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 Topic: Qur'anic studies today

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  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3840 - September 08, 2018, 04:34 PM
    Canaanite and Altara,

    Quote
    While the gradual development from Nabataean, geographically, politically, etc, IS demonstrable, you just deny it without actually addressing the evidence and keep talking about space travel and yawning.


    Isnt that an exaggeration? I went trough Nehme's article again, and yes, Nabatean seems to have evolved. But the more recent found texts that are supposed to show the Arabic link are very fragmentary in contrast with the longer pure Nabatean earlier texts. No political/religious circumstances known...

    And then I wonder, the latest attested Nabatean forms Nehme mentions are mid 5th C. The Zebed inscription is from 512 CE in a "modern"Arabic script, completely recognisable following the "modern" rules. There must ahve been a moment, maybe mid 5th C or earlier, that someone decided to create a new standard for Arab, inspired by the scripts of the area, and spread it around through a network.

    What network could that have been? Altara says it must have been a Christian network since all these pre-islamic Arabic texts are found in this context. Yes, I am inclined to see the argument in this. There are indications for the context of these pre-Islamic inscriptions...

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3841 - September 08, 2018, 04:54 PM
    Mundi: the point is the evolution began before the spread of Christianity. The Zebed is not the earliest inscription: at Najran you have fully fledged Arabic inscriptions from the late 5th c. ad. There is no chronological gap. Yes the earlier monumental Nabataean texts are longer and later texts are graffiti indicating a monumental tradition ceased and the script survived on perishable materials, explaining its movemebt towards cursive. The point nehme makes is that all of the letter forms of Arabic have emerged completely by the 5th century. Also a collection of unpublished pre Islamic Arabic inscriptions from Tabuk area. In her article with robin and avner they explain that the script was used at the chancellories of ghassan tanukh and other Arabian principalities. And there is evidence for the use of Nabataean among them. Finally it is not a question of no Christianity : the entire central and north arabia appear to be Christian from the epigraphy but the precense of Christianity does not mean that Syriac is the origin of Arabic script or had anything to do with it. It simply means it is plausible but I can see no clear evidence of it.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3842 - September 08, 2018, 05:10 PM
    Also i remember this point from lessons on this subject : epigraphy is archaising. Greek inscriptions and graffiti are almost always in captials and rarely in the book hand : just compare inscriptions and papyri. The arabic script as we know it was likely the bookhand while the capital monumental forms are more common in the rock inscriptions. We must not assume because the arabic script appears on rock in 490ad that it was "invented" at that moment.

    Again you say: it was invented influenced by scripts around it. Ok let's go beyond impressions. How? What is the smoking gun that points to this process? Where is th e syriac? The connecting bar on the bottom is not an argument because that exists in Nabataeo-Arabic texts : see the sakaka inscription in Nehme article.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3843 - September 08, 2018, 05:54 PM
    Quote
    the presence of Christianity does not mean that Syriac is the origin of Arabic script or had anything to do with it.



    That is weird to me. If we are talking here of a Christian community (and evidence is there that the Nabatean areas were intensively Christianised),  why didnt Syriac play a bigger role in the Arabic script?

    I could understand if the script had emerged during proto- Islam ( to distance itself from the competing religion), but it existed already full fledged more than 1 century earlier. Was the cause political? Or was there already a certain religious divergence?

    What were the elements pushing Arabic away from Syriac?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3844 - September 08, 2018, 06:04 PM
    Quote from: Mahgraye on September 08, 2018, 03:37 PM
    Thanks, Altara. Will contact Brelaud and Briquel-Chatonnet. You should also take a look at the paper by Christelle and Florence Jullien (“Aux frontières de l’iranité: “nāṣrāyē” et “krīstyonē” des inscriptions du mobad Kirdīr. Enquête littéraire et historique,” Numen, vol. 49, no. 3, 2002, pp. 282–335). Just like Brelaud and Briquel-Chatonnet, they also make the case that Persians one some occasions referred to Christians as nāṣrāyē. In other words, they support your preferred explanation.

     

    Rather, I support their explanation Wink Giving the sources, they seems to me convincing.


    Quote
    Maybe, but as you said to me, the issue is not that simple either. Gallez's hypothesis, granted, is the most extreme version of the Jewish-Christianity hypothesis. But I must take some issue - assuming I understood you correctly, since you were talking about Gallez - that the Nazoreans are not mentioned anywhere.


    Quote
    that they are never mentioned as Gallez describes them in some of their beliefs in his thesis, in any texts, even Epiphanius.

     

    Quote
    To be fair, and going back to what you said, this is not a simple matter, as this very same inscription has now been interpreted by four scholars (in addition to your source, see the reference I gave above) in a completely different way that does not support the Nazorean hypothesis.


    Yes. Giving the sources, Brelaud at al. seems to me convincing.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3845 - September 08, 2018, 06:11 PM
    Quote from: mundi on September 08, 2018, 05:54 PM

    What were the elements pushing Arabic away from Syriac?


    Only technical elements. But technical elements is not enough to assert what was happened like Jallad et al. say.
    Technical elements of an human instrument (scripture) ignoring religious script context is non sense. There is no "natural" evolution possible like in Europe. Simply because of the scripts present in the area connected to one important point of the time : religion.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3846 - September 08, 2018, 06:23 PM
    Laila Nehmé's Works   and books\

    Quote
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWh-JF8W2gc   ........1
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TLWx1nIYAw    ........2
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkhaCacEU-s    ........3
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzX5RVr89CA     .......4
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbsR9xeycic      ........5
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txdcy8tzTLo        ........6

    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3847 - September 08, 2018, 06:30 PM
    Altara - did you get my message?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3848 - September 08, 2018, 06:33 PM
    Yes, I've responded.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3849 - September 08, 2018, 06:40 PM
    Quote from: mundi on September 08, 2018, 05:54 PM

    That is weird to me. If we are talking here of a Christian community (and evidence is there that the Nabatean areas were intensively Christianised),  why didnt Syriac play a bigger role in the Arabic script?

    I could understand if the script had emerged during proto- Islam ( to distance itself from the competing religion), but it existed already full fledged more than 1 century earlier. Was the cause political? Or was there already a certain religious divergence?

    What were the elements pushing Arabic away from Syriac?


    Why is it weird? They had a pre existing script so why should Syriac or even Greek affect it? I again am not saying it is impossible I am asking what is the evidence for it? I don't think our feelings about what should have been the case matter. The point is : what is the evidence for this influence? I've asked altara to produce it but he simply responds with one lined dodges or appeals to non script explanations. I am sorry that is not how to explain the development of a writing system. There is no necessity for Syriac to influence Nabataean on its way to Arabic. If it did, then what is the script based evidence. "Syriac Christianity was everywhere" does not constitute an explanation.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3850 - September 08, 2018, 07:02 PM
    Canaanite,

    Communities with a shared religion tend to mix and take over cultural and linguistic elements. Especially with Syriac and Greek having more prestige, it would be normal for the Arabs (nabateans) to take over chunks of the culture. Just like the Persians or Pakistanis took over the Arab alphabet to write their languages in.

    Religious institutions were the loci for transfer of knowledge. If the Arabs shared those institutions they would be educated in Syriac and Greek, "forgetting"their native language.

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3851 - September 08, 2018, 07:13 PM
    Mundi: great examples! Both the iranians and pakistanis adopted the arabic script and modified it in obvious ways. No one can say this ahout the 6th c. Arabic script. It isnt a slightly modified syriac script : it is the latest stage of nabataean in all formal ways. The appeals to Syriac stem from "it stands to reason" type arguments. Not demonstration. I agree that arabs were reading and wirting greek clearly but this doesn't mean they forgot or discarded their language. In fact the opposite seems true the harran inscription shows an elevation of status to the same level as greek within Arab communities. The iranian and pakistani cases are therefore not comparable.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3852 - September 08, 2018, 07:29 PM
    Canaanite: just to float an idea - would it make sense to see the move from writing mainly in Nabatean Aramaic to writing in Arabic as linked to the Christianisation of the Nabatean cultural area and a consequent replacement of Nabatean Aramaic by Syriac? i.e. the use of the old script for writing Aramaic would have come to seem archaic to Christian scribes familiar with Syriac, while a modified version would have continued in use for writing the Arabic vernacular.
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3853 - September 08, 2018, 07:31 PM
    Canaanite,

    I know the Pakistani and Persian examples are not comparable. And I ask myself why? Keeping an own language alive is not a given. So what was keeping these Arab communities apart from the Syriac and Greek speaking ones? So much apart that it doesnt really reflect in the script they developed  (4-5C)
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3854 - September 08, 2018, 07:44 PM
    Nehme argues that by the 4th century the Aramaic part of nabataean was restricted to fixed phrases and formularies. By this time arabic must have been gaining. The only way to prove this is to find documents from the period which is entirely possible. Therefore i do not think we need to appeal to syriac Christianity for the promotion of arabic since the.process was already under way. Mundi you are right aramaic dominated and replaced the vernaculars of the levant. Hebrew phoenician and allied languages disappeared. Why didn't this happen to arabia. The obvious answer is that aramaic did noy have the cultural momentum to do this. It was not able to compete with the local languages and cultures even if it was a liturgical language it must have been restricted to religious circles monasteries perhaps but not have become an administrative or business language in arabia. The fact that Syriac didnt dominate points towards a limited scope.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3855 - September 08, 2018, 07:54 PM
    "cultural momentum": yes, indeed,  maybe that is how it could be seen.

    French, German and Dutch won over Latin too at the end...
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3856 - September 08, 2018, 07:59 PM
    Quote from: canaaniteshift on September 08, 2018, 07:44 PM
    you are right aramaic dominated and replaced the vernaculars of the levant. Hebrew Phoenician and allied languages disappeared. Why didn't this happen to arabia. The obvious answer is that aramaic did noy have the cultural momentum to do this. It was not able to compete with the local languages and cultures even if it was a liturgical language it must have been restricted to religious circles monasteries perhaps but not have become an administrative or business language in arabia. The fact that Syriac didnt dominate points towards a limited scope.

    Is this a case of settled villagers losing their vernaculars over time while groups with a more pastoralist or nomadic way of life tended to keep their vernaculars?
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3857 - September 08, 2018, 08:10 PM
    Not exactly, as settled folk at oasis towns would have also. I think it is a matter of geography : arabia is peripheral and the motivation for aramaic to replace native vernaculars and written languages was apparently not there. This is not hypothetical, right, syriac did not replace arabic as a language nor did it become the script of Arabia. As arabians figured more and more into the world stage their peripheral language and writing system become clear symbols of group identity, whatever that group may habe been. That is tto explain why the arabic names in zebed inscription are written in arabic script not syriac and Harran too. It is a public display of identity, that may account also for its survival as a seperate traditon rather than domination by aramaic, cf. Hoyland.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3858 - September 08, 2018, 08:20 PM
    Walid Saleh - The Preacher of the Meccan Qur'an: Deuteronomistic History and Confessionalism in Muḥammad's Early Preaching:

    Quote
    There has been a trend in recent scholarship on the Qur'an to downplay the role of Muḥammad in delivering and preaching the Qur'an, such that one is almost presented with a disembodied Qur'an which has no relationship to his prophetic career. The disappearance of Muḥammad from the Qur'an, and the pretence that there is no preacher, allows for a radical rereading of the text, such that one can then claim not only that it is an outgrowth of a Christian preaching environment, but that the Qur'an's main audience was a Biblically-saturated community. However, there is also a more serious issue at hand. Our Fragestellung about what the Qur'an has to tell us about Muḥammad is problematic. It seeks to reconstruct his life in the manner of a nineteenth-century biography, outlining a linear and comprehensive life-story. The Qur'an is unlike the Gospels, we are repeatedly told: there is no sustained biography of Muḥammad there to be found, and no chronological order to its parts. Indeed, the mantra that the Qur'an does not tell us much about Muḥammad is now a truism in Qur'anic studies. However, the Qur'an is packed with information about Muḥammad: it is actually a record of his preaching.

    In this article I will investigate the most important details we can find in the Qur'an about Muḥammad, and assess the image of the preacher of the Qur'an as fashioned there. I will then develop the historical implications of my analysis, and show that when we analyse the information in the Qur'an we can obtain historical information about Muḥammad, his community, and their respective ideas. The analysis will be confined to the image of Muḥammad in the Meccan parts of the Qur'an: the topic of his image in the Medinan Qur'an is a matter for another study.


    Available: http://sci-hub.tw/10.3366/jqs.2018.0338

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3859 - September 08, 2018, 08:26 PM
    Quote from: canaaniteshift on September 08, 2018, 08:10 PM
    Not exactly, as settled folk at oasis towns would have also. I think it is a matter of geography : arabia is peripheral and the motivation for aramaic to replace native vernaculars and written languages was apparently not there.

    I suppose a comparison could be made with the contemporary survival of non-Arabic languages in North Africa - mainly in mountainous or desert areas and remote oases.
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3860 - September 08, 2018, 08:37 PM
    I do have a response to the argument from the Kirdīr inscription. One can also interpret it in different ways, as my previous comment showed, or at least tried to show. Will get back to you soon as possible as I have contacted some knowledgeable people on this topic.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3861 - September 08, 2018, 08:38 PM
    Quote
    I suppose a comparison could be made with the contemporary survival of non-Arabic languages in North Africa - mainly in mountainous or desert areas and remote oases.


    The Zebed and Harran inscriptions prove Arabic did not only survive in remote areas (who knows, maybe it was never spoken there, we have no evidence), but in the bigger population centers.

    Do we have any idea how widespread Aramaic/Syriac was as a mother tongue?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3862 - September 08, 2018, 08:42 PM
    Ok. ( but I still no see in the Quran specific Jewish Christian stuff about the nasara, it even say that they say that Jesus is the Son of God Wink )
    Not Jewish Christian (it is even the exact contrary)...
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3863 - September 08, 2018, 08:51 PM
    Yes, indeed. But as is the case with the Kirdir inscription, there also a response to the verse you alluded to, ha ha.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3864 - September 08, 2018, 09:08 PM
    Quote from: Mahgraye on September 08, 2018, 08:20 PM
    Walid Saleh - The Preacher of the Meccan Qur'an: Deuteronomistic History and Confessionalism in Muḥammad's Early Preaching:

    Available: http://sci-hub.tw/10.3366/jqs.2018.0338

    Quote from: Walid Saleh
    a man who we know did not read Syriac

    I wonder how Saleh can know this about Muhammad.
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3865 - September 08, 2018, 09:10 PM
    Quote from: mundi on September 08, 2018, 08:38 PM
    The Zebed and Harran inscriptions prove Arabic did not only survive in remote areas (who knows, maybe it was never spoken there, we have no evidence), but in the bigger population centers.

    Do we have any idea how widespread Aramaic/Syriac was as a mother tongue?


    1/ Of course. This stories of remote areas ... Where are the Arabs massively? Iraq/Syria-Palestine ; urban places. The peninsula is void apart nomadic wanderers, small caravans, from whom Jallad discovers inscriptions.  Arabs are so in urban places that the narrative places the Muhammad story in them, and not at all where Jallad finds his inscriptions, namely, mainly, in the desert. And almost all urban places (Dumat, Najran...) inscription in pre Quranic Arabic script (same as Zebed/Harran) bear crosses...Crosses comes from where? Japan?


    2/From Palestine to Euphrates/Tigris and from there to the Gulf, and North to actual Turkey (Edessa).
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3866 - September 08, 2018, 09:12 PM
    Quote from: zeca on September 08, 2018, 09:08 PM
    I wonder how Saleh can know this about Muhammad.

    Maybe he knows him very well Wink
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3867 - September 08, 2018, 09:17 PM
    Quote from: zeca on September 08, 2018, 09:08 PM
    I wonder how Saleh can know this about Muhammad.


    This paper (not read yet...) seems to be a response to the "sceptics" of our time (Dye, etc) Like all scholar from Muslim extraction, Saleh defends the narrative. This corroborates the fact that this narrative is a fundamental element of the Muslim belief ;  It is not believing in God, it is believing an history  which is a sinking ship. And sinking, it take Islam with it, as Islam is just believing in a story which give an explication of/to the existence of the Quran. Nothing else.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3868 - September 08, 2018, 09:34 PM
    I asked myself the very same question, dear Zeca. It is very unfortunate that his article does not even interact with scholars as Dye and others similar to him.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #3869 - September 08, 2018, 10:11 PM
    Quote from: zeca on September 08, 2018, 08:26 PM
    I suppose a comparison could be made with the contemporary survival of non-Arabic languages in North Africa - mainly in mountainous or desert areas and remote oases.

    Quote from: mundi on September 08, 2018, 08:38 PM
    The Zebed and Harran inscriptions prove Arabic did not only survive in remote areas (who knows, maybe it was never spoken there, we have no evidence), but in the bigger population centers.

    My point about North Africa wasn’t that non-Arabic languages survive only in remote areas. I mentioned remote oases (Siwa in Egypt would be an example) but mountain areas where varieties of Berber are spoken may or may not be remote. They were traditionally still separate enough to retain cultures distinct from the Arabic speaking lowland villages and towns. In Morocco for example this didn’t at all rule out close contact between Arabic and Berber speakers.
    Quote from: mundi
    Do we have any idea how widespread Aramaic/Syriac was as a mother tongue?

    My (very much non-expert) impression is that the pre-Islamic linguistic boundary between Aramaic and dialects of Arabic was quite close to the boundary between areas that could support settled agriculture and more arid areas dominated by pastoralism - though the Arabic speaking areas would still have included urban centres and oases with settled agriculture.
    Quote from: Altara
    This stories of remote areas ... Where are the Arabs massively? Iraq/Syria-Palestine ; urban places.

    I wasn’t trying to relocate Arabic speakers into distant Arabia or suggesting they only lived in remote areas. In any ancient society most people lived in the countryside outside urban centres. I’m suggesting that the way of life of the rural majority of Arabic speakers was dominated by at least semi-pastoralism (though there was obviously oasis agriculture as well).
    Which side are you on?
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