Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

Late Bronze Age Peleset and Hellenic/Roman/Byzantine Palaestina were adapted by the Arabs and became Filastin under Islam from 638

AD onwards. In the mid-7th century the population of Palestine was predominantly Christian, mostly Palestinian Syriac Aramaic-speaking Christian peasants who continued to speak the language of Jesus throughout early Islam. However, the earliest Arabic inscriptions found in Palestine go back to the Roman and Byzantine periods, and for several centuries the Arabs were closely linked with the three Byzantine provinces of Palaestina; in fact, under the Byzantines Provincia Arabia itself became part of Palaestina Salutaris, with its capital located in Petra, the old capital of the Nabataean Arabs. Also after the Arabs took over Palestine in the 7th century many place names in Palestine that were used by the Greek-speaking Byzantine administration continued to be used by the Arab administration; hence the emergence of the three Arabic forms of Byzantine Παλαιστινη: Falastin, Filastin and Filistin (Schiller 2009:

85; Sharon 2003).

The presence of Arabs in Palestine was noted by Herodotus in the 5th century BC and Arabic inscriptions in Palestine were discovered from the Roman era. Closely related to Palestinian Arabic is Palestinian Syriac Aramaic, which was part of the north-west Semitic group of languages and was the language of ordinary people in the country. Palestinian Syriac Aramaic continued to flourish at a non-official popular level in Roman and Byzantine Palestine and in early Islamic Palestine and became closely related to the modern Palestinian Arabic colloquial language.

In the 4th‒early 7th centuries the Ghassanid Arabs of the ‘Three Palestines’ were champions and protectors of the Syriac Monophysite Church.

Their Arabic-speaking poets, bishops and kings (and phylarchs of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda and Palaestina Tertia) must have been familiar not only with the lingua franca of the Byzantine Empire (Greek), but also with the Syriac Aramaic dialect of greater Palestine.

Palestinian Aramaic was also spoken by Palestinian Jews during the Roman and Byzantine period (Sokoloff 2003). Today a significant number of Palestinian Aramaic words are found in both standard Arabic and in the vernacular language of many Palestinian villages. Also interestingly, in the early 20th century the European Zionist inventors of modern Hebrew, in pursuit of indigenising and antiquating strategies, borrowed heavily from Palestinian Aramaic and ancient Greek vocabulary.

Palestinian Aramaic has also survived in a large number of modern Palestinian and Arab toponyms including:

• Ramallah (Aramaic ‘Ram’, meaning height, and ‘Allah’, the Arabic word for God), a city which is the headquarters of the Palestinian National Authority.

• Al-Rama (height), a Palestinian town in upper Galilee.

• Al-Ram, a Palestinian town north-east of Jerusalem.

• Al-Majdal (meaning fortress), an Arab village near Tiberias depopulated by Israel in 1948.

• Al-Majdal (‘Asqalan), the ancient Philistine city.

• Majdal Shams, a Druze Arab town north of the Golan Heights.

• Al-Mujaydil, an Arab village south-west of Nazareth depopulated by Israel in 1948.

• Al-Tur (mountain), the name of three mountainous place names in Palestine.