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

THE LINGUISTIC BACKGROUND TO THE QUR’AN
18 R.W. Daniel, “P. Petra Inv. 10 and its Arabic,” Atti del XXII Congresso Internazionale
di Papirologia, Florence: Istituto papirologico G. Vitelli, 2001, 1, 331–41 (esp. 338–9:
“in spite of the fact that the Petra papyri are written in Greek...the toponyms show that
society at large spoke Arabic”).
19 But it was most likely a very polyglot region. Its diversity is brought out by A. Negev,
Personal Names in the Nabatean Realm, Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1991, 2
(“342 personal names occur only in North Arabia, 327 only in Sinai, 218 only in
Edom/Moab, and 117 only in the Hawran”); M.C.A. Macdonald, “Languages, scripts
and the uses of writing among the Nabataeans,” in G. Markoe (ed.), Petra
Rediscovered: lost city of the Nabataeans, New York: Abrams, 2003, 37–56.
20 And Figure 9 would seem to be by one ‘Amr the king (see later).
21 It is not certain; M. Zwettler, “Imra’alqays, son of ‘Amr, king of...?” in M. Mir (ed.),
The Literary Heritage of Classical Islam, Princeton: Darwin, 1993, 3–37, argues that
‘Arab refers here to a geographical area, not a people. Generally, it refers to the area
around Hatra in modern N.W. Iraq, but it is also occasionally used of Roman Arabia
(e.g. J. Parisot, “Book of the Laws of Countries,” Patrologia Syriaca 1, 1894, 602, 25:
“Yesterday the Romans occupied ‘Arab and abrogated all the previous laws”).
22 See my “Epigraphy and the emergence of Arab identity,” in P. Sijpesteijn et al. (eds),
From al-Andalus to Khurasan: Documents from the Medieval Muslim World, Leiden:
Brill, 2006. Note, for example, the Ghassanid phylarch Abu Karib’s involvement in the
settlement of a dispute between two church deacons concerning the sale of a vineyard
(M. Kaimio, “P. Petra inv. 83: a Settlement of Dispute,” Atti del XXII Congresso
Internazionale di Papirologia, 2, 719–24).
23 E. Littmann, Semitic Inscriptions. Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to
Syria, Leiden: Brill, 1914–49, 4A.41.
24 H. Humbach and P.O. Skjaervo, The Sassanian inscription of Paikuli 3.1, Wiesbaden:
Reichert, 1983, 92.
25 W. Müller, “Eine sabäische Gesandtschaft in Ktesiphon und Seleukia,” Neue
Ephemeris für Semitische Epigraphik 2, 1974, 155–65.
26 See I. Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs, Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1984–
Present, 1, 349–66 (on Hisham al-Kalbi’s writings about the pre-Islamic kings”;
K. Athamina, “The tribal kings in pre-Islamic Arabia,” al-Qantara 19, 1998, 19–37;
Retsö, The Arabs in Antiquity, 473–85.
27 See, for example, W. Müller, “Ergebnisse neuer epigraphischer Forschungen im
Jemen,” ZDMG suppl. 3, 1977, 732, on a mid-third-century inscription whose author
had been sent on a mission “to the kings of the tribes (ash‘b) of Ghassan, al-Asd, Nizar,
and Madhhij,” and C. Robin and I. Gajda, “L’inscription de Wadi ‘Abadan,” Raydan 6,
1994, 113–37, on Himyarite campaigns against Murad, Iyad, Ma‘add, and ‘Abd
al-Qays to the northeast of Mecca “between the land of Nizar and the land of Ghassan”
(in the Himyarite year 470 = 360 CE). On these tribes in the Muslim sources see the
relevant entries in EI 2 .
28 The only exception is Tayyi’, which appears as a self-designation in S. Campetti and
E. Borzatti von Löwenstern, L’altra umanità. Origini Storia e arte dei nomadi della
tenda nera, Florence: Sansoni, 1983, 16, and as a designation of others in Corpus
Inscriptionum Semiticarum 5.1, Paris, 1950, no. 2795; E. Littmann, Safaitic inscriptions,
Leiden: Brill, 1943, 236; V. Clark, A Study of New Safaitic Inscriptions from
Jordan, PhD thesis, Melbourne, 1979, 1004. It features in Syriac literary sources, as
Tayyayê, from the third century CE onward.
29 In Inscriptions grecs de la Syrie, no. 2110, for example, Flavius Seos and his son,
builders of a house, refer to the reign of Mundhir. Similarly, an event in John Moschus’
Pratum Spirituale is dated to “when Nu‘man (Names), the phylarch of the Saracens,
was making raids” (Patrologia Graeca, J.P. Migne (ed.), 87.3, 3024 = ch. 155) and
Ms. BM Syriac 585 of the monastery of Natpha near Tadmur (Palmyra) is dated to
67