The Arabic Language

Qurʾān
has an operational declensional system, for example, 
in the use of the masculine sound plural endings 
-ūna
/
-īna
correlating with the 
syntactic function of the word, and in the use of the moods of the verb (indicative 
versus subjunctive/jussive). But the question still remains whether this state of 
affairs reflects the structure of the language of the Ḥijāz. As we have seen above, 
the orthography of the 
Qurʾān
reflects the adaptation of the Ḥijāzī dialect to a 
different phonological system, for instance, in the spelling of the 
hamza
. For the 
case endings, there is no such evidence. The only thing that can be said with any 
certainty is that the Qurʾānic orthography continues the orthographic conven-
tions of the Aramaic/Nabataean script, which were also used in the pre-Islamic 
Arabic inscriptions. This is clear in the entire system of the rendering of conso
-
nants (see above, Chapter 3, p. 32), but it also applies to the representation of 
endings. The most important principle is that in the consonantal skeleton text the 
word is always recorded in its isolated (pausal) form. The original pausal forms 
of the nunated endings 
-un
, 
-in
, 
-an
were probably 
-ū
, 
-ī
, 
-ā
, as we have seen in the 
inscriptions and in the representation of Arabic names in the Nabataean inscrip
-
tions. In the Arabic of the 
Qurʾān 
only the accusative nunation 
-an 
has a special 
pausal form, 
-ā
; the other two cases have a zero ending in pause. Hence, the 
nunation is written only in the case of the accusative, spelled with 
ʾalif
. The same 
principle applies to the orthography of the singular feminine noun, with 
-at
or
-ah
, where the variation in spelling in the Qurʾānic manuscripts – sometimes with 
t
and sometimes with 
h
– reflects a change in the pausal ending of the feminine 
words that was already operative in the earlier period. In the later period, when 
vocalisation had been introduced in order to record both contextual and pausal 
endings, the pausal 
-ah
of the feminine noun was combined with the pronuncia
-
tion 
-t-
of the contextual forms in the orthographic device of the 
tāʾ marbūṭa
, a 
letter 
h
with the two dots of the letter 
t
.
Another aspect of the Qurʾānic text mentioned in the discussion about the 
case endings is that of the rhyming conventions. In pre-Islamic poetry, a system 
prevails in which short final vowels 
-u
, 
-i
, 
-a
are pronounced long and count as part 
of the rhyme. But in the 
Qurʾān
, and sometimes in poetry, there is another system 
of rhyming in which the final short vowels are dropped and only the rhyming 
consonant counts. According to Birkeland (1940), this is a new development, 
reflecting a tendency to drop the declensional endings. The only ending that was 
spared apocopation is the pausal ending 
-an
, pronounced 
-ā
. In the view of Birke
-
land and others, for a long time this ending resisted elision, not because it was 
a case ending, but because it had a special syntactic status (e.g., as an adverbial 
ending). In some modern Central Arabian dialects, vestiges of this 
tanwīn
in the 
accusative still exist (cf. below, p. 193). The problem with the rhyming patterns, 

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Arabic in the Pre-Islamic Period 
55
however, is that it is not clear to what degree pausal phenomena can be used as 
evidence for the disappearance of case endings. After all, nobody denies that in 
context both poetry and the 
Qurʾān
consistently use case endings in nouns as well 
as modal endings in verbs.
The conclusion from pre-Islamic and Qurʾānic orthographical practice is that 
neither can give a definitive answer to the question about the presence or absence 
of case endings. This means that the question of whether the Ḥijāzī dialect 
belonged to the Old Arabic or to the New Arabic type cannot be resolved on this 
basis. Most Western scholars nevertheless continue to believe that the colloquial 
language of the