Editing Arabic (section)

=== Loanwords ===
[[File:Folio Blue Quran Met 2004.88.jpg|thumb|The Qur'an has served and continues to serve as a fundamental reference for Arabic. ([[Maghrebi script|Maghrebi]] [[Kufic]] script, [[Blue Qur'an]], 9th–10th century.)]]
The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languages [[Aramaic language|Aramaic]],<ref>See the seminal study by Siegmund Fraenkel, ''Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen'', Leiden 1886 (repr. 1962)</ref> which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, and [[Ge'ez language|Ethiopic]]. Many cultural, religious and political terms have entered Arabic from [[Iranian languages]], notably [[Middle Persian]], [[Parthian language|Parthian]], and (Classical) Persian,<ref>See for instance Wilhelm Eilers, "Iranisches Lehngut im Arabischen", ''Actas IV. Congresso des Estudos Árabes et Islâmicos, Coimbra, Lisboa'', Leiden 1971, with earlier references.</ref> and Hellenistic Greek (''kīmiyāʼ'' has as origin the Greek ''khymia'', meaning in that language the melting of metals; see [[Roger Dachez]], ''Histoire de la Médecine de l'Antiquité au XXe siècle'', Tallandier, 2008, p.&nbsp;251), ''alembic'' (distiller) from ''ambix'' (cup), ''almanac'' (climate) from ''almenichiakon'' (calendar).

For the origin of the last three borrowed words, see Alfred-Louis de Prémare, ''Foundations of Islam'', Seuil, L'Univers Historique, 2002. Some Arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persian languages are, as presented in De Prémare's above-cited book: {{citation needed|date=September 2022}}
*''madīnah''/[[medina]] (مدينة, city or city square), a word of Aramaic origin ܡܕ݂ܝܼܢ݇ܬܵܐ ''məḏī(n)ttā'' (in which it means "state/city").{{citation needed|date=September 2022}}
*''jazīrah'' (جزيرة), as in the well-known form الجزيرة "Al-Jazeera", means "island" and has its origin in the Syriac ܓܵܙܲܪܬܵܐ ''gāzartā''.{{citation needed|date=September 2022}}
*''lāzaward'' (لازورد) is taken from Persian لاژورد ''lājvard'', the name of a blue stone, lapis lazuli. This word was borrowed in several European languages to mean (light) blue – azure in English, ''azur'' in French and ''azul'' in Portuguese and Spanish.{{citation needed|date=September 2022}}
[[File:Arabic_script_evolution.svg|thumb|Evolution of early [[Arabic script]] (9th–11th century), with the ''[[Basmala]]'' as an example, from [[kufic]] ''[[Qur'an|{{transliteration|ar|ALA|Qur'ān}}]]'' manuscripts:

(1) Early 9th century, script with no dots or diacritic marks;(2) and (3) 9th–10th century under the Abbasid dynasty, [[Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali|Abu al-Aswad's]] system established red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel; later, a second black-dot system was used to differentiate between letters like ''{{transliteration|ar|ALA|fā'}}'' and ''{{transliteration|ar|ALA|qāf}}'';

(4) 11th century, in [[Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi|al-Farāhidi's]] system (system used today) dots were changed into shapes resembling the letters to transcribe the corresponding long vowels.]]A comprehensive overview of the influence of other languages on Arabic is found in Lucas & Manfredi (2020).<ref name="Lucas2020"/>