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THE HISTORY OF ARABIC PALAEOGRAPHY 117

strokes. One wonders why Abbott shied away from using dated Arabic
documents and Qjir'anic manuscripts from the first century A.H., which
rest on library shelves in relative abundance.
Leaving the Syriac aside, the other culture to be credited with providing
the impetus for Arabic palaeography is the Nabataean. According to Dr.
jum'a, extensive research by authoritative scholars has proved that the
Arabs derived their writing from them; in this he quotes a multitude of
scholars such as Abbott and Wilfinson.? Analysing a set of the earliest
Muslim inscriptions, coins and manuscripts, against those from the pre-
Islamic Arabic and then comparing the entire group with the Nabataean,
Abbott concluded that the Arabic script in use at the dawn of Islam was
a natural development of pre-Islamic Arabic which in turn was a direct
development of the Aramaic Nabataean script of the first centuries of our
era."

o 100 J<>Q
I
45
Figure 9.1: Probable routes if diffusion if the earty north Arabic script, according
toAbbott. Source: Abbott, The Rise of the North Arabic Script, p. 3.

7 Ibrahtm jum'a, Diriisiitunfi Tataunour al-Kitiibiit al-~ufiyya, 1969, p. 17
8 N. Abbott, TheRiseif the North Arabic Script, p. ]6.