,
10 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
1/10.
Commonly known as the earliest Arabic script used for writing the Qur’an, the "hijazi script" is at the center of an old scholarly debate. What is hijazi script ? What does it look like ?
A thread about the story of the Hijazi concept and its evolution.
Commonly known as the earliest Arabic script used for writing the Qur’an, the "hijazi script" is at the center of an old scholarly debate. What is hijazi script ? What does it look like ?
A thread about the story of the Hijazi concept and its evolution.
2/10. The story of "Hijazi" begins at the end of the 18th when S. de Sacy discovers that Kufic isn’t actually the earliest Arabic script, as it is then accepted. In a ms of the Fihrist, written in the 10th by al-Nadim, he finds the names of earlier scripts: Makkan and Medinan.
3/10. For de Sacy, the reliability of this statement is confirmed by a 2nd century H. Arabic papyrus, not written in Kufic –– but "in a cursive script similar to Nesḫi".
4/10. The 1st to link the “Meccan script” to Qur’ans is Amari, working in the 1850’s on the BnF collection. He classifies 18 mss as "Meccan", describing it as a script "half nesḫi half kufi" close to the early papyri, except for the inclination of the strokes (only for Qur'ans).
5/10. In 1891, the Autrichian papyrologist Karabacek reexamines the question: he identifies the script of BL Or.2165 as "mā’il" (leaning), found in Flügel’s edition of al-Fihrist. According to him, "mā’il" inherits from the Mekkan script but differs in the inclinaison of the lām.
6/10. Again, the comparison with papyri leads him to identify a 2nd ms in "mā’il", in the Khedivial Library in Cairo... But Karabacek ignored that the word mā’il was actually a mistake in the copy of al-Fihrist used by Flügel, as other copies discovered since have "munab[a/i]ḏ".
7/10. Karabacek’s arguments never convinced Moritz, former curator at the Khedivial Library, who states in 1913: "Except one [a small fragment on papyrus], all old copies of the Qur’an are written in kufic" and raises doubts about the existence of the Meccan and Medinan scripts.
8/10. In 1940, Abbott restores the concept of Meccan script, found in 8 Qur’ans kept in the Oriental Institute at Chicago. For her, "Hijazi" is a lost archetypal script from which the Meccan/Medinan script derives, and Qur’anic script should be distinguished from papyri script.
9/10. It is Bergsträsser who fixes the use of « Hijazi », and gives 2 examples : BL Or.2165 and Kodex Medina 1a. He defines it as a style between the lapidary (=kufic) and the cursive style from papyri, moving gradually towards kufic in the last decades of the 1st H.
10/10. The Hijazi script is a concept which regenerate with the new available material. Today, we mostly rely on the classification of Déroche (1983), but we must remember that it was based on a limited corpus: the BnF collection. So, the definition of Hijazi isn’t yet written...
