This page provides media resources and links related to the study of Semitic languages from ancient Arabia, namely the Safaito-Arabic and Old South Arabian branches. Along with the Northwest Semitic languages, Safaito-Arabic and Old South Arabian belong to the Central Semitic node.

First, Safaitic is the name of an ancient alphabetic script used by nomads in the deserts of Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia (and occasionally elsewhere) dating from the end of the first millennium BCE to the middle of the first century CE. The language(s) and dialect(s) of the speakers who wrote in this script are closely related to Old (pre-Islamic) Arabic which is also likely represented in other Arabian scripts such as Hismaic and Nabatean.

Second, Old South Arabian is the name given to a group of four or so related languages spoken in the southern portion of the Arabian peninsula (mostly modern Yemen and Oman; their relationship to the Modern South Arabian still spoken there today remains unclear, but they are likely not the direct ancestor languages). While the languages of these inscriptions (Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramitic, Minaic, and others) are Central Semitic, the script type is historically related to the Ethiopic (Ge’ez) abugida (alphasyllabary).

Safaitic & Old Arabic

OCIANA Database Project

OCIANA (https://ociana.osu.edu/), housed by The Ohio State University, stands for the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia. Its Scientific Directors are Michael C. A. Macdonald of Oxford and Ahmad Al-Jallad of Ohio State. Along with Al-Jallad, James D. Moore is also one of the Project Managers.