Sabaean Language - Varieties of Sabaean

Varieties of Sabaean

• Sabaean: the language of the kingdom of Saba and later also of Ḥimyar; also documented in the Ethiopian kingdom of Da'amot; very well documented, ca. 6000 Inscriptions
  • Old Sabaean: mostly boustrophedon inscriptions from the 8th until the 4th century BC and including further texts in the next two centuries from Ma'rib and the Highlands.
  • Middle Sabaean: 1st century BC until the end of the 4th century AD The best documented language. The largest corpus of texts from this period comes from the Awwam Temple (otherwise known as Maḥrem Bilqīs) in Ma'rib.
    • Amiritic/Ḥaramitic: the language of the area to the north of Ma'īn
    • Central Sabaean: the language of the inscriptions from the Sabaean heartland.
    • South Sabaean: the language of the inscriptions from Radmān and Ḥimyar
    • "Pseudo-Sabaean": the literary language of Arabian tribes in Najrān, Ḥaram and Qaryat al-Fāw
  • Late Sabaean: 5th- 6th centuries AD. This is the monotheistic period, when the Christianity and Judaism brought Aramaic and Greek influences.

In the Late Sabaean period we find that the ancient names of the gods are no longer mentioned and only one deity Raḥmānān is referred to. The last known inscription in Sabaean dates from the year 554/9 AD. The languages eventual extinction was brought about by the later rapid expansion of Islam, bringing with it Norther Arabic or Muḍarī, which became the language of culture and writing, totally supplanting Sabaean.

The dialect used in the western Yemeni highlands, known as Central Sabaean, is very homogenous and generally used as the language of the inscriptions. Divergent dialects are usually found in the area surrounding the Central Highlands, such as the important dialect of the city of Ḥaram in the eastern al-Jawf. Inscriptions in the Ḥaramic dialect, which is heavily influenced by North Arabic, are also generally considered a form of Sabaean. The Himyarites appeared in the late 2nd century BC, later taking over the Sabaean Kingdom, and ultimately ruling all of Yemen from their capital at Zafar. The Ḥimyarites spoke a Semitic language but not a South Arabic language, nevertheless using Sabaean as a written language.