Marijn van Putten @PhDniX Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Marijn van Putten

@PhDniX

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Historical Linguist; Working on Quranic Arabic and the linguistic history of Arabic and Tamazight. Game designer @team18k

The Netherlands

https://t.co/7pPoTyq9gI

Joined April 2010

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@PhDniX

Marijn van Putten

3 years

"Is the Quran (perfectly) preserved?" is a question I get a lot. I'm never sure how to answer this, or why I am considered the person to ask. This is obviously a question of faith, not something that can be known as an absolute truth. Against better judgment, a small thread.

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@PhDniX

Marijn van Putten

4 years

@BuckleButtercup

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@PhDniX

Marijn van Putten

3 years

The name of God in the Quran is Aḷḷāh, that much is clear. We also know that the Quran explicitly equates its God with the God the Christians and Jews follow. Today Arabic Christian and Jews alike will indeed call their God that. But where does this name come from? 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

It may not look like it, but the script of this inscription is the script that would eventually evolve to become the modern Arabic script. This is the Nabataean Aramaic script, and I wanted to do a little thread on the evolution of its letter shapes. 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

The Quran was canonized around the year 650. After this standard was established, the text underwent no real changes. Any manuscript is word-by-word identical to the other, save for obvious mistakes and a few regional variants. But what about the time before this canonization? 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

4 months

The modern forgery claiming to be a letter of the Prpophet Muhammad, now inexplicably preserved in a museum as a genuine item. There, fixed it for you.

@LifeSaudiArabia

Life in Saudi Arabia

@LifeSaudiArabia

4 months

The letter Prophet Muhammad ﷺ sent to Heraclius of the Roman Empire is preserved at the museum in the King Hussain Mosque (Jordan).

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Marijn van Putten

6 years

Arabic is often called Luġat al-Ḍād "the language of the Ḍād". Clearly indicating that this language was considered unique specifically for its pronunciation of this letter. But how was it actually pronounced?

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

@Qashta1 @BuckleButtercup Rorrim smac eifles .toidi uoy

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Marijn van Putten

5 years

There are several letters of the prophet to several heads of state, which have been recorded in literary sources. There are some documents out there, which are said to be the actual letters mentioned in these sources Scholars rightly take these to be forgeries. Here's why:

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

@notbalin Since some people seem to still be dumb enough to think that this is staged, because the affected eye "changed sides". Let's teach them something about selfie cams.

@PhDniX

Marijn van Putten

4 years

@BuckleButtercup

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

The biblical figure known in the Bible as Saul (Biblically Hebrew šå̄ʾūl) in the Quran carries a completely different name: ṭālūt. Where does this name come from, and how can we understand it? a little thread. 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

3 months

One has to wonder whether he would get away with this using not Muslim jargon but, you know, the actual words. "Counter to my previous opinion I *now* believe apostates should be executed". Sick fuck. Will report, but the obscurantist wording will probably fly past...

@HATzortzis

Hamza A. Tzortzis

4 months

Important clarification and apology: Over ten years ago, I made a statement about the hadd for ridda that was incorrect. I described the hadd and explained it in the wrong way. I have retracted those statements in the past and I reiterate now for the sake of clarity and 100%

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@PhDniX

Marijn van Putten

2 years

Finally a physical copy of my book in hand!

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

I was surprised to learn that "Quranic Arabic: From Its Hijazi Origins to its Classical Reading Traditions" has released early! It's the end result of years of research, and I'm proud of the result. And it's Open Access for everyone! Download it now!

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Marijn van Putten

9 months

@AmoorahNL @NaokiQYamamoto It's written in classical Japanese, not modern Japanese, so this gets in the way of Google translate doing a very good job. Haha.

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Marijn van Putten

1 year

I once made public statements that I did not buy that this contained Arabic. Then I found a catalogue of stones like this (which the original publication hadn't citrf either) with tons of similar inscriptions from the Abbasif Empire. I was very wrong, this is genuine.

@WeirdMedieval

weird medieval guys BOOK OUT NOW !!

1 year

a medieval viking era ring inscribed with the words ‘for allah’, found in a 1200 year old grave in sweden. the ring is part of a small body of evidence of direct contact between the vikings and the abbasid caliphate!

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Marijn van Putten

1 year

In the past months you may have run into videos about "Marin van Putin (sic) who was paid 2 million dollars (sic) to find mistakes in the Quran and was SHOCKED by what he found." So was I? No. tl;dr: It's intentional lies, half-truths and poor fact-checking.

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Marijn van Putten

5 years

Malta once part of the Muslim empire, is now a overwhelmingly Catholic (93.9%), but Islam has left an interesting mark. The Maltese word for lent, the Catholic 40 day fast after Ash Wednesday, is "Randan" from Arabic ramaḍān رمضان! #RamadanMubarak

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Marijn van Putten

3 months

There is a kind of irony in "there is no p in Arabic therefore no Palestine", but meanwhile Arabic retains the historical ġayn in ġazzah, while modern Hebrew just says Aza, but somehow you never hear Israeli rightwing nut-jobs bring that up.

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

Many Islamic invocations of God, both ancient and modern, will start with the vocative Aḷḷāhumma "O God!", but that is certainly a strange form. Where does it come from? A little thread on the Arabic vocative suffix -umma. 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

Sūrat Maryam (Q19) is well-known among scholars of the Quran for having a highly conspicuous passage () which must be an interpolation. The question however is: when was this section interpolated into the Quran? Manuscript evidence can give us some hints.🧵

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Marijn van Putten

5 months

An exciting new publication by Al-Jallad and Sidky! The publication of a monotheistic inscription likely written by the companion Ḥanẓalah b. ʾAbī ʿĀmir, seemingly *before* his conversion to Islam using his pre-Islamic name Ḥanẓalah b. ʾAbd ʿAmr!

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

It is with great joy that I can announce today that I have received the ERC Consolidator Grant for my research Project: QurCan: The Canonisation of the Quranic Reading Traditions. I am incredibly grateful, and happy that I will be employed to conduct such a cool project.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

Now that my monograph that I've worked on for the past years is finally out (and free for anyone to download!: ). I thought it would be nice to do a series of threads, writing accessible summaries on what my book is actually about. Today Chapter 1! 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

The لا lām-ʾalif is an interesting letter of the Arabic alphabet, due to its shape, it is not always clear which part is the lām and which one is the ʾalif. In this series of: "orthography in medieval manuscripts that nobody ever talks about", let's talk about the lām-ʾalif flip!

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

This thread by Bayt Al Fann is doing the rounds about the early collection of the Quran. It presents the traditionally accepted Islamic narrative. But how does modern scholarship think about this history? A scholarly companion thread to this thread. 🧵

@BaytAlFann

Bayt Al Fann

2 years

The Holy Qur’an was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) over 23 years, with the first revelations beginning in the month of Ramadan in 610 AD. But how did the Qur’an reach us today in its final form? Who compiled it & why, & where are the oldest Qur’ans in the world? A thread…

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Marijn van Putten

1 month

I'm about to start watching this. As some of you may know, I don't have a particularly high opinion of Arabic101, but now he's wading into the manuscript fray... Will be live-tweeting facepalms as I go through it.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

So to sum up: 1. Aḷḷāh might come from al-ʾilāh "the God" but it is not the SAME as saying "The God". It is a name. 2. Christian before Islām call The God al-ʾilāh 3. Pagans around the year zero know a pagan God called Aḷḷāh 4. At some point before Islam these merge into one.

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Marijn van Putten

1 year

What is something that is wrong in your field that just won't die, no matter how often you point out/say/publish that it's a misconception? Mine: "The earliest Quranic manuscripts were without consonantal dots/dots were only introduce ca. year 60 AH"

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Marijn van Putten

5 months

Last year I was asked to give a talk at the NISIS Autumn School about the textual history of the Quran. Here's a thread summarizing the points of that presentation. Specifically the presentation addresses some of Shoemaker's new objections on the Uthmanic canonization.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

It's with great excitement that I can now announce that my monograph on Quranic Arabic will be published in the beginning of next year with Brill. And best of all: It will be published Open Access, so it will be completely free for everyone to download!

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Marijn van Putten

6 months

Those who have read my book on Quranic Arabic may have noticed that I translate The Arabic word luġah as "linguistic practice", rather than "dialect" which is how many people commonly translate it. This is for good reason: among the Arab grammarians it did not mean dialect! 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

7 years

⚡️ I made a moment out of my Twitter Thread: “The Language of the Uthmanic Codex”

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Marijn van Putten

5 months

I think I know how to cite my own name dear editors...

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

The story of Lot and his people in the Quran recurs strikingly often throughout the Quran (Q11:77-83; Q15:51-77; Q26:160-75; Q27:54; Q37:133-8; Q51:24-37; Q54:33-9; Q80:33-42), and finds clear parallels with the story as told in Gen. 19. A thread on a specific reading variant. 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

9 months

A little chart I made that tries illustrate what kinds of different readings there are. There are two main categories: 1. Uthmanic readings (which follow the Uthmanic text) 2. Non-Uthmanic readings (those that do *not* follow the Uthmanic text)

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

Whenever one learns Classical Arabic, they are usually told that it has 6 vowels, three short ones: /a/, /i/, /u/, and their long counterparts: /ā/, /ī/, /ū/. But many Quranic reading traditions have more than those, a short thread on the vowel systems of the seven readers. 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

Classical Arabic and Classical Greek orthography share a strange and rare commonality: both of them use a spelling that is *less* archaic than their standard pronunciation. Contrary to (almost?) every other language in the world. A thread on this phenomenon🧵

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

The Lower text of the Sanaa Palimpest is exciting to researchers, because its lower text is a non-Uthmanic version of the Quran. When the wording differs between the Palimpsest and the Uthmanic text, how do we decode which one is more original? A thread on a variant at Q19:26 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

9 months

A summary thread of Hythem Sidky's new article: "Consonantal Dotting and the Oral Quran". I don't usually thread's on other people's publications, but this article is really important, and Hythem has left Twitter, so I figured I'd highlight some of the main takeaways.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

Just sent of the final version before typesetting of my book that I wrote as part of my veni postdoc at Leiden University. It will be published with Brill, and I'm sure it will take quite some months before you can read it, but I'm very happy and proud that it's done!!!

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Marijn van Putten

6 years

Most modern Arabic fonts treats the right leg of the lām-ʾalif as a lām, and the left one as the ʾalif. This can be seen in al-ʾarḍ where the hamzah is placed on the left leg. But this was not always the case! A thread on the history of the lām-ʾalif ->

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Marijn van Putten

3 months

If you need God to tell you that it is wrong to kill people and otherwise you literally would not know that that is the case, you're either a psychpath or obviously deluding yourself. This is why I block every galaxy brain person that asks "how do you know murder is wrong?"

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

A fascinating and, likely, extremely early rendering of Sūrat al-ʾIḫlāṣ, both remarkable for its not-quite-canonical wording AND its pre-Islamic spelling practices. A thread on what information can be gleaned from it 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

9 months

One of the interesting things that the Karaites used to do in their Hebrew Bibles (besides writing it in Arabic script with Hebrew vocalisation) is to avoid writing God's holy name by writing it as aḷḷāh! Number 14:41 ويومر موشا لاما زا اتام عوريم اث في الله وهي لا تصلاح

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Marijn van Putten

6 years

Just reconstructed the stemma of a cluster of plagiarized papers handed in by three of my students. Don't plagiarize in the class of a philologist kids!

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Marijn van Putten

5 years

Apparently some are still under the impression that the Birmingham Fragment (Mingana 1572a + Arabe 328c) is pre-Uthmanic copy of the Quran. This is impossible, despite its strikingly early C14 dating (568-645 CE with 95.4%) it is clearly a descendant of the Uthmanic text type.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

Today I learned that one of the earlier editions of portions the Quran in its original language in Europe was printed in Judeo-Arabic orthography! Published with Latin translation by Mathias Friedrich Beck in 1688 containing Sūrat al-Rūm and Sūrat al-Fatḥ.

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

I was asked a while ago to explain what historical linguists of Arabic mean when we told about 'Old Hijazi' and 'Nabataean Arabic' and how these relate to one another and where the language of the Quran fits in. So this thread will address these questions!

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

Roses are red, Violets are blue, My book has now been out for a year, And it's free to download for you!

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"Quranic Arabic" published on 14 Feb 2022 by Brill.

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

When the 3rd caliph ʿUṯmān b. ʿAffān tasked the committee led by Zayd b. Ṯābit to write the official Mushaf, he is said to have told them "write it in the language of the Quraysh, for it has been revealed in their tongue." This seems incompatible with the canonical readings. 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

Early Islamic pious inscriptions frequently use the formula aḷḷāhumma ṣallī ʿalā fulān "O God, bless so-and-so." As in the example here: aḷḷāhumma ṣallī (صلي!) ʿalā l-qāsimi bni muḥammadin By Classical Arabic standards this is a mistake, but we see it frequently. Thread 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

In recent years, more and more Christian Arabic inscriptions from before Islam have become available to us. And whenever they invoke the Christian God, he has a single name and it is *not* Aḷḷāh. Instead, they consistently call him al-ʾIlāh

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

A strange bit of misinformed apologetics has been making the rounds on Twitter that claims the Dead Sea Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaª) (Is. 42:1) mentions ʾAḥmad (traditionally understood to be Muḥammad) of Q61:6. This is false, but figuring out what is happening is interesting. So 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

It's clear that the Uthman's Quran recension is a very stable text tradition, and I'm sometimes asked: is there any text in antiquity that shows a similar kind of stability over such a long time? The answer: Yes there is. The (proto-)Masoretic tradition of the Hebrew bible.🧵

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

@aborteddreams "The very image of entitlement"??? 35+ year olds want to be able to afford more than a single bedroom flat so they can start a life and a family, something their parents were able to do when they were 21. Speak of entitlement.

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

Posting this as a separate thread, because it should be interesting to more people. Early inscriptions of Shahadah's that lack the explicit invocation of Muhammad as the prophet. Number 4 is a shahādah that isn't even the 1st part of the regular formula (but clearly monotheistic)

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

Time for an experiment! As you may know I've had a Patreon page for some time. I've been wondering if it would be possible to use it to fund a small research project I've been working on: A critical edition of the Quran! You can download Q70-Q74 here!

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Marijn van Putten

9 months

Apologists are saying ridiculous things about Biblical Hebrew time again! This time: The Song of Songs mentions Muhammad and calls him an Arab. As usual, it's a bunch of handwaving comparing vague lookalikes by people who don't know any Hebrew.

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Marijn van Putten

3 months

@JonathanACBrown If you find thus an unremarkable religious belief, instead of sick, rank intolerable incitement to violence, yes.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

It is frequently (and not unreasonably) assumed that Aḷḷāh is a contraction of the definite article al- "the" + ʾilāh "deity". And this is indeed likely its origin, but it is not without its problems. This loss of hamzah and kasrah (and addition of velarization) is irregular.

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Marijn van Putten

6 months

It's pretty neat that this year Maltese randan (i.e. Christian Lent) overlaps significantly with the origin of this word (the month of Ramaḍān). We're currently both in Randan in both its modern and original sense!

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

So... I'm going to have to admit that I've been very wrong. And honestly, I now think both about this Brooch AND the Birka Ring. I have to thank @boris_liebrenz for making this clear to me. If one examines Victoria Porter's catalogue, there are very similar (mirrored?) examples.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

If you enjoyed this thread and want me to do more of it, please consider buying me a coffee. . If you want to support me in a more integral way, you can become a patron on Patreon!

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Buy Marijn van Putten a Coffee. ko-fi.com/phdnix

Become a supporter of Marijn van Putten today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.

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Marijn van Putten

1 year

pahādin

@BibHebrew

BiblicalHebrew.com

1 year

What is the plural of Ph.D.?

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Marijn van Putten

7 months

Arabic is so funky sometimes. Has 9 perfectly sensible derivational categories of the verb that express things like causative, passive, medio-passive, conative, pluractional, and then has like 6 more that are non-derivational and all exclusively express colour or bodily defect.

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Marijn van Putten

11 months

Maybe I'm extremely late to noticed this, but did you know that the stem-vowel of the imperfect verb of the verbs for the vowels, have the vowels they designate? fatḥah: yaft*a*ḥu kasrah: yaks*i*ru ḍammah: yaḍ*u*mmu I wonder if that was intentional.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

My book is now with book cover on the website! Pretty amazing if I do say so myself. Pop-quiz: what manuscript is that on the cover?!

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

I've been spending a lot of time lately looking at (non-Quranic) Arabic manuscripts, and have been annoyed how few adequate descriptions exist of central orthographic features. So I'll be doing some threads in the coming days trying to give an adequate description! First: ʾihmāl

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

One of the features of the Quran is that certain words with no obvious rhyme or reason will occur in two different pronunciations even when the formula is essentially identical from one to the other. This is most notable between Q18:78 and 82. How to understand this? Thread 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

Today, by far the most dominant recitation of the Quran is that of Ḥafṣ (d. 180/796) who transmits from the Kufan reciter ʿĀṣim (d. 127/745). But this dominant position it has today appears to have been a rather recent one. Thread on looking for Ḥafṣ in early manuscripts 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

Here's a very nice infographic on the development of the canonization of the Quran by @NaqadStudies . In the comments an interesting discussion developed on what "Semi-canonical Qurans" means and how they related to the reading traditions. Here's a small thread.

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Marijn van Putten

6 years

Anyone familiar with articulatory phonetics will be struck just how far ahead of his time Sībawayh was with this type of description deconstructing the articulatory elements that make up a sound. It took western linguistics over a millennium to get on his level.

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Marijn van Putten

5 months

It isn't quite as cool sounding as: "I was being an idiot, suggesting that Marijn was being paid by the Saudi's to lie about Mecca that got me blocked", so instead one has to make up a bullshit story to cope instead. :-)

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

In Classical Arabic, the expected outcome of al-+ ʾilāh would simply be al-ʾilāh, not Aḷḷāh. So while its etymology might be "The God", the name does not mean "The God", just like "Peter" to an English speaker would not mean "stone".

πέτρα - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.wiktionary.org

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Marijn van Putten

1 year

Reading medieval Karaite writings is quire a script rollercoaster.

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Marijn van Putten

10 days

Shoemaker: The Arabians were a non-literate society, even in the 6th century Hijaz. See what Macdonald says! Macdonald: "[Nabataean/Arabic] writing appears to have been used for notes, business documents treaties, letters, etc." It's not me who's misreading Macdonald here...

@mushrikun

Bart ☠️

10 days

@PhDniX deze had je vast al gezien, maar voor de zekerheid stuur ik hem maar. Is in artikel van Shoemaker van deze maand.

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@PhDniX

Marijn van Putten

3 years

In the Quran, God is referred to in three places (Q2:255; Q3:2; Q20:111) as al-ḥayy al-qayyūm "The Living, The All-Sustaining". ʿUmar ibn al-Ḫaṭṭāb , the second Islamic caliph, is attributed as reading al-Ḥayy al-Qayyām, a reading which has an interesting biblical parallel.

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Marijn van Putten

1 year

New Article alert! This one is Open Access and you can download and read it yourself! But let my try to write a short summary of what I tried to do in this article: In the article I tackle a controversial passage in the verse Q20:63.

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

Leiden's Or. 298, the earliest dated Arabic paper manuscript (252 AH/866 CE), a copy of Abū ʿUbayd's (d. 224) Ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ, is an absolute goldmine of of orthographic archaisms. This Hadith, for example, is orthographically many similarities to Quranic Arabic.

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Marijn van Putten

5 years

The Quranic reciter Al-Kisāʾī was asked: "Why do you not apply the hamzah to al-ḏīb 'the wolf'?" (most others read al-ḏiʾb). To which he replied: "I'm afraid it would eat me!" You see, hamaza means both "to apply the hamzah" and "to prod". #medievaldadjokes

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Marijn van Putten

5 years

I don't know when this happened but @UBLeiden 's Or. 298, the earliest Arabic paper manuscript, is now digitized! Dated to 252AH/866 AD, this Ġarīb al-Ḥadīṯ by ʾAbū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām was copied mere decades after the author's death (d. 223). A thread on the orthography

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

There are verses in the Quran that are interesting because they form doublets: two verses that are almost verbatim identical in their contents. There is a triplet like this Q7:141, Q14:6 (and a little different Q2:49) present an interesting text critical conundrum.

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

In the recitation of the Quran, generally 7 readings tradition are accepted as canonical and most consider an additional 3 after that as canonical as well. Today, for each reader 2 canonical transmitters are accepted, but this was not always the case. A thread on transmitters.🧵

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Marijn van Putten

5 years

“The Grace of God” as evidence for a written Uthmanic archetype: the importance of shared orthographic idiosyncrasies [Open Access] I'm very proud of this article. it proves the early standardization of the Quranic text and a strict written transmission.

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“The Grace of God” as evidence for a written Uthmanic archetype: the importance of shared orthogr...

“The Grace of God” as evidence for a written Uthmanic archetype: the importance of shared orthographic idiosyncrasies - Volume 82 Issue 2

www.cambridge.org

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@PhDniX

Marijn van Putten

4 years

In the new volume by Segovia, there's an article that makes me feel like we have stepped into a time machine, all progress of the past decades is ignored. Emilio Ferrín argues for a Wansbrough-style late (post 800 CE) compilation of the Quran. Here's why this doesn't work. 🧵

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@DanielABeck9

Daniel A. Beck

4 years

Last, Emilio Ferrin argues that “the Qur’ān” was canonized by unifying disparate texts over time, as an ‘inclusive compilation,’ advancing what I feel are Wansbrough-type arguments. If you like Wansbrough, this is going to be similar.

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

The @britishlibrary has digitized an absolute treasure trove of manuscripts from Djenné, Mali. This collection contains mostly Arabic manuscripts, generally written in the gorgeous Malinese substyle of the Maghrebi script. One manuscript caught my eye...

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

For many people, this is a central miracle of the Quran. But, like miracle claims in countless other religions, it simply cannot be proven. That doesn't mean it isn't true, but it does mean I cannot tell you whether the Quran is preserved or not. Hope that clears things up.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

To recapitulate: 6th century Christian Arabic speakers do *not* call their God Aḷḷāh, but al-ʾilāh. Pagan Arabic speakers around 1st c. BCE-1st c. CE know a minor deity in their pantheon named Aḷḷāh, and it is unclear if they equated him to the Jewish God.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

In an ingenious article by David Testen, he writes an *extremely* specifically conditioned sound change (as is his wont) to account for the contraction al-ʾilāh > Aḷḷāh, and points out that a similar contraction could also account for ʾunās "people", but an-nās "the people".

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Marijn van Putten

4 months

NEW PUBLICATION: "Pronominal variation in Arabic among grammarians, Qurʾānic readings traditions and manuscripts". This article has been in publication hell for 4 years. But it was an seminal work for my current research project, and a great collaboration with Hythem Sidky. 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

1 year

So as expected, this tweet's fact turned out controversial. But let's look at the surprising fact: Earlier manuscripts have more dots than than later ones! Let's compare the 1st/7th century Birmingham fragment with Arabe 5122, a late (?) 2nd/8th century Kufic manuscript.

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@PhDniX

Marijn van Putten

1 year

What is something that is wrong in your field that just won't die, no matter how often you point out/say/publish that it's a misconception? Mine: "The earliest Quranic manuscripts were without consonantal dots/dots were only introduce ca. year 60 AH"

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Marijn van Putten

5 years

I discovered a new letter of the Arabic alphabet in the early Islamic period in Quranic manuscripts! In modern Arabic script jīm/ḥāʾ/ḫāʾ all have the same basic letter shape. However, in several early manuscripts final jīm is straight while ḥāʾ/ḫāʾ is curved.

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

Abraham's name only occurs once in the 14th Sūrah which is named after him. Funnily enough, early manuscripts spell the name ابرهم, not ابرهيم in this position (Q14:35), which rather points to ʾIbrāhām, which is in fact how the Hišām, transmitter of Ibn ʿĀmir recited it.

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

Finally the author copies of my new book have come in in the mail! Want to have your very own digital copy? You're in luck it's completely free to download from the Brill website!

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

Shady Hekmat Nasser has launched an incredible website, an Encyclopaedia of the Readings of the Quran. This allows you to navigate many of the known readings (canonical and non-canonical) in the literature sources with easy navigation.

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Marijn van Putten

1 year

The ǧīm in modern Arabic script has the exact same shape as the ḥāʾ and ḫāʾ in all positions. But originally the ǧīm derives from a completely different character than the ḥāʾ/ḫāʾ. #ArabicLetterofTheWeek

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Marijn van Putten

3 years

The Quran has a written form and recited forms. Its written form remained more or less unchanged. But the recited forms were sometimes at odds with what is written in the text. A thread on what scribes did to alleviate these conflicts, in early Quranic manuscripts.🧵

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Marijn van Putten

4 years

The consonantal dotting of the Arabic script is something about which quite a bit of confusion exists, from its origins, application in manuscripts, quranic or otherwise and finally anachronistic imposition of modern norms onto medieval manuscripts, a thread on Arabic dotting 🧵

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Marijn van Putten

2 years

So when are we going to admit that English actually uses a logographic script and not an alphabet?

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