History
Classical Arabic has its origins in the central and northern parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and is distinct from Old South Arabian languages that were spoken in the southern parts of the peninsula, modern day Yemen. Classical Arabic is the only surviving descendant of the Old North Arabian languages. The oldest inscription so far discovered in Classical Arabic goes back to 328 AD and is known as the NamÄrah inscription, written in the Nabataean alphabet and named after the place where it was found in southern Syria in April 1901.
With the spread of Islam, Classical Arabic became a prominent language of scholarship and religious devotion as the language of the Qur'an (at times even spreading faster than the religion). Its relation to modern dialects is somewhat analogous to the relationship of Latin to the Romance languages or of Middle Chinese to modern Chinese languages.
Read more about this topic: Classical Arabic
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)