Re: Luxenberg's critique



Denis Giron wrote:
> M.S.M. Saifullah wrote:
> > "Islamic Awareness" website has added the article
> > "From Alphonse Mingana To Christoph Luxenberg:
> > Arabic Script & The Alleged Syriac Origins Of The
> > Qur'an". Please follow the link:
> >
> > http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/vowel.html
>
> I just started reading this very interesting article, and have a few
> thoughts. Maybe, however, this portion of the discussion should be held
> in a newsgroup like sci.lang?
>
> In response to Luxenberg's claim that at the time the Qur'an was being
> formed, Arabic was not a written language, the article first calls to
> witness the Raqush inscription as an example of a very early Arabic
> inscription:
>
> http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/raqush.html
>
> On the second line, the second character of the first word *looks* like
> the Syriac reysh (with the dot above) - equivalent to the Arabic raa.
> However, on the third line, the third character of the first word seems
> to be the exact same character, yet here it is treated as a daal (the
> equivalent of the Aramaic/Hebrew dalet). How was the conclusion reached
> that these are two different characters? They look like the same
> character to me. The same character seems to appear yet again at the
> start of the eighth (i.e. second to last) line, yet there it is treated
> as a thaal (i.e. the 9th character of the Arabic alif-baa; looks like a
> daal with a dot above it). I'm no expert, but I'm curious about this
> possibly being a rather inconsistent treatment of a single character.
>
> For another example, look at what is either two characters or one that
> start the first line. It is simply treated as a thaal, yet it is wholly
> different from the above-mentioned character starting the eighth line
> that is also treated as a thaal. Look at the third character of the

i.e. dha:l

> first word of the second line. There, something very similar looking is
> treated as a thaa (which would be roughly equivalent to the last
> character of the Aramaic and Hebrew alphabets). In fact, looking at the
> third character of the first word of the second line, as well as the
> last character of the second word on the fifth line (or the last
> character of the first word of the last/ninth line), it seems the best
> conclusion is that the first line does not simply start with a thaal,

i.e. dha:l

> but rather two characters: either thaa-ha or taa-ha (i.e. the
> equivalents of the 22nd/last and 5th characters of the Aramaic and
> Hebrew alphabets: tav and heh).
>
> Furthermore, the attempt to differentiate the shin and sin seems
> dubious to me (as the characters dont look terribly different).
>
> This article on the Raqush inscription does not give an author, but the
> original articled linked to by Dr. Sayfullaah above lists himself,
> Mohamed Ghounem and Shibli Zaman as authors. I'm guessing Shibli is the
> most capable of the three in the area of deciphering possibly Aramaic
> scripts, so perhaps he can give his thoughts on this? While I admit
> that the Raqush inscription was not a major crux of the original
> article, it was called to witness, and the (alleged) problems listed
> show that further discussion is needed. From this very cursory look at
> the inscription, it seems to have a very Aramaic feel to it. The

the *script* is a variety of aramaic script.

> article itself notes that it has alternatively been called (1)
> "Nabataean", (2) "Nabataean" with "many Arabisms," (3) "an eccentric
> mixture of Nabataean and Arabic," or (4) "an Arabic text with Aramaic
> archaisms". That seems to show in itself that before the advent of
> Islam a tedency to blend Aramaic and Aramic was not unheard of (though

in the arab north.

> admittedly the date assigned to this inscription makes it significantly
> older than the Qur'an and thus possibly entirely outside of whatever
> genre or milieu the Qur'an was borne out of).

but possibely ancestral to that "genre or mileu"

>
> As I said, I just started reading Dr. Sayfallaah's article, and this is
> a minor point, but I thought I'd raise some questions with the hopes of
> igniting further discussion.
>
> -Denis Giron
> http://lubienski.com/freethoughtmecca

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Luxenbergs critique
    ... >> However, on the third line, the third character of the first word seems ... >> equivalent of the Aramaic/Hebrew dalet). ... > expert on Nabataean, Arabic and Syriac inscriptions, you will find that in ... The only instances when dots appear in the Nabataean script to ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Regular expression to match persons name
    ... For example in "physicist Albert Einstein was born in Germany and" ... In all cases the names are capitalised and the first word in the string ... starts with a lower case character and the first word after the name starts ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb)
  • Re: Regular expression to match persons name
    ... For example in "physicist Albert Einstein was born in Germany and" ... In all cases the names are capitalised and the first word in the string ... starts with a lower case character and the first word after the name ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb)
  • Regular expression to match persons name
    ... For example in "physicist Albert Einstein was born in Germany and" ... In all cases the names are capitalised and the first word in the string ... starts with a lower case character and the first word after the name starts ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb)
  • Re: Regular expression to match persons name
    ... For example in "physicist Albert Einstein was born in Germany and" ... In all cases the names are capitalised and the first word in the string ... starts with a lower case character and the first word after the name ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb)