Towards a Sociohistorical Reconstruction of Pre-Islamic Arabic Dialect Diversity
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Copyright by Alexander Magidow 2013 cbnd e Dissertation Commiee for Alexander Magidow certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Towards a Sociohistorical Reconstruction of Pre-Islamic Arabic Dialect Diversity Commiee: Kristen Brustad, Supervisor Patience Epps, Co-Supervisor Mahmoud Al-Batal Na’ama Pat-El Mohammad A. Mohammad Towards a Sociohistorical Reconstruction of Pre-Islamic Arabic Dialect Diversity by Alexander Magidow, B.A., M.A. DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of e University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN August 2013 Dedicated to the curiosity which drives us to question how things came to be. Anowledgments is dissertation would not have been possible without my amazing com- miee, especially my co-supervisors Kristen Brustad and Paie Epps. ey gave me an incredible amount of support and encouragement, allowing me to dream while keeping me grounded. I am immensely grateful to the entire commiee for their expertise, and for their aention both to broad issues and to small mistakes. All remaining mistakes are solely the responsibility of the author. e support of my colleagues was a great help, especially when working through a difficult point. I would like to acknowledge in particular the members of UT’s Center for Arabic Dialect Research (CADR) and the Multidisciplinary Ap- proaches to Linguistics (MAL) graduate presentation group, where I was able to get feedback on many of the ideas that made it to the dissertation, and many that did not. anks also go to the audiences at the Jīl Jadīd conferences and the Arabic Linguistic Symposium. My wife Melanie was the touchstone that kept me sane throughout this project and reminded me that there is so much to life beyond the dissertation. is dissertation is very much indebted to the open source and free so- ware movements. e dissertation was compiled in X LE ATEX using the MikTEX distribution and the TEXMaker editor. Most of the figures were made using the Inkscape vector graphics program. e Roman text was set in Linux Libertine, v and the Arabic text was set in Scheherazade from SIL. Since the figures are com- plex, the reader is encouraged to use the most recent version of their PDF reading soware. e dissertation and all of the original figures are licensed under the Cre- ative Commons ‘Aribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs’ license, which allows for free distribution of the dissertation or figures for non-commerical purposes pro- vided they are aributed to the author. vi Towards a Sociohistorical Reconstruction of Pre-Islamic Arabic Dialect Diversity Publication No. Alexander Magidow, Ph.D. e University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisors: Kristen Brustad Patience Epps is dissertation develops a new framework for reconstructing the diver- sity of a language at a given historical time period. It applies this framework to the problem of reconstructing the diversity of Arabic dialects immediately prior to the Islamic conquests, which spread speakers of these dialects across much of North Africa and the Middle East. e study first establishes a theoretical framework for reconstructing historical speech communities, defined as groups of speakers linked by shared allegiance. It then analyzes the tribal and non-tribal social or- ganization in Pre-Islamic Arabia, and provides a detailed historical overview of how the Islamic conquests contributed to the Arabization of the conquered terri- tories. Finally, the dissertation reconstructs the linguistic history of the Arabic demonstratives, using them as a variable to determine which speech communities existed in pre-Islamic Arabic, where they were located in time and space, and how the diversity of those communities is related to the diversity of modern Arabic dialects. vii Table of Contents Anowledgments v Abstract vii List of Tables xiv List of Figures xv Introduction 1 0.1 Seeking Diversity in Arabic’s Past .................. 4 0.1.1 Previous Approaches ...................... 4 0.1.2 Current Approach ....................... 7 0.1.2.1 Organization ..................... 9 0.2 Demonstratives ............................. 10 0.3 Data Sources .............................. 13 0.4 Sample points .............................. 16 0.4.1 Classical Arabic ......................... 16 0.4.2 Peripheral Dialects ....................... 17 0.4.3 North African Dialects ..................... 20 0.4.4 Nile Valley and Southern African Dialects .......... 23 0.4.5 Levantine Dialects ....................... 25 0.4.6 Mesopotamian Dialects .................... 27 0.4.7 Arabian Dialects ........................ 28 0.4.8 Yemeni Dialects ......................... 29 viii 0.4.9 Summary Chart and Map of Sample Points ......... 30 0.5 Conventions and Abbreviations .................... 34 Chapter 1. From the genealogy of languages to the areology of spee communities 36 1.1 Challenges in applying the comparative method .......... 38 1.1.1 Units of analysis ........................ 38 1.1.2 Genealogy ............................ 45 1.1.2.1 Homogeneity of the past ............... 49 1.2 From languages to speech communities ............... 52 1.2.1 Defining speech communities ................. 54 1.2.1.1 Social Networks ................... 54 1.2.1.2 Identity and Allegiance ............... 59 1.2.1.3 Speech Communities: Networks, Allegiance, Size . 66 1.2.2 Uniting the Linguistic and Extra-Linguistic ......... 70 1.2.2.1 Changes in Structure and Allegiance ........ 71 1.2.2.2 Diagnosing Speech Communities .......... 75 1.3 Towards an archaeology of speech communities .......... 77 1.3.1 Alignment Events and Innovation .............. 78 1.3.2 Diffusion within closely related lects ............. 82 1.3.2.1 Social diffusion .................... 83 1.3.2.2 Geographical Diffusion ............... 86 1.3.3 Diffusion between distantly related lects ........... 89 1.3.3.1 Degree of difference ................. 91 1.3.3.2 Dominance ...................... 92 1.3.3.3 Integration ...................... 95 1.3.3.4 Multilingualism .................... 96 1.3.4 Newly established communities ................ 99 1.3.4.1 Dialect Mixing to Focusing ............. 101 1.3.5 Shi to another lect ...................... 106 1.3.5.1 Direction of shi ................... 106 1.3.5.2 Linguistic outcomes of shi ............. 108 1.4 Summary ................................ 110 ix Chapter 2. Pre-Islamic Arabia: Tribes and Social Organization 112 2.1 Modes of Subsistence ......................... 113 2.2 Group Organization .......................... 119 2.3 Group Interactions ........................... 122 2.4 e Tribe as a Linguistic Unit ..................... 127 2.5 e Bedouin Paradox ......................... 133 2.6 Conclusion ............................... 136 Chapter 3. History: Greater Arabian Peninsula 138 3.1 Approach ................................ 140 3.2 General Trends ............................. 143 3.2.1 Subsistence Paerns and Barriers ............... 143 3.2.2 Linguistic Separation ...................... 147 3.2.2.1 New Cities (ʾamṣār) ................. 148 3.3 Arabian Peninsula ........................... 150 3.3.1 Ancient North Arabian and Arabic .............. 150 3.3.2 Population movements in the Arabian Peninsula prior to Islam 156 3.3.3 Yemen .............................. 160 3.3.4 Oman .............................. 164 3.3.5 Summary: Arabian Peninsula ................. 166 3.4 e Levant ............................... 166 3.5 Pre-Islamic Linguistic Situation .................... 167 3.5.1 Client States and the Arabization of the South-central Levant 169 3.5.2 From Roman to Arab Rule ................... 173 3.5.3 Urban selement ........................ 175 3.5.4 Natural Disasters: Earthquake and Plague .......... 179 3.5.5 e Lebanese Mountains .................... 184 3.5.6 Summary: Arabization of the Levant ............. 185 3.6 Mesopotamia .............................. 187 3.6.1 Pre-Islamic Linguistic Situation ................ 188 3.6.2 Conquest and Continuity ................... 192 3.6.3 New-cities founded in Mesopotamia ............. 199 x 3.6.3.1 Kufa .......................... 199 3.6.3.2 Basra ......................... 204 3.6.3.3 Baghdad ........................ 205 3.6.4 Other selements and selement paerns in Mesopotamia 206 3.6.5 Summary: Arabization of Iraq ................. 209 3.7 Summary: Arabic and the Greater Peninsula ............ 210 Chapter 4. History: Outside the Greater Peninsula 212 4.1 Egypt .................................. 212 4.1.1 Selement of Egypt ...................... 214 4.1.2 Arabization of Egypt ...................... 219 4.1.3 Summary: Arabization of Egypt ............... 222 4.2 North Africa .............................. 223 4.2.1 Westward Migrations ..................... 233 4.2.1.1 Historical Overview of Banū Hilāl ......... 237 4.2.1.2 Re-evaluating Origins ................ 240 4.2.1.3 Re-evaluating Timing ................ 241 4.2.1.4 Re-evaluating Impact ................. 243 4.2.1.5 Western Migrations Reconsidered ......... 246 4.2.2 Effects of the Reconquista on North Africa .......... 247 4.3 Andalusia ................................ 251 4.4 Peripheral regions ........................... 257 4.4.1 Malta and Sicily ........................ 257 4.4.2 Cyprus ............................. 260 4.4.3 Central Asia ........................... 261 4.4.4 Sudan, Chad, Nigeria ...................... 262 4.5 Conclusion ............................... 262 Chapter 5. e Linguistic Development