The fourth in a series on pre-Islamic sources adduced for Mecca. Previous: 3) Dabanegoris regio Next: 5) The Samaritan Asatir. “l-mā Qdešāyē aḥyānē ’nūn da-bnay Hāgār” “Are the Qadeshis brothers with the sons of Hagar?” —Narsai of Nisibis In a recent… Continue Reading
The earliest surviving reference to the Arabic term ‘God is great’ (Allāhu akbar) is in a Syriac text known as the Maronite Chronicle, composed in the second half of the 7th century, perhaps as early as the 660s.[1] The anonymous… Continue Reading
In a previous post I gave some general examples of how spelling and pronunciation can drift between languages: the d in Muhammad is spelt in some early sources with an emphatic t (teth) or regular t (taw), so I wanted to show that… Continue Reading
In the British Library collections is an eighth-century manuscript of a seventh-century text in Syriac, attributed to Thomas Presbyter. It’s a funny little jumble of geography, genealogy, chronicle and king-list. Why it survived I don’t know. But we’re very lucky it… Continue Reading