New Evidence for an Early Islamic Arabic Dialect in Eastern Arabia? The Qaṭrāyīth (“in Qatari”) Spoken in Beth Qaṭraye

Abstract

71 Journal of Near Eastern Studies, volume 81, number 1, April 2022. © 2022 The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published by The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/717786 The region known in the Syriac sources as “Beth Qaṭraye” includes not only the peninsula of Qatar, but also incorporates its hinterland of Yamāma and the entire coast of north-east Arabia as far as the peninsula of Musandam in present-day Oman, along with all the adjacent islands.1 Christianity must have reached Beth Qaṭraye no later than the fourth century ad. Evidence for this is that a certain Eliya, bishop of Mashmahig (possibly today’s Samahīj on Muḥarraq island), was present at the first East-Syriac Synod in SeleuciaCtesiphon (410), while another bishop of Mashmahig was deposed and excommunicated at the same synod. From the sixth century onwards, in addition to Mashmahig, there were bishops in Dayrin (possibly on Tārūt island), Mazūn (Oman region), Hagar (Hajr), and Ḥatta (al-Khaṭṭ). Initially, these bishops were under the control of the metropolitan of Rev Ardashir, in Fars, until Beth Qaṭraye obtained its own metropolitan, whose existence is attested only in 676.2 However, most of our information on Beth Qaṭraye pertains to the early Islamic period. An important example is the correspondence of Catholicos Ishoʿyahb III (Patriarch of the Church of the East, 649–59), which