Prior to this, the earliest extant Arabic inscription was from Namara in modern day Syria (dating from 328 CE), but it is written solely in Nabataean characters. The discovery, described at the time as the ‘missing link’ between Nabataean and Arabic writing, helps explain why Nabataean is considered the direct precursor to the Arabic script. Dating from 469 to 470 CE, it was found 100 kilometers north of Najran in Saudi Arabia and is written in a mixed text known as Nabataean Arabic. How Nabataean evolved into Arabic is not precisely clear, but in 2014 a joint Saudi-French archaeological team discovered what is, at present, the oldest known inscription in the Arabic alphabet. The Nabateans used a form of writing that flowed from right to left and had strong similarities with Arabic, including its cursive nature and its reliance on bodies of text that consisted largely of consonants and long vowels. The Arabic alphabet is believed to have evolved from this Aramaic dialect. What is less appreciated is their pivotal role in the formation of the Arabic script.Ī Nabataean inscription in AlUla in Saudi Arabia. Today, the Nabataeans are best known for the architectural wonders they bequeathed the world, including Petra in Jordan and Madain Saleh in Saudi Arabia. The Arabic alphabet is believed to have evolved from Nabataean, an Aramaic dialect used by a semi-nomadic Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia, the southern Levant and the Sinai Peninsula from around the 4th century BCE. However, the exact origins of Kufic and the scripts that preceded it are unclear. Known as The Inscription of Zuhayr, it is situated on an ancient trade and pilgrimage route between Al-Mabiyat and Madain Saleh and states the date of death of Umar Ibn Al-Khattab, the second Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate. The oldest, however, dates from 644 CE and is engraved on a rock near AlUla in Saudi Arabia, according to the Kingdom’s submission to UNESCO’s Memory of the World register. Kufic’s geometric elegance also meant it was well suited to architectural decoration, with one of its earliest known examples found in a 240-meter-long Qur’anic inscription inside Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock. The Blue Qur’an - a 9th-century manuscript believed to have been produced in Spain - was written in Kufic script.