This conference will explore questions around language, script, and social interaction in contexts where nomadic and settled populations interact and live in close proximity to one another.
Conference dates: 11-13 April 2027
Location: AlUla, Saudi Arabia
Deadline abstracts: 14 September 2026
How to apply: send your abstract (max. 300 words) to aicap@ugent.be
Call for papers
We are looking for papers that explore questions around language, script, and social interaction in a context where nomadic and settled populations interact and live in close proximity to one another. While papers focusing on language and epigraphy are welcome, the theme of the conference is by no means limited to these fields. We also encourage contributions adopting anthropological, historical, or archaeological perspectives on the conference theme.
We are particularly interested in contributions that engage with the following:
- Development and use of scripts and writing cultures in nomadic contexts (e.g. Tifinagh, Libyco-Berber, Nomadic Ancient North Arabian, etc.)
- Use of languages and scripts of power in ‘peripheral’ spaces (e.g. Ancient Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Ancient Egyptian, etc.)
- Use of epigraphy in central and peripheral spaces to mark ritual sites
- How are ties of kinship, society, and identity formed and maintained within and across central and peripheral spheres?
- Movement between central and peripheral spaces.
Time span: pre-Islamic period to modern times.
Regional focus: we are interested in contributions that focus on the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Near-East and Central Asia.
Theme and rationale
This conference will be held in AlUla, an oasis in northwestern Saudi Arabia. This oasis has long occupation history with writing appearing in the first half of the first millennium BCE. The incredibly rich and varied epigraphic landscape of AlUla attests to the importance of a place of permanent water in an otherwise arid landscape. The desert environments of the Arabian Peninsula, and elsewhere, have invited the development of adaptable ways of life such as nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralism (e.g. Magee 2014). Oases, on the other hand, have long attracted human settlement, because their permanent access to water made agriculture possible. At the same time, the presence of water also makes oases an important resource for those passing through the area either as (semi) nomadic pastoralists or as travellers (including traders and pilgrims).
A perceived dichotomy between ‘the desert and the sown’, or settled and nomadic communities, has long informed historical as well as linguistic approaches to the study of people and societies in arid environments (e.g., Palva 2005). However, researchers from various different disciplines have convincingly shown that distinction between settled and nomadic groups is not as static or impermeable as once thought (e.g. Barker 2012; Magee 2014; Macdonald 1993, 2014; Al-Wer 2025).
In Arabic dialectology, for example, recent approaches have shown how features initially associated with settled or nomadic communities can be reconfigured in ways that defy such a division, especially in modern urban settings (e.g., Al-Wer 2007, 2025). Recently, however, Ahmad Al-Jallad has suggested that there already may have been distinct settled and nomadic linguistics features in the languages used in Arabia in the pre-Islamic period (Al-Jallad 2025).
The context of pre-Islamic Arabia offers a unique lens through which to examine the languages, scripts, and expressions of identity of both local populations and groups traversing the region over long distances, owing to the remarkable diversity of its epigraphic and linguistic landscape (Macdonald 2000). Preliminary study of the distribution of the inscriptions in the AlUla region shows quite clearly that Dadanitic, Nabataean, and Ancient South Arabian inscriptions cluster in the oases of ancient Dadan and Hegra, while scripts associated with Nomadic groups more densely attested in the wadis surrounding the settled areas. The Early Islamic Arabic inscriptions from the region show an important cluster near the historical city of Qurḥ(Nasif 1988), but also spread along the pilgrimage roads. This highlights the continued presence of travellers in the area, while also raising questions about how to identify a social group as “local” on the basis of its epigraphic habits and about the relationships that existed between the settlement of Qurḥ and its surrounding area.
Bibliography
Al-Jallad, A. 2025. “Was There a Nomadic – Sedentary Split in the Dialect Geography of Pre-Islamic Arabic.” Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes 115: 6–28.
Al-Wer, E. 2007. “The Formation of the Dialect of Amman: From Chaos to Order.” In Arabic in the City. RoutledgeCurzon.
Al-Wer, E. 2025. “Sociolinguistics and the Bedouin/Sedentary Split: Jordan as a Case Study.” Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes 115: 63–76.
Barker, G. 2012. “The Desert and the Sown: Nomad-Farmer Interactions in the Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan.” Journal of Arid Environments 86: 82–96.
Macdonald, M. C. A. 1993. “Nomads and the Hawran.” Syria 70 (3/4): 303–413.
Macdonald, M. C. A. 2014. “Romans Go Home? Rome and Other ‘Outsiders’ as Viewed from the Syro- Arabian Desert.” In Inside and Out. Interactions between Rome and the Peoples on the Arabian and Egyptian Frontiers in Late Antiquity, edited by J. H. F. Dijkstra and G. Fisher. Peeters.
Magee, P. 2014. The Archaeology of Prehistoric Arabia: Adaptation and Social Formation from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Cambridge University Press.
Nasif, Abdallah. 1988. An Historical and Archaeological Survey with Special Reference to Its Irrigation System. King Saud University.
Palva, Heikki. 2005. “Dialects: Classification.” In Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, edited by Mushira Eid and Kees Versteegh, I A: Ed. Brill.
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