Re: Arabic transliteration...?

["Annette M. Stroud" <astroud@xxxxxx>]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Jacques Guy wrote:

>  
> > Which brings me to my question: does anyone know of any ***medieval
> > transliterations*** of Arabic?
> 
> Uhh???? Arabic is written in an alphabetical script, with the vowels
> most often omitted. Medieval European scholar who knew Arabic would
> not have needed any transliterations, since er... well... this is
> a bit tautological, since they could read it straight away. What do you have in
> mind there? Even if the VMS is a transliteration of Arabic (and I
> know enough Arabic to say "it's not"), how could a medieval 
> transliteration do us any good, since it would amount to a simple
> substitution cipher.

I have long thought that it was a "short hand" copy of Arabic, by someone
who had access to a physical copy of a book, but who did not know Arabic,
and did not write from right to left, who had devised a method of
transliterating the symbols he saw and who taught this method to the
second scribe in order to get a copy of this mystical book.  It would make
it very, very hard to ever decode (unless, of course, one found the
original book), because there would be no assurance at all that someone
unfamiliar with Arabic would pick up on the necessary and defining
components of the letters in Arabic.

Of course, I would be embarrassed to admit how long it has been since I
have looked at any image of the Voynich manuscript.

Annette