and modern dialects, to the exclusion of Classical Arabic. I suggest that these features represent the earliest linguistic layer of the modern dialects
The Seven Stars, Allāt from ʿmn and Dusares from rqm: A new Safaitic astronomical text
This article studies a newly discovered Safaitic inscription from northern Jordan. The text contains the first clear attestation of the asterism “the Pleiades” as well as new divine titles for the deities Allāt and Dusares
Notes on the language of the Hismaic Inscriptions and a re-reading of Line 4 of the Madaba Hismaic Inscription
One of the longest Hismaic inscriptions yet discovered comes from the region of Madaba, Jordan. It was published first in an Arabic article by Khraysheh in 2000 and was re-edited by Graf and Zwettler four years later. Both editions remark on the striking similarity in language and style between this text and Classical Arabic. Indeed, this inscription and a closely related text from Uraynibah West, also published by Graf and Zwettler in the same a…
ʿArab , ʾAʿrāb , and Arabic in Ancient North Arabia: The first attestation of (ʾ)ʿrb as a group name in Safaitic
This article presents two new Safaitic inscriptions containing the group name ʾʿrb . Following an edition of the texts, the article discusses the implications of these new attestations on the origin and use of group names derived from the root ʿ‐r‐b in pre‐Islamic times and concludes with a discussion on the name of the Arabic language before the 7 th c. CE. The article is followed by an appendix of texts discovered at the same site and related t…
An early Christian Arabic graffito mentioning ‘Yazīd the king’
This article is an edition and commentary on an early Christian Arabic inscription discovered near Qaṣr Burquʿ in northeastern Jordan. The text mentions a certain yzydw ʾl‐mlk ‘Yazid the king’ and could date to the sixth or seventh century. We discuss the text's palaeography, its relevance for the history of the Arabic script, and attempt to identify the historical figure to which it refers
The Arabic of the Islamic conquests: Notes on phonology and morphology based on the Greek transcriptions from the first Islamic century
This paper attempts to reconstruct aspects of the phonology and morphology of the Arabic of the Islamic conquests on the basis of Greek transcriptions in papyri of the first Islamic century. The discussion includes phonemic and allophonic variation in consonants and vowels, and nominal morphology. The essay concludes with a discussion on possible Aramaic and South Arabian influences in the material, followed by a short appendix with remarks on se…
An ancient Arabian zodiac. The constellations in the Safaitic inscriptions, Part II
The second part of ‘An ancient Arabian zodiac. The constellations in the Safaitic inscriptions’ discusses the position of the Arabian zodiac vis‐à‐vis other parapegmata from antiquity, and takes up a comparative etymological study of the zodiac names in an attempt to locate their source. Four appendices discussing tangential issues that arose in the course of this study follow
Echoes of the Baal Cycle in a Safaito-Hismaic Inscription
This article provides a new reading and interpretation of the undeciphered Ancient North Arabian inscription krs 2453. It is argued that the text is composed in a mixed Safaito-Hismaic script, and contains a three-line poem recounting the conflict between the Canaanite deities Baal and Mōt as known from the Ugaritic Baal Cycle. The inscription’s Ancient North Arabian context is also discussed, and its style and structure are examined in light of …
An ancient Arabian zodiac. The constellations in the Safaitic inscriptions, Part I
This contribution identifies a previously unrecognised mode of reckoning time in the inscriptions‐the stars. Twelve zodiacal constellations are identified, along with the constellations Orion and the Pleiades
On the genetic background of the Rbbl bn Hfʿm grave inscription at Qaryat al-Fāw
It is widely believed that the Rbbl bn Hfʿm grave inscription found at Qaryat al-Fāw is the earliest example of Old Arabic. The ten-line inscription - written in the Sabaic script - attests the common Arabic definite article, ʾl, plus several other non-Sabaic linguistic features. I argue that the definite article is not a suitable diagnostic of genetic affiliation, and other features, such as mimation, the conjunction ʿdky, and more, should also …
Arabia and Areal Hybridity
The present contribution proposes the existence of two ‘micro linguistic areas’ in Arabia in which features from Arabic and other Semitic languages diffused multilaterally. Some of the output varieties pose a significant challenge to phylogeny as they exhibit conflicting isoglosses connecting them equally with different lineages of Semitic. We introduce to the term ‘areal hybridity’ to explain the genetic position of languages emerging from conta…
An early Christian Arabic graffito mentioning ‘Yazīd the king’
This article is an edition and commentary on an early Christian Arabic inscription discovered near Qaṣr Burquʿ in northeastern Jordan. The text mentions a certain yzydw ʾl‐mlk ‘Yazid the king’ and could date to the sixth or seventh century. We discuss the text's palaeography, its relevance for the history of the Arabic script, and attempt to identify the historical figure to which it refers
On the genetic background of the Rbbl bn Hfʿm grave inscription at Qaryat al-Fāw
It is widely believed that the Rbbl bn Hfʿm grave inscription found at Qaryat al-Fāw is the earliest example of Old Arabic. The ten-line inscription - written in the Sabaic script - attests the common Arabic definite article, ʾl, plus several other non-Sabaic linguistic features. I argue that the definite article is not a suitable diagnostic of genetic affiliation, and other features, such as mimation, the conjunction ʿdky, and more, should also …
Notes on the language of the Hismaic Inscriptions and a re-reading of Line 4 of the Madaba Hismaic Inscription
One of the longest Hismaic inscriptions yet discovered comes from the region of Madaba, Jordan. It was published first in an Arabic article by Khraysheh in 2000 and was re-edited by Graf and Zwettler four years later. Both editions remark on the striking similarity in language and style between this text and Classical Arabic. Indeed, this inscription and a closely related text from Uraynibah West, also published by Graf and Zwettler in the same a…
An ancient Arabian zodiac. The constellations in the Safaitic inscriptions, Part II
The second part of ‘An ancient Arabian zodiac. The constellations in the Safaitic inscriptions’ discusses the position of the Arabian zodiac vis‐à‐vis other parapegmata from antiquity, and takes up a comparative etymological study of the zodiac names in an attempt to locate their source. Four appendices discussing tangential issues that arose in the course of this study follow
A Paleo‐Arabic inscription on a route north of Ṭāʾif
This paper will produce a new edition of the Rīʿ al‐Zallālah inscription, discussing in detail its paleographic features and content, and the ramifications it has on our understanding of the linguistic and religious milieu of the sixth–early seventh century Ḥigāz
An ancient Arabian zodiac. The constellations in the Safaitic inscriptions, Part I
This contribution identifies a previously unrecognised mode of reckoning time in the inscriptions‐the stars. Twelve zodiacal constellations are identified, along with the constellations Orion and the Pleiades
A Paleo-Arabic Inscription of a Companion of Muhammad
ʿArab , ʾAʿrāb , and Arabic in Ancient North Arabia: The first attestation of (ʾ)ʿrb as a group name in Safaitic
This article presents two new Safaitic inscriptions containing the group name ʾʿrb . Following an edition of the texts, the article discusses the implications of these new attestations on the origin and use of group names derived from the root ʿ‐r‐b in pre‐Islamic times and concludes with a discussion on the name of the Arabic language before the 7 th c. CE. The article is followed by an appendix of texts discovered at the same site and related t…
The Arabic of the Islamic conquests: Notes on phonology and morphology based on the Greek transcriptions from the first Islamic century
This paper attempts to reconstruct aspects of the phonology and morphology of the Arabic of the Islamic conquests on the basis of Greek transcriptions in papyri of the first Islamic century. The discussion includes phonemic and allophonic variation in consonants and vowels, and nominal morphology. The essay concludes with a discussion on possible Aramaic and South Arabian influences in the material, followed by a short appendix with remarks on se…
Echoes of the Baal Cycle in a Safaito-Hismaic Inscription
This article provides a new reading and interpretation of the undeciphered Ancient North Arabian inscription krs 2453. It is argued that the text is composed in a mixed Safaito-Hismaic script, and contains a three-line poem recounting the conflict between the Canaanite deities Baal and Mōt as known from the Ugaritic Baal Cycle. The inscription’s Ancient North Arabian context is also discussed, and its style and structure are examined in light of …
Arabia and Areal Hybridity
The present contribution proposes the existence of two ‘micro linguistic areas’ in Arabia in which features from Arabic and other Semitic languages diffused multilaterally. Some of the output varieties pose a significant challenge to phylogeny as they exhibit conflicting isoglosses connecting them equally with different lineages of Semitic. We introduce to the term ‘areal hybridity’ to explain the genetic position of languages emerging from conta…
An ancient Arabian zodiac. The constellations in the Safaitic inscriptions, Part I
This contribution identifies a previously unrecognised mode of reckoning time in the inscriptions‐the stars. Twelve zodiacal constellations are identified, along with the constellations Orion and the Pleiades
On the genetic background of the Rbbl bn Hfʿm grave inscription at Qaryat al-Fāw
It is widely believed that the Rbbl bn Hfʿm grave inscription found at Qaryat al-Fāw is the earliest example of Old Arabic. The ten-line inscription - written in the Sabaic script - attests the common Arabic definite article, ʾl, plus several other non-Sabaic linguistic features. I argue that the definite article is not a suitable diagnostic of genetic affiliation, and other features, such as mimation, the conjunction ʿdky, and more, should also …
Echoes of the Baal Cycle in a Safaito-Hismaic Inscription
This article provides a new reading and interpretation of the undeciphered Ancient North Arabian inscription krs 2453. It is argued that the text is composed in a mixed Safaito-Hismaic script, and contains a three-line poem recounting the conflict between the Canaanite deities Baal and Mōt as known from the Ugaritic Baal Cycle. The inscription’s Ancient North Arabian context is also discussed, and its style and structure are examined in light of …
An ancient Arabian zodiac. The constellations in the Safaitic inscriptions, Part II
The second part of ‘An ancient Arabian zodiac. The constellations in the Safaitic inscriptions’ discusses the position of the Arabian zodiac vis‐à‐vis other parapegmata from antiquity, and takes up a comparative etymological study of the zodiac names in an attempt to locate their source. Four appendices discussing tangential issues that arose in the course of this study follow
An early Christian Arabic graffito mentioning ‘Yazīd the king’
This article is an edition and commentary on an early Christian Arabic inscription discovered near Qaṣr Burquʿ in northeastern Jordan. The text mentions a certain yzydw ʾl‐mlk ‘Yazid the king’ and could date to the sixth or seventh century. We discuss the text's palaeography, its relevance for the history of the Arabic script, and attempt to identify the historical figure to which it refers
The Arabic of the Islamic conquests: Notes on phonology and morphology based on the Greek transcriptions from the first Islamic century
This paper attempts to reconstruct aspects of the phonology and morphology of the Arabic of the Islamic conquests on the basis of Greek transcriptions in papyri of the first Islamic century. The discussion includes phonemic and allophonic variation in consonants and vowels, and nominal morphology. The essay concludes with a discussion on possible Aramaic and South Arabian influences in the material, followed by a short appendix with remarks on se…
The Seven Stars, Allāt from ʿmn and Dusares from rqm: A new Safaitic astronomical text
This article studies a newly discovered Safaitic inscription from northern Jordan. The text contains the first clear attestation of the asterism “the Pleiades” as well as new divine titles for the deities Allāt and Dusares
Notes on the language of the Hismaic Inscriptions and a re-reading of Line 4 of the Madaba Hismaic Inscription
One of the longest Hismaic inscriptions yet discovered comes from the region of Madaba, Jordan. It was published first in an Arabic article by Khraysheh in 2000 and was re-edited by Graf and Zwettler four years later. Both editions remark on the striking similarity in language and style between this text and Classical Arabic. Indeed, this inscription and a closely related text from Uraynibah West, also published by Graf and Zwettler in the same a…
ʿArab , ʾAʿrāb , and Arabic in Ancient North Arabia: The first attestation of (ʾ)ʿrb as a group name in Safaitic
This article presents two new Safaitic inscriptions containing the group name ʾʿrb . Following an edition of the texts, the article discusses the implications of these new attestations on the origin and use of group names derived from the root ʿ‐r‐b in pre‐Islamic times and concludes with a discussion on the name of the Arabic language before the 7 th c. CE. The article is followed by an appendix of texts discovered at the same site and related t…
The Digraph اى in the Quranic Consonantal Text and the Identification of a New Letter Shape for Final Hē in the 7th to 8th Century Arabic Script
This paper proposes a hitherto unrecognized orthographic practice in the Quranic consonantal text: use of the digraph اى ,that is, alif + denticle, to represent the noninitial glottal stop, most often adjacent to the high vowels i/ī and less commonly in other environments. This feature leads to the identification of a new letter shape for the final hē in the early Islamic Arabic hand, originating in the Nabataeo-Arabic script, which in turn can e…
Old Arabic Minutiae I: Ḥattā, laysa, and More from the Inscriptions of the Syro-Jordanian Ḥarrah
This is the inaugural paper of a series on material attested in ancient North Arabia inscriptions that is of particular importance to the history of Arabic, its linguistic context, and its development and classification. The article edits eleven Safaitic inscriptions, inscribed on seven stones, discovered during the 2019 Badia Survey in Northeastern Jordan. Most of these texts attest new grammatical and lexical features that shed important light …
On the origins of the god Ruḍaw and some remarks on the pre-Islamic North Arabian pantheon
This contribution proposes an interpretation of a newly attested divine title of the ancient Arabian deity Ruḍaw, mkśd ‘(the one) from Chaldea’. It explores what sense this title could have had and its implications on our understanding of Ruḍaw's position in the ancient Arabian pantheon, especially in relation to Allāt. It also examines mentions of Ruḍaw in Islamic-period narrative sources and concludes that his cult likely disappeared by Islamic…
A Paleo‐Arabic inscription on a route north of Ṭāʾif
This paper will produce a new edition of the Rīʿ al‐Zallālah inscription, discussing in detail its paleographic features and content, and the ramifications it has on our understanding of the linguistic and religious milieu of the sixth–early seventh century Ḥigāz
Connecting the Lines between Old (Epigraphic) Arabic and the Modern Vernaculars
This paper investigates three linguistic features-wawation, the 1CS genitive clitic pronoun, and the relative pronoun-that are shared between the ancient epigraphic forms of Arabic and modern dialects, to the exclusion of Classical Arabic. I suggest that these features represent the earliest linguistic layer of the modern dialects
Old Arabic Minutiae II: Greek-Safaitic Bilinguals and Language Contact in the Syro-Arabian Ḥarrah
This article publishes a selection of texts discovered during the 2019 Badia Survey that shed light on the complex interactions between the inhabitants of the desert and settled areas. The inscriptions studied here include two new Safaitic-Greek bilingual texts, two new Greek inscriptions, and a Safaitic text composed by an inhabitant of the city of Bosra in the Ḥawrān
The Roman annexation of the Nabataean kingdom: A Safaitic witness
This article presents a new Safaitic inscription dated to the year Gaius Claudius Severus was appointed as governor of the former Nabataean kingdom, called mlkt rbʾl “the kingdom of Rabbʾel.” As such, the text is an important witness to the shadowy events surrounding the Roman annexation of Nabataea in ad 106. Beyond its historical value, the inscription contains a number of hapax legomena, thus expanding our knowledge of the Safaitic lexicon, an…
A Paleo-Arabic Inscription of a Companion of Muhammad
Seeking refuge and the Ǧinn: Two notes on Safaitic lexicography
This contribution investigates the etymology of two obscure Safaitic terms: the verb ʾlmn and the divine title ḏgn . It is argued that the former means “to seek refuge” and ultimately derives from the Greek word for “harbor”, λιμήν. The latter term, ḏgn , is composed of two elements: the relative pronoun ḏ and the noun gn , which is identified as Ginn or Gānn (Genies). This is substantiated through an investigation of the semantic range of the ve…
Qaṭrāyīṯ and the Linguistic History of Ancient East Arabia
Qaṭrāyīṯ is a Syriac term that refers to the vernacular of east Arabia in the Early Islamic period. This linguistic variety is known from a small collection of lexical glosses in Syriac sources. Recently, Mario Kozah (2021, 2022) collected and examined about 40 Qaṭrāyīṯ lexical items, based on which he declared Qaṭrāyīṯ to be a dialect of Arabic. The purpose of this study is to re-assess the evidence, using a sounder linguistic methodology, to be…
Towards the decipherment of Thamudic D: An Identification of New Glyphs and Phoneme Values
The Thamudic D script is only partially deciphered. This article attempts to advance our understanding of the script by identifying all the Thamudic D glyphs and their phonemic values with varying degrees of certainty. It also discusses the major writing formulae associated with this script type and offers a few notes on the language it inscribes
A Dated Paleo‐Arabic Inscription Mentioning Al‐Mundhir ( ʾmndr ) the King
This contribution edits a newly discovered Paleo‐Arabic inscription from Wādī al‐Šuwayṭī in the northeastern Jordanian Ḥarrah. The inscription is dated to the reign of a king called ʾmndr , identified by the authors as the Jafnid ruler Al‐Mundhir III ibn al‐Harith. Some remarks on its implications about Arab rulership and identity are also offered
Late Antique Allāh: Ancestral Arabian Religion and the Monotheistic Zeitgeist
This essay addresses the ongoing scholarly tension between the monotheistic interpretations of late pre‐Islamic Arabian religion, pioneered by G. Hawting and P. Crone, and the traditional accounts of rampant Arabian polytheism found in later Islamic literary sources. By integrating the analysis of the Quran and Islamic literary sources with the rapidly growing body of Paleo‐Arabic epigraphy from Late Antique West Arabia, the authors propose a syn…
Archaeology and Historical Studies (22 works) · History (18 works) · Linguistics (16 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Arabic (13 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (12 works) · History (12 works) · Ancient history (11 works) · Art (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works)