Iranian/Indo-Aryan/South Arabian language resources?

Some city names I know of the top of my head:

Baraqesh, is Ytl, I am not sure how they place vowels in South Arabian so I'm guessing it was Yathal or Yathel, etc... If it is more closely related to Arabic then it would be Yathal if not then probably Yathel or Yathil.

Qarnaawu , or Qrnw. The vowels in it I am not sure of, perhaps Qarnewu as I do not know if the hard ā is as popular in Sabaen/Minaen as it is in Arabic, especially since it is not as close as Hebrew.

Ma'in, and without vowels M'n. The alif within it is a definite, however the 'in, could have been an 'een.

Ma'rib, M'rb, this is how it is said in Arabic, not sure exactly how it would be said by the Saba'iyyun.

Sayhaad, modern al-Ramlat Saba'tayn, was the old word for the desert of Yemen corresponding to the ancient south Arabian kingdoms. It likely was either the actual word used by the Yemeni's themselves or an Arabic play on the original word.


Timna or Teman, Tmn, the capital of the Qatabani kingdoms.

Hadramuut, in MSA known as Hadramawt.

Unfortunately most of the works on South Arabia are tainted by contemporary Arab sources who emphasized the history of Hijaz and Nejd as its what most pertained to Muhammad.

However I would suggest a book by Jawad Ali, "The history of Arab states before Islam", it is available in Arabic, and maybe Farsi, I am not for sure.

Then take your pick of the Arabic scholars of the past to use for King names, they give great genealogy lines for these kingdoms despite knowing relatively little about the kingdoms of those times in an actual scholarly fashion and not a folk form.

All correct. The most common transliterations I have seen are "Yathill" and "Qarnaw" respectively.
 
Any links of the geneologies?


Also, do you have any good sources on the Arabic of the period?

Depends on what are you calling "Arabic" at this stage.
"Arabic" in the Imperial Roman era is documented by exactly two inscriptions, whose date and whose being actually in Arabic are both open to some doubt. And they lack vowels, of course. If you take a more ecumenic view of what "Arabic" is supposed to be, you could include the North Arabian corpus of inscriptions. That's impressive, hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of short inscriptions carved in stone pretty much everywhere from Syria to Yemen for about a millennium. The problem is that, despite this potential wealth of information, we know relatively little about North Arabian. the inscriptions, while numerous, tendo to be short, repetitive, formulaic, and hard to read (also, of course, unvocalized). A grammar of Safaitic has been recently published by Ahmad al-Jallad. Also note that at this time, the prestige language for writing in North Arabia was Aramaic.
 
Actually South Arabian languages (and Old North Arabian as well, and other ancient languages using Semitic abjads including older varieties of Phoenician and Aramaic) are often transliterated without vowels, especially in scientific context, precisely because often we have little clue to actual vocalization. This obviously not a case in Arabic and other languages (Hebrew, Syriac, Geez) where pronunciation is traditionally known. But we have not that luxury for Sabaean or Hismaic.
In more readable works, reconstructed (and sometimes simplified) transliterations with vowels are common, so you read South Arabian names such as "Karib'il Watar" as opposed to "krb'lwtr". A similar convention is used in Egyptology. The vowels are put there based on comparison, and are not necessary the "true ones" but the most likely.

I thought he was referring to Arabic.
 
I thought he was referring to Arabic.
Perhaps I misunderstood, but Arabic is only exceptionally transliterated without vowels, since they are known (there's a couple of exceptions regarding a few very exotic old words that nobody is exactly sure how to vocalize, but that's extremely minor).
 
Perhaps I misunderstood, but Arabic is only exceptionally transliterated without vowels, since they are known (there's a couple of exceptions regarding a few very exotic old words that nobody is exactly sure how to vocalize, but that's extremely minor).

I think we are misunderstanding something.. When you translate a word in Arabic to English, you insert the vowels, you don't just go around spelling everything unvocalized.
 

Vixagoras

Banned
Depends on what are you calling "Arabic" at this stage.
"Arabic" in the Imperial Roman era is documented by exactly two inscriptions, whose date and whose being actually in Arabic are both open to some doubt. And they lack vowels, of course. If you take a more ecumenic view of what "Arabic" is supposed to be, you could include the North Arabian corpus of inscriptions. That's impressive, hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of short inscriptions carved in stone pretty much everywhere from Syria to Yemen for about a millennium. The problem is that, despite this potential wealth of information, we know relatively little about North Arabian. the inscriptions, while numerous, tendo to be short, repetitive, formulaic, and hard to read (also, of course, unvocalized). A grammar of Safaitic has been recently published by Ahmad al-Jallad. Also note that at this time, the prestige language for writing in North Arabia was Aramaic.


Thank you very much. I will definitely be looking for these. However, is this grammar in Arabic? lol. Cuz that would be problematic for obvious reasons. At present, I am not sure if any major world religion is going to be developed in the Arabian Peninsula, so what I am after are words for names of places and people and information on how to construct names and words for governmental offices and the like. We'll see if the Arabian Peninsula just converts to the religions around it, or if it is a major producer as it was IOTL. I currently have a major proselytizing religion in the works, and I will let on that it comes out of Central Asia, but that is the extent of any spoilers I will give in an open thread. I'm not sure if this religion is going to be appeal to Arabs though, however, Arabs ITTL are going to be in a different social setting than they were IOTL, I am pretty sure, so it might.
 
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