The first concern of Islamic scholars was to codify the texts with which they worked. Even though oral transmission continued to remain an essential component of Islamic culture, the risk of major discrepancies in the transmission became too large to ignore. The need for an authoritative text was imperative above all in the case of the Revealed Book. Clearly, the central government had a major stake in the acceptance of a uniform Book throughout the empire as the basis for all religious and political activities.

The codification of the Qur’aan was a crucial moment in the development of a written standard for the Arabic language. On a practical level, the writing-down of the text involved all kinds of decisions concerning the orthography of the Arabic script and the elaboration of a number of conventions to make writing less ambiguous and more manageable than it had been in the Jaahiliyya . We have seen above (Chapter 3) that writing was not unknown in the peninsula in the pre-Islamic period. But, for religious reasons, early Islamic sources emphasised, perhaps even exaggerated, the illiteracy of the Prophet and, by extension, of the entire Jahilee society. The Prophet had been an ‘ummee, someone who could not read nor write, and this was what made the revelation of the Qur’aan and his recitation of the text a miracle.

There are clear indications that as early as the sixth century writing was fairly common in the urban centres of the peninsula, in Mecca and to a lesser degree in Medina. In the commercial society that was Mecca, businessmen must have had at their disposal various means of recording their transactions. There are references to treaties being written down and preserved in the Ka’ba in Mecca. Even the raawees, the transmitters of poetry, sometimes relied on written notes, although they recited the poems entrusted to them orally. In the Qur’aan, we find the reflection of a society in which writing for commercial purposes was well established. In the second sura we find, for instance, detailed stipulations on the settlement of debts that include the exact writing-down of the terms (Q2/282):

O you believers, when you take a loan among you for a certain period of time, write it down and let a scribe write it down fairly between you, and let no scribe refuse to write as God has taught him and let him write and the creditor dictate ( yaa ‘ayyuhaa lla th eena ‘aamanoo ‘i th aa tadaayantum bi-daynin ‘ilaa ‘ajalin musamman fa-ktuboohu wa-l-yaktub baynakum kaatibun bi-l-’adli wa-laa ya’ba kaatibun ‘an yaktuba kamaa ‘allamahu llaahu fa-l-yaktub wa-l-yumlili lla th ee ‘alayhi l- Haqqu )

In the biography of the Prophet, there are many references to his using scribes for his correspondence with the Arab tribes and for the writing of treaties, for instance the famous treaty with the settlements in North Arabia. This treaty which was signed in the course of the expedition to Tabook in year 9 of the Hijra, laid down for the first time the relations between Muslims and people of other religions. In the account preserved by the historians, the scribe and the witnesses are mentioned, as well as the fact that the Prophet signed it with his fingernail (cf. al-Waaqidee, Maghaazee III, I,025ff.). This last detail is probably added to underscore the fact that the Prophet himself could not write.

The Prophet may well have been illiterate himself, but there were scribes on whom he could rely, just as his fellow Meccans used scribes in the management of their affairs. In the beginning, the revelation consisted of short messages which the Prophet brought to the believers and which could easily be committed to memory. But very soon, the messages grew longer and longer, and it became essential to have a written aid to memory, while the recitation of the text continued to take place orally. Tradition has preserved the names of several scribes to whom Muhammad dictated the messages, chief among them being Zayd ibn Thaabit (d. 45/665). The text of the Qur’aan itself documents this shift from recitation to collected text. The current term qur’aan in the early suras (possibly borrowed from Syriac qeryaanaa ‘recitation’ is replaced increasingly often in the later suras with the term kitaab ‘book’.

Both Islamic tradition and Western scholars agree that there was no complete collection of the revelation during the Prophet’s lifetime, but there were fragments of all kinds of material, on which parts of the messages were recorded. The actual collection of all these fragments took place after the death of the Prophet. According to the tradition, the third caliph, ‘Uthmaan (r. 25/644-35/656), ordered the establishment of an authoritative codex of the Qur’aan . He entrusted this edition to Muhammad’s scribe Zayd, who had already been involved in the recording of the text during the Prophet’s lifetime. When the work was finished, the codex was sent to the important centres of the Islamic empire, where it was to replace all existing alternative readings. Acceptance of this text, usually called al-mu S Haf, was slow, and non-canonical variants continued to be transmitted; but eventually, by the end of the second century of the Hijra, the ‘Uthmaanic text had become the basis for religious teaching and recitation almost everywhere. In the first grammatical treatise of Arabic, Seebawayhi’s (d. 177/793) Kitaab, all deviations from the consonantal text of the codex are rejected and only some divergence in the vocalisation of the text is allowed. Around the variant readings ( qiraa’aat ), a massive literature arose which at the same time contributed to the linguistic study of the text and the language of the Qur’aan .

Apart from the problems of unification encountered during the codification of the text, the main problem confronting Zayd ibn Thaabit and his committee of text-editors was the ambiguity of the Arabic script. The type of script which the Meccan traders had at their disposal was still a primitive one. Basically, there were two problems connected with this primitive form of the Arabic alphabet. In the first place, there were as yet no diacritic dots to distinguish between certain phonemes, and many of the letters of the alphabet indicated two or even more phonemes, in the case of seen/sheen, Saad/ Daad, baa’/taa’/tha’/noon/yaa’, faa’/qaaf, daal/ th aal, raa’/zaay, Taa’/ D aa’ . This was the heritage of the Nabataean script that had been the model for the earliest form of Arabic script and that did not contain all of the Arabic phonemes. The second problem was connected with a general trait of all Semitic scripts, namely the fact that these scripts do not indicate the short vowels. In the case of the Nabataean model, even many of the long vowels were written defectively (cf. above, p. 30). The former problem may already have been solved in pre-Islamic times. There are some indications that, very early on, scribes had used diacritic dots to distinguish between homographs. They may have borrowed this device from a Syriac model, since in the Syriac script dots are used to distinguish between allophonic variants of phonemes. According to some scholars, there are even examples of the use of dots in the Nabataean Script.

The notation of the short vowels was an altogether more complicated problem. During the first century of Islam, when people started to collect and record the fragments of the Qur’aanic revelation, the need for a uniform and unambiguous system for the short vowels made itself felt. Various grammarians, among them the legendary ‘inventor’ of grammar, ‘Aboo, l-’Aswad ad-Du’alee (d. 69/688?), are credited with the introduction of a system of (coloured) dots below and above the letters to indicate the three short vowels. In the version of the tradition that is reported by Ibn al-’Anbaaree, ‘Aboo l-’Aswad gives a scribe the following instruction:

When I open my lips, put one dot above the letter, and when I press them together put a dot next to the letter, and when I draw them apart put a dot beneath the letter, and when I make a humming sound after one of these vowels, put two dots. ( fa-’i th aa fata Htu shafatayya fa-nqu Twaa Hidatan fawqa l- Harf, wa-’i th aa Damamtuhumaa fa-j’al an-nuq Ta ‘ilaa jaanibi l- Harf wa-’i th aa kasartuhumaa fa-j’al an-nuq Ta min ‘asfalihi, fa’i th aa ‘atba’tu shay’an min haa th ihi l- Harakaat ghunnatan fa-nqu Tnuq Tatayn ; Ibn al-’Anbaaree, Nuzha, ed. Attia Amer, Stockholm, 1963, pp. 67)

In this story, the origin of the dot notation of the three vowels and the nunation is ascribed to ‘Aboo l-’Aswad, and the names of the vowels ( fat Ha, Damma, kasra ) are connected with their articulation. We know from the Islamic sources that at first there was considerable opposition to the use of vowel dots in Qur’aanic manuscripts, and as a matter of fact this system is absent in the oldest manuscripts in Koofic script as well as in the inscriptions. In some manuscripts, the dots have been added by a later hand.

Two other innovations attributed to ‘Aboo l’Aswad concern the notation of the hamza (glottal stop) and the shadda (gemination). Both signs are absent in the Nabataean script. We have seen in Chapter 4 (p. 42) that in the Hijaaz the hamza had probably disappeared, but in the variety of the language in which the Qur’aan was revealed and the pre-Islamic poems were composed, the hamza was pronounced. Because of the prestige of the language of poetry and the Qur’aan, the Hijaazee scribes had to devise a way of recording the glottal stop. Since in their own speech the hamza had been replaced in many cases by a long vowel, they spelled words containing a hamza with a long vowel, indicated by a semiconsonant w, y or ‘alif . According to the tradition, ‘Aboo l-‘Aswad improved this system by using a small letter ‘ayn above the semi-consonant; this ‘ayn indicated the presence of a guttural sound, namely the glottal stop. The gemination of a consonant was noted by a diacritic dot.

A substantial improvement in the system of short-vowel notation is usually attributed to the first lexicographer of the Arabic language, al-Khaleel ibn ‘A Hmad (d. 175/791). He replaced the system of dots with specific shapes for the three short vowels, a small waaw for the vowel u, a small ‘alif for the vowel a, and a (part of a) small yaa’ for the vowel i. He also changed the sign for the shadda, using a small seen (short for shadeed ‘geminated’ instead. When a single consonant was intended, a small khaa’ (short for khaafeef ‘light’ could be used. Originally, this system had been devised for writing down poetry, which also went through a period of codification, but gradually it spread to Qur’aanic manuscripts written in cursive script as well. It was considerably less ambiguous than the old system, in which the dots had to perform various functions.

With al-Khaleel’s reform, the system of Arabic orthography was almost completed and, apart from a very few additional signs, it has remained essentially the same ever since. The frequency of diacritic dots and vowel signs varies considerably, however, and alongside fully-vowelled manuscripts one finds texts in which even the diacritic dots are left out. After the establishment of the orthography, a large variety of writing styles were developed, each with its own special domains. Apart from the epigraphic script (called Koofic), which was also used in early Qur’aanic manuscripts, a cursive script was developed for use in the chancellery, after ‘Abd al-Malik’s reform (cf. below). The script itself became an essential component of Islamic art. Because of the general aversion to pictorial art, calligraphy was one of the most important means of decoration. This development of Arabic script will not be dealt with here.

Having an orthography is one thing, but elaborating a standardised language for official―commercial and administrative―purposes is another. As far as we know, the Meccan traders did not have any archives, and we must assume that they did not have at their disposal an elaborate legal terminology or conventions for book-keeping, either. In the first period of the establishment of the Islamic empire, the government, therefore, opted to use Greek-speaking clerks in Syria and Egypt and Persian-speaking clerks in the East for purposes of administration and taxation. In the sources, the shift from Greek to Arabic in the tax register ( deewaan ) is traditionally connected with the name of the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik. According to this story, the caliph ordered the clerks to shift to Arabic in the year 81/700, allegedly because one of the Greek clerks was caught urinating in an inkwell (al-Balaa th uree, Futoo H 196-7). Whatever the truth of that story, the shift is a sign of the growing self-confidence of the Arabs and their increased familiarity with a practical writing system.

From The Arabic Language
© 1997 Kees Versteegh
Used by permission of the Edinburgh University Press.