The history of the am- definite article – South Arabian or Arabic? research-article Ahmad Al-Jallad Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik, Jahrgang 2021 (2021), Ausgabe 73, Seite 53 - 70 This essay reconsiders the history of the am-definite article, which by Islamic times had become one of the most salient linguistic features of Southwest Arabia. Drawing on historical and epigraphic sources, I argue that this article form originates in north-central Arabia sometime in the first half of the first millennium CE. The article form was brought to Yemen as part of an early diffusion of Arabic dialects to southwest Arabia in the late pre-Islamic period.