Fred Donner and the 'earliest Arabic letter'
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/march/early-days-islam-030315.html[...]
But Donner has a key piece of evidence: a letter that he believes was written in that crucial early seventh-century period.
Donner did not find the letter on one of his numerous trips to archives in Europe, the United States or the Middle East, but came across it inadvertently while preparing to teach a course at the University of Chicago, where he is a professor of Near Eastern history.
According to Donner, both the script in which it is written and the names of people mentioned in the letter point strongly to an early seventh-century date. "As far as I can tell, it may be the earliest Arabic letter we have," he said.
The stained and tattered papyrus is written in Arabic script and is mostly complete, except for a small part missing in the middle.
"As you can see, it's a complete letter," Donner said, as he excitedly pulled up a digital image of the document on his laptop. "For the seventh century, you usually only find a little piece."
Since arriving at Stanford last fall, Donner has been analyzing the letter along with other such original documents. "When you work on a papyrus like this, it's usually several years for a single page," he said. The letterforms can be puzzling, the documents smudged, faded and folded. He's been known to keep a copy of a difficult document posted on his refrigerator for years.
[...]
Donner was looking through digital scans of papyri at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute when the letter caught his eye. It had been cataloged as an unremarkable commercial document, but Donner noticed a letterform in it that, he said, "was never used after the late seventh century."
A striking aspect of the letter is that it features language that is monotheistic but not confessional – that is, it doesn't reflect any particular theologically defined monotheistic community. As Donner pointed out, it opens with the phrase "I praise to you God, other than whom there is no God," and closes with "Peace and God's blessing upon you," which would be acceptable to any monotheist – Jew, Christian or otherwise.
While the letter does mention God, it offers no signs that this seventh-century worldview is "distinctly Islamic," he said. "No mention of Islam, or of Muhammad, or of the Quran; or, for that matter, of distinctively Christian or Jewish features, either."
Donner has deciphered enough of the letter to see that it mentions a number of people who have the same names as several people who were close associates of Muhammad, though the prophet himself is never mentioned in the letter.
"The constellation of names is very suggestive, and these are people who died in the first half of the seventh century," Donner said.
He pointed to the mention of a seventh-century caliph, the supreme religious and political leader of an Islamic state, as significant. The mention of this caliph is especially noteworthy because there is no other secure documentation of his existence, only references from later texts, Donner said.
[...]
Topic: Qur'anic studies today