Arabic Epigraphy

English Translation of "Arabe préislamique, arabe coranique, arabe classique : un continuum ?", dans Karl-Heinz Ohlig & Gerd-Rüdiger Puin (Hrsg) Die dunklen Anfänge. Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam, p. 248-265. Berlin : Verlag Hans Schiler, 2005.

My talk today focuses on a specific text, an inscription reading barakat Muḥammad, or 'the blessing of Muḥammad’, and always following the square Kufic format. Contrary to their absence in scholarship on Islamic art and epigraphy, such barakat Muḥammad squares are rather widespread in Morocco. In the old cities of Fez, Meknes, Marrakesh, Essaouira and elsewhere, observant visitors may spot them on mosques, minarets, shrines, city gates, fountains, and other buildings including a giant sculpture in the middle of a roundabout. As I hope to demonstrate, these inscriptions might tell us something about how their commissioners intended to govern, perhaps not the whole world, but at least the state of Morocco. Before tracing the history of this specific inscription in the second part of my talk, I would first like to summarise a few interrelated points about texts, images, and icons more broadly in Islamic art. This is likely to be familiar to some of you, though perhaps not useless to remind us of some points that will then help to contextualise the barakat Muḥammad inscriptions. I should clarify beforehand that whatever I say here is little more than a proposal, a suggestion of how to incorporate a phenomenon specific to Morocco into the broader discourse pertaining to Islamic texts, images, and icons. To that end, I first intend to present a few brief notes on how texts may function as images and even as icons.

Les fouilles archeologiques et les prospections conduites a Ghazni ont permis de collecter une grande quantite de documents epigraphiques. Parmi ceux-ci, un corpus inedit d’inscriptions funeraires en langue arabe, gravees sur des tombeaux en marbre, fait l’objet de cette etude qui se base sur un fonds photographique unique, garde dans les archives de la Mission Archeologique italienne en Afghanistan (1957-1978). Ces tombeaux, dates entre le VIIIe/XVe et le XIIe/XVIIIe siecle, temoignent d’une nouvelle phase d’activite de la ville apres la periode d’abandon dans laquelle elle fut plongee au VIIe/XIIIe siecle, suite a l’invasion des hordes mongoles. A cette epoque, Ghazni perd a jamais son role politique et culturel mais la ville continue a jouir d’une reputation de sacralite assuree par la presence de mausolees et de tombeaux venerables des souverains ghaznevides et des personnages renommes de l’epoque qui y furent enterres. Leurs tombeaux devinrent bientot des lieux de devotion popu...

Note épigraphique publiée en annexe de l'article de F. Imbert
"Graffiti arabes de Cnide et de Kos : premières traces épigraphiques de la conquête musulmane en mer Egée"
Constructing the Seventh Century, Travaux et Mémoires XVII, 2013, éd. Constantin Zuckerman, 2013

Madinat al-Zabm' en las fuentes árabu del occidente i¡láttica Pág. 53 BRUNA SORAVIA Une bistaire de la f.rna. Aurariré er lígitirnirí dan: le tuIutpaltis d'Ibn Hayan Pág. 81 MANIIELA MARÍN A/tos fancionarios para e/ ca/ifa: jueces 1 otras cargos de la Adntinisnación cle'Al¡d al-Rabntan III Pá9.97 M.' ANTONIA MARTÍNEZ NÚÑEZ. MANUEL ACIÉN ATMANSA La epi¡1rafra de Madinar al-Zabra' Pá9. I07 SOLANGE ORY L' ep i grap b i e umayy ade s yapa / e s t i n i enne Pás.159 CARMEN BARCETÓ El cíJin andalusi de "praaincias" durante el Califato (3a0_403t9j2_10j3) pá9. t73 ANTONTO VALLEJO TRTANO, ALBERTO MONTEJO CÓRDOBA, ANDRÉS GARCÍA CORTÉS Resa/tados preliminares de /a interaenciín art¡aeo/ígica en /a "Ca:a de Ya'far" 1 en el ecliJicia cle "Patio cle los Pilaru" de X[adinat al-Zahra' Pá9. I99 PATRICE CRESSIER, MOURAD RAMMAH S¿bra al-A4ansariya : [Jne autre aille caltfale Pág.241 JUAN F. MURILLO REDONDO, MARÍA TERESA CASAL GARCÍA, ELENA CASTRO DEL RÍO Madinat Qar¡aba. Aproxinaciín al procesa de forntaciín de la ciudad emiral 1 califal a patir de la información arquealógica Pág. 217 VICENTE SALVATIERRA La instauraciín clel Califato en el AIra Gaadalqaiuir Pá5. 291 PEDRO GURRIARÁN DAZA Hacia una canstrucción del poder. Las prácticas edi/icias en la periferia andalusi duranre el Califaro Pág. 297 ALBERTO CANTO GARCÍA El dinar en al-Andalas en el sigla X Pás.327 CAROLINA DOMÉNECH BELDA La rnaneda farimí 1 sa relaciín con al-Andalus Pág. 339 PATRICE CRESSIER Histarias de capiteles: ¿Hubo talleres califales pratincialesi' Pá9. 751 TILO ULBERT Resafa en Siria. Una residencia califal de los últimrts onteyas en )riente Pá9. 377

finalist for the 2019 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award, which "honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in the English language" (College Art Association).

The Nasrid builders of the Alhambra – the best-preserved medieval Muslim palatial city – were so exacting that some of their work could not be fully explained until the invention of fractal geometry. Their design principles have been obscured, however, by the loss of all archival material. This book resolves that impasse by investigating the neglected, interdisciplinary contexts of medieval poetics and optics and through comparative study of Islamic court ceremonials. This reframing enables the reconstruction of the underlying, integrated aesthetic, focusing on the harmonious interrelationship between diverse artistic media – architecture, poetry and textiles – in the experience of the beholder, resulting in a new understanding of the Alhambra.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Series Editor's Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Colour, Design and Medieval Optics
Chapter 2. Addressing the Beholder: The Work of Poetic Inscriptions
Chapter 3. Qalahurra of Yusuf I: A Case Study of a Tower-Palace
Chapter 4. "Textile Architecture" in the Cuarto Dorado
Chapter 5. Integrating Aesthetic and Politics: The Mawlid Celebration in the Alhambra
Appendix
Bibliography
Illustration Acknowledgments
Indices
Hardback / Spring 2018 / 344 pages / 94 colour illustrations / ISBN 9781474416504 /
Published by Edinburgh University Press (distributed by Oxford University Press in the Americas) in the Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art series, edited by Robert Hillenbrand.

                    Reviews: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/reframing-the-alhambra-9781474416504?lang=en&cc=us#

NB This is a pre-publication version of the article submitted to Fred Donner & Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee (eds.), Scripts and Scripture: Writing and Religion in Arabia, 500–700 CE. Chicago: Oriental Institute. The published version is available on my academia.edu site as well.

This article discusses early Islamic identity based on Arabic inscriptions and other contemporary evidence, which is analyzed with the help of the social identity theory. It will be argued that this evidence tallies with Fred Donner’s hypothesis of the somewhat late articulation of markedly Islamic identity. Circa one hundred published Arabic inscriptions dated to the 640s–740s CE are collected in the Appendix and form the main set of evidence used in the article. The epigraphic material is compared with other material evidence as well as the Qurʾān. It is argued that Arabic inscriptions form an important, but still underused, corpus for the study of early Islamic history. This is because people who were outside the scholarly and political elite produced much of the epigraphic corpus; Arabic inscriptions, then, proffer information for researching aspects of social history. According to the epigraphic corpus, distinctly Islamic identity began to be articulated in the first decades of the eighth century CE, with an emphasis on specific rituals and the Prophet, as well as with the appearance of the words “Muslims” and “Islam” as references to the religious group.

Doucments on Swiss Epigraphist and Researcher Max van Berchem

MAX VAN BERCHEM PASSPORT (1895) AND DOCUMENTS
Max van Berchem’s travel passport from 1895 is preserved in Max van Berchem foundation archives in Geneva. Some of Max van Berchem’s documents concerning his travel to Jerusalem are preserved
in Ottoman Archives in Istanbul. Hereunder a selection of this documents in original and with transcription transcribed and commented by Mehmet Tütüncü. with a short Biography by Moshe Sharon.

Le Coran, nouvelles approches (éd. M. Azaiez et S. Mervin),  CNRS éditions, Paris, 2013, p. 99-124

"Il y a quelques années, nous avons entrepris une recherche sur les graffiti arabes , une recherche longue et passionnante dont nous pressentons qu'elle pourra intéresser non seulement les épigraphistes, mais aussi les historiens, sociologues des religions ou linguistes travaillant sur les deux premiers siècles de l'Hégire dans le contexte d'émergence de l'islam. En effet, en 1998, nous avions posé les premiers jalons d'une réflexion se fondant sur l'analyse des graffiti de Jordanie, réflexion à travers laquelle nous devinions la matière d'une orientation nouvelle en épigraphie arabe. Lors de cette première phase d'étude, nous avions limité notre approche à un nombre restreint de graffiti que nous avions analysés très globalement. La finalité était alors de montrer l'importance et la nécessité de mêler d'avantage l'épigraphie aux études sur le Coran, ces dernières ne devant plus se satisfaire des seuls travaux fondés sur la critique textuelle, religieuse, littéraire ou historique visant à mieux cerner le statut de l'écriture coranique. Le Coran, s'il demeure le fondement de la croyance des musulmans dans leur ensemble, n'en demeure pas moins un texte s'inscrivant dans un moment de l'histoire et en un lieu géographique connu des hommes : selon la tradition arabo musulmane, il fut l'objet d'une révélation divine durant le premier quart du VII e siècle de notre ère en Arabie occidentale. Cependant, il peut être soumis à une analyse visant à reconstituer les grandes étapes de son élaboration matérielle sans que celle-ci doive obligatoirement s'appuyer sur les sources historiographiques et hagiographiques islamiques dont on sait qu'elles sont tardives par rapport aux événements [...].
il peut aussi, au titre de la matérialité, s'étudier sur le terrain : sur les murs des monuments antiques ou arabes, sur les rochers le long des pistes, dans les steppes où les Arabes apposèrent librement des inscriptions. Ces travaux de terrain, de longues prospections visant à rassembler les graffiti dits " coraniques " , permettent de rappeler que le Coran n'est pas un corpus fermé et qu'au-delà de sa forme de prédilection-le livre-il peut être aussi voix (la psalmodie), art (la calligraphie) et donc pierre ! Ainsi, les graffiti gravés sur des rochers, des parois montagneuses ou monumentales, sont des textes libres et privés, laissés par des Arabes anonymes et jamais passés au crible de la censure linguistique, politique ou religieuse..."

The seventh century CE in the Near East was an era characterized by major political transition and cultural change, representing a historical epoch that witnessed the decline of the region’s long-standing major political institutions alongside the emergence of a powerful Arab Caliphate that supplanted both the offices of the Byzantine Emperor and the Persian, Sasanid Shah in most or all of the region. 

This Arab Caliphate, first based out of the Hejaz, then out of Syria-Palestine with the rise of the Umayyads (r. 661-750 CE), the first hereditary dynasty of the Islamic period, embarked on a campaign of Arab and Muslim hegemony across three continents within the course of a century.

Some of the Umayyad’s successes in terms of both the acquisition of and projection of power were not only the result of an organized and determined military and a steady stream of income from its territorial acquisitions, but also due to their ability to construct institutions and bureaucratic machinery that allowed them to create and control narratives through the production of inscribed material culture. Through various administrative and institutional mechanisms, the Umayyad caliphs were able to universalize the Arabic language and script and, by extension, promote a doctrinal form of Islam, both of which were accelerated by the development and expansion of their state and which played a critical role in the attempt to validate their political claims.

Most importantly, an Umayyad monopoly on the cursive Arabic script, an orthography initially used by Christian missionaries in the Levant and Arabia in the sixth century, led to its appropriation for administrative uses by the Muslims which was then wielded as a source of political capital. The weaponization of the Arabic orthography enabled the Umayyads to decisively institute and enforce a new linguistic, cultural, religious and political order over the Near East in the era of Late Antiquity.  The extant inscribed material culture implicates the Umayyads as graphophiles, obsessed with the written word and cognizant of its qualities and abilities in helping them impose their political will on their opponents in a battle for cultural, political and ideological primacy. 

Thus, this dissertation serves as an archaeolinguistic study of how the Umayyads instrumentalized and exploited the Arabic script on administrative material culture as instruments of authority and as purveyors of a new order in the region.

The aim of this paper is to reassess a silver-in- laid bronze tray decorated with Christian figures that has traditionally been seen as an item of ‘Ayyubid’ metalwork from the first half of the 13th-century. In the light of new material evidence provided by the interpretation of a small engraved inscription, a new time frame can be proposed. Moreover, as this brings forward the completion of the tray to the second half of the 13th-century, it allows us to reconsider how both the geographical and the cultural context of its production might be linked to the Mosul school of metalwork in the Ilkhanid period.

This chapter examines how urban populations in early Islam identified themselves and understood their role in the administration of their cities, especially in the regions of modern-day Egypt and Iraq. After investigating the ways in which these civic bodies expressed their belonging and the place occupied by cities in self-representations, I consider the participation of Muslim in the management of local affairs. It turns out that Muslims primarily identified themselves as belonging to tribal groups, and that they rarely expressed their sense of belonging to cities before the third/ninth century. Furthermore, although jurists and theologians never theorized any system of popular representation, Muslims participated at an early stage in the governance of collective interests, both through permanent and temporary institutions such as the judiciary and delegations, and through their elites’ capacity to speak on behalf of individuals or groups.

In recent years, Valencia’s artistic heritage has undergone successive restoration campaigns aimed at recovering painted ceilings. Their panels, located in churches and noble palaces dating from the Middle Ages, show again their vigorous colors. The changes in the structure of the architectures had relegated them to historical enclosure behind modern vaults, as in Assumpció church in Vallibona, La Pobla de Benifassà parish church and the former Palau Joan Valeriola, today the Chirivella Soriano Foundation. The ceilings have now abandoned the space in the margins and claim the context of their artistic idiosyncrasy, along with others historically more famous such as the conserved in Santa Maria church of Llíria, with which they share figurative richness and hybridizations in the artistic language. This paper seeks to survey the imaginary of Valencian ceilings pointing out certain peculiarities in their style and form in order to reveal the process by which their visual culture was gestated and reflect on its impact as an aesthetic experience. What does the use of clearly Islamic motifs, such as Arabic epigraphy, mean in Christian spaces? Likewise, the role played by material culture in the dissemination of iconographic information among Mediterranean cultures will also be revealed, most notably with emphasis on the points of contact between Al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms, yet without losing sight of the role played by the elites in these transmissions. In this way, factors which may be crucial, in the interpretation of a set of works with a particular decorative density, will be highlighted.

The article draws attention to the interest in the epigraphic monuments of Derbent, which was shown by many authors who visited the city in the 17th century – Fedot Kotov (1624), Adam Olearius (1638), Evliya Çelebi (1647), Jan Jansen Struys (1670), as well as authors of the 18th-19th centuries (J. Bell, P.H. Bruce, I.G. Gerber, J. Lerch, J. Hanway, S.G. Gmelin, A. Dumas, etc.). The article provides a brief overview of the study of the epigraphic monuments of Derbent. It is noted that the beginning of the collection of epigraphic monuments of Derbent and their study is associated with the name of Prince Dmitry Kantemir (1673–1723) – the first Russian orientalist who head the campaign office of Emperor Peter the Great during the Persian campaign. In the 19th-20th centuries a great contribution to the identification and study of epigraphic monuments of Derbent was made by Ch.D. Frähn (1782–1851), I.A. Bartholomey (1813–1870), B.A. Dorn (1805–1881), N.V. Khanykov (1819–1878), E.A. Pakhomov (1880–1965), P.I. Spasskiy, H.S. Nyberg (1889–1974), S.Yu. Kasumova (1943–2017), G. Gropp, etc. Of particular note are the activities in the identification and study of Derbent epigraphy by L.I. Lavrov (1909–1982) and A.R. Shikhsaidov (1928–2019), authors of fundamental works on epigraphy of the North Caucasus and Dagestan, in which a significant place is allocated to the monuments of Derbent.
The article presents a brief overview of the monuments of Middle Persian (568–569 AD) and Arabic epigraphy (8th–12th centuries) revealed by the Derbent archaeological expedition in 1996–2021. Among them is one of the oldest Arabic Kufic inscriptions in the world, compiled in 176 AH/792–3 AD and mentioning Shahanshah Khosrow I Anushirvan (Arab. Kisra), “lord of the faithful” (amir al-mu’minin), caliph Harun al-Rashid and his son, “heir to the throne of Muslims” (valī ‘ahd al-muslimīn) al-Amin Muhammad, inscriptions of the 11th-12th centuries, discovered during the study of newly declared Muslim places of worship, a tombstone of the third quarter of the 11th-12th centuries with an epitaph (“This is the grave of Muhammad the Tinsmith (lakhim). The mercy of Allah over him”).
Discovered epigraphic monuments reveal new pages of Derbent history. Researchers have the important task of continuing to identify, study the medieval inscriptions of Derbent and create a corps of medieval epigraphy of this ancient city.

My first exposure to the epigraphic program of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, published in 2001, came from reading an article on the ideological meaning of the decoration and the Quranic citations inscribed in al-H. akam II's addition to the building. In that article, I concluded that the Quranic verses found in the mosque were chosen not only for being a universal proclamation of divine power and praise for the Umayyad dynasty, as proposed by Nuha Khoury in 1996, but also because they clearly fitted in with the particular Andalusi, or rather Cordoban, religious, cultural, and political context in the first half of the 10th century. Most of the inscriptions had been read in the 19th century by Amador de los Ríos, but some of them remained uninterpreted. Given that they were an essential part of the ideological message, it seemed appropriate to revisit the critical reading of the epigraphic program and determine its full meaning. Later, I discussed other architectural aspects of the Great Mosque in which the links to the Andalusi and the eastern Umayyad traditions are a key aspect in understanding why these forms were chosen. Damascus, the eastern Umayyad capital, and to a lesser extent Medina and the Abbasid capitals, became the model for the caliphs of Cordoba. This article proposes to revisit the main architectural and decorative features of the caliphal enlargements of the Great Mosque of Cordoba in order to reflect on the meaning and forms of its epigraphic program. 1. A New Scenario for the Umayyads of Al-Andalus Following 'Abd al-Rah. m¯ an III's (d. 961) decision to declare himself caliph in 929, al-Andalus became the most important arts and knowledge-based centre in the western Mediterranean, directly competing with the Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates, as well as the Byzantine Empire. The Andalusi caliphs mostly draw inspiration from the works of their Damascus Umayyad ancestors for their cultural and artistic pursuits, but also from the Abbasid caliphate and the Byzantine Empire. All of this, added to the Hispanic pre-Islamic patrimony, allowed them to build their own visual and iconographic identity that would also become apparent in later Andalusi art (as in the case of the Almohads). Hence, contrary to the idea that al-Andalus acted in response to their political rivals, or by imitating eastern patterns, my own analysis of the monuments made me increasingly aware of the independence of the Cordoban caliphate in the search for its own visual and ideological models of legitimisation and reaffirmation. There were three main aspects of influence. Firstly, the Andalusi Umayyads invoked the authority of the " Well Guided " caliphs and of their eastern and Andalusi ancestors to establish their claim

La proyección del proceso de arabización e islamización en epigrafía funeraria empieza a aflorar en época emiral. El uso de epitafios se generaliza a partir de la instauración del califato omeya, cuando culmina lo que se ha denominado como “islamización social”.
Estas señales externas contrastaban con la mayor parte de enterramientos, austeros y anónimos, y tenían como implicación más inmediata la que se refiere a la jerarquización y a la diferenciación social, apartándose de las prescripciones de los alfaquíes acerca de la austeridad que debía caracterizar los enterramientos musulmanes.
Tal disociación entre teoría y práctica fue un fenómeno generalizado en todo el ámbito islámico medieval, que se incrementó con el paso del tiempo, incluso en aquellos periodos caracterizados por una teórica reislamización de las costumbres, como en el caso de los almorávides y de los almohades para el Occidente islámico.

11 Ensomniar quimeres? Un sistema d'inventari col·laboratiu que pogué ser ¿Soñar quimeras? Un sistema de inventario colaborativo que pudo ser Javier Martí Oltra 27 De Madīnat al-Turāb a Balansiya: ceràmica paleoandalusí a València (segles viii-ix) De Madīnat al-Turāb a Balansiya: cerámica paleoandalusí en València (siglos viii-ix)

This volume follows the changes that occurred in central Palestine during the longue duree between the 7th to the 11th centuries. That region offers a unique micro-history of the Islamicate world, providing the opportunity for intensive archaeological research and rich primary sources.

Through a careful comparison between the archaeological records and the textual evidence, a new history of Palestine and the Islamicate world emerges – one that is different than that woven from Arabic geographies and chronicles alone. The book highlights the importance of using a variety of sources when possible and examining each type of source in its own context. The volume spans ancient technologies and daily life, ancient agriculture, and the perception of place by ancient authors. It also explores the shift of settlements and harbors in central Palestine, as well as the gradual development of a new metropolis, al-Ramla.

Settlement and Urbanization in Early Islamic Palestine will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the history of Islam or the history of Palestine, or anyone working more generally in the methodology of historical research and integrating texts and archaeology.

Some comments on the Inscription of Zuhayr, allegedly mentioning the death of Caliph Umar. Final proofs, to appear in M. Groß & K.-H. Ohlig, Die Entstehung einer Weltreligion V, Der Koran als Werkzeug der Herrschaft;
INÂRAH, Schriften zur frühen Islamgeschichte und zum Koran Band 9, Schiler & Mücke, Berlin 2020, 11-51.

Lecture given in Spanish at the congress, "La pérdida de las Hispanias. Idiología poder y conflicto". Madrid 3-6 de February, 2016.
Last corrections & changes; 16/5/2016

For more on Umayyad  lead seals: http://www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/Seals.html

Die Frage ist für uns nicht : was ist das reinste, correcteste und schönste, sondern was ist überhaupt Arabisch ? Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer, 1854. L'arabe préislamique Avant l'islam, l'arabe n'est connu que par des inscriptions et graffites. C'est pourquoi on peut l'appeler arabe épigraphique préislamique. Cet arabe se laisse classer en trois groupes, selon un double critère de langue et d'écriture. seul et même) du wādī Ramm (300 ap. JC ?) et l'inscription d'Umm al-Ǧimāl (V e ou VI e siècle ap. JC ?) et deux inscriptions datées, celle de Zabad, près d'Alep (512 ap. JC) et celle de Ḥarrān (568 ap. JC). A ce groupe est venue s'ajouter, en 1964, une inscription, restée longtemps méconnue, celle du Ǧabal Usays (Sês en dialecte syrien), que je prendrai comme exemple de l'arabe épigraphique préislamique. Cette inscription a d'abord été publiée (dessin sans photo) par Muḥammad Abū l-Faraǧ al-'Ušš dans la revue al-Abḥāṯ à Beyrouth en 1964. Elle a été republiée (dessin + photo) par