A Multipolar Approach to Early Christian Arabic: Vatican Arabic Ms 13 in the Linguistic Landscape of Early Islam

Abstract

This volume offers the most comprehensive linguistic analysis to date of Vatican Arabic MS 13, a late 9th/early 10th-century Arabic Gospel manuscript. Combining meticulous quantitative study with wide-ranging comparative evidence, this book provides an in-depth examination of the manuscript's orthography, phonology, morphology, morpho-syntax, and syntax. Through extensive charts, tables, and multiple interpretive frameworks, the author illuminates how linguistic features pattern across every dimension relevant to accurate analysis.Crucially, the study does not treat MS 13 in isolation. Its features are systematically compared with those of other Christian Arabic manuscripts, Quranic traditions, medieval Arabic registers, early poetry, and modern dialects. This contextualised approach situates the manuscript within the rich linguistic diversity of medieval Arabic and challenges long-standing assumptions about 'Middle Arabic' and 'Classical Arabic'. By demonstrating that many features of MS 13 align with broader scribal and linguistic practices of the period, the book makes a compelling case against the notion that scribes worked towards a single, unified register or variety. Rather, they drew creatively and pragmatically from a diverse repertoire of features and linguistic traditions, revealing a far more dynamic and multifaceted approach to written composition than previously recognised.An outstanding and field-shaping contribution, this volume provides an essential model for future work on Christian Arabic, medieval Arabic varieties, and the history of Arabic more broadly.