Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to use what you read in the target language to find out about the communities where it is spoken and aspects of their cultures. The museum offers three things to read about: the language, the story told of how its script was devised, and an art of writing. The texts you read, and the communities beyond these, your class brings. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- C3.1 using information from a variety of texts in the target language, identify communities where the target language is spoken, find out about aspects of their cultures, and make connections to personal experiences and their own and other communities […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What do a language and its writing tell you about its speakers?
Read how the records present the language, the report on its script and an art of writing. Note which statements are descriptions and which are a report from one narrator, and what you would need to confirm the second kind.
Go deeper
The Encyclopaedia of Islam calls the script of the Umayyad period an imperial script, marked by balance and regularity 2. It says the caliph Abd al-Malik required Arabic of the scribes in central and provincial administration and ordered Arabic legends on coins, and it credits his son al-Walid with leaving an epigraphic band of unequalled importance on the walls of the Dome of the Rock 2. Letters were sorted into three groups by simple geometric schemes, namely tall straight strokes, loops, and curves below the line 2. The same shapes were set rigidly on stone and parchment, or rounded on papyrus for letters 3. See Islamic calligraphy.
How do we know?
For the earliest script, the article says evidence outside literary sources is thin: undated Qur'an fragments and letters on parchment whose authenticity is not firmly shown, an epitaph of 31 AH/652 CE in the Cairo museum, and a dam inscription of 58 AH/677-8 CE in the name of Mu'awiya near al-Ta'if 4. It says attempts to read the medieval writing manuals against surviving documents have often reached an impasse 4. It calls Arabic palaeography a young discipline with no complete manual 5 6 7.
Think about it
The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence reports that al-Shafi'i holds knowing Arabic obligatory on every responsible Muslim as far as his effort allows, and that the jurists require Arabic for the recitation of the Qur'an, the call to prayer and the Friday sermon 8 9. Give a reason and an example from a language you know: how might a community's view of its language, like this one, shape the way learners from outside the community approach it?
Into the museum
- Islamic calligraphy: the Encyclopaedia of Islam's account of the Umayyad script, kufic, the rounded scripts and the great masters.
- The Devising and Spread of Arabic Script: al-Baladhuri's report, and the record's note that it is a single report from one narrator.
- Arabic in jurisprudence: the meaning of the word, and what the jurists require of Arabic in worship.
Try this
Read the records on the Arabic language and on the devising of the script. Write down the places and people through which the report says the script travelled, then draw them as a map.
4 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
5 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does The Arabic language in jurisprudence (arabiyya) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
What is Arabic?. In the lexicon, Arabic is eloquence and purity of speech; the Arabic language is what the Arabs spoke, and the Qur'an came down in it. The Kuwaiti jurists' encyclopaedia, which the record follows, adds that Arabic has merit as the tongue of the people of paradise and that a person is rewarded for learning and teaching it. How does a community's view of its language shape the way others learn it?
In your own words: what does The Devising and Spread of Arabic Script have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
How the script travelled. Al-Baladhuri relays a report from al-Sharqi ibn al-Qatami that three men of Tayy devised the script, measuring the spelling of Arabic against the spelling of Syriac. People of al-Anbar learned it from them, then the people of al-Hira, and Bishr ibn Abd al-Malik taught it in Mecca. The record notes that this is a single report from one narrator and needs a further source. What would you check next?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: Classical Studies and International Languages
- 2. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 4 p. 1164
- 3. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 4 p. 1165
- 4. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 4 p. 1163
- 5. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 4 p. 1160
- 6. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 4 p. 1161
- 7. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 4 p. 1162
- 8. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.11543
- 9. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.11544