Thread by @PhDniX

I don't know when this happened but @UBLeiden's Or. 298, the earliest Arabic paper manuscript, is now digitized!
Dated to 252AH/866 AD, this Ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ by ʾAbū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām was copied mere decades after the author's death (d. 223).

A thread on the orthography

Being a manuscript this early, it contains all kinds of wonderfully archaic features which remind one somewhat Quranic orthography, although it is already clearly transitional between the archaic orthography of the Quran and later Classical orthography.

Especially names frequently get spelled defectively.

al-qāsim as القسم
ʾibrāhīm as ابرهيم
ʾismāʿīl as اسمعيل
ʾisḥāq as اسحق

But also the formula used after the mention of the prophet, ʿalayhi s-salām consistently writes as-salām defectively all throughout the manuscript.

Another thing that catches the eye, is that each quire, introduced by a numbered juzʾ writes that word as الجزو. Is this a variant al-juzuʾ as attested in the Quranic reading of Šuʿbah (Q2:260 juzuʾan), or is this simply the dialects form juzw~juzū? Difficult to say.

A final intersting feature is that, even though the manuscript occasionally has a qāf with two dots above, it also frequently uses a qāf with dot below. This is significant, as qāf with dot below frequently occurs in early Quranic manuscripts.

So what's going on? Did the scribe just have access to both ways of marking? Did a correct later come in and amended some of the qāf's with dots above (or perhaps below?) I don't know. In Quranic manuscripts two dots above is almost always later addition.

Before I forget, here is the link to the digitized manuscript. Do you notice any interesting/surprising orthographic practices? Do share!

…italcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/2000…