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A Melkite Arabic literary lingua franca from the second half of the first millennium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Joshua Blau
Joshua Blau
Affiliation:
The Israel Academy, Jerusalem
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Extract

After the Islamic conquest, the Greek Orthodox, so-called Melkite ( = Royalist), church fairly early adopted Arabic as its literary language. Their intellectual centres in Syria/Palestine were Jerusalem, along with the monaster ies of Mar Sabas and Mar Chariton in Judea, Edessa and Damascus. A great many Arabic manuscripts stemming from the first millennium, some of them dated, copied at the monastery of Mar Chariton and especially at that of Mar Saba, have been discovered in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, the only monastery that has not been pillaged and set on fire by the bedouin. These manuscripts are of great importance for the history of the Arabic language. Because Christians were less devoted to the ideal of the ‘arabiyya than their Muslim contemporaries, their writings contain a great many devi ations from classical Arabic, thus enabling us to reconstruct early Neo-Arabic, the predecessor of the modern Arabic dialects, and bridge a gap of over one thousand years in the history of the Arabic language.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , February 1994 , pp. 14 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1994

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References

1 See Griffith, S. H., Jerusalem studies in Arabic and Islam, 13, 1990, 226Google Scholar.

2 See Blau, J., A grammar of Christian Arabic based mainly on South-Palestinian texts from the first millennium (Louvain, 1966–1967)Google Scholar.

3 See ibid., 21–3.

4 Breydy, M., Etudes sur Sa‘id ibn Baṭīrq et ses sources (Louvain, 1983), 88 ffGoogle Scholar. has strongly asserted for The Book of the Demonstration (Eulychius of Alexandria, The Book of the Demonstration [Kitāb al-burhān], ed. Cachia, P., Louvain, 1960–1961)Google Scholar the possibility that it is an adaptation and a compilation. He has indeed proved the special status of its fourth part which treats the refutation of the Jews.

5 See Blau, Grammar, §171.

6 ibid., 57.

7 In Iraq, for instance, -n-imperfects prevail.

8 In Studies in Islamic history and civilization in honour of D. Ayalon (Jerusalem-Leiden, 1991), 448–55Google Scholar.

9 According to its colophon (The Book of the Demonstration, Pt. II, 134, 7), which is written in a late, very cursive hand, it was copied in 372 A.H. (ilhnayn wa-sab‘īn wa-thalātha mi’a = A.D. 983). It is true that the colophon follows the fourth part of The Book of the Demonstration, a polemic against the Jews which may well be an addition to the original book (see n. 4 above), but the wording of the colophon refers to the book as a whole, even though it may have originally been compiled from disparate parts. Although the numbers are not very clear, nevertheless, in my opinion, there is no doubt that ilhnayn wa-sab‘īn wa-thalātha mi’a is the correct reading. It is impossible to substitute for it, with Breydy, Etudes, 91, ithnayn wa-sittīn wa-xams mi’a (562 A.H. = A.D. 1166/67). Moreover, this reading is totally out of the question, not only because the dates of the eclipse of the moon and the sun mentioned in the colophon are confirmed by astronomical calculations (see also The Book of the Demonstration, Pt. I, p. ii, 4 ff.), but since MS Sinai ar. 75 is written in a half-Kufic hand, which is clearly characteristic of the eighth and ninth centuries and had already in the tenth century fallen into desuetude. This latter argument is quite decisive.

10 See Oriens Christianus N.S., 1, 1911; 227–44; Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Lileratur (Vatican, 1944 ff.), ii, 35–38Google Scholar.

11 Eutychius of Alexandria, The Book of the Demonstration [Kitāb al-burhān], tr. Watt, W. Montgomery (Louvain, 1960–1961)Google Scholar, Pt. I, p. i, 15 ff.—Breydy, Etudes, 88 ff., has adduced other convincing reasons for Eutychius not being the author/compiler of The Book of the Demonstration; he did not take into consideration the ascription of MS Sinai ar. 75.

12 If, indeed, Peter, the brother of St. Basilius and St. Gregorius of Nyssa is intended, this postscript contains several cases of oversight: not only was Peter bishop of Sebaste, rather than of Capitolia, but the eldest brother was Basilius.

13 See Blau, Grammar, §1.4.1.2.

14 See Griffith, , Jerusalem studies, 225 ffGoogle Scholar.

15 See Blau, J., Le Muséon, 76, 1963, 369–70Google Scholar.

16 I am citing MS British Library fol. 39a, lines 11–13 = MS Sinai fol. 116b, lines 12–15. This passage was published by Malouf, L. in al-Mashriq, 6, 1903, 1023Google Scholar, lines 4–5. I quote the passage according to the manuscripts (which are identical); the places where Malouf's reading differs (because Malouf had a tendency to change vulgar forms into classical ones) are marked by (!). Bāšā, Q., Mayāmīr th. Abī Qurra … (Beirut, 1904), 187–90Google Scholar, is, of course, wrong in inferring from this passage that the work is of Nestorian origin.