Cross Palaeographic Traditions. Some Examples from Old Christian Arabic Sources

Abstract

2 In linguistics, the quest for comparative cross-cultural research into standardisation started with Jespersen (1925, 46) and was coined 'comparative standardology ' by Joseph (1987, 13) and resulted in a comprehensive comparative work on Germanic languages (Deumert and Vandenbussche 2003a) (see especially Deumert and Vandenbussche 2003b, 1), which is discussed in the following sections. For manuscript studies, see Sobieroj 2016 and his overview of a recent trend in Arabic studies to 'place variance itself in the focus of research' (Sobieroj 2016, 2). 3 One significant exception is a collection of articles edited by Jennifer Cromwell and Eitan Grossman (2018), Scribal Repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic Period. This work deserves special attention. With their focus on the exact opposite of the subject of this volume, there is a shared goal to study the connected phenomena -'their' variation and 'our' standardisation -in the complex linguistic and extra-linguistic dimensions. Although the cultural and geographic scope of Cromwell and Grossman 2018 is Egypt, their book is in essence a cross-cultural and typologically oriented comparative study since it covers cultures in Egypt which co-existed or replaced one another in the course of four millennia, while the typological frame is given through the lens of historical sociolinguistics informed by European philology (especially studies of pre-modern English). 17 It should be noted that these dates are only helpful as general guidelines for periodisation of the norms of Classical Arabic because, as den Heijer (2012, 10) puts it, 'an overall history of Arabic orthography, which only partly overlaps with palaeography (a much better documented and studied issue!) is yet to be written'.27 On the issue of deviation from the norms conditioned by distinctive group and individual identity, see Weth and Juffermans 2018.