Arabic in Syriac Script: Some Garšūnī BasicsVia Abu 'l-Rayhan Al-Biruni on FB.
This is the inaugural post in a series that will deal with manuscripts and the languages, literature, and history of Christianity in the Middle East. I serve as lead cataloger of Eastern Christian manuscripts at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML), Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota. HMML is a repository of microfilms and high-quality digital images of several thousands of manuscripts in—as far as Eastern Christianity is concerned—Arabic, Armenian, Syriac, and Ge`ez from collections in churches, monasteries, and libraries in Ethiopia, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Middle East, along with more in European languages from western collections. HMML has entered into agreements with the owners of these manuscripts 1. to preserve them against destruction, theft, etc., and 2. to make them more accessible for scholars to study.
In this first post, I’d like to talk briefly about an interesting phenomenon in Christian Arabic literature: Garšūnī, also known as Karšūnī (and in older publications even Carshun or Carshunic). Whatever it is called and however it is spelled, it refers to the writing of Arabic in Syriac letters. The earliest continuous examples of this kind of writing appear in the fourteenth century, but there are short notes and colophons dated before that time. It is, however, not a practice only of the past: HMML collections have a number of examples of Garšūnī from well into the 20th century.
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Much of this will be interesting to nonspecialists, although parts do get technical. Garshuni has been mentioned at PaleoJudaica here and here. The important work of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library has been noted here, with links to previous posts.
