The author

Ahmad Al-Jallad, Ph.D. (2012) Harvard University, is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University. He has published on the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages, the history of Arabic, and on the epigraphy of Ancient North Arabia, including An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions (Brill, 2015).

Contributors

Ahmad Al-Jallad, Martin F. J. Baasten, Johnny Cheung, Guillaume Dye, Lutz Edzard, Jordi Ferrer i Serra, Francesco Grande, John Huehnergard, Geoffrey Khan, Manfred Kropp, Alexander Magidow, Daniele Mascitelli, Laïla Nehmé, Naama Pat-El, and Andrzej Zaborski.

Presentation

This volume gathers fifteen interdisciplinary papers on the history of Arabic in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the chair of Arabic at Leiden, ranging from the epigraphy of pre-Islamic Arabia to the modern spoken dialects, and everything in between.

The writing of Arabic’s linguistic history is by definition an interdisciplinary effort, the result of collaboration between historical linguists, epigraphists, dialectologists, and historians. The present volume seeks to catalyse a dialogue between scholars in various fields who are interested in Arabic’s past and to illustrate how much there is to be gained by looking beyond the traditional sources and methods. It contains 15 innovative studies ranging from pre-Islamic epigraphy to the modern spoken dialect, and from comparative Semitics to Middle Arabic. The combination of these perspectives hopes to stand as an important methodological intervention, encouraging a shift in the way Arabic’s linguistic history is written.

Qurʾānic Arabic

Traces of Bilingualism/Multilingualism in the Qur’ānic Text
Guillaume Dye, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

A Syriac Reading of the Qurʾān? The case of sūrat al-Kawṯar
Martin F.J. Baasten, Leiden University