Nabataean Arabic

In the first century CE, the Nabataeans wrote their inscriptions, such as the legal texts carved on the façades of the monumental tombs at Mada'in Salih, ancient Ḥegrā, in Nabataean Aramaic.

It is probable, however, that some or all of them, possibly in varying proportion depending on the region of the Nabataean Kingdom where they lived, spoke Arabic.

The term Nabataean Arabic may also refer to the script that succeeded Nabataean Aramaic and preceded Paleo-Arabic.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

In contrast with Old Hejazi and Classical Arabic, Nabataean Arabic may have undergone the shift < * and < *, as evidenced by the numerous Greek transcriptions of Arabic from the area. This may have occurred in Safaitic as well, making it a possible Northern Old Arabic isogloss.

Nabataean א in دوسرا (dwsrʾ) does not signal ; it would seem that *ay# collapsed to something like . Scribes must have felt that this sound was closer to א when the spelling conventions of Nabataean were fixed. In Greek transcription, this sound was felt to be closer to an e-class vowel, yielding Δουσαρης.