Editing Aramaic alphabet (section)

== History ==
[[File:AsokaKandahar.jpg|thumb|left|The [[Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription]], a Greek and Aramaic inscription by the [[Mauryan Empire|Mauryan]] emperor [[Ashoka]] at [[Kandahar]], [[Afghanistan]], 3rd century BC]]
The earliest inscriptions in the [[Aramaic language]] use the [[Phoenician alphabet]].<ref>''Inland Syria and the East-of-Jordan Region in the First Millennium BCE before the Assyrian Intrusions'', Mark W. Chavalas, The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium, ed. Lowell K. Handy, (Brill, 1997), 169.</ref> Over time, the alphabet developed into the Aramaic alphabet by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the [[Aramaic language]]s spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the [[Fertile Crescent]]. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a [[language shift]] for governing purposes — a precursor to [[Arabization]] centuries later. 

These include the [[Neo-Assyrian Empire|Assyrians]] and [[Neo-Babylonian Empire|Babylonians]], who permanently replaced their [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]] language and its [[cuneiform script]] with Aramaic and its script, and among [[Jews]], but not [[Samaritans]], who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]], displacing the former [[Paleo-Hebrew alphabet]]. The modern [[Hebrew alphabet]] derives from the Aramaic alphabet, in contrast to the modern [[Samaritan script|Samaritan alphabet]], which derives from [[Paleo-Hebrew alphabet|Paleo-Hebrew]].

=== Achaemenid Empire (The First Persian Empire) ===
{{further information|Imperial Aramaic}}
[[File:Sirkap Aramaic inscription 4th century BC (2).jpg|thumb |upright|[[Aramaic inscription of Taxila]], [[Pakistan]] probably by the emperor [[Ashoka]] around 260 BCE]]
Around 500 BC, following the [[Achaemenid Empire|Achaemenid]] conquest of [[Mesopotamia]] under [[Darius I]], [[Old Aramaic]] was adopted by the Persians as the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast Persian empire with its different peoples and languages. The use of a single official language, which modern scholarship has dubbed as Official Aramaic, Imperial Aramaic or Achaemenid Aramaic, can be assumed to have greatly contributed to the astonishing success of the Achaemenid Persians in holding their far-flung empire together for as long as they did."<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Iranica|volume=2|year=1987|title=Aramaic<!-- pp 250–261 --><!-- section:Aramaic in the Achaemenid Empire pp 251–252-->|last=Shaked|first=Saul|publisher=Routledge & Kegan Paul|location=New York|pages=250–261}} p. 251</ref>

Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised. Its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was influenced by [[Old Persian]]. The Aramaic glyph forms of the period are often divided into two main styles, the "lapidary" form, usually inscribed on hard surfaces like stone monuments, and a cursive form whose lapidary form tended to be more conservative by remaining more visually similar to Phoenician and early Aramaic. Both were in use through the Achaemenid Persian period, but the cursive form steadily gained ground over the lapidary, which had largely disappeared by the 3rd century BC.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Greenfield|first1=J.C.|editor1-last=Gershevitch|editor1-first=I.|title=The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume 2|date=1985|publisher=Cambridge University Press|pages=709–710|chapter=Aramaic in the Achaemenid Empire}}</ref>

For centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 331 BC, Imperial Aramaic, or something near enough to it to be recognisable, remained an influence on the various native [[Iranian languages]]. The Aramaic script survived as the essential characteristics of the Iranian [[Pahlavi scripts|Pahlavi writing system]].<ref>{{Cite book |author1-link=Wilhelm Geiger |first1=Wilhelm |last1=Geiger |first2=Ernst |last2=Kuhn |year=2002 |title=Grundriss der iranischen Philologie: Band I. Abteilung 1 |location=Boston |publisher=Adamant |pages=249ff}}</ref>

30 Aramaic documents from [[Bactria]] have been recently discovered, an analysis of which was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the 4th century BC, in the Persian Achaemenid administration of [[Bactria]] and [[Sogdiana]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=Ancient Aramaic Documents from Bactria |series=Studies in the Khalili Collection |last1=Naveh |first1=Joseph |last2=Shaked |first2=Shaul |isbn=978-1-874780-74-8 |publisher=Khalili Collections |location=Oxford |year=2006}}</ref>

The widespread usage of Achaemenid Aramaic in the Middle East led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing [[Hebrew]]. Formerly, Hebrew had been written using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician, the [[Paleo-Hebrew alphabet]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Thamis |title=The Phoenician Alphabet & Language |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/article/17/the-phoenician-alphabet--language/ |access-date=2023-06-25 |website=World History Encyclopedia |language=en}}</ref>

===Aramaic-derived scripts===

Since the evolution of the Aramaic alphabet out of the Phoenician one was a gradual process, the division of the world's alphabets into the ones derived from the Phoenician one directly, and the ones derived from Phoenician via Aramaic, is somewhat artificial. In general, the alphabets of the Mediterranean region (Anatolia, Greece, Italy) are classified as Phoenician-derived, adapted from around the 8th century BC. Those of the East (the Levant, Persia, Central Asia, and India) are considered Aramaic-derived, adapted from around the 6th century BC from the Imperial Aramaic script of the Achaemenid Empire.{{Citation needed|reason=Reliable source needed for the whole sentence|date=May 2020}}

After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, diversifying into a number of descendant cursives.

The Hebrew and [[Nabataean alphabet]]s, as they stood by the [[Roman era]], were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. [[Ibn Khaldun]] (1332–1406) alleges that not only the old Nabataean writing was influenced by the "Syrian script" (i.e. Aramaic), but also the old Chaldean script.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ibn Khaldun |author-link=Ibn Khaldun |title=[[The Muqaddimah]] (K. Ta'rikh – "History") |editor=F. Rosenthal |volume=3 |date=1958 |publisher=Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.|location=London |page=283 |language=en |oclc=643885643}}</ref>

A [[cursive Hebrew]] variant developed from the early centuries AD. It remained restricted to the status of a variant used alongside the noncursive. By contrast, the cursive developed out of the Nabataean alphabet in the same period soon became the standard for writing Arabic, evolving into the [[Arabic alphabet]] as it stood by the time of the early [[Early Muslim conquests|spread of Islam]].

The development of cursive versions of Aramaic led to the creation of the [[Syriac alphabet|Syriac]], [[Palmyrene alphabet|Palmyrene]] and [[Mandaic alphabet]]s, which formed the basis of the historical scripts of Central Asia, such as the [[Sogdian alphabet|Sogdian]] and [[Mongolian script|Mongolian]] alphabets.<ref name="Kara1996">{{cite book|first=György|last=Kara|chapter=Aramaic Scripts for Altaic Languages|editor=Daniels, Peter T. |editor2=Bright, William|title=The World's Writing Systems|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195079937/page/535 535–558]|year=1996|isbn=978-0-19-507993-7|title-link=The World's Writing Systems}}</ref>

The [[Old Turkic script]] is generally considered to have its ultimate origins in Aramaic,<ref>''Babylonian beginnings: The origin of the cuneiform writing system in comparative perspective'', Jerold S. Cooper, ''The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process'', ed. Stephen D. Houston, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 58–59.</ref><ref>Tristan James Mabry, ''Nationalism, Language, and Muslim Exceptionalism'', (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 109.</ref><ref name="Kara1996"/> in particular via the [[Pahlavi script|Pahlavi]] or [[Sogdian alphabet]]s,<ref>''Turks'', A. Samoylovitch, '''First Encyclopaedia of Islam: 1913–1936''', Vol. VI, (Brill, 1993), 911.</ref><ref>George L. Campbell and Christopher Moseley, ''The Routledge Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets'', (Routledge, 2012), 40.</ref> as suggested by [[Vilhelm Thomsen|V. Thomsen]], or possibly via [[Kharoṣṭhī|Kharosthi]] (''cf''., [[Issyk inscription]]).

[[Brahmi script]] was also possibly derived or inspired by Aramaic. [[Brahmic family of scripts]] includes [[Devanagari]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Brāhmī {{!}} writing system |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brahmi |website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|access-date=2020-05-29}}</ref>