Historical Arabic Dialectology: Interpreting the Sources

The description of historical Arabic dialects brings with it a whole plethora of challenges. The most important one is that there are no native speakers left of these dialects, with the consequence that researchers have to rely on written sources in order to discover more about the historical stages of Arabic dialects. These sources are often hard to find and even harder to interpret. This chapter will address some of these challenges, from the interpretation of Arabic orthographical habits in writing the dialect, the use of text editions, and the (un)reliability of historical sources, to the use of Latin transcription or alphabets other than the Arabic for writing the Arabic language. The chapter illustrates these issues with samples of Arabic dialect materials from various periods and origins.