The Qur'an in its historical context (pdf - Islam and Christian-Muslim ...

ROBERT HOYLAND
of the Christians martyred at Najran in the 520s. 34 So though there was no
center of Syriac Christianity in the Hijaz, there certainly were Syriac Christian
lines of communication passing through it.
Third, the earliest dated Arabic text in Arabic script is that from Zebed
(though it is out on a limb, as all other pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions are from the
Nabataean sphere of influence, see earlier), which certainly does belong to
the Syriac Christian sphere of influence. The next two are from the Damascus
area (Jabal Says and Harran), from which some Syriac literary material survives,
though no Syriac inscriptions. However, it is also true that the Arab tribes
allied to Rome operated in these areas (thus the Ghassanids had a camp at
Jabiya to the southwest of Damascus and residences in Damascus itself 35 ), so
the location of the pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions could be used in support of
either argument.
Arab tribes and Christian missionaries
Indeed, one could possibly combine the two arguments, for most of the Arab
tribes allied to Rome posed as defenders and patrons of the Syriac Christian
church to some degree. 36 This connection is made by the Muslim tradition, which
has men from the Christian Arab tribe of Tayyi’ derive the Arabic script from the
suryani one and pass it on to Arab tribes at Hira and Dumat al-Jandal, 37 and also
by a mid-sixth century Syriac manuscript (BM syr. 14602) containing the
signatures of the priests and abbots of the eparchy of Arabia (‘rby’). This latter
document is very interesting in that the churches and monasteries to which these
clergymen are attached are found not only in the Byzantine administrative
province of Arabia with its capital at Bostra, but also portions of Phoenicia
Libanensis, especially Damascene. In the words of Nöldeke: “Dies lässt sich
nur so erklären, dass diese monophysitische Kirchenprovinz ‘Arabia’ so weit
gerechnet wurde, wie die Macht der Ghassânischen Phylarchen ging;” 38 that is,
ecclesiastical “Arabia” was pretty much coterminous with the Ghassanid sphere
of authority.
The epigraphic evidence
However, though it might be historically possible that Syriac would have formed the
basis of the Arabic script, the surviving epigraphic evidence suggests otherwise.
There are no Arabic inscriptions written in the Syriac script whereas there are quite
a number of them written in Nabataean Aramaic script. A detailed examination of
the change in letter forms from Nabataean Aramaic to Arabic has already been done
in a study by Healey, in which he demonstrated how important Nabataean cursive
(used for documents) was for the formation of the Arabic script. All I would like to
add is a note about the discovery, since Healey wrote, of a number of graffiti from
N.W. Arabia that provide clear examples of the Nabataean Aramaic script in transition.
39 In particular, they answer the objection of the only proponent for the Syriac
60