What languages were spoken in today's Syria/Jordan/Iraq before the Islamic conquest?

Islamic sources cite a language called "Khuzi" being spoken in Khuzestan as late as the 8th century, and Khuzestan was the heartland of the Elamite people.

Not sure about Akkadian, I might be wrong on that one.



They were, that's why there's the Eastern and Western Aramaic branches which have an old separation. Even today, Eastern Aramaic languages are barely mutually intelligible amongst each other. Important religious languages like Syriac, Talmudic Aramaic, and Mandaic are all Eastern Aramaic languages though.
That might as well be some Iranian language at this point in time, there is really no reason to believe it's Elamite. Maybe it's Luri: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luri_language

Since when did those 2 branches exist?
Both the Romans and the Sassanids didn’t connect strongly with the populations of these areas, especially in the rural areas. Most of the population continued speaking Aramaic as they did. This was furthered by the way these areas were fought over by the Romans and Persians.
That's not really true as both the Romans and Sassanids influenced the region a lot in many ways even when talking about rural areas, in any case I would have assumed the relatively stable border would have create 2 disticntly Aramaic languages areas.
 
Hi all,

I'm trying to work out what languages were the dominant ones in each of the different areas of Syria/Jordan/Iraq before Mohammed. I understand Aramaic and Syriac were the main ones, but this only seems to be in the North of the area. What was spoken in Baghdad, Basra, Amman etc and the desert in between?

On a separate point, what were the main religions in each of the cities?
Greek was important.
 
Moost of the region would speak Aramaic, with some areas like Afrin and Sulaymaniya Kurdish. Parts of Iraq southwest of Euphates would be Arabic, while Jordan would have some Arabic, especially in the desert. Some urban areas would speak Greek: especially Latakia, Aleppo and possibly some areas of the Decapolis as well. Dialectal division would be mainly among denominations ans well as old Roamn provinces...
 
That might as well be some Iranian language at this point in time, there is really no reason to believe it's Elamite. Maybe it's Luri: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luri_language
Al-Muqaffa says that Khuzi was "the tongue spoken by princes and nobles when alone or at their games or at pleasure-resorts or when speaking to their servants," and other Arab geographers mention that it was a language very different from both Persian and Aramaic, and one apparently impossible to write in the Arab abjad. If it was any language we know of, it has to be Elamite.
 
Al-Muqaffa says that Khuzi was "the tongue spoken by princes and nobles when alone or at their games or at pleasure-resorts or when speaking to their servants," and other Arab geographers mention that it was a language very different from both Persian and Aramaic, and one apparently impossible to write in the Arab abjad. If it was any language we know of, it has to be Elamite.
How come Elamite was spoken by nobles and yet we have no written record of it in those centuries? Also I'm really curious what "impossible to write in abjad" means, Persian in theory is not exactly the best language for abjads either.

Edit: I really have no idea how can a language survive almost a millennia while being still spoken by the nobility and having no written record, to be honest I'd jump at some other Iranic language to explain it and say that those geographers just aren't the most knowledgeable in linguistics, which no one can blame them for(maybe the "impossible to write" in abjad refers to phonology)

Edit2: Also it's dubious even if Elamite survived that it would have been "very different" from Persian considering it would have existed for a millennia in a state of diglossia with Persian and what we know of the last Elamite texts it was already massively influenced by Persian(which makes sense if we assume it died around the Hellenistic period)
 
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