Remarks on a Recent Edition of Arabic Papyrus Letters

IN AN EXTENSIVE article which appeared seven years ago 1 in one of the most authoritative oriental journals of our time Dr. Karl Jahn studied the style of Arabic private letters in the early Islamic age as it can be evinced from the papyri.2 As a conclusion of his research he published seventeen letters on papyrus, ranging from the end of the first to the third century from the Hijra and all belonging, with the exception of Nos. 1, 2 and 11 which are from the Schott-Reinhardt Collection in Heidelberg, to the famous Archduke Rainer Collection in Vienna, which Karabacek and Grohmann have extensively studied with such brilliant results. Arabic private letters on papyrus, a substantial number of which has already been published,3 although to a far lesser extent than Greek documents of the same kind, are invaluable for a better understanding of an almost unexplored side of the Arabian society during the early Middle Ages. They afford us a direct and unsophisticated picture of every day life, and contain precious information about the economic, social, and even intellectual conditions of Egypt, which did not differ substantially from those of the rest of the wide Moslem world.' Their language, which is often free from the constriction of standardized Arabic and presents some features of the so called colloquial Arabic still in use at the present day, is only slightly less interesting than their contents. The following remarks refer exclusively to the edition and translation of the texts in Jahn's article. To be sure, his systematical survey of the subject, useful as it undoubtedly is, is not free from major and minor flaws, the most conspicuous of which is to give too much or too little,5 a shortcoming which is occasionally found in the first essays of young scholars, as I assume Jahn is. However, in the author's intention as well as in the reader's expec

Arabic · Linguistics · Papyrus · Classics · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Historical Astronomy and Related Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Philosophy

• Aspects épars du commerce méditerranéen du IVe/Xe siècle à travers une lettre inédite

  Open Access•Moez Dridi•Arabica•2024

  Add to list