Nominal Case in Christian Arabic Translations of the Gospels (9th-15th Centuries CE)

Abstract

Middle Arabic is conventionally defined as existing on a spectrum between colloquial Arabic on the low end and Classical Arabic on the high end. Differences between Middle Arabic and Classical Arabic that are not attested in a modern dialect are typically treated, historically at least, as due to pseudo-correction. This is especially true of non-Classical manifestations of nominal case. In this paper, I tag all instances of alif al-tanwīn – which in Qurʾānic and Classical Arabic marks the accusative on triptotic nouns that do not end in tāʾ marbūṭa – from representative portions of the manuscripts, both vocalized and unvocalized, of 15 Christian translations of the gospels into Arabic dating from the 9th to 15th centuries CE. The data demonstrate, contrary to previous descriptions, that the majority of case inflection is written in line with Classical Arabic norms. Further, the syntactic contexts in which non-Classical case markings occur follow regular patterns, which recur with remarkable consistency across time and manuscript. Instead of originating in pseudo-corrections, I propose the differences from Classical Arabic originated in attempts by Christian scribes to represent a variety of Arabic in which a vowel merger before tanwīn resulting in a single morpheme erased the vocalic distinctions between case vowels. These syntactic contexts include nominative, genitive, and accusative ones. Since Christian Arabic differed from the varieties for which the Arabic script and subsequent vocalizations were developed to write, scribes originally varied in the degree to which they adhered to the writing conventions, with some closely adhering and others taking greater liberties in order to represent the underlying variety with greater nuance. Over time, this led to several scribal traditions for writing tanwīn in Christian manuscripts, each of which is attested among the vocalized manuscripts included in this study and discussed in detail.