However, after the conquests of Alexander the great, Greek displaced Aramaic as the official language of the new empire. Aramaic survived into the Roman times, in places around Palestine and Syria. Hebrew replaced Aramaic as the spoken language of the Jews as early as the 6th century. Luckily, these changes did little to affect the unity of Aramaic language and literature immediately. The common people used it as the vernacular language. However, in the late 7th century, during the Muslim conquests, Arabic gradually replaced Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Middle East. The Aramaic language was heavily influenced by the Phoenicians, and even based its alphabet from theirs. Other groups of people such as the ancient Israelites adopted this