WRITING. Arabic ʿIlmu ʾl-K͟hat̤t̤ (علم الخط‎). Sir William Muir, in the Introduction of his Life of Mahomet, writes on this subject as follows:—

“De Sacy and Caussin de Perceval concur in fixing the date of the introduction of Arabic writing into Mecca at A.D. 560 (Mém. de l’Acad., vol. 1. p. 306; C. de Perc., vol. i. p. 294.) The chief authority is contained in a tradition given by Ibn Khallicân, that the Arabic system was invented by Morâmir at Anbar, whence it spread to Hira. It was thence, shortly after its invention, introduced into Mecca by Harb, father of Abû Sofiân, the great opponent of Mahomet. (Ibn Khallicân, by Slane, vol. ii. p. 284.) Other traditions give a later date; but M. C. de Perceval reconciles the discrepancy by referring them rather to the subsequent arrival of some zealous and successful teacher than to the first introduction of the art (vol. i. p. 295). I would observe that either the above traditions are erroneous, or that some sort of writing other than Arabic must have been known long before the date specified, i.e. A.D. 560. Abd al Muttalib is described as writing from Mecca to his maternal relatives at Medîna for help, in his younger days, i.e. about A.D. 520. And still farther back, in the middle of the fifth century, Cussei (Quṣaiy) addressed a written demand of a similar tenor to his brother in Arabia Petræa. (Kâtib al Wâckidi, 11½; Tabari, 18, 28.)

“The Himyar or Musnad writing is said by Ibn Khallicân to have been confined to Yemen; but the verses quoted by C. de Perceval (vol. i. p. 295) would seem to imply that it had at one period been known and used by the Meccans, and was in fact supplanted by the Arabic. The Syriac and Hebrew were also known and probably extensively used in Medîna and the northern parts of Arabia from a remote period.

“In fine, whatever the system employed may have been, it is evident that writing of some sort was known and practised at Mecca long before A.D. 560. At all events, the frequent notices of written papers leave no room to doubt that Arabic writing was well known, and not uncommonly practised, there in Mahomet’s early days. I cannot think, with Weil, that any great ‘want of writing materials’ could have been felt, even ‘by the poorer Moslems in the early days of Islam.’ (Mohammed, p. 350.) Reeds and palm-leaves would never be wanting.” (Muir’s Mahomet, Intro., p. viii.)

The intimate connection of the Arabic alphabet, as it is now in use, with the Hebrew, or rather Phœnician alphabet, is shown not only by the form of the letters themselves, but by their more ancient numerical arrangement, known by the name of Abjad, and described under that head on page 3 of the present work. This arrangement, it will be remembered, is contained in the six meaningless words:—

The first six of these words correspond to the Hebrew alphabet, the last two consist of the letters peculiar to Arabic, and it will be seen that the words abjad, hawwaz, and ḥut̤t̤ī (as we transcribe them according to our system of transliteration), express the nine units, together with ten, kalaman and saʿfaṣ, the tens from twenty to ninety, and qarashat, s̤ak͟haẕ, and ẓaz̤ag͟h, the hundreds together with one thousand.

The present arrangement of the Arabic alphabet, in the form which the letters take as finals, is the following:—

Finals.

On examining these characters, as represented in the above synopsis, it will at once be seen that, with the exception of the first and the seven last ones, each character stands for two or three sounds, their only distinction consisting in from one to three dots, which are added at the top or bottom of the letter, and that thereby the number of characters is reduced from twenty-eight to seventeen. It will, moreover, be noticed that several of these characters have an appendix or tail, which is well adapted to mark the end of a word, but which would prevent the letter from being readily joined to a following one, and therefore is dispensed with if the letter be initial or connected with others. Suppressing those dots and cutting off these tails, and arranging the characters in their reduced order, and in that form which fits them to appear as initials or medials, we obtain the following simplified schedule:—

Initials and Medials.

A further examination of this reduced list shows, that the characters, 1, 4, 5 and 16, ا‎, د‎, ر‎ and و‎, do not admit of the horizontal prolongation towards the left which serves to connect a letter with a following one, or, in other words, that they can only be joined to a preceding letter, and that the characters 14 and 17, viz. ن‎ and ى‎, in their initial and medial form, differ from the character b only by the superadded dots, and may therefore count for one with it, finally limiting the number of characters to fifteen. Thus the whole Arabic alphabet resolves itself into the four signs

ا د ر و‎

which can be joined to a preceding letter, but must, even in the middle of a word, remain separate from a following one, and the eleven signs

ٮحسصطعڡكلمه‎

which can be connected either way.

These, then, are the graphical elements, in their simplest expression, by means of which Arabic, etymologically perhaps the richest language in existence, was originally written, and which were expected to transmit the sacred text of the inspired book to the coming generations. The first in the above series of connectible characters (ٮـ‎) represents five different sounds, b, t, s̤, n, and y; the second (حـ‎) three sounds, ḥ, j, and k͟h; the next five (سـ‎, صـ‎, طـ‎, عـ‎, ڡـ‎), together with د‎ and ر‎ two sounds each, s and sh, ṣ and ẓ, t̤ and z̤, ʿ and g͟h, f and q, d and ẕ, r and z, respectively, and only five out of the whole number of fifteen (و‎, مـ‎, لـ‎, كـ‎, ا‎) are single signs for a single consonantal sound each. As for the vowels, only the long ones, ā, ū, and ī, were in this system of writing graphically expressed, being represented by the so-called weak consonants, ا‎, و‎, and ى‎, which, in this case, act as letters of prolongation. Yet the corresponding short vowels, a, u, and i, were of the utmost importance for the correct reading of a text, for the whole system of Arabic inflection is based upon them, and their faulty employment in the recital of the Qurʾān would frequently lead to grave mistakes, or, at all events, grievously shock the pious and the learned.

So it will be easily understood that the want of additional signs was soon felt, to obviate this double insufficiency of the original alphabet, that is to say, on the one hand to distinguish between letters of the same form but of different sound, and on the other hand to show with what vowel a letter was to be enounced in accordance with the rules of the Iʿrāb or grammatical inflection.

Accounts differ as to when and by whom these signs were invented and introduced into the sacred as well as the secular writing. We must here at once remark that the form in which they now appear is by no means their oldest form, as we have also, with regard to the characters of the alphabet themselves, to distinguish between two styles of writing, the one called Cufic, used in inscriptions on monuments and coins, in copies of the Qurʾān, and documents of importance, the other of a more cursive character, better adapted to the exigencies of daily life. This latter style, it is true, seems to have existed, like the former, long before Muḥammad, and resembles in a document of the second century of the Hijrah, which has come down to us, already very much the so-called Nask͟hī character now in use. But the two kept from the first quite apart, and developed independently from each other up to the middle of the fourth century of the Muḥammadan era, when the more popular system began to supplant the older one, which it finally superseded even in the transcriptions of the sacred book.

In tracing the origin of the vowel-marks and the diacritical signs, as we may now call them, in the first instance of the Cufic alphabet, we will follow Ibn K͟hallikān, whose information on the subject seems the most intelligible and self-consistent that has reached us. In his celebrated biographical dictionary, he relates that Ziyād, a natural brother of the first Umaiyah K͟halīfah Muʿāwiyah, and then Governor of the two ʿIrāqs, directed Abū Aswad ad-Duʾilī, one of the most eminent of the Tābiʿūn, to compose something to serve as a guide to the public, and enable them to understand “the book of God,” meaning thereby a treatise on Grammar, the elements of which Abū Aswad was said to have learned from ʿAlī, the son-in-law of the Prophet himself. He at first asked to be excused, but when he heard a man, on reciting the passage (Sūrah ix. 3): Anna ʿllāha bariʾun mina ʾl-mushrikīna wa rasūluhu, pronounce the last word rasūlihi, which changes the meaning of the passage from “That God is clear of the idolaters, and His Apostle also,” into “That God is clear of the idolaters and of His Apostle,” he exclaimed, “I never thought that things would have come to such a pass.” He then went to Ziyād and said, “I shall do what you ordered; find me an intelligent scribe who will follow my directions.” On this a scribe belonging to the tribe of ʿAbdu ʾl-Qais was brought to him, but did not give him satisfaction: another then came, and ʿAbdu ʾl-Aswad said to him: “When you see me open (fataḥ) my mouth in pronouncing a letter, place a point over it; when I close (ẓamm) my mouth, place a point before the letter, and when I pucker up (kasar) my mouth, place a point under the letter.” Nöldeke, the learned author of Geschichte des Qorâns, rejects this part of the story as a fable, and it is certainly not to be taken in the literal sense, that each time a letter was pronounced, the scribe was supposed to watch the action of the dictater’s lips. But it seems reasonable enough to assume that in cases where much depended on the correct vocalisation of a word, and where the reciter would naturally put a particular emphasis on it, Abū Aswad should instruct his amanuensis not to rely upon his ears only in fixing upon the sound, but also call the testimony of his eyes to his aid. At any rate, the name of the vowel-points: Fatḥah, “opening,” for a, ẓammah, “contraction,” for u, and kasrah, “fracture” (as the puckering up of the mouth may fitly be called), is well explained, and the notation itself: dot over line. for fatḥah, dot before line. for ẓammah and dot under line. for kasrah, is that which we still find in some of the old Cufic manuscripts of the Qurʾān marked in red ink or pigment. We refer the reader to the first specimen of Cufic writing given below (p. 687), which he is requested to compare with the transcript in the modern Arabic character and with our Roman transliteration, when he will readily perceive that the points or dots in the Cufic fragment correspond to the short vowels of the transliteration, while, in the Arabic transcript, they serve to distinguish the consonants. Take, for instance, the point above the second letter of the third word, and it will at once be seen that in the Cufic form it expresses the a after the n of tanazzalat, for it recurs again after the l in the last syllable, and that in the Nask͟hī character it distinguishes the n (نـ‎) itself from the preceding double-pointed t (تـ‎), both which letters remain without a distinctive sign in the Cufic.

To return to Ibn K͟hallikān: he relates in another place, after Abū Aḥmad al-ʿAskarī, that in the days of ʿAbdu ʾl-Malik ibn Marwān, the fifth K͟halīfah of the Umaiyah dynasty, the erroneous readings of the Qurʾān had become numerous and spread through ʿIrāq. This obliged the governor, al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf, to have recourse to his kātibs, for the purpose of putting distinctive marks on the words of uncertain pronunciation; and it is said that Naṣr ibn ʿĀṣim undertook that duty and imagined single and double points (nuqat̤, pl. of nuqt̤ah, “drop,” “dot”), which he placed in different manners. The people then passed some time without making any copies of the Qurʾān but with points, the usage of which did not, however, prevent some false readings from taking place, and for this reason they invented the Iʿjām (signs serving to distinguish the letters of the same form from one another), and they thus placed the iʿjām posteriorly to the nuqat̤.

Primâ facie, this seems to contradict the passage quoted previously, according to which Abū Aswad would be the inventor of the nuqat̤ or vowel-points, and the same remark applies to another account of the same author, which we shall adduce presently. Pending our attempt to reconcile the different statements, we notice here two fresh particulars of some importance. For the first time mention is made of double points, and we shall scarcely be wrong if we refer this to the way in which the Nunnation or Tanwīn, that is the sounding of an n after the vowels, is expressed in the early writing. It is simply by doubling the vowel-signs in the same position in which the single points are placed: two dots over line. for an, two dots before line. for un, and two dots below line. for in. Secondly, we meet with the distinct assertion that the invention of the iʿjām or diacritical signs followed that of the nuqat̤ or vowel-points. Nöldeke thinks the reverse more probable, not only because the letter b (ب‎) is found already pointed on coins of ʿAbdu ʾl-Malik, but also because the diacritical signs are in the ancient manuscripts, like the letters themselves, written with black ink, while the vowel-points are always of a different colour. But the early use of a pointed b does not prove that the other letters were similarly marked at the same time. On the contrary, if such a distinction was once established for the b, which would be most liable to be confounded with one of its four sister-forms, the other characters of a like shape could for some time dispense with distinctive signs, as for an Arabian reader accustomed to hear, see, and think certain groups of consonants together, and deeply imbued with an instinctive consciousness of the phonetic laws of his language, the danger of mistaking one letter for another would not be by far so great as it appears to us. And as for the argument taken from the different colour of the ink, Nöldeke himself remarks that it was natural to use the same tint for the consonants and their distinctive signs, which form only a part of them, while the vowel-points are an entirely new element.

According to a third tradition, it was Yaḥyā ibn Yaʿmar (died A.H. 129) and al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (died A.H. 110), by whom al-Ḥajjāj caused the Qurʾān to be pointed, and it is stated that Ibn Shīrīn possessed a copy of it, in which Yaḥyā ibn Yaʿmar had marked the vowel points. He was remarkable as a Shīʿah of the primitive class, to use Ibn K͟hallikān’s expression: one of those who, in asserting the superior merit of the People of the House, abstained from depreciating the merit of those Companions who did not belong to that family. It is related by ʿĀṣim ibn Abī ʾn-Najūd, the Qurʾān reader (died A.H. 127), that al-Ḥajjāj summoned Yaḥyā on that account into his presence and thus addressed him:—

“Do you pretend that al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusain were of the posterity of the Apostle of God? By Allāh, I shall cast to the ground that part of you which has the most hair on it (that is: I shall strike off your head), unless you exculpate yourself.” “If I do so,” said Yaḥyā, “shall I have amnesty?” “You shall,” replied al-Ḥajjāj. “Well,” said Yaḥyā, “God, may His praise be exalted! said:

“‘And We gave him (Abraham) Isaac and Jacob, and guided both aright; and We had before guided Noah; and of his posterity, David and Solomon, and Job, and Joseph, and Moses and Aaron: Thus do We reward the righteous: And Zachariah, John, Jesus, and Elias: all were just persons.’ (Sūrah vi. 84, 85).

“Now, the space of time between Jesus and Abraham is greater than that which separated al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusain from Muḥammad, on all of whom be the blessing of God and his salvation!” Al-Ḥajjāj answered, “I must admit that you have got out of the difficulty; I read that before, but did not understand it.” In the further course of conversation, al-Ḥajjāj said to him: “Tell me if I commit faults in speaking.” Yaḥyā remained silent, but as al-Ḥajjāj insisted on having an answer, he at length replied: “O Emir, since you ask me, I must say that you exalt what should be depressed, and depress what should be exalted.” This has the grammatical meaning: You put in the nominative (rafʿ) what should be in the accusative (naṣb), and vice versâ; but it is, at the same time an epigrammatical stricture on al-Ḥajjāj’s arbitrary rulership, which, it is said, won for Yaḥyā the appointment as Qāẓī in Marw, that is to say, a honorary banishment from the former’s court.

According to other sources, Yaḥyā had acquired his knowledge of grammar from Abū Aswad ad-Duʾilī. It is related that, when Abū Aswad drew up the chapter on the agent and patient (fāʿil, subject, and mafʿūl, object of the verb), a man of the tribe of Lais̤ made some additions to it, and that Abū Aswad, having found on examination that there existed, in the language of the desert Arabs, some expressions which could not be made to enter into that section, he stopped short and abandoned the work. Ibn K͟hallikān thinks it possible that this person was Yaḥyā ibn Yaʿmar, who, having contracted an alliance by oath with the tribe of Lais̤, was considered as one of its members. But it is equally possible that the before-mentioned Naṣr ibn ʿĀṣim, whose patronymic was al-Lais̤ī, may have been that man, and this supposition would enable us to bring the different statements which we have quoted into some harmony. To Abū Aswad the honour can scarcely be contested of having invented the simple vowel-points or nuqat̤. Naṣr ibn ʿĀṣim, walking in his track, may have added the double points to designate the Tanwīn. Lastly, Yaḥyā would have completed the system by devising the iʿjām, or diacritical signs of the consonants, and introduced it to a fuller extent into the writing of the Qurʾān, in which task he may have been assisted by al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, one of the most learned and accomplished Qurʾān-readers amongst the Tābiʿūn.

But whoever may have been the inventor of the diacritical signs in their earlier form, we must again remark that their shape in Cufic manuscripts, like that of the vowel-points, is essentially different from the dots which are now employed for the same purpose. They have the form of accents (slanted lines), or of horizontal lines (horizontal lines), or of triangular points, either resting on their basis or with their apex turned to the right (up and right-pointing triangles). As it cannot be our intention to give here an exhaustive treatise on Arabic writing, we pass over the remaining orthographical signs made use of in the old copies of the Qurʾān, in order to say a few words on the system of notation which is employed in the Nask͟hī character and our modern Arabic type.

If, with regard to the Cufic alphabet, we have spoken of diacritical signs to distinguish between the consonants, and of vowel-points, we must now reverse these expressions, calling the former diacritical points, the latter vowel-signs. For, as already has been seen from the synopsis of the alphabet on p. 681, the point or dot is there made use of for the distinction of consonants, while the vowels, which in the Greek and Latin alphabets rank as letters equally with the consonants, have no place in that synopsis. As this style of writing was to serve the purposes of daily life, it is probable that the want of some means of fixing the value of the consonants was here more immediately felt, and that therefore the use of points for this end preceded the introduction of the vowel marks, or to speak more accurately, of marks for the short vowels. For the long vowels ā, ī, and ū, were, as in the Cufic writing, also expressed by the weak consonants ا‎, ى‎ and و‎ taken as letters of prolongation.

When, later on, the necessity arose to represent the short vowels equally in writing, the point or dot, as a distinctive mark, was disposed of, and other signs had to be invented for that purpose. This was accomplished, we are told, by al-K͟halīl, the celebrated founder of the Science of Arabic Prosody and Metric. His device was simply to place the abbreviated form of the before-mentioned weak consonants themselves above or beneath the letter after which any short vowel was to be pronounced. The origin of the ẓammah or u ( _ُ‎_ ) from the و‎ is at once evident. The sign for the fatḥah or a ( _َ‎_ ) differs only by its slanting position from the form which the ا‎ assumes frequently in such words as اللٰه‎ for اللاه‎; and the kasrah or i ( _ِ‎_ ) is derived from the bend towards the right which the letter ى‎ takes in its older shape ( ے‎ ). The Tanwīn was then, as in the Cufic writing, expressed by doubling the signs for the simple vowels: _ً‎_ for an, _ُ‎_ُ‎_ or _ٌ‎_ for un, and _ٍ‎_ for in.

There remains a third set of signs supplementary to the Arabic alphabet, which may be called orthographical signs, and which, in their present form, were probably also invented and introduced by al-K͟halīl; at all events, this is distinctly stated with regard to two of them, the Hamzah and the Tashdīd. The Hamzah, to be well understood, must be considered in connection with the letter ʿain (ع‎) of which its sign (ء‎) is the abbreviated form. If the latter assertion needed proof against the erroneous opinion, put forth by some writers, that the Hamzah is derived from the ى‎, this proof would be afforded by the following anecdote. The K͟halīfah Hārūnu ʾr-Rashīd was sitting one day with a favourite negro concubine, called K͟hāliṣah, when the poet Abū Nuwās entered into his presence and recited some verses in his praise. Absorbed in conversation with the fascinating slave-girl, the K͟halīfah paid no attention to the poet, who, leaving him in anger, wrote upon ar-Rashīd’s door:—

لقد ضاع شعرى على بابكم كما ضاع عقد على خالصة‎

Laqad ẓāʿa shiʿrī ʿala bābikum, kamā ẓāʿa ʿiqdun ʿala K͟hāliṣah.

“Forsooth, my poetry is thrown away at your door, as the jewels are thrown away on the neck of K͟hāliṣah.”

When this was reported to Hārūn, he ordered Abū Nuwās to be called back. On re-entering the room, Abū Nuwās effaced the final stroke of the ع‎ in the word ضاع‎ (ẓāʿa, “is lost” or “thrown away”), changing it thereby into ضاء‎ (ẓāʾa), written with the Hamzah and entirely different in meaning. For when the K͟halīfah asked: “What have you written upon the door?” the answer was now:

“Truly, my poetry sparkles upon your door, as the jewels sparkle on the neck of K͟hāliṣah.”

The fact is, that both the letter ʿain and the Hamzah are different degrees of the distinct effort, which we all make with the muscles of the throat, in endeavouring to pronounce a vowel without a consonant. In the case of the ʿain, this effort is so strong for the Arabic organ of speech, that it partakes in itself of the nature of a consonant, and found, as such, from the first, a representative in the written alphabet, while the slighter effort, embodied in the Hamzah, was left to the utterance of the speaker. But when their language became the object of a favourite study with the learned Arabs, this difference not only called for a graphical expression, but led even to a further distinction between what is called Hamzatu ʾl-Qat̤ʿ or Hamzah of Disjunction, and Hamzatu ʾl-Waṣl or Hamzah of Conjunction. We will try shortly to explain this difference.

If we take the word امير‎ amīr, “a commander or chief,” the initial a remains the same, whether the word begins the sentence or is preceded by another word: we say أَميرٌ قالَ‎ amīrun qāla, “a commander said” (according to the Arabic construction literally “as for a commander, he said”), as well as قالَ أَميرٌ‎ qāla amīrun, “there said a commander” (in Arabic literally “he said, namely, a commander”). Here the Hamzah (ء‎), with the Alif (ا‎) as its prop and the fatḥah or a as its vowel, is called Hamzatu ʾl-Qat̤ʿ, because in the latter case it disjoins or cuts off, as it were, the initial a of the word amīrun from the final a of the word qāla; and the same holds good if the Hamzah is pronounced with i, as in إمارة‎ imārah, “commandership,” or with u, as in أُمراء‎ umarāʾ, “commanders,” plural of amīr. But it would be otherwise with the a of the article أَل‎ al, if joined with the word amīr. In أَلاميرُ قالَ‎ al-amīru qāla, “the commander said,” it would preserve its original sound, because it begins the sentence; but if we invert the order of words, we must drop it in pronunciation altogether, and only sound the final a of qāla instead, thus: qāla ʾl-amīru, “said the commander,” and the same would take place if the preceding word terminated in another vowel, as yaqūlu ʾl-amīru, “says the commander,” or bi-qauli ʾl-amīri, “by the word of the commander.” Here the Hamzah would no longer be written hamza but wasla (قالَ ٱلامير‎, etc.), and would be called Hamzatu ʾl-Waṣl or Hamzatu ʾṣ-Ṣilah, because it joins the two words together in closest connection.

In the article, as it has been stated above, and in the word aimān, “oath,” the original sound of the Hamzatu ʾl-Waṣl is fatḥah, a; it occurs besides in a few nouns, in several derived forms of the verb, and in the Imperative of the primitive triliteral verb, in all of which cases it is sounded with kasrah or i, except in the Imperative of those triliteral verbs whose aorist takes ẓammah or u for the vowel of the second radical, where the Hamzah is also pronounced with ẓammah (أُسكُتْ‎ uskut, “be silent”). But the reader must always keep in mind that it preserves this original pronunciation only at the beginning of a sentence; if it is preceded by any other word, the final vowel of that preceding word takes the place of the Hamzah, and if this word terminates in a consonant, the Hamzah is generally pronounced with i. We say generally, because the only exceptions are after the preposition من‎ min, where it is sounded with a, and after the pronominal affixes of the second and third person plural, كُم‎ kum and هُم‎ hum, where it takes u.

We can pass over more rapidly the other signs of this class, which are the Maddah, the Tashdīd, and the Jazmah or Sukūn. If in consequence of any grammatical operation an Alif, as prop of a Hamzah sounded with fatḥah, comes to stand before another such Alif, we write آ‎ pronounced ā, instead of أَأَ‎, and the upper horizontal sign is called Maddah or Madd, “lengthening,” “prolongation.” While thus the Maddah is the sign for the doubling of an Alif, the Tashdīd ( _ّ‎_ ) is the sign for the doubling of a consonant (ـبّـ‎ = bb). If, lastly, a consonant is not to be followed by a vowel, the sign _ْ‎_ or alternative sukun, named Jazmah (cutting off) or Sukūn (rest), is placed above it, and the consonant is called “quiescent” (sākinah), in contradistinction from a “moved” consonant (muḥarrakah), that is, one sounded with a vowel (ḥarakah, “motion”).

We have seen that the Hamzatu ʾl-Qat̤ʿ (hamza) is an abbreviated form of the letter ʿAin (ع‎). In similar manner, the sign for the Hamzatu ʾl-Waṣl or Hamzatu ʾṣ-Ṣilah (wasla) is an abbreviated form of the initial صـ‎ (ṣ) of the word Ṣilah. The sign for the Maddah (maddah), as written in old manuscripts, seems to be a stretched out form for the word Madd (مد‎) itself, and the sign for the Tashdīd ( _ّ‎_ ) represents the initial شـ‎ of the word Shiddah, which is the technical term for it. The original sign for the Jazmah (alternative sukun) is the cypher or zero, employed to indicate the absence of a vowel sound. A native Arab scholar of our days, the late Nāṣif al-Yazijī of Beyrout, has combined the vowel marks as well as the last-mentioned orthographical signs in the words:

أَخَطُّ ٱلْهِجاَٰ‎

Ak͟hat̤t̤u ʾl-hijāʾa.

“I write out the Alphabet,”

and these words, together with the two formulas given on page 682 (ادرو‎ and ٮحسصطعڡكلمه‎), and the dot as a diacritical sign, contain the whole system of Arabic writing, as it were, in a nut-shell.

However indispensable these various supplementary signs may seem to us for fixing the meaning of an Arabic text, educated Arabs themselves look at them in a different light. Although the need for them was from the first most urgently felt for the purpose of securing the correct reading of the Qurʾān, several of the learned doctors of early Islām strongly opposed their introduction into the sacred book as a profane innovation. The great Sunnī traditionist, Mālik ibn Anas (died A.H. 179), prohibited their use in the copies employed at the religious service in the mosque (ummahātu ʾl-maṣāḥif), and allowed them only in the smaller copies, destined for the instruction of the young in schools. In course of time, however, when even the office of reading the Qurʾān publicly more and more frequently devolved upon persons who had not received a special theological training, the necessity of carefully marking the text with these signs all through went on increasing, and became at last a generally acknowledged principle. In secular literature and in epistolary intercourse amongst the educated, on the contrary, their use should, according to the competent authorities, be limited to those cases where ambiguity is to be apprehended from their omission. If there is no danger of miscomprehension, we are told by Ḥājī K͟halīfah, it is preferable to omit them, especially in addressing persons of consequence and refinement, whom it would be impolite not to suppose endued with a perfect knowledge of the written language. Moreover, to a chastened taste, a superabundance of those extraneous signs seems to disfigure the graceful outline of the Arabic character. When a piece of highly elaborate penmanship was presented to ʿAbdu ʾllāh ibn T̤āhir, the accomplished governor of K͟hūrasān under the Abbaside K͟halīfah al-Maʾmūn, he exclaimed, “How beautiful this would be if there were not so much coriander seed scattered over it.” The diacritical points of the consonants, of course, are now always added, for they have grown to be considered as integral elements of the alphabet itself. Their absence, or their accidental misapplication, gave rise, in former times, to numberless ludicrous or serious perplexities and mistakes, instances of which abound in Muḥammadan history. Al-Balādorī, e.g., relates that the poet al-Farazdaq (died A.H. 110) interceded by letter with Tamīm, governor of the boundaries of Sind, in order to obtain release from military service for the son of a poor woman of the tribe of T̤aiy. The youth’s name was Ḥubaish حبيش‎; but as the diacritical points were not marked in al-Farazdaq’s letter, Tamīm was at a loss whether to read Ḥubaish or K͟hunais خنيس‎, and solved the difficulty by sending home all soldiers whose names contained the dubious letters. A more tragical event is recorded by Ḥājī K͟halīfah, to which we would fain apply the Italian saying: Sè non è vero, è ben trovato. The K͟halīfah al-Mutawakkil is said to have sent an order to one of his officials to ascertain the number of Ẕimmīs in his province, and to report the amount. Unfortunately, “a drop fell,” as the Arabic original expresses it, upon the second letter of the word احصى‎ (aḥṣī, “count”), and the result was, that the officious functionary submitted the ill-fated Ẕimmīs to a certain painful and degrading operation, in consequence of which they all died but two.

On the other hand, the employment of these signs in the Qurʾān, together with several others, to mark its division into verses, chapters, sections, and portions of sections, to call attention to the pauses that should be observed in reciting it, and to indicate the number of rukūʿ or inclinations with which the recital is to be accompanied, gave occasion for graphical embellishment of various kinds. Brilliantly coloured ink or a solution of gold to write with, delicately tinted and smoothly pressed pergament or paper, frequently overspread with gold or silver dust, highly finished ornamental designs of that fanciful and elegant description which has received the name of arabesques, such are the means which serve to render the copies of the Qurʾān of the halcyon days of Islām gorgeous and oftentimes artistically beautiful. Writing became indeed an art, diligently cultivated, and eloquently treated upon in prose and verse by its possessors, to whom it opened access to the most exalted positions in the State. Amongst the most celebrated calligraphists are mentioned the Wazīr Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muqlah (died A.H. 328), ʿAlī ibn Hilāl, surnamed al-Bauwāb (died A.H. 413), and Abū ʾd-Durr Yāqūt ibn Yāqūt ibn ʿAbdi ʾllāh ar-Rūmī al-Mustʿaṣamī (died A.H. 698), whose father and grandfather had excelled in the art before him, but who, according to Ḥājī K͟halīfah, was never surpassed in it by any of his successors.

It was a natural consequence of the general development of the art of writing, that various styles were invented and cultivated independently of each other, and it will now be our task shortly to speak of the principal varieties, trying to describe their distinguishing features by help of a few illustrations chosen from Bresnier’s Cours de Langue Arabe. Along with the fundamental distinction already mentioned, of the Cufic or monumental, and the Nask͟hī or manuscript style, there runs, in the first instance, that of the Mag͟hrib-Berber or Western, and Mashriq or Eastern style. It must, however be remarked, that the Western Nask͟hī stands in closer connection and has preserved a greater resemblance with the Western Cufic, than is the case with the Eastern Nask͟hī in reference to the Eastern Cufic, as the reader will scarcely fail to perceive on comparing the following specimens.

The first is the before-mentioned fragment of the Qurʾān, written in the Cufic manuscript style, and provided with the vowel-points as invented by Abū Aswad ad-Duʾilī (or Naṣr ibn ʿĀṣim, see page 682). Like the remainder of our specimens, we accompany it with a transcript in modern type, a transliteration in Roman character, and a rendering into English.

وَ مَا تَنَزَّلَتْ بِهِ ٱ لْشَّيَاطِينُ وَ مَا يَنْبَغىِ لَهُمْ و مَا (يَسْتَطِيعوُنَ)‎

Wa mā tanazzalat bi-hi ash-shayāt̤īnu wa mā yanbag͟hī la-hum wa mā (yastat̤īʿūna).

“The Satans were not sent down with it (the Qurʾān): it beseemed them not, and they had not the power.”

(Sūrah xxvi. 210; the words in italics correspond to the word yastat̤īʿūna, which is not contained in the Cufic original.)

---

The next two specimens illustrate the Cufic style, as it is employed on monuments, and more particularly so its Maghrebian development.

No. 2 is part of an inscription copied from a public building in Tarragona in Spain. It reads:—

بسم الله بركة من الله لعبد الله عبد الرحمان امير المومنين اطال الله (بقاءه)‎

Bi-smi ʾllāhi! barakatun mina ʾllāhi li-ʿabdi ʾllāhi ʿabdi ʾr-raḥmāni amīri ʾl-muʾminīna at̤āla ʾllāhu (baqāʾa-hu).

“In the name of God! May a blessing from God be upon ʿAbdillāh ʿAbdur-raḥmān, Commander of the Faithful; may God lengthen his life.”

No. 3, an inscription taken from the Alhambra, exhibits a style of monumental writing which can scarcely be called Cufic any longer, so much resembles it the Nask͟hī character. While in the previous specimen neither vowel points nor diacritical signs are made use of, here we find them employed in the shape, which they assume in manuscripts written in that hand. The reader will not have much difficulty in tracing the component letters by comparison with the following transcript and transliteration:—

يا وارث الانصار لا عن كلالة تراث جلال تستخف الرواسيا‎

Yā wāris̤a ʾl-anṣāri lā ʿan kalālatin turās̤a jalālin tastak͟hiffu ʾr-rawāsiyā.

“O thou who inheritest from the Anṣārs, and not by way of distant kindred, a heirloom of glory that makes every summit of fame appear low.”

It will be noticed that the فـ‎ (f) of the word tastak͟hiffu is left without the diacritical point which distinguishes this letter from the letter قـ‎ (q). This tallies with a remark of Ḥājī K͟halīfah, according to which the diacritical points of these two letters may be put or omitted ad libitum; and we seem therefore justified in concluding that the necessity for their distinction was latest felt and provided for. Hence arises one of the peculiarities which at once mark the difference between the Western and Eastern styles of writing, and which the reader will observe in the next three specimens, presenting instances of the Mag͟hrib manuscript character.

The first (No. 4) is written in a bolder hand, and consequently shows more strikingly the close relationship with the monumental style of the Western Arabs.

قالت عائشة رضى الَّله عنها فجئْت رسول الَّله صلَّى الَّله عليه‎

Qālat ʿĀyishatu raẓiya ʾllāhu ʿan-hā fa-jiʾtu rasūla ʾllāhi ṣalla ʾllāhu ʿalai-hi.

“ʿĀyishah, may God be gracious to her, related: I went to the Apostle of God, may God’s blessing be upon him,” &c.

On comparing the initial letter of either line, it will be found that the one is قـ‎ (in qālat), the other فـ‎ (in fa-jiʾtu); but in the Maghrebian original, the former is marked by a dot above, the latter by a dot beneath the character, instead of the superscribed double and single point respectively in the transcript. This is the distinguishing feature between the two styles previously alluded to, and it seems to prove that the use of the diacritical points for these two letters is of later origin, and dates from a time when the two great divisions of the nation had definitely separated and followed each their own destinies. Another point to which we draw attention, is the different form of the Tashdīd, as seen in the word Allāh. The Mag͟hrib form is Mag͟hrib shadda instead of shadda; and while in the Oriental writing the vowel signs are placed over it, the Western style places the sign for the Tashdīd and for the vowel frequently side by side, as it is done here.

قال ابقراط رحمه الله العمر قصير والصناءة طويلة والوقت ضيق والتجربة خطر والقضاء عسر‎

Qāla Abuqrāt̤u raḥima-hu ʾllāhu ʾl-ʿumru qaṣīrun wa ʾṣ-ṣināʾatu t̤awīlatun wa ʾl-waqtu ẓaiyiqun wa ʾt-tajribatu k͟hat̤irun wa ʾl-qaẓāʾu ʿasirun.

“Hippocrates, may God have compassion upon him, said: Life is short, art is long, Time is narrow, experience dangerous, judgment difficult.”

ان ابقراط لم ياذن لمن دعته شهوته الى الشرب بالليل ان يشرب او
لا يشرب لكنه ان شرب ونام بعد شربه فانه اجود من ان لا
ينام وذلك لان النوم يتدارك ضرر الشرب وذلك ان العادة لم
تجر بالشرب بالليل فاذا شرب فيه فلا محالة ان ذلك الشرب يحدث
فى الهضم فجاجة وفسادا كحال الماء البارد اذا صب فى قدر
فيها طعام وهو يغلى على النار‎

Inna Abuqrāt̤a lam yaʾẕan li-man daʿat-hu shahwatu-hu ilā ʾsh-shurbi bi-ʾl-laili an yashraba aw
lā yashraba lakinna-hu in shariba wa nāma baʿda shurbi-hi faʾinna-hu ajwadu min an lā
yanāma wa ẕālika liʾanna ʾn-nauma yatadā­raku ẓarara ʾsh-shurbi wa ẕālika anna ʾl-ʿādata lam
tajri bi-ʾsh-shurbi bi-ʾl-laili fa ʾiẕā shariba fī-hi fa-lā maḥālata anna ẕālika ʾsh-shurba yuḥdis̤u
fī ʾl-haẓmi fajājatan wa fasādan ka-ḥāli ʾl-māʾi ʾl-bāridi iẕā ṣubba fī qadrin
fī-hā t̤aʿāmun wa huwa yag͟hlī ʿala ʾn-nāri.

“Hippocrates neither allows nor forbids a man, who has a desire to drink at night-time,
to satisfy his desire. If, however, he drinks, and sleeps after drinking, it is better
than not to sleep, this being so because sleep counteracts, in this case, the evil effect of drinking;
for it is not customary to drink at night-time, and if one does so, this will of necessity produce
a disturbance and derangement in the digestion, just as if cold water were poured into a vessel
containing food that is being boiled.”

These two fragments scarcely call forth any further remark, except that in the last both forms of the Tashdīd are employed, the ordinary form even more frequently than the Maghrebian; for the latter occurs only twice, in bi-ʾsh-shurbi, which is the second word in the fourth line, and in ash-shurba, which is the last word but one in the same line. Moreover, it will be useful to notice the peculiar shape which the letters د‎ (d) and ذ‎ (ẕ) take in the Mag͟hrib character, as in the words ajwadu towards the end of the second line, and yaʾẕan near the beginning of the first.

Dismissing the Mag͟hrib-Berber style of Arabic writing, with its numerous local varieties, as less interesting for the English reader, we now turn to the Oriental style, where we meet again with a bipartition, viz. into the Eastern Nask͟hī, as it is written in Arabia itself, Egypt, and Syria, and the T̤aʿlīq, current in Persia, India, and Central Asia.

No. 7 is a specimen of the Nask͟hī in the more limited sense of the word, meaning the style generally employed in manuscripts, and derived from nask͟h or nusk͟hah, “copy.”

قال يا آدم انبئهم باسمائهم فلما انباهم باسمائهم قال الم اقل لكم‎

انى اعلم غيب السموات والارض واعلم ما تبدون‎

وما كنتم تكتمون * واذ قلنا للملائكت اسجدوا‎

Qāla yā Ādamu ʾnbiʾ-him bi-asmāʾi-him fa­lammā anbaʾa-hum bi-ʾasmāʾi-him qāla alam aqul la-kum

Annī aʿlamu g͟haiba ʾs-samawāti wa ʾl-arẓi wa aʿlamu mā tabdūna

Wa mā kuntum taktumūna. Wa iẕ qulnā li-ʾl-malāʾi-kati ʾsjudū.

“He said: ‘O Adam, inform them of their names,’ and when he had informed them of their names, He said: ‘Did I not say to you, That I know the hidden things of the heavens and of the earth, and know what ye bring to light, And what ye hide?’ And when we said to the angels: ‘Bow down’.…”

(Sūrah ii. 31, 32.)

From this ordinary Nask͟hī several more ornate manuscript styles are derived, as the Rīḥānī, Yāqūtī, and S̤ulus̤. They are distinguished principally by the relative proportions of the characters; and in the S̤ulus̤ in particular, of which we give a specimen under No. 8, the letters are three times the size of the ordinary Nask͟hī, while the Rīḥānī and Yāqūtī show intermediate proportions between the two.

كنت نبيا والادم بين الماء والطين‎

Kuntu nabīyan wa ʾl-adamu baina ʾl-māʾi wa ʾt̤-t̤īni.

“I was a prophet, when man was yet a mixture of water and clay.”

It will be observed that beneath the م‎ (m) of the words الادم‎ (al-adamu) and الماء‎ (al-māʾi), in the S̤ulus̤ fragment, the letter is written a second time in a smaller character, and that, moreover, in the word الادم‎ it is surmounted by the sign Mag͟hrib shadda, which in Mag͟hrib writing, as we have seen, generally represents the Tashdīd. This is done in the above-mentioned ornate styles, especially with those letters which admit of diacritical points, viz. ح‎, د‎, ر‎, س‎, ص‎, ط‎, ع‎, &c. To indicate that no such diacritical point is intended, the sign Mag͟hrib shadda is placed on the top of the letter, or to make still surer of preventing a mistake, the letter itself is repeated in a minute shape at the bottom. Only the letter ه‎ (h), as distinguished from ة‎ (t), is, in this case, written above the line, because it frequently occurs as abbreviation of هو‎ huwa, “He,” or الله‎ Allāh, “God,” and it would therefore be considered irreverential towards the Deity to write it beneath the other letters. As a feature common to this division of the Eastern Arabic manuscript style, we lastly point out the inclination of the characters from the left to the right, in contradistinction both to the Mag͟hrib and T̤aʿlīq writing, where the letters are traced perpendicularly, or even with a slight bend from the right to the left.

Two other deviations from the pure Nask͟hī style are the Jarī and Dīwānī, officially employed in Turkey, and exhibited in the specimen No. 9:—

The Jarī fragment in the upper division is a facsimile of the formula which accompanies the seal of the Sultān, and runs as follows:—

نشان شريف عاليشان سامى مكان وطغراى غراى جهان اراى ستان خاقان نفذ بالعون الربانى والصون الصمدانى حكمى اولدر كه‎

Nishāni sharīfi ʿālīshān sāmī makān wa tug͟hrāʾī g͟harrāʾī jihān arāʾī sitāni k͟hāqān nufiẕa bi ʾl-ʿaun ar-rabbānī wa ʾṣ-ṣaun aṣ ṣamadānī ḥukmī oldur ki.…

“This is the noble, exalted, brilliant sign-manual, the world-illuminating and adorning cipher of the K͟hāqān (may it be made efficient by the aid of the Lord and the protection of the Eternal). His order is that, etc.”

The beauty of this style is considered to consist in its being written either diagonally from the top to the bottom of the page, or ascending elliptically from the bottom to the top.

The Dīwānī style, of which the lower division gives an example, is used in the official correspondence of the Turkish administration. The final letters, and even words, are placed on the top of one another, and in its more intricate varieties the letters run together in a fanciful manner, which renders the decipherment of this writing frequently very difficult.

Finally, we present in No. 10 a specimen of the Persian T̤aʿlīq writing:—

همين چشم دارم ز خوانندگان كه نامم به نيكو برند بر زبان‎

Hamīn chashmi dāram zi k͟hwānandagān Ki nāmam ba nīkū barand bar zabān.

“Such hope I cherish that in minstrel’s lay, With right fair fame my name will live for aye!”

(Firdausī.)

From this style of writing the Shikastah is derived, and bears the same relation to it which the Dīwānī bears to Nask͟hī. While in general preserving the peculiar outline of the T̤aʿlīq, it superposes finals and words, and joins letters in a similar way to the Dīwānī, with which, however, it contrasts favourably by a far more elegant and graceful delineation of the characters.

It remains now only to add a few words on the writing materials which the Arabs, and Orientals in general, make use of. From the nature of the character and from the direction of the writing from the right to the left, it will be easily understood that our quill and steel pens would answer the purpose rather indifferently. The bolder stroke requires a broader nib, and, at the same time, the edges of the writing instrument should be smooth enough to glide with ease over the paper, so as to enable the hand to give that fine swing and swell to the curved lines, which form one of the chief beauties of the Arabic writing. These conditions are admirably fulfilled by the qalam or reed pen. For the same reasons their ink is richer and their paper more glossy than those which we employ ourselves. The best ink is said to be made of lamp-black and vinegar or verjuice, to which red ochre is added, well beaten up and mixed with yellow arsenic and camphor. The paper, before being used for writing, is submitted to the action of the press, or made smooth by placing it on a well-levelled board of chestnut wood, and polishing it with an egg of crystal of about half a pound’s weight.

We cannot here enter into further particulars on the subject. The reader who might feel interested in it, will find some curious details in a short poem by Abū ʾl-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Bauwāb, which De Sacy has published and translated in his Chrestomathie. As mentioned before, this calligraphist was one of the greatest masters of his art, so much so that when he died, A.H. 413 or 423, the following lines were written in his praise:—

“Thy loss was felt by the writers of former times, and each successive day justifies their grief. The ink-bottles are therefore black with sorrow, and the pens are rent through affliction.”

Ibn K͟hallikān, from whom we quote, finds these verses very fine. Without disparaging his taste, we can happily assure our readers that Ibn al-Bauwāb’s verses are finer. With regard to the qalam, however, he rather mystifies us on the very point which would be most interesting, namely, the manner in which the nib should be cut or made. He says:—

“Give your whole attention to the making of your nib, for on this, verily, all else depends.

“But do not flatter yourself that I am going to reveal this secret; it is a secret which I guard with a miser’s jealousy.

“All that I will tell is, that you must observe the golden mean between a too much rounded and too much pointed form.”

Disappointed as we are at this oracular saying, we will condone him for his niggardly reticence on account of his final lines, with which we will also terminate our article:—

“Let your hand devote its fingers to writing only useful things that you will leave behind you on quitting this abode of illusion;

“For man will find, when the book of his actions will be unrolled before him, all that he has done during the days of his life.”