Livestream with THE Prof. Ahmad Al-Jallad: Were the Arabs really pagans at the dawn of Islam? YouTube video by Exploring the Quran and the Bible

Livestream tomorrow on the burning questions of late antique Arabia’s religious history. Join here:

www.youtube.com/live/iJ4zsdI...

BES24 Walkthrough YouTube video by OCIANA

#New on #OCIANA : Join a brief tour of Al-Munḏir's mountain in the Jordanian Ḥarrah! Ancient crosses, Safaitic, rock art, and Paleo-Arabic with stunning views.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcRi...

Just published on DiCoNab: a new Paleo-Arabic inscription, by yours truly, perhaps referring to the Ghassanid raid on khaybar in 567 CE. Sheds more light on the northern dialect and writing school of Arabic at this time - see the card for details.
diconab.huma-num.fr/inscriptions...

Lost Script of Arabia Finally Deciphered — What It Reveals About the Name Muhammad YouTube video by MythVision Podcast

An introduction to the Dhofari script and the background of the name Muhammad/Mahmed (the AI thumbnail says 2500 BCE for some reason, unrelated to video!). With best wishes,

youtu.be/BoltvOGEmjQ?...

Public lecture on Thursday in Paris. I will deliver a lecture on the linguistic pre-history and history of the Mecca region, based on two seasons of epigraphic fieldwork carried out btwn '21-'22. Welcome.

See the commentary in the link

#New on #OCIANA: Is this the oldest #Arabic inscription yet discovered? The famous #Bāyir inscription is now online. An ancient Arab calls upon the Canaanite gods: Malkom, Kemosh, and Qaws to protect the wells of Bāyir (ancient: ʾabāʾir).

Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Al-Jallad. Pre-Print. Ancient North Arabian: A Compositional-Formulaic Approach This paper proposes a compositional-formulaic approach to understanding Ancient North Arabian (ANA) writing traditions, arguing that the relationship between these scripts can be informed by analyzing...

I don't know about Tifinagh, but I do not think Macdonald's characterization of Safaitic in those terms holds. See the discussion in this paper (pgs. 35-50): www.academia.edu/129747926/Al...

Monday in Cambridge - سلم اىىم

www.ames.cam.ac.uk/events/paleo...

Five years ago now surveying the extremely harsh terrain south of Mecca. Inscriptions forthcoming...

Wādī al-Qaṭṭāfī ((c) A. Al-Jallad)

#New Is Baʿal-Samīn (the storm deity) an ʾ𝒍𝒉 𝒔̣𝒅𝒒 'a just god?' Rain-making prayers in ancestral Arabian religion and the expectation of divine 'justice' in a multipolar divine world. A extremely important #Safaitic inscription published here: shorturl.at/oJvMW.

#New on #OCIANA: The ancient Arabian divine world was populated by independent powers. The author of this #Safaitic inscription calls upon an assembly of 7 gods to save "from what Bʿls¹mn (the storm god) has unjustly wrought upon us" = 'drought'
Find more: shorturl.at/UyXCr

#New on #OCIANA: A #Dhofari itinerarium (prayer for travel): "help him who has departed; give long life (to him who) is fed up with staying in one place". How many can still relate to this...

ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Was Biblical literature translated into Arabic before Islam? This is the million-dollar question. This paper argues that two pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions contain an Arabic trans. of Deuteronomy 6:5 via the New Testament. Find more: www.academia.edu/164814783/Al...

The same is said in Jordan.

Hidden in plain sight: Did archaeologists really overlook evidence for early writing at Göbekli Tepe?! When Irving Finkel, esteemed Assyriologist and Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures at the British Museum, who’s always good for some really great public ou…

Did a small stone from #GöbekliTepe represent the very beginnings of #writing? Did archaeologists really overlook such an important find all this time? - Spoiler: No, it doesn’t. And we didn’t.

On Irving Finkel's "controversial theory" at @lexfridman.bsky.social:

trowelandpen.com/2025/12/22/h...

Qur'an Manuscripts and Qur'anic Arabic: Live Q & A with Dr. Marijn van Putten! YouTube video by Exploring the Quran and the Bible

After the major technical difficulties last time, me and Gabriel Reynolds decided to do another Live Q&A. So, of course, the first thing that happened was that my WiFi died, and then we got audio issues.

After some editing it is now put back online!

www.youtube.com/live/vkiji1e...

#OCIANA #Top_10_in_2025 : The #OCIANA team inserted more than 1500 new inscriptions into the database. Here are our top ten (with a three-way tie at #10) of the year, just in case you missed them! From Nabonidus to Dahr, let us known what you think!

www.academia.edu/145461821/OC...

To the Ḥarrah and Back Again | OSU grad students discuss epigraphic fieldwork YouTube video by Near East by Midwest Podcast

New NExMW podcast. OSU grad students discuss their experience on BES25. Tune in to hear about new, exciting discoveries and high adventure.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLxx...

#Behind_the_scenes: The first inscriptions from the #Mecca region are going into #OCIANA. They are not public now, but you can get an idea of the distribution here! Can you see what I see? More coming very soon. (yellow are inscriptions not available to the public yet). Photo - wadi nu'man (#7)

If only! Haha, greetings!

#Updated on #OCIANA - The first Ancient South Arabian inscription from the Ḥarrah, from Zalaf, Syria! Was it carved by a North Arabian who learned the script or a wandering South Arabian trader? Impossible to know! But its irregularities tell a story.

Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

DhI 8 | OCIANA dhr: 'Fate-time'; the etymology of the word has to do with 'burning' and 'destruction' (Beeston et al. 1982: 35).

The composition is beautiful too. Dahr derives from terms of destruction and fire and so the verb šabba 'to burn fiercely' is appropriate! The epithet lord of plunder and fear has a poetic balance - rabb ḥōś wa-hōl.

What secrets remain unread...

Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

#New on #OCIANA - The #Dhofari Script 2 inscriptions documented by Dr. Al-Mashikhi, many thanks for his hard work. DhI 8 is simply remarkable. The Mušrikīn of the Quran state: 'nothing dooms us but Fate (ad-dahr)'. DhI 8 states: 'Dahr, lord of plunder and fear, burned fiercely'.

Those are lovely hearts but they are not early Islamic inscriptions! One is dated to 2002 :).

The evolution of the Arabic script was set into motion well before the spread of Christianity, so it isn't really comparable to Armenian, etc. Hoyland supposed that the spread of Christianity across Arabia played a roll in the script's spread. I am not sure.

An important 'time out' by a very clear thinker. Much of what Shoemaker claims about the Hijaz on the eve of Islam is conclusively disproved by material evidence, which grows by the year. I have a surprise, too, from my last survey mission (May 2025) between Taif-Mecca and Medina

shorturl.at/8IG8f

I say this because there are all sorts of cultural reasons why the name could be concealed and replaced by a title, or even if these commemorate the death of babies. Such tombstones elsewhere may just say 'infant'. Also does w have to mean son? or maybe a genitive marker? (sorry for my ignorance!)

Does WRM(H)Z ever occur in second position, or always first, in genealogies?

I know a Bedouin in Saudi Arabia from the ʿUtaybī tribe whose father was named rūmī, similar to turkī.