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116 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIC TEXT

have Y Khalil an-Nami's theory that the "Hijaz was the home of the
birth and evolution of the North Arabic script to the exclusion of all other
localities, including Hirah."? As to why Gruendler completely neglects this
third premise, I will leave to the reader.
Among the missionary Orientalists there are those who believe that
Arab Muslims did not have their own writing system during the Prophet's
lifetime. In the words of Professor Mingana,

Our ignorance of the Arabic languagein the earlyperiod of itsevolution
is such that we can not even know with certainty whether it had any
[alphabet] of itsown in Mecca and Madina. If a kind of writing existed
in these two localities, it must have been something very similar to
Estrangelo [i.e. Syriac] or the Hebrew characters."

Nabia Abbott has further partially championed this hypothesis.

A study of Christian Arabic manuscripts showsthe interesting fact that
some of the earliestof these come the nearest to showingan estrangelo
influence, though indirectly through the Nestorian, in the general app-
earance of the script,which isfIrmand inclined to squareness.Others ...
show the effectofJacobite serto. Furthermore, a comparison of several
of these Christian manuscripts with largelycontemporary KuficKurans
reveals a decided similarity of scripts."

All is not as it seems, however. According to Abbott, "The earliest dated
Christian Arabic manuscript [is from] 876,"5 meaning 264 A.H. 'Awwad
has mentioned an even earlier dated manuscript, written in 253 A.H.l867
C.£.6 The earliest dated Christian Arabic manuscripts therefore stem from
the second half of the third century A.H. There are literally hundreds if not
thousands of Qur'anic manuscripts belonging to this period; comparing
these hundreds with one or two estrangelo (Syriac) examples and claiming
that the latter influenced the former is very poor science indeed, if it can
be called a science at all. On top of this I would add that the Syriac script
c. 250 A.H. (angular and forward-slanted) does not correspond at all with
the general Arabic of that period, which is inclined to curves and unslanted

2 Nabia Abbott, The Riseofthe North Arabic Script anditsKur'iinic Development, witha
jUllDescription ofthe Kur'iin Manuscripts inthe Oriental Institute, The University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1938, p. 6, footnote 36.
3 Mingana, "Transmission of the Kuran", TheMoslem VVorld, vol. 7 (1917), p. 412.
4 Nabia Abbott, The Riseofthe North Arabic Script, p. 20.
5 ibid, p. 20, footnote20.
6 K. 'Awwad, Aqdamul-Makhtidd:al-'ArabfyyafiMakiabiit al-'.Alam, Baghdad, 1982, p.65.