ARAMAEANSwere Aramaicized, and the policy of al-I:Jajjaj provides an excellent
example of the strength of Aramaicizing tendencies in rural Iraq as
late as the early eighth century. When, as part of the reaction to the
revolt of Ibn al-Ash'ath, al-I:Jajjaj exiled the religious spokesman (Ar.
fuqahii') and the mawiilf from the garrison cities of Iraq and forced
them to mingle with the rural Aramaic population by marking their
hands with the names of the villages to which they were assigned, they
are said to have become assimilated with the Aramaeans.^45 The nature
of such assimilation is indicated by the existence of a form of spoken
Arabic in the countryside around Kufa which JaQi~ claims was pro-
nounced in a Nabatl manner, in which "s" replaced "z" and hamza
replaced 'ayn.^46
The Aramaic dialects of Iraq remained living vehicles of expression
and linguistic assimilation well into the Islamic period. Syriac contin-
ued to be a heavily used literary medium in northern Iraq and the
spoken form of local dialects influenced the way place names were
rendered in Arabic. Many place names of Aramaic origin, or preserved
through Aramaic use, survived in Islamic Iraq. Although these place
names continued to be used in Syriac literature in their original forms,
they preserved an orthography that often no longer corresponded to
the spoken language which had begun to form contractions and drop
suffixes by the sixth century. In particular, the th in compound place
names formed with beth (house, home of) had been dropped in spoken
Syriac, as is indicated by the way the Greek translator of the sixth-
century life of ShlrIn rendered Beth Garme as Begarmeon.^47 The Arabic
spelling of such constructions reflects the spoken language. Beth Garme
was rendered in the Arabic script as Bajarma, Beth 'Arbhaye as
Ba'arbaya, and Beth Zabhde as Bazabda.^48 The possibility that the
letter jfm in the Arabic alphabet represents a velar ptonunciation as
"g" in the Yamani dialect spoken in early Islamic Iraq 49 would make
45 Mubarrad, Kiimil, p. 286.
'" C. Pellat, The Life and Works ofJii/Ji:r. (Berkeley, 1969), pp. 101-2. For an argument
against the possibility of such influences, see W. Cowan, "Sound Change in Central
Asian Arabic," Der Islam 43 (1967), 134--38.
47 Devos, "Sirin," p. 104. But the same Greek rranslator rendered Beth Armaye in
Greek by Betharmaes (ibid., p. 105).
48 Likewise, Beth Nuhadhra was rendered as Bahudhra, Beth Rushme as Barusma,
Beth Neqya as Baniqya, Beth Deqla as Badaqla, Beth Daraye as Badaraya, and Beth
Kusaye as Bakusaya.
49 R. Curiel, "Monnaies Arabo-Sasanides, 11," Revue numismatique (1966), pp. 65-
66.