The Arabic Language

15.5 Uzbekistan and Afghanistan Arabic
During the 1960s, information became available on an Arabic dialect spoken in the 
(then) Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. Since Western Arabists did not have access 
to this region, the only fieldwork had been done by the Soviet Arabists Vinnikov 
and Tsereteli. Through their publications, scholars learned that an Arabic dialect 
was spoken in the Qašqa Darya (1,000 speakers in 1938) and Bukhara (400 speakers 
in 1938) regions of Uzbekistan. Most of them were bi- or trilingual, Tajik and 
Uzbek being the current languages in the community. Their dialect turned out to 
be related to the Mesopotamian and Anatolian 
qǝltu
dialects, but it had developed 
in a special way. According to fieldwork carried out in 1996 by Dereli (1997) and 

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Arabic as a Minority Language 
285
in 2002 by Zimmermann (2002), the inhabitants of the village
s of Jogari, 35 km to 
the north of Bukhara, still use Arabic in their daily contacts, although they code-
switch constantly to Uzbek and Tajik.
The origins of the Uzbekistan community of speakers of Arabic are contro
-
versial. According to some traditions, the Arab presence in Transoxania and the 
Islamisation of this area date back to the time of Qutayba ibn Muslim, governor of 
Ḫurāsān, who conquered Bukhara and Samarqand in 87/709–10. Others link the 
Arab presence with Timur Lenk’s conquests in the fourteenth century, or with 
Bedouin migrations from Afghanistan in the sixteenth century. In all likelihood, 
there were different stages of Arabicisation in this area, which would explain the 
mixed character of the lexicon.
Apparently, between 5,000 and 10,000 speakers of Arabic still survive in a few 
villages in the Khorasan region in east Iran, on the border with Afghanistan and 
Turkmenistan (Seeger 2002, 2009). They call themselves 
ʿArab 
and speak a variety 
of Arabic that is entirely different from the Arabic spoken in Khuzestan (see 
Chapter 11, pp. 203f.), and may be related to the Arabic of Uzbekistan. The dialect 
spoken in Khorasan is affected by interference from Persian, unlike Uzbekistan 
Arabic, which is heavily influenced by Turkic. In its phonemic inventory, emphasis 
has disappeared, and in some varieties sibilants have become interdentals, for 
example, 
iṯim 
‘name’ (Classical Arabic 
ism
), 
ṯūf 
‘wool’ (Classical Arabic 
ṣūf
), 
bēḏ 
‘eggs’ (Classical Arabic 
bayḍ
). Classical Arabic /q/ and /k/ have the reflexes /j/ 
and /č/ before front vowels, including /a/, for example, 
bājir
, but plural 
bugar 
‘cattle’ (Classical Arabic 
baqara
). This trait appears in other Bedouin dialects (see 
Chapter 11, p. 194), but is absent in Uzbekistan Arabic. The Khorasan dialect has 
a definite article 
al- 
and an indefinite article 
fal-
, both of which assimilate to 
all following consonants, for example, 
aḥ-ḥurme 
‘the woman’, 
fab-bājir 
‘a cow’. 
In verbal morphology, the infix 
-inn- 
occurs with participles in a manner that is 
similar to Uzbekistan Arabic, for example, 
āḫḏ-unn-he
/
āḫiḏt-inn-ah 
‘I [masculine/
feminine] take her/him (as husband/wife)’.
Our lack of knowledge is greater in the case of the Arabic spoken in Afghani
-
stan. The first publication in a Western language concerning remnants of Arabic 
in Afghanistan appeared in 1973. At that time, there were approximately 4,000 
speakers of an Arabic dialect in northern Afghanistan in the provinces of Balkh 
and Jawzjān. Most speakers were bilingual in Arabic and Persian (Tajik). They 
belonged to a close-knit community that observed a strict endogamy, and felt 
proud of their Arabic descent. According to local tradition, they descended from 
the tribe of Qurayš and had been brought to this region by Timur Lenk in the 
fourteenth century. On the whole, their dialect seems to be closely related to the 
dialect spoken in Uzbekistan. They exhibit the same double reflex of the Classical 
q
, disappearance of the emphatic consonants and sibilant realisation of the inter
-
dentals. Unlike Uzbekistan Arabic, however, Afghanistan Arabic seems to have 
preserved the two phonemes /ḥ/ and /ʿ/.

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The Arabic Language
Belonging as it does to the 
qǝltu
group, Uzbekistan Arabic exhibits many of 
the typical features of a sedentary dialect. There are, however, traces of Bedouin 
influence, since not all words show the voiceless reflex of Classical Arabic