Hismaic

Hismaic (Arabic: حسمائية) is a variety of the Ancient North Arabian script and the language most commonly expressed in it. The Hismaic script may have been used to write Safaitic dialects of Old Arabic, but the language of most inscriptions differs from Safaitic in a few important respects, meriting its classification as a separate dialect or language. Hismaic inscriptions are attested in the Ḥismā region of Northwest Arabia, dating to the centuries around and immediately following the start of the Common Era.

Hismaic
Region	Hisma (ar)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic North Arabian? Arabic Old Arabic Hismaic
Writing system	Old North Arabian script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	hism1236

Geographic area

Location of the Ḥismā region (shaded red) in Northwest Arabia.

Characteristics

Phonology

Hismaic has undergone the merger of Proto-Semitic s¹ + s³, the same as all Arabic varieties and Dadanitic. There are clear instances of d being used for /ḏ/ in the variant spellings of the divine name Ḏū l-S²arā as ds²r or ds²ry – as against classical ḏs²r or ḏs²ry, although these are probably Aramaicisms, under Nabataean influence.

The spelling ʿbdmk for ʿbdmlk suggests an interchange of n for l (with unvocalised n assimilated to the following k), similar to that found in Nabataean where the name of the kings named Malichos occurs as both mlkw and mnkw and the compound as both ʿbdmlkw and ʿbdmnkw.

Grammar

Perhaps the most salient distinction between Safaitic and Hismaic is the attestation of the definite articles h-, hn-, ʾ-, and ʾl- in the former. A prefixed definite article is not attested in Hismaic. Nevertheless, Hismaic seems to attest a suffixed -ʾ on nouns and hn in personal names. The use of the morpheme h- as a demonstrative is attested.