Ancient North Arabian is known from fragmentary inscriptions in Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, dating to between roughly the 6th century BC and the 6th century AD, all written in scripts derived from Epigraphic South Arabian. These dialects appear to be predecessors of Classical Arabic.

It includes a number of closely related extinct dialects of pre-Islamic Arabia, summarized as Ancient or Old North Arabian (ISO 639-3 xna), including

• Safaitic
• Dedanitic/Lihyanitic (Dedanite/Lihyanite)
• Thamudic
• Hasaitic

Ancient North Arabian uses h- rather than al- for the definite article.

Literature

• Lozachmeur, H., (ed.), (1995) Presence arabe dans le croissant fertile avant l'Hegire (Actes de la table ronde internationale Paris, 13 Novembre 1993) Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations. ISBN 286538 2540
• Macdonald, M.C.A., (2000) "Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia" Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 11(1), 28?79
• Scagliarini, F., (1999) "The Dedanitic inscriptions from Jabal 'Ikma in north-western Hejaz" Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 29, 143-150 ISBN 2-503-50829-4
• Winnett, F.V. and Reed, W.L., (1970) Ancient Records from North Arabia (Toronto: University of Toronto)

de:Frühnordarabische Sprache mk:???? ?????????????? ????? ru:????????????????? ?????