Lecture Notes: Middle East Geography, Languages, and Word Origins (Vocabulary Flashcards)

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering key terms about Middle East geography, language families, spread of Arabic, and related word origins.

Middle East

A region named by Europeans, spanning from Morocco to Afghanistan; includes North Africa, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of central and south Asia.

Rosetta Stone

A key artifact that helped decode Egyptian hieroglyphics; it contains inscriptions in Greek, demotic, and hieroglyphic scripts.

Semitic languages

A language family that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic.

Aramaic

Language Jesus spoke; originated in Aram (ancient region in today’s Syria, Turkey and Iraq) and influenced Hebrew and Arabic.

Kaaba

described as a place for poetry; associated with the poet Antaraand considered the most sacred site in Islam, located in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is a cube-shaped structure that Muslims face during prayers.

Antara

A famous Arab poet linked to the Kaaba in the notes.

Ancient Sumerian languages

Spoken in Mesopotamia; among the first languages with written records.

Spread of Arabic beyond the Arabian Peninsula (Abu Bakr)

Under Abu Bakr, Arabic spread to Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine, with Ridda wars.

a prestige language

Arabic is as a ________ in the Middle East.

rose

warda (Arabic for 'rose').

Persian word for rose

vareda.

mosque

masjid.

Arabic word for peace

salaam

Hebrew word for peace

shalom

Indo-European

All Indo-Iranian languages (Persian, Kurdish, Pashto) and English.

Spread of Arabic language

Generally spread gradually rather than suddenly.

Islamic empire expansion (geographic extent)

Expanded to Spain in the west and to Afghanistan/Pakistan in the east.

Hebrew language group

Semitic language.

Turkish language group

Ural-Altaic language family primarily spoken in Turkey and surrounding regions, characterized by vowel harmony and agglutinative structure.

Similar words with the same construction across languages

Words in different languages that share the same root or construction (cognates/loanword patterns).