A Dictionary of Islam Being a cyclopedia of the...

A further examination of this reduced list shows, that the characters, 1, 4, 5 and 16, ا, د, ر and و, do not admit of the horizontal prolongation towards the left which serves to connect a letter with a following one, or, in other words, that they can only be joined to a preceding letter, and that the characters 14 and 17, viz. ن and ى, in their initial and medial form, differ from the character b only by the superadded dots, and may therefore count for one with it, finally limiting the number of characters to fifteen. Thus the whole Arabic alphabet resolves itself into the four signs

These, then, are the graphical elements, in their simplest expression, by means of which Arabic, etymologically perhaps the richest language in existence, was originally written, and which were expected to transmit the sacred text of the inspired book to the coming generations. The first in the above series of connectible characters (ٮـ) represents five different sounds, b, t, s̤, n, and y; the second (حـ) three sounds, ḥ, j, and k͟h; the next five (سـ, صـ, طـ, عـ, ڡـ), together with د and ر two sounds each, s and sh, ṣ and ẓ, t̤ and z̤, ʿ and g͟h, f and q, d and ẕ, r and z, respectively, and only five out of the whole number of fifteen (و, مـ, لـ, كـ, ا) are single signs for a single consonantal sound each. As for the vowels, only the long ones, ā, ū, and ī, were in this system of writing graphically expressed, being represented by the so-called weak consonants, ا, و, and ى, which, in this case, act as letters of prolongation. Yet the corresponding short vowels, a, u, and i, were of the utmost importance for the correct reading of a text, for the whole system of Arabic inflection is based upon them, and their faulty employment in the recital of the Qurʾān would frequently lead to grave mistakes, or, at all events, grievously shock the pious and the learned.

So it will be easily understood that the want of additional signs was soon felt, to obviate this double insufficiency of the original alphabet, that is to say, on the one hand to distinguish between letters of the same form but of different sound, and on the other hand to show with what vowel a letter was to be enounced in accordance with the rules of the Iʿrāb or grammatical inflection.

Accounts differ as to when and by whom these signs were invented and introduced into the sacred as well as the secular writing. We must here at once remark that the form in which they now appear is by no means their oldest form, as we have also, with regard to the characters of the alphabet themselves, to distinguish between two styles of writing, the one called Cufic, used in inscriptions on monuments and coins, in copies of the Qurʾān, and documents of importance, the other of a more cursive character, better adapted to the exigencies of daily life. This latter style, it is true, seems to have existed, like the former, long before Muḥammad, and resembles in a document of the second century of the Hijrah, which has come down to us, already very much the so-called Nask͟hī character now in use. But the two kept from the first quite apart, and developed independently from each other up to the middle of the fourth century of the Muḥammadan era, when the more popular system began to supplant the older one, which it finally superseded even in the transcriptions of the sacred book.

In tracing the origin of the vowel-marks and the diacritical signs, as we may now call them, in the first instance of the Cufic alphabet, we will follow Ibn K͟hallikān, whose information on the subject seems the most intelligible and self-consistent that has reached us. In his celebrated biographical dictionary, he relates that Ziyād, a natural brother of the first Umaiyah K͟halīfah Muʿāwiyah, and then Governor of the two ʿIrāqs, directed Abū Aswad ad-Duʾilī, one of the most eminent of the Tābiʿūn, to compose something to serve as a guide to the public, and enable them to understand “the book of God,” meaning thereby a treatise on Grammar, the elements of which Abū Aswad was said to have learned from ʿAlī, the son-in-law of the Prophet himself. He at first asked to be excused, but when he heard a man, on reciting the passage (Sūrah ix. 3): Anna ʿllāha bariʾun mina ʾl-mushrikīna wa rasūluhu, pronounce the last word rasūlihi, which changes the meaning of the passage from “That God is clear of the idolaters, and His Apostle also,” into “That God is clear of the idolaters and of His Apostle,” he exclaimed, “I never thought that things would have come to such a pass.” He then went to Ziyād and said, “I shall do what you ordered; find me an intelligent scribe who will follow my directions.”

On this a scribe belonging to the tribe of ʿAbdu ʾl-Qais was brought to him, but did not give him satisfaction: another then came, and ʿAbdu ʾl-Aswad said to him: “When you see me open (fataḥ) my mouth in pronouncing a letter, place a point over it; when I close (ẓamm) my mouth, place a point before the letter, and when I pucker up (kasar) my mouth, place a point under the letter.” Nöldeke, the learned author of Geschichte des Qorâns, rejects this part of the story as a fable, and it is certainly not to be taken in the literal sense, that each time a letter was pronounced, the scribe was supposed to watch the action of the dictater’s lips. But it seems reasonable enough to assume that in cases where much depended on the correct vocalisation of a word, and where the reciter would naturally put a particular emphasis on it, Abū Aswad should instruct his amanuensis not to rely upon his ears only in fixing upon the sound, but also call the testimony of his eyes to his aid. At any rate, the name of the vowel-points: Fatḥah, “opening,” for a, ẓammah, “contraction,” for u, and kasrah, “fracture” (as the puckering up of the mouth may fitly be called), is well explained, and the notation itself: for fatḥah, for ẓammah and for kasrah, is that which we still find in some of the old Cufic manuscripts of the Qurʾān marked in red ink or pigment.

We refer the reader to the first specimen of Cufic writing given below (p. 687), which he is requested to compare with the transcript in the modern Arabic character and with our Roman transliteration, when he will readily perceive that the points or dots in the Cufic fragment correspond to the short vowels of the transliteration, while, in the Arabic transcript, they serve to distinguish the consonants. Take, for instance, the point above the second letter of the third word, and it will at once be seen that in the Cufic form it expresses the a after the n of tanazzalat, for it recurs again after the l in the last syllable, and that in the Nask͟hī character it distinguishes the n (نـ) itself from the preceding double-pointed t (تـ), both which letters remain without a distinctive sign in the Cufic.