In December 2022, an Emirati friend of mine sent me an invitation to an outdoor wedding reception in northern Ras Al Khaimah. But I was confused by the invitation card. It did not mention a time or a venue. It only included the name of the neighborhood, the date, and the name of the groom’s family. On the appointed day, I asked my friend what time the celebration would start. “The party started around 10:00 AM,” he told me. “It's already been going on for hours.”
As I exited the highway toward the neighborhood, I saw people parking cars along the highway for lack of space. The “venue” was the neighborhood; the “time” was the whole day. Hundreds of rugs covering a large open area in the middle of the neighborhood; traditional coffee and halwa (a dessert) flowing in profusion; and a generous dinner served to all the guests. Several hundred men gathered for the razeef dance around a big circle while the women sat in a separate section enjoying the festivities. The party lasted from morning till well past midnight.
Nearly everyone present at the celebration was an Emirati from the Shihhi tribe. Shihhis speak a unique dialect of Arabic, not commonly understood by other Arabs. It is usually called ‘Shihhi dialect’ (popularly) or ‘Shihhi Arabic’ (by linguists). Technically, it would be even better to call it ‘Ru’us al-Jibal Arabic’, since it is spoken by not one but four tribes in the Ru’us al-Jibal (literally, ‘Mountain Capes’) area: Shihhis, Dhahouris, Habsis, and Shimailis. One goal of my work was to understand just what makes Shihhi Arabic different from other Arabic dialects, so I was thrilled to spend my evening in Ras Al Khaimah.
In my western suit, I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. When children greeted me in English, I replied to them with a Shihhi Arabic greeting that my friend had taught me. Hooma khborik? They seemed shocked that I knew these words. As the conversation continued, the children laughed at my accent. My host explained that my accent had sounded like someone on the other side of the Wadi.
Uh oh, I thought. Are the accents that specific? I had heard that Shihhi Arabic had different accents. I began to ask my friend more basic Shihhi Arabic terms.
“How do you say ‘sun’? Shamis?”
“You can say shams, shamis, shaamis.”
“But I read that some people said shimish.”
“Oh, yeah. Some people also say shimis or shimish. It depends on your family and where you are from.”
On that day, I realized I was standing on the brink of a sea of local dialects of Arabic, not just two or three “accents”. English has been standardizing for hundreds of years, partly under the influence of the printing press. Shihhi Arabic has not been standardized. There are places in Ras Al Khaimah where, if an Emirati hears another Emirati speak in Arabic, they can pinpoint their village or neighborhood.
Since that day, I have had the opportunity to interview many Shihhis and Dhahouris from Ras Al Khaimah and Musandam, but I still feel like I have only scratched the surface of Shihhi Arabic. Some villages have as few as 20 people, but they speak a clearly identifiable Arabic dialect. It is different from other Ru’us al-Jibal villages, and different from other Arabic dialects.
If we look at pronunciation in Shihhi Arabic, it differs from the UAE’s urban dialects. For instance, people in Ru’us al-Jibal often pronounce the sound of the Arabic letter ain like a hamzah. But there are Omani and Yemeni tribes that use the same pronunciation. In fact, extensive study of Arabian dialects makes Shihhi Arabic seem quite at home in the Arabian Peninsula—not an exotic outlier.
One postulation is that the divergence of Shihhi Arabic stems from colonial contact in Ras Al Khaimah. This I find to be baseless. In 1507, the Portuguese established a foothold at Hormuz Island (in Persia), and they extracted tribute at ports from Bahrain to Oman. Arabic does include words of Portuguese origin, but none are unique to Ras Al Khaimah or Ru’us al-Jibal. Those who look to European influences to explain the remarkable presence of Shihhi Arabic will be disappointed. In fact, in my own study, very few Shihhi vocabulary items are borrowed from other languages at all. As Emirati linguist Maryam Bayshak stated, Shihhi Arabic is unquestionably Arabic.
People who speak well-known languages ask me what value there is in studying Shihhi Arabic, or for that matter, painstakingly documenting its words and grammar. I am never asked this question by people I meet from, say, Nigeria, a country in which more than five hundred languages are spoken. The world has thousands of mother tongues, each with its own structure and style and folklore. Each of them is an intrinsically valuable piece of culture.
Shihhi Arabic has fewer speakers than any other Arabic dialect. Globally, languages are disappearing year by year, often following on the heels of migration to urban centers. Ru’us al-Jibal is already dotted with traditional homes that are infrequently used due to steady urbanization. Many of them are brick houses of the type known as bayt al-quful—meaning ‘lock house’. The locks are not operated by turning a key; rather, a hook is latched on the inside, but it can only be reached by using a tool with a certain knack known only to the owner. After a season on the coast, Ru’us al-Jibal families would return to their homes on the mountains, using muscle memory to regain access to their treasures. Making a record of Shihhi Arabic is like writing down the instructions to a locked house. As people slowly withdraw from the stone homes of their grandparents and cultural knowledge is incrementally lost, they may find assurance in the fact that a record can serve as the key to access some of that cultural knowledge.