In
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
and
ethnologyEthnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific Discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
,
Semitic (from the
BiblicalThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
"
ShemShem was one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. He is most popularly regarded as the eldest son, though some traditions regard him as the second son. Genesis 10:21 refers to relative ages of Shem and his brother Japheth, but with sufficient ambiguity in each to have yielded different translations...
", Hebrew: שם, translated as "name", Arabic: ساميّ) was first used to refer to a
language familyA language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics...
of largely
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East...
ern origin, now called the
Semitic languagesThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
.
This family includes the ancient and modern forms of
AkkadianAkkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, Amharic,
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
,
AramaicAramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship...
,
Ge'ezGe'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa...
,
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
,
MalteseMaltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
, Phoenician,
TigreFor other uses please see Tigre Tigre is a Semitic language which along with Tigrinya is a direct descendant of the extinct Ge'ez language...
and Tigrinya among others.
As language studies are interwoven with
cultural studiesCultural studies is an academic field which combines political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies...
, the term also came to describe the extended
cultureCulture is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
s and
ethnicities, as well as the history of these varied peoples as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution.
Origin
The term
Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern people originating in southwestern Asia, including Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Ethiopian Semites. It was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to Hebrew by
Ludwig SchlözerAugust Ludwig von Schlözer was a German historian who laid foundations for the critical study of Russian history....
, in
Eichhorn'sJohann Gottfried Eichhorn was a German Protestant theologian of Enlightenment and early orientalist.- Education and Early Career :He was born at Dörrenzimmern, in the principality of Hohenlohe-Oehringen...
"Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45). In his "Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term.
The word "Semitic" is an adjective derived from
ShemShem was one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. He is most popularly regarded as the eldest son, though some traditions regard him as the second son. Genesis 10:21 refers to relative ages of Shem and his brother Japheth, but with sufficient ambiguity in each to have yielded different translations...
, one of the three
sons of NoahThe Table of Nations or Sons of Noah is an extensive list of descendants of Noah which appears in of the Hebrew Bible, representing an ethnology from an Iron Age Levantine perspective...
in the
BibleThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
(Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
derivative of that name, namely
Σημ (Sēm); the noun form referring to a person is
Semite.
The term "anti-Semitic" (or "anti-Semite") usually refers to Jews only. It was coined in 1879 by German journalist
Wilhelm MarrWilhelm Marr was a German agitator and publicist, who coined the term "antisemitism".-Life:Marr was born in Magdeburg as the only son of an actor and stage director. He went to a primary school in Hannover, then to a high school in Braunschweig...
in a pamphlet called, "The Victory of Germandom over Jewry". Using ideas of race and nationalism, Marr argued that Jews had become the first major power in the West. He accused them of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879 Marr founded the "League for Anti-Semitism".
The concept of "Semitic" peoples is derived from Biblical accounts of the origins of the cultures known to the ancient
HebrewsHebrews are an ancient people defined as descendants of the prophet Eber, son of Shelah.In the Bible, the patriarch Abraham is referred to a single time as the ivri, which is the singular form of the...
. Those closest to them in culture and language were generally deemed to be descended from their forefather Shem. Enemies were often said to be descendants of his cursed nephew,
CanaanCanaan is a Biblical figure who, according to the Old Testament, was the son of Ham and the grandson of the patriarch Noah. The Book of Genesis states that the Canaanites, a people who mostly occupied modern-day Israel, were descendants of this Canaan. Canaan fathered the Phoenicians through his...
. In Genesis 10:21-31, Shem is described as the father of
AramAccording to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 of the Hebrew Bible, Aram was a son of Shem, and the father of Uz, Hul, Gether and Mash....
, Asshur, and
ArpachshadArpachshad or Arphaxad or Arphacsad was one of the five sons of Shem, the son of Noah . His brothers were Elam, Asshur, Lud and Aram; he is an ancestor of Abraham. He is said by Gen...
: the Biblical ancestors of the Arabs, Aramaeans,
AssyriansThe Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people are an ethnic group whose origins lie in the Fertile Crescent, their homeland today being divided between Northern Iraq, Syria, Western...
, Babylonians,
ChaldeaChaldea or Chaldaea , "the Chaldeans" of the KJV Old Testament, was a Hellenistic designation for a part of Babylonia, which became an independent kingdom under the Chaldees...
ns, Sabaeans, and
HebrewsHebrews are an ancient people defined as descendants of the prophet Eber, son of Shelah.In the Bible, the patriarch Abraham is referred to a single time as the ivri, which is the singular form of the...
, etc., all of whose languages are closely related; the
language familyA language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics...
containing them was therefore named Semitic by linguists. However, the
CanaanCanaan is an ancient term for a region encompassing modern-day Israel and Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Jordan, Syria and northeastern Egypt...
ites and
AmoriteAmorite refers to a Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from at least the second half of the third millennium BC...
s also spoke a language belonging to this family, and are therefore also termed Semitic in linguistics, despite being described in Genesis as sons of Ham (See
Sons of NoahThe Table of Nations or Sons of Noah is an extensive list of descendants of Noah which appears in of the Hebrew Bible, representing an ethnology from an Iron Age Levantine perspective...
). Shem is also described in Genesis as the father of
ElamElam in the Hebrew Bible is said to be the oldest son of Shem, the son of Noah. It is also used , for the country of Elam in what is now southern Iran, that the Hebrews believed to be the offspring of Elam, son of Shem...
and
LudLud was a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, according to Genesis 10 . Lud should not be confused with the Ludim, said there to be descended from Mizraim....
, although the
ElamElam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province , as far as Jiroft in Kerman province and Burned City in Zabol, as well as a small part of...
ites and
LydiaLydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
ns usually thought to descend from these spoke languages that were not Semitic.
The hypothetical Proto-Semitic language, ancestral to historical Semitic languages in the Middle East, is thought to have been originally from either the
Arabian PeninsulaThe Arabian Peninsula , Arabia, Arabistan, and the Arabian subcontinent is a peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia...
(particularly around
YemenYemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is a country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia...
) or the adjacent Ethiopian highlands, but its region of origin is still much debated and uncertain. The Semitic language family is also considered a component of the larger Afroasiatic macro-family of languages. Identification of the hypothetical proto-Semitic region of origin is therefore dependent on the larger geographic distributions of the other language families within Afroasiatic.
Ancient Semitic peoples
The following is a list of ancient Semitic peoples.
- Akkadians — migrated into Mesopotamia in the late 4th millennium BC
The 4th millennium BC saw major changes in human culture. It marks the beginning of the Bronze Age and of writing.The city states of Sumer and the kingdom of Egypt are established and grow to prominence. Agriculture spreads widely across Eurasia...
and amalgamateAmalgamation is a now largely archaic term for the intermarriage and interbreeding of different ethnicities or races. In the English-speaking world, the term was in use into the twentieth century. In the United States, it was partly replaced after 1863 by the term miscegenation...
with non-Semitic Mesopotamian (Sumerian) populations into the AssyriaAssyria was a civilization centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
ns and BabyloniaBabylonia was a civilization in Lower Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad...
ns of the Late Bronze Age.
- Eblaites — 23rd century BC
- Aramaeans
The Aramaeans are a West Semitic semi-nomadic and pastoralist people who lived in upper Mesopotamia . Aramaeans never had a unified empire; they were divided into independent kingdoms all across the Near East...
— 16th to 8th century BC / Akhlames (Ahlamu) 14th century BC
- Ugarit
Ugarit was an ancient cosmopolitan port city, sited on the Mediterranean coast...
es, 14th to 12th centuries BC
- Canaanite language
The Canaanite languages or Hebraic languages are a subfamily of the Semitic languages, which were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region, including Canaanites, Israelites and Phoenicians...
speaking nations of the early Iron Age:
- Amorites
- Ammonites
- Edomites
- Hebrews
Hebrews are an ancient people defined as descendants of the prophet Eber, son of Shelah.In the Bible, the patriarch Abraham is referred to a single time as the ivri, which is the singular form of the...
/IsraeliteIn the Bible, the Israelites were the descendants of the Biblical patriarch Jacob. They were divided into twelve tribes, each descended from one of twelve sons or grandsons of Jacob....
s — founded the nation of IsraelThe history of ancient Israel and Judah is known to us essentially from the Hebrew Bible...
which later split into the Kingdoms of Israel and JudahThe Kingdom of Judah existed at two periods in Jewish history. According to the Hebrew Bible, a kingdom emerged in Judah after the death of Saul, when the tribe of Judah elevated David, who came from the Tribe of Judah, to rule over it. After seven years David became king of a reunited Kingdom of...
. The remnants of these people became the Jews and Samaritans.
- Moabites
- Phoenicians — founded Mediterranean colonies including Carthage
Carthage refers both to an ancient city in present-day Tunisia, and a modern-day suburb of Tunis. The civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence is referred to as Punic or Carthaginian...
- Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used for four closely related languages spoken in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. However, there is no doubt that there were a number of other Sayhadic lanhuages , of which very little evidence survived, however. All those languages were quite distinct...
speaking peoples
- Sabaeans
The Sabaeans or Sabæans were an ancient people speaking an Old South Arabian language who lived in what is today Yemen, in south west Arabian Peninsula. Some Sabaeans also lived in D'mt, located in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, due to their hegemony over the Red Sea.-History:The ancient Sabaean...
of Yemen — 9th to 1st c. BC
- Ethio-Semitic
Ethiopian Semitic is a language group, which together with Old South Arabian, forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages...
speaking peoples
- Aksumites — 4th c. BC to 7th c. AD
- Arabs, Old North Arabian speaking Bedouins
- Gindibu
Gindibu was king of Damascus who led the Arab forces at the battle of Qarqar as they fought against Assyria. An Assyrian scribe recorded a description of the size of the Arab infantry, this record "is the first known reference to the Arabs as a distinct group." Little else is known of him or the...
's Arabs 9th c. BC
- Lihyan
Lihyan is an ancient Arab kingdom. It was located northwestern Arabia, and it is known for its Old North Arabian inscriptions dating to ca...
ites — 6th to 1st c. BC
- Thamud
The Thamud were a people of ancient Arabia who were known from the 1st millennium BC to near the time of Muhammad. Although they are thought to have originated in southern Arabia, Arabic tradition has them moving north to settle on the slopes of Mount Athlab near Mada'in Saleh...
people — 2nd to 5th c. AD
- Ghassanids
The Ghassanids were a group of South Arabian Christian tribes that emigrated in the early 3rd century from Yemen to the Hauran in southern Syria, Jordan and the Holy Land where some intermarried with Hellenized Roman settlers and Greek-speaking Early Christian communities...
— 3rd to 7th c. AD
- Nabataeans
The Nabataeans were an ancient Semitic people, Arabs of southern Jordan, Canaan and the northern part of Arabia, whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus , gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea...
— adopted Arabic in the 4th century AD
Languages
The modern
linguistic meaningSome argue meanings to be abstract logical objects but some philosophers, including Plato , Augustine, Peter Abelard, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, John Searle, Jacques Derrida, and W.V...
of "Semitic" is therefore derived from (though not identical to) Biblical usage. In a linguistic context the
Semitic languagesThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
are a subgroup of the larger Afroasiatic language family (according to
Joseph GreenbergJoseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
's widely accepted classification) and include, among others:
AkkadianAkkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, the ancient language of Babylon;
AmharicAmharic is a Semitic language spoken in North Central Ethiopia by the Amhara. It is the second most-spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide...
, the official language of Ethiopia;
TigrinyaTigrinya , also spelled Tigrigna, Tigrina, Tigriña, less commonly Tigrinian, Tigrinyan, is a Semitic language spoken by the Tigray-Tigrinya people in central Eritrea , where it is one of the two dominant languages of Eritrea, and in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia Tigrinya ( ትግርኛ, tigriññā), also...
, a language spoken in Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia;
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
;
AramaicAramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship...
; Canaanite;
Ge'ezGe'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa...
, the ancient language of the
EritreanThe Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church is an Oriental Orthodox church. Its autocephaly was recognised by the Ethiopian Patriarchate after Eritrea gained its independence in 1993.-Origins:...
and
Ethiopian OrthodoxThe Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is an Oriental Orthodox Christian church in Ethiopia...
scriptures;
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
;
MalteseMaltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
; Phoenician or Punic;
SyriacSyriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from the 4th to the 8th centuries...
; and
South ArabianThe Modern South Arabian languages are spoken mainly by minority populations on the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen and Oman...
, the ancient language of
ShebaSheba was a kingdom mentioned in the Jewish scriptures and the Qur'an...
/Saba, which today includes Mehri, spoken by only tiny minorities on the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula.
Wildly successful as second languages far beyond their numbers of contemporary first-language speakers, a few Semitic languages today are the base of the sacred literature of some of the world's great religions, including
IslamIslam Islam Islam ( al-’islām,
[There are ten pronunciations of Islam in English, differing in whether the first or second syllable has the stress, whether the s is or , and whether the a is pronounced as in father, as in cat, or (when the stress is on the i) as in the a of sofa...]
(Arabic),
JudaismJudaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts...
(Hebrew and Aramaic), and Orthodox
ChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
(Aramaic and Ge'ez). Millions learn these as a second language (or an archaic version of their modern tongues): many
Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
s learn to read and recite
Classical ArabicClassical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...
, the language of the
Qur'anThe Qur’an is the central religious text of Islam...
, and many Jews all over the world outside of
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
with other first languages speak and study Hebrew, the language of the
TorahThe term "Torah" , refers either to the Five Books of Moses or to the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts...
,
MidrashMidrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....
, and other Jewish scriptures.
It should be noted that Berber,
EgyptianEgyptian is the indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BCE, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century CE in the form of Coptic...
(including
CopticCoptic or Coptic Egyptian is the final stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the seventeenth century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the first century...
),
HausaHausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 24 million people, and as a second language by about 15 million more.-Classification:...
,
SomaliThe Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its nearest relatives are Afar and Oromo. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies of it from before 1900....
, and many other related languages within the wider area of Northern Africa and the Middle East do not belong to the Semitic group, but to the larger Afroasiatic language family of which the Semitic languages are also a subgroup. Other ancient and modern Middle Eastern languages —
AzerbaijaniAzerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
,
KurdishKurdish is the language spoken by Kurds in western Asia. Unlike many other languages it does not have a single standardized linguistic entity with the status of an official or state language...
,
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
,
Gilaki,
TurkishTurkish is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other...
, ancient
SumerianSumerian was the language of ancient Sumer, spoken in Southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BCE . It was gradually replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BCE , but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary...
, and Nubian — do
not belong to the larger Afroasiatic language family.
For a complete list of Semitic languages arranged by subfamily, see list from SIL's
Ethnologue.
Geography
Semitic peoples and their languages, in both modern and ancient historic times, have covered a broad area bridging Africa, Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest historic (written) evidences of them are found in the
Fertile CrescentThe Fertile Crescent is a region in the Near East, incorporating the Levant and Mesopotamia, and often incorrectly extended to Egypt. Mesopotamia is considered the cradle of civilization and saw the development of the earliest human civilizations and is the birthplace of writing and the wheel.The...
, an area encompassing the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations along the
TigrisThe Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates. The river flows from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...
and
EuphratesThe Euphrates is the longest and historically one of the most important rivers of Southwest Asia. Together with the Tigris, the Euphrates is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...
rivers, extending northwest into southern Asia Minor (modern
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
) and the
LevantThe Levant describes, traditionally, the Eastern Mediterranean at large, but can be used as a geographical term that denotes a large area in Western Asia formed by the lands bordering the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, roughly bounded on the north by the Taurus Mountains, on the south by...
along the eastern Mediterranean. Early traces of Semitic speakers are found, too, in South Arabian inscriptions in
YemenYemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is a country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia...
,
EritreaEritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen...
, Northern
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
and later, in Roman times, in Nabataean inscriptions from
PetraPetra is an archaeological site in the Arabah, Ma'an Governorate, Jordan, lying on the slope of Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah , the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It is renowned for its rock-cut architecture...
(modern
JordanJordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in Western Asia spanning the southern part of the Syrian Desert down to the Gulf of Aqaba. Jordan shares borders with Syria to the north, Iraq to the northeast, Saudi Arabia to the east and south, the Gulf of Aqaba to the southwest,...
) south into Arabia.
Later historical Semitic languages also spread into
North AfricaNorth Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the UN definition of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia,Mauritania, and...
in two widely separated periods. The first expansion occurred with the ancient
PhoeniciaPhoenicia what is now modern day Lebanon, was an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal regions of modern day Lebanon, extending to parts of Israel, Syria and Palestine...
ns, along the southern Mediterranean Sea all the way to the
Atlantic OceanThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres , it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface and about one-quarter of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek...
(colonies which included ancient Rome's nemesis
CarthageCarthage refers both to an ancient city in present-day Tunisia, and a modern-day suburb of Tunis. The civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence is referred to as Punic or Carthaginian...
). The second, a millennium later, was the expansion of the Muslim armies and Arabic in the 7th-8th centuries AD, which, at their height, controlled the
Iberian PeninsulaThe Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar and a very small area of France. It is the westernmost of the three major southern European peninsulas—the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas...
(until 1492) and
SicilySicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is an autonomous region of Italy. Several much smaller islands surrounding it are considered to be part of Sicily....
. Arab Muslim expansion is also responsible for modern Arabic's presence from
MauritaniaMauritania , officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a country in northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, by Senegal on the southwest, by Mali on the east and southeast, by Algeria on the northeast, and by the Morocco-controlled Western Sahara on the northwest...
, on the Atlantic coast of
West AfricaWest Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries distributed over an area of approximately 5 million square km:*Benin...
, to the
Red SeaThe Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez,...
in the northeastern corner of Africa, and its reach south along the Nile River through traditionally non-Semitic territory, as far as the northern half of
SudanSudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa and in the Arab World, and tenth largest in the world by area...
, where, as the national language, non-Arab Sudanese even farther south must learn it.
Modern Hebrew was reintroduced in the 20th century, and together with Arabic, is a national language in Israel. Western Aramaic dialects remain spoken in Malula near Damascus. Eastern Neo-Aramaic is spoken along the northern border of
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
and
IraqIraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , also known as Mesopotamia, is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.Iraq shares borders with Jordan to the west, Syria...
and in far northwestern
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
. These speakers are often called Chaldean or Neo-Assyrian. Mandean is still spoken in parts of southern
IraqIraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , also known as Mesopotamia, is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.Iraq shares borders with Jordan to the west, Syria...
. Semitic languages and peoples are also found in the Horn of Africa, especially
EritreaEritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen...
and
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
. Tigrinya, a North Ethiopic dialect, has around six million speakers in Eritrea and
TigrayTigray Region is the northernmost of the nine ethnic regions of Ethiopia containing the homeland of the Tigray people. It was formerly known as Region 1...
. In Eritrea,
TigreTigre may mean:-Places in America:* Tigre Island, island of Honduras* Tigre River, located in Peru* Tigre River, located in Venezuela* Tigre Partido, an administrative division in Buenos Aires, Argentina...
is the language of around 800,000 Muslims. Amharic is the national language of
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
and is spoken by at least 10 million Coptic Christians. Semitic languages today are also spoken in
MaltaMalta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed European country in the European Union. The Southern European island nation is an archipelago that includes the inhabited islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino, along with a number of smaller, uninhabited islands...
(where an Italian-influenced language derived from
Siculo-ArabicSiculo-Arabic was a variety of Arabic spoken in Sicily, Malta, and Southern Italy between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries. It is extinct in Sicily, but it has developed into what is now the Maltese language on the islands of Malta.-Arab conquest of Sicily:During the seventh and eight...
is spoken) and on the island of
SocotraSocotra or Soqotra is a small archipelago of four islands in the Indian Ocean off the coast of the Horn of Africa some south of the Arabian peninsula. It is very isolated, and through the process of speciation, a third of its plant life is found nowhere else on the planet...
in the
Indian OceanThe Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by South Asia ; on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean...
between
YemenYemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is a country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia...
and
SomaliaSomalia , officially the Republic of Somalia and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, is a country located in the Horn of Africa...
, where a dying vestige of South Arabian is spoken in the form of
SoqotriSoqotri is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd-el-Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of Republic of Yemen. It is one of the Modern South Arabian languages and is usually classified as a South Semitic language...
. The
Maltese languageMaltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
is the only officially recognized Semitic language of the
European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 Member States, located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993 upon the foundations of the pre-existing European Economic Community...
.
Religion
In a religious context, the term Semitic can refer to the religions associated with the speakers of these languages: thus
JudaismJudaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts...
,
ChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
and
IslamIslam Islam Islam ( al-’islām,
[There are ten pronunciations of Islam in English, differing in whether the first or second syllable has the stress, whether the s is or , and whether the a is pronounced as in father, as in cat, or (when the stress is on the i) as in the a of sofa...]
are often described as "Semitic religions", though the term
Abrahamic religionsAbrahamic religions has become a popular and often used designation for the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, emphasizing their common origin and values. For some 1,300 years their histories and thought have been intertwined...
is more commonly used today. A truly comprehensive account of "Semitic" religions would include the Ancient Semitic religions (such as the religions of
Adad' is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
,
HadadHaddad was northwest Semitic storm and rain god, cognate in name and origin with the Akkadian god Adad. Hadad is often called simply Ba‘al , but this title is also used for other gods...
) that flourished in the Middle East before the Abrahamic religions.
Ethnicity and race
In Medieval Europe, all
Asian peopleAsian people or Asiatic people is a demonym for people from Asia. However, the use of the term varies by country and person, often referring to people from a particular region or subregion of Asia...
s were thought of as descendants of Shem. By the nineteenth century, the term Semitic was confined to the ethnic groups who have historically spoken Semitic languages. These peoples were often considered to be a distinct race. However, some anti-Semitic racial theorists of the time argued that the Semitic peoples arose from the blurring of distinctions between previously separate races. This supposed process was referred to as
SemiticizationSemiticization is a concept found in the writings of some racial theorists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The term was first used by Arthur de Gobineau to label the blurring of racial distinctions that, in his view, had occurred in the Middle-East...
by the race-theorist
Arthur de GobineauJoseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the racialist theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races...
. The notion that Semitic identity was a product of racial "confusion" was later taken up by the Nazi ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
.
Modern science, in contrast, identifies a population's common physical descent through genetic research, and analysis of the Semitic-speaking peoples suggests that they have some common ancestry. Though no significant common mitochondrial results have been yielded,
Y-chromosomalThe Y chromosome is the sex-determining chromosome in most mammals, including humans. In mammals, it contains the gene SRY, which triggers testis development, thus determining sex. The human Y chromosome is composed of about 60 million base pairs.- Overview :...
links between Semitic-speaking Near-Eastern peoples like Arabs,
AssyriansThe Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people are an ethnic group whose origins lie in the Fertile Crescent, their homeland today being divided between Northern Iraq, Syria, Western...
and Jews have proved fruitful, despite differences contributed from other groups (
see Y-chromosomal AaronY-chromosomal Aaron is the name given to the hypothesised most recent common ancestor of many of the patrilineal Jewish priestly caste known as Kohanim .In the Hebrew Bible this ancestor is identified as Aaron, the brother of Moses.Researches have indicated that about half of contemporary Jewish...
). Although
population geneticsPopulation genetics is the study of the allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four evolutionary processes: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow. It also takes account of population subdivision and population structure in space. As such, it attempts...
is still a young science, it seems to indicate that a significant proportion of these peoples' ancestry comes from a common Near Eastern population to which (despite the differences with the Biblical genealogy) the term "Semitic" has been applied. However, this correlation should rather be attributed to said common Near Eastern origin, as for example Semitic-speaking Near Easterners from the
Fertile CrescentThe Fertile Crescent is a region in the Near East, incorporating the Levant and Mesopotamia, and often incorrectly extended to Egypt. Mesopotamia is considered the cradle of civilization and saw the development of the earliest human civilizations and is the birthplace of writing and the wheel.The...
(including Jews) are generally more closely related to non-Semitic speaking Near Easterners, such as
IraniansThe Iranian peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly on the Iranian plateau and beyond in central, southern, and southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe. As a group of people, they are predominantly defined along linguistic lines as speaking the Iranian...
,
Anatolians- Anatolians :The term "Anatolian" denotes any ethnic inhabitant of Anatolia descended from the inhabitants native to the Anatolian Peninsula before the Turks arrived in the region...
, and Caucasians, than to other Semitic-speakers, such as Gulf Arabs, Ethiopian Semites, and North African Arabs.
See also
- Hamitic
Hamitic is a historical term for the peoples supposedly descended from Noah's son Ham, paralleling Semitic and Japhetic.It was formerly used for grouping the non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages , but since, unlike the Semitic branch, these have not been shown to form a phylogenetic unity, the term is...
- Japhetic
Japhetic is a term that refers to the supposed descendants of Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible. It corresponds to Semitic and Hamitic...
- Proto-Semitic
- Antisemitism
- Afroasiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 350 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia, as well as parts of the Sahel, West Africa and East Africa. Arabic is the most widespread Afroasiatic...
External links