On Kufic Script, History and Philosophy of History
Indeed, Kufic script is used primarily for writing Qur’an for centuries, but nevertheless, kufic script is seen everywhere from buildings to the instruments and even on the clothes. So the writing calligraphy had been the most formative element of islamic culture, so much so that, it is the most marked and apparent aspect of islamic civilization. From the 7th to 11th for five centuries Kufic calligraphy have been the most prominent aspect of the cultural identity of the Muslim world and it appeared as a civilization of kufic scrupture; and so, quranic verses were visible everyhere from the buildings to the ‘tiraz’ called clothes. The word of God, as if embodied by the Kufic calligraphy, as if it was the incarnation of the “Kelam”(likewise logos concept of Heraclit), embodied and represented by the solemn character of the kufic scripture of Qur’an. It appeared within every aspect of islamic culture, everywhere . This reminds me a verse from the qur’an: ‘Ve lillâhi’l-maşrıku ve’l-mağrib. Fe’eynemâ tuvellû fe-semme vechullah”: : ‘to God belong the East and the West; whithersoever you turn, there is the Face of God.
Moreover, history of the kufic s c r i p t u r e is a convenient and Perfect example, to dispute t h e g e n e r a l n a t u r e of historical knowledge. In addition, surely it is possible to discuss the role of historical knowledge, semantics, human knowledge and beliefs in general; yet as I already mentioned, if we take a holistic perspective, we could debate all the related subjects about human destiny in this context. ‘In history, everything is related with everything else!’
When I decided to write about my kufi calligraphy and kufic scripture in general, at first I thought that this is a new opportunity to convey all of my ideas more clearly here, within the illuminating light of the kufic scrupture; but in that case, to explain and discuss so many ideas would be a never ending story which needs large book volumes. At that rate, it would be better for my short term goals to finish this essay in a short time, to write primarily about the art of kufic calligraphy, including all my kufic calligraphy designs in it.
Nevertheless, perhaps it is much better to make short statements about some problematic aspects of the general human knowledge whenever it seems to me suitable within this subject. Naturally, I have already read many well written books about paleography and epigraphy of the arabic script written by famous orientalists. Sure I have read many books, even some manuscripts, written by arabs, persians or turkish writers too. But I think, it is not necessary to repeat all the knowledge I have gathered from those books, all the known and unknown aspects of the subject, I will prefer to offer my interpretations whenever it seems proper to me . Anyway, naturally, this essay will include a bibliography for the more interested reader who wishes to learn more.
Let us remember some historical knowledge about arabic people and qur’an: According to muslim religion Qur’an is the word of Allah revealed by the archangel Gebrail to the prophet Mohammad. Again according to the traditional arab genealogy Muhammad was a descendant of Ishmael, the son of Abraham. Traditionally arabic people divided into two groups called adnani and kahtani, adnanis i.e. northern arabs considered as `arab ı-musta`ribe` that is, being descendants of Ishmael, they have been `arabized arabs` and the southern arabs are called as kahtani, like yemen arabs. This is why northern arabs are called ‘The sons of Ishmael’ by the Jews. According to Bible, Abraham and Hagar’s son Ishmael has 10 children. Names of the first and second son of Ishmael given by The Old Testament seemed to me interestingly historical: Nebaioth the firstborn of Ishmael, and Kedar. The name Nebaioth seems related with the Nabatean people, and according to paleographic and epigraphic investigations of orientalists, much widely held guess amongst them is that, arabic script comes from the Nabatean script.
Definitely, history of Kufi script also clearly shows us again the dubious nature of the historical knowledge. Indeed whence the arabic script come from is not clear at all. There are only different predictions of some orientalists based on some relics of inscriptions.
I think these short remarks about my epistemological reasoning is enough to show my stand point in front of the kufic scripture’s historical, theological, mystical, semantical and artistical aspects. As it is said in Ecclesiastes II-8 ‘cunctae res difficiles non potest eas homo explicare sermone non saturatur oculus visu nec auris impletur auditu’: all things are hard: man cannot explain them by word. The eye is not filled with seeing, neither is the ear filled with hearing.
Thus the origins of the Arabic script have been a subject of scholarly debate for centuries. There are two main theories about its origins: The Nabataean Theory and The Musnad Theory.
The modern and most widely accepted theory is that the Arabic alphabet evolved from the Nabataean script, which itself was derived from the Aramaic alphabet. This evolution followed this path:
Phoenician alphabet → Aramaic alphabet → Nabataean Aramaic → Nabataean
Arabic → Paleo-Arabic → Classical Arabic → Modern Standard Arabic
The Nabataean script was used by the Nabataean Kingdom, which was centered in Petra (in modern-day Jordan) from around the 3rd century BCE. The Nabataeans were predominantly Arab Semitic tribes living in the area controlling trade routes from the eastern Mediterranean shores to Ḥijāz (Saudi Arabia) and Yemen. A transitional phase between the Nabataean Aramaic script and a subsequent, recognizably Arabic script, is known as Nabataean Arabic. The pre-Islamic phase of the script as it existed in the fifth and sixth centuries CE, once it had become recognizably similar to the script as it came to be known in the Islamic era, is known as Paleo-Arabic.
An alternative Musnad Theory theory suggests that the Arabic script can be traced back to Ancient North Arabian scripts which are derived from ancient South Arabian script (Arabic: ḵaṭṭ al-musnad). This hypothesis has been discussed by Arabic scholars Ibn Jinni and Ibn Khaldun. Some scholars, like Ahmed Sharaf Al-Din, have argued that the relationship between the Arabic alphabet and the Nabataeans is only due to the influence of the latter after its emergence (from Ancient South Arabian script). Arabic has a one-to-one correspondence with ancient South Arabian script except for one letter. German historian Max Muller (1823-1900) thought the Phoenician script was adapted from Musnad during the 9th century BCE when the Minaean Kingdom of Yemen controlled areas of the Eastern Mediterranean shores. Syrian scholar Shakīb ´Arsalān shares this view.
In history we do not know what happened in the past, but we know only historical documents and relics. Once I was speaking on history at ISAM (islamic research center), then I had compared all historical remnants to the famous poetry of Imru al Qays ,” kıfâ nebki min zikrâ habîbî ve menzili”: “Let’s stop here and cry, remembering the beloved and our home town, the distance she passed through”. That is, all we have only historical remnants; they are solely some relics of the past events. Looking at them, we try to imagine those past events just like Imru al Qays imagines and remembers his beloved looking at the relics of camel caravan. Knowledge about historical remnants can be a science and could be investigated by scientific methods since they are existing material objects. This is the only scientific aspect of history.
In fact we do not know for sure whence arabic script come from. These are only some predictive arguments of orientalists that it might come from the nabatean script, according to other orientalists, it might be a developed form of musnad script still others guess that arabic script influenced by syriac. There are even definitively different tendencies preferences of one or other vıew according to different echols like french, german or british ecols of orientalists. In fact, the kufi script and arabic script and history of arabs in general is a perfect example of the dubious feature of all historical knowledge. As Will Durant beautifully articulated in his book, “The Lessons of History”,“To begin with, do we really know what the past was, what actually happened, or is history ‘a fable’ not quite ‘agreed upon’?” Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.” Napoleon phrased it more wittily which probably W. Durant alludes: “ what is history but a fable agreed upon!”
Let us quote Napoleon once more: “Since history is not an objective reality, but only an imaginative reconstruction of vanished events, the pattern that appears useful and agreeable to one generation is never entirely so to the next.”
But history itself as past events has passed away and gone for ever and what is known as historical narration is only a historiography which is what we try to understand and narrate about past events based on interperetations of those relics. As W. Durant beautifully articulated: “ Obviously historiography cannot be a science. It can only be an industry, an art, and a philosophy- an industry by ferreting out the facts, an art by establishing a meaningful order in the chaos of materials, a philosophy by seeking perspective and enlightenment. In philosophy we try to see the part in the light of the whole; in the ‘the philosophy of history’ we try to see this moment in the light of the past. We know that in both cases this is a counsel of perfection; total perspective is an optical illusion. We do not know the whole of man’s history; there were probably many civilizations before the Sumerian or the Egyptian; we have just began to dig! We must operate with partial knowledge, and be provisionally content with probabalities; in history, as in science and politics, relativity rules, and all formulas should be suspect. ‘History smiles at all attempts to force its flow into theoretical patterns or logical grooves; it plays havoc with our generalizations, breaks our rules; history is baroque.’ Perhaps, within these limits, we can learn enough from history to bear reality patiently, and to respect one another’s delusions.” L H
Then, Historical knowledge about all the historical relics becomes dubious if historical understanding changes according to the historian’s interpretation= and taste; theerefore it can only become an art or a philosophy of history. I have already written elsewhere about epistemological value of historiography, in “the quest of meaning throghout time”, implying that historical narration is only a conjectural belief about some historical events:
“Historian has to imagine the flow of events in history, that is, how could it be possible that the river of events have been formed and taken a special river-bearing for the course of events which might have been flowed. It is so hard to describe this awakened dream of consciousness – this self deceptive imagination of historian – that I cannot help but repeat that strong statement of the Antiquarian’s view of history, “sans aultre preuve que de simples conjectures dece qui pouvoit avoir este”: “it is only a guess, simply a conjectured belief without proof, since we can conceive that it was possible to occur (as implied by our imagination); then, presumably in any case, it really had happened so.” I will not repeat all of my epistemological analysis written in this essay but simply repeat one more paragraph from that essay:
That is, a historical event could be, at most, an ‘imaginatively constructed and believed’ explanation of a historian. There remains only this ‘ratio credentis’: we might believe a historian on the basis of his professional authority.
If so, what are the ends aimed by historiography? and what could be the justifications of historiography? It is to narrate illustratively in a proper form what might have been discovered about history by the research and imagination of historians as meaningfully stated by the aforesaid Antiquarian. And historians always try to write history as they imagine: that is, they try to change the past according to their wishful thinking and ideology. This is also a ridiculous and whimsical wish: they try to convince some people that according to their imagined version of the story of the past is definitely true. A historical evidence cannot give any sufficient and necessary reason to prove that the indicated event is true, merely for the reason of being reported and described by it: although it might seem a strong evidence, there could be no ‘ratio veritatis’, not any proven justification that ‘the event’ had actually occurred ‘definitely as it has been told’ by that official document, witness, historian or whatsoever. We can always suspect and deny its reliability.
As stated by stephen J shoemaker: ‘Historians are rarely able to prove absolutely that something did happen, or did not happen, particularly for matters of great antiquity or when dealing with the formative history of a particular community, which is often a very active site of shifting memories.’ C.k.P.38
‘Taking little bits out of a great many books which no one has ever read, and putting them together in one book which no one ever will read’ quote carl becker. And There is cynical saying which I do not remember which historian said that: ‘history does not exists until a historian writes it’.
But actual historical events can not be known even by whom who experienced them. I will quote here from Carl Becker again: xx
‘No doubt throughout all past time there actually occurred a series of events which, whether we know what it was or not, constitutes history in some ultimate sense. Nevertheless, much the greater part of these events we can know nothing about, not even that they occurred; many of them we can know only imperfectly; and even the few events that we think we know for sure we can never be absolutely certain of, since we can never revive them, never observe or test them directly. The event itself once occurred, but as an actual event it has disappeared; so that in dealing with it the only objective reality we can observe or test is some material trace which the event has left—usually a written document. With these traces of vanished events, these documents, we must be content since they are all we have; from them we infer what the event was, we affirm that it is a fact that the event was so and so. ‘
https://cooperative-individualism.org/becker-carl_what-is-historiography-1938-oct.pdf
In fact, what we know about history of arabs, arabic script, prophet muhammad and Qur’an and all of the other stories related with the first century of islamic history is all secondhand knowledge inferred from the traditional hearsayings of historical sources and relics which are not contemporary of prophet Muhammad but the remnants from the second and third century of İslam. We do not have any authentical relic which was contemporary with prophet Muhammad. Of course we can not know actual series of historical events. History in itself can not be known, historical knowledge is something else as historiography, an art form which is a narration of the past events as imagined -gathered information which depends on all kinds of historical sources- and told by a historian. This is why Voltaire cynically says: ‘little bit more than what is said by a scriber to another secreatary.’ Suppose we would have satisfactorily enough and true knowledge about the flow of historical events, are we sure that we could understand the essence of living reality by some descriptive narration. In history, we can never be sure of the truthfullness of statements made by a contemporary observer of events or written by a historian about an event; it can not be proved like mathematical statements and obviously can not be tested like scientific materials. Anyway, an art of narration might be beatiful but could not claim that all its statements are true. Here again, for the sake of clarity, I am forced to show my classification of disciplines, at least in short, to explain my highly sceptical attitudes towards the matters related with the kufic scripture, its history and some linguistic, philosophical and theological implications of the subject. As quoted from a poet by Aviezer Tucker in his introduction to A Companion to The Philosophy of History and Historiography: Perhaps we are…
‘Still in the earliest days of history
When the world existed only in theory . . .’