64
The Arabic Language
Two other innovations attributed to ʾAbū l-ʾAswad concern the notation of
the
hamza
(glottal stop) and the
šadda
(gemination). Both signs are absent in the
Nabataean script. We have seen in Chapter 4 (p. 49) that in the Ḥijāz the
hamza
was
probably absent, but in the variety of the language in which the
Qurʾān
was
revealed and the pre-Islamic poems were composed, the
hamza
was pronounced.
Because of the prestige of the language of poetry and the
Qurʾān
, the Ḥijāzī scribes
had to devise a way of recording the glottal stop. Since in their own speech the
hamza
had been replaced in many cases by a long vowel, they spelled words
containing a
hamza
with a long vowel represented by a semi-consonant or glide,
w
,
y
or
ʾalif
. According to the tradition, ʾAbū l-ʾAswad improved this system by using
a small letter
ʿayn
above the semi-consonant; this
ʿayn
indicated the presence of
a
guttural sound, namely, the glottal stop. The gemination of a consonant was
noted by a diacritic dot.
A substantial improvement in the system of short-vowel notation is usually
attributed to the first lexicographer of the Arabic language, al-Ḫalīl ibn ʾAḥmad
(d. 170/786 or 175/791). He replaced the system of dots with specific shapes for
the three short vowels, a small
wāw
for
the vowel
u
, a small
ʾalif
for the vowel
a
,
and a (part of a) small
yāʾ
for the vowel
i
. He also changed the sign for the
šadda
,
using a small
sīn
(short for
šadīd
‘geminated’) instead. When a single consonant
was intended, a small
ḫāʾ
(short for
ḫafīf
‘light’) could be used. Originally, this
system had been devised for writing down poetry, which also went through a
period of codification, but gradually it spread to Qurʾānic manuscripts written in
cursive script as well. It was considerably less
ambiguous than the old system, in
which the dots had to perform various functions.
With al-Ḫalīl’s reform, the system of Arabic orthography was almost complete
and, apart from a very few additional signs, it has remained essentially the same
ever since (for one additional sign, the so-called Warš dot to indicate fronting of
the vowel
a
, see Chapter 17, p. 315). The frequency of diacritic dots and vowel
signs varies considerably, however, and alongside fully vowelled manuscripts
one finds texts in which even the diacritic dots are left out. Even after the intro-
duction of new orthographic devices, it took quite
some time before they were
universally and systematically adopted in writing. After the establishment of the
orthography, a large variety of writing styles were developed, each with its own
special domains. Apart from the epigraphic script (called Kūfic), which was also
used in early Qurʾānic manuscripts, a cursive script was developed for use in the
chancellery, after ʿAbd al-Malik’s reform (cf. below). The script itself became an
essential component of Islamic art. Because of the general aversion to pictorial
art, calligraphy was one of the most important means of decoration. This develop
-
ment of Arabic script will not be dealt with here.
Having an orthography is one thing, but elaborating a standardised language
for official – commercial and administrative – purposes is another. As far as we
know, the Meccan traders did not have any archives,
and we must assume that
The Development of Classical Arabic
65
they did not have at their disposal an elaborate legal terminology or conven
-
tions for bookkeeping, either. In the first period of the establishment of the
Islamic empire, the government, therefore, opted to use Greek-speaking clerks in
Syria and Egypt, and Persian-speaking clerks in the East for purposes of admin-
istration and taxation.
In the sources, the shift from Greek to Arabic in the tax
register (
dīwān
) is traditionally connected with the name of Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik.
According to this story, the caliph ordered the clerks to shift to Arabic in the
year 81/700, allegedly because one of the Greek clerks was caught urinating in an
inkwell (al-Balāḏurī,
Futūḥ al-buldān
, ed. Riḍwān, Cairo, 1959, pp. 196–7). Whatever
the truth of that story, the shift is a sign of the growing self-confidence of the
Arabs and their increased familiarity with a practical writing system.
Even so, it took more than a caliph’s edict to effectively end the use of Greek
by the scribes. Careful investigation of the papyri reveals that the transition to
Arabic in the bureaucracy was much more gradual than is generally assumed
(Sijpesteijn 2007). The political importance of the change of language is under
-
scored by the distribution of tasks of the two languages. Stroumsa (2008) has
shown that for some time under the ʾUmayyad administration Greek continued
to be perceived as a language of power and authority and, hence,
as the natural
language to be used in public inscriptions, while Arabic was reserved for private
inscriptions. The papyri in the Nessana archive from the Nabataean site Nitsana
in the Negev Desert show that even internal documents were sometimes written
exclusively in Greek, without an Arabic translation. The transition to exclusively
Arabic documents is therefore evidence of the growing power of the caliphate.
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