1. Introduction
Scholarly discussions about the genesis of the Arabic dialects have always been connected by another crucial issue: the linguistic situation in Arabia before Islam and its relation to the linguistic variety of the Qurʾān and poems attributed to pre-Islamic poets. Yet, there are very few studies devoted exclusively to dialects in the pre-Islamic period (Rabin 1951; Owens, forthcoming 2).
Arabic dialects appeared after the expan…