Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 02-18-2009, 12:14 PM

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Arabic alphabet

Main

second most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (the Latin alphabet is the most widespread). Originally developed for writing the Arabic language and carried across much of the Eastern Hemisphere by the spread of Islam, the Arabic script has been adapted to such diverse languages as Persian, Turkish, Spanish, and Swahili. Although it probably developed in the 4th century ad as a direct descendant of the Nabataean alphabet, its origins and early history are vague. Some scholars believe that the earliest extant example of Arabic script is a royal funerary inscription of the Nabataeans dating from ad 328. Others believe that this epigraph shows characteristics of Arabic but is essentially Aramaic and that the earliest extant example of Arabic is a trilingual inscription in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic dating from ad 512.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...rabic-alphabet

Solo · 02-18-2009, 12:33 PM

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Originally Posted by Clinical

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Nonsense. Where is your source of information for this fairy tale?

It is not a fairy tale. If you read the thread from the beginning you would not have said this. Here is what I said earlier ""Read: In the name of thy Lord who createth," [96:1] So he was able to read and write.

Uuh..uh...that's quite a leap, my friend !

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"And they say: Fables of the men of old which he hath had written down so that they are dictated to him morn and evening." [25:5] Here we understand that the opponents of Muhammad knew that he was writing the Quran as it was dictated to him morning and evening."

But the sura is denying vehemently that the rumour is true..you cannot use the verse as a proof of M's literacy.

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Again he was not illiterate. And was a trader, not a "drover of camels".

He was a trader since his adoption by his uncle. He worked as a profit-sharing contractor for a rich Meccan woman who then married him.

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who robbed caravans traveling along the great north south routes connecting Antioch and Damascus with Mecca

Now that is a fairy tale. Not only because it contradicts the teachings of the Quran, but also because it is a later invention 120 years after his death.

The battle of Badr, which was a caravan ambush (in keeping with the bedouin tradition of raiding enemy goods, called ghazw) is mentioned in the Quran (3:123-125).

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Most broadly, "there was no Islam as we know it" until two or three hundred years after the traditional version has it (more like CE 830 than 630);

Again wrong. Hadiths were invented like CE 830, but they are not part of Islam or Muhammad's life. The early manuscripts of the Quran disprove this too.

I am not sure what "invented" means here. Ahadith are tradiional oral reports first issued as large collections by Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, independently of each other around, 850. We have no early extant copies of the Quran.
G.A.Wells, who was no slouch in attributing mythical origins to Jesus, was quite satisfied that the Mohammed and Quran were historically situated where the Islamic tradition placed them by comparing two strands of tradition leading to the first great Quranic scholar al Tabari and those to external historical accounts of Theophanes and Nicephorus. He found that they agreed in fundamentals.

Jiri

Roger Pearse · 02-19-2009, 12:03 AM

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Originally Posted by Clinical

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Originally Posted by avi

I disagree fundamentally.
The Eastern halves of Syria and Iran are desert, that did not prevent Alexander of Macedonia, or Christian missionaries, from traversing them, en route to India, nor did these desert areas prevent Genghis Khan from waging war across their breadth and length. What about the Gobi desert traversing Silk route caravans traveling from XiaMen to Antioch, even before Alexander? The desert areas of the Arabian peninsula are certainly harsh, but no match for the Gobi, which exhibits a temperature range of 80 degrees centigrade, plus minus 40 degrees centigrade, length: 1000 miles, annual precipitation: 4 inches. The Arabian peninsula is hotter, up to 50 degrees centigrade in summer, but not nearly as cold in winter, (-10 Centigrade) and with twice as much precipitation as Gobi.

Still there was no any evidence for Christian communities in Hijaz.

Perhaps so.

Just to be clear: this is a change of position from "there were not, could not be, any Christians along the west coast of Arabia in the 5-6th centuries, not even ones washed ashore from passing ships containing people like Cosmas Indicopleustes, or lost camel drovers going from the Christians in the north to the Christians in Yemen" to "there is no literary or archaeological evidence of Christian communities in the area in the pre-islamic period." The latter may be correct -- I don't know -- the former can't be, because it involves positive assertions where we have no evidence (if the latter is correct).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse · 02-19-2009, 12:06 AM

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Originally Posted by Solo

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Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

I don't think that dalat and resh have "diacritical dots"; the dots are part of the consonant, although not always written at an early date. Arabic has the same feature.

But what we're discussing here is vowels, surely? The swarms of dots for vowels is a feature of East Syriac, and appears also in Arabic. (In West Syriac in the 7th century the scholar Jacob of Edessa induced his countrymen to use a version of Greek vowels instead). I don't understand why the writer supposes that a feature of one script cannot be extended when borrowing it to create another. It's hard to believe that any sane person would have adopted the system of dots for vowels except by tradition, particularly when you know that at least three consonants in Arabic differ only in the dots.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

I don't understand it either but I don't think it's at all critical. The writer criticizes the diacritics connection to Syriac, in the context of the argument of Mingana and Luxenberg, which asserts that Islam and the Arabic alphabet were wholly derived. There is a simpler way of arguing the genealogies by pointing out that the first known versions of Quran were in the kufic script, which is free of dots. So it is quite possible that the vowel dots indeed originate with Syriac but were gradually imported into the arabic alphabet after the Islamic conquest of Syria (CE 636).

Also, quite a lot of Syriac manuscripts are not vocalised, even those written a century ago. Even some printed texts are not. We can tell that Jacob of Edessa was mucking around with vowels in the latter half of the 7th century, because we have a treatise he wrote on the subject. Prior to that... I'm not sure what the evidence is. We do have a Syriac manuscript of Eusebius' Theophania from 411 AD, I know. I will ask around.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse · 02-19-2009, 12:09 AM

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Originally Posted by Net2004

As we have seen earlier, Mingana had claimed that the origin of Arabic vowels is unknown to history and said that the opinions of Arab authors are too "worthless" to be quoted. Instead he advanced his own "opinion" (worthless or otherwise) by saying that the foundation of the Arabic vowels is based on the vowels of the Syrians. The only proof offered by Mingana was the similarity in the names of vowels in Syriac and Arabic. The fatha of Arabic corresponds in appellation and in sound to the Aramaic phtâha.[33]

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Qur...Mss/vowel.html

NB: Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. The ptaha, therefore, is common to both; and the last statement therefore surely endorses Mingana's point?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

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