First, Altara, saying that Nehme ignores geography doesn't make sense.
She ignore (forget/set aside) the historical and geographical context. It's normal, she's not an historian.
She is the only one who has studied these texts in any geographic context. 6th c. Arabic inscriptions cluster in the Nabataean realm,
Nabataean realm in the 6th c. Sure. What else? (yawn...)
especially north Arabia and southern Levant. Zebed is the single outlier.
Zebed is very far from the peninsula. Exceptional proto Quranic script.
I don't have an argument for this development
Excellent!
but Nehme articulates one very clearly. After the fall of Petra, the use of the Nabataean script/language remained active in the peripheral areas not directly under Roman control.
The Romans are in Hegra in the 4th c. Dumat place is under more or less ( as far as I know, no Romans, there...)Persian control, meaning Church of the East, meaning Syriac script :
And 2017, Laïla Nehmé published an inscription from Dumat al-Jandal, an oasis in northern Arabia, and it is the first Arabic script inscription from north Arabia. And this text read dhakir al-ilah (ذكر الاله)–so, “may the God,” and this is the name of the Christian God in pre-Islamic Arabic, al-ilah (الاله), “the God,” literally–“be mindful of” and then a personal name, and it was dated 6th century CE.
The emergent petty states continued to employ this script and language for their administration/chancelleries.
"administration/chancelleries" when exactly?
From the 2nd to 5th centuries CE, the gradual changes to the Nabataean script happened resulting in the arabic script, motivated by writing with ink. She in her paper and in an upcoming book on this traces this development, century by century. It is gradual. Jallad argues that the Nabataean script didn't evolve into Arabic linearly but that since it was used by different courts, without an overarching political structure, the script developed different orthographies in different places, a disorder not resolved until the emergence of abd al-malik's imperial Arabic.
That's what I suspected... glow, no sources (different courts, etc.) nothing in fact. These Arabs live on Mars.
Zebed (512)and Harran (568) attest of a structure who has been ordered, if not orthography, at least the script. Both are under Christianity.
Dumat (548/549) = Church of the East
https://www.islamic-awareness.org/history/islam/inscriptions/dumah1.htmlFor islamic-awareness Script is : Nabateo-Arabic script. (following Jallad et al.)
For me proto Quranic script whose the content is biblical stories and heavily influenced by Syriac Christianity
Off-topic.
The gradual development is document. The geographic location of Northwest Arabia and southern Levant emerges from the distribution of the inscriptions themselves.
Gradual development alone: how, when, dates? nobody knows. The explication is that you et al. are incapable to explain this evolution/gradual development to reach Zebed, Dumat, Harran. All of these are under Christianity, two under Syriac Church of the East.
Nor Nehmé and Jallad et al. are historians, all what they say is not scholarship, as they ignore the religious scriptural context present since almost 400 years.
End of story (at least for me...)
Topic: Qur'anic studies today