This paper provides updated digital images of four Qurʾān fragments from Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum (OIM) that appeared in Nabia Abbott’s Rise of the North Arabic Script, and calls attention to features of their paleography and vocalization which are not apparent from her original black-and-white plates. In doing so, it demonstrates tha…[Read more]

In his 1875 description of the language, Theodor Nöldeke describes Mandaic as among the purest of the Aramaic languages and the furthest from Western Aramaic, particularly with respect to its lexicon. As Mandæans identify their faith with that of John the Baptist and his community of followers, this observation is not without relevance for a…[Read more]

In his 1875 description of the language, Theodor Nöldeke describes Mandaic as among the purest of the Aramaic languages and the furthest from Western Aramaic, particularly with respect to its lexicon. As Mandæans identify their faith with that of John the Baptist and his community of followers, this observation is not without relevance for a…[Read more]

The Arabic-script Qurʾān fragments of the Cairo genizah collections have not yet drawn much interest among Arabic and genizah scholars. This paper aims to bring them to the attention of a broader audience by presenting the palaeographic features (§3) and vocalisation systems (§4) of eleven Arabic-script Qurʾān fragments from the Cambridge Unive…[Read more]

This article presents new data on links between the various medieval vocalisation traditions of Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic. These include the identification of overlaps in the Aramaic terminology used by Jewish Masoretes and Syriac Christian grammarians and in the phonological theories that underlie them, as well as connections between Syriac and…[Read more]

“Lives in Turkish” is an ongoing research project held at Boğaziçi University Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies. We trace the journey of life-writing in Turkish, collect metadata and visuals about biographical publications and biography subjects introduced to the Turkish reader since the early 1800s. Our aim is to propose a c…[Read more]

Among the numerous Jewish uṣūl al-dīn compositions in the Second Firkovitch Collection at the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg there is one that I have labelled “A Hamaḏānian Patchwork”. You might just as well call it “A Persian Carpet”. It is another magnificent specimen of “diachronic intertextualities”.
The treatise, which is…[Read more]

This is an Urdu translation of the work “Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law and Non-Muslims”

English translation of Midhat Sertoğlu, İlk Milletlerarası Dili Bir Türk İcat Etmişti, originally published in Hayat Tarih Mecmuası 1 (1966): 66–68

Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic…[Read more]

Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic…[Read more]

D. Kruisheer, ‘Theodore bar Koni’s Ktābā d-’Eskolyon as a Source for the Study of Early Mandaeism’, Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap “Ex Oriente Lux” (Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society “Ex Oriente Lux”) 33 (1993-1994), 151-169.

Qurʾān in Hebrew script produced for a students’ exercise in a seminar entitled “One Language, Many Scripts: Allographic Traditions Used for Writing Arabic” with reference to Johannes den Heijer, Andrea Schmidt and Tamara Pataridze (eds.), Scripts Beyond Borders: A Survey of Allographic Traditions in the Euro-Mediterranean World (Louvain: P…[Read more]

Undotted consonantal skeleton of the Quranic text produced for a students’ exercise. The display is constrained by the limitations of the font and by no means meant to reproduce scribal practices of early Qurʾān manuscripts! Full document available on request (gs50[at]soas.ac.uk).