Re: VMs: Arabic

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dan,

At 10:46 09/01/2004 -0700, Dan Gibson wrote:
> In Robert's email of December 1992 he quickly dismissed Arabic as the root
> language of the VMS. He jumps to a number of interesting conclusions which I
> will list below:
>
> 1.  "If it's Arabic, the place of origin is surely Muslim Spain -
> al-Andalus - and very likely Catalonia or the Balearic Islands."
>
> Please remember that in 1683 the Ottomans were attacking Vienna. There is no
> reason to point to Spain, or to any specific place as the origin of the VMS.
> It could easily have originated deep in the Arabian world, been collected in
> Baghdad at the height of the Islamic era, and have been one of the many
> thousands of Arabic books that made it's way to Europe. The fact that it was
> written in an unknown script would have made it an interesting if not
> somewhat misunderstood book.

I'd say that the Ottomans in Budapest were an even better example of this. 
A Latinised version of their administrative shorthand (siyaqat) was a prime 
possibility for the VMs' script - but having now seen a fair bit of it, I'm 
99% certain there's no connection between the two. The Ottoman language of 
the mutes might also have been the source for the arm positions of the 
nymphs - but I'm 90% sure that it wasn't.

Note that I'm not saying "it's not Nabataean" (as it could well be) - but I 
certainly don't see any link with Arabic (culture, art, stylistics, 
language, calligraphy, palaeography, etc) per se.

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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