Acknowledgements

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Acknowledgements V
3. Contents VII
4. List of Illustrations XIII
5. Note on Conventions XV
6. Maps XIX
7. Introduction
8. Becoming Empire 1
9. Semantics of Empire 5
10. Empires and Arab History 8
11. Views on Early Islamic History 11
12. A Review of the Documentary Evidence and Coping with its Limitations 14
13. Previous Studies 22
14. Approach and Methodology: Form over Substance 24
15. The Definitional Trap: A Note on Terminology and Anachronism 29
16. Timeframe 33
17. Organization of this Study 35
18. I Towards an Ecology of Documentary Arabic
19. Introduction 37
20. A Sudden Language: Pre-Islamic Arabic Writing and the Epigraphical Habit 42
21. The Rise and Dissolution of “Imperial Arabic” (From Reichssprache to Lingua Franca) 47
22. Concluding Remarks 109
23. II Imperial Arabic: Between Text and Visual Text
24. Introduction 111
25. Images of the Word 115
26. The Word and the Image: An Arab Late Antiquity 131
27. From Image to Word 142
28. The Eye of the Beholders 163
29. Conclusion 166
30. III Shaping Official Umayyad Arabic
31. Introduction: Reichsarabisch or Early Islamic Official Arabic? 169
32. If the Mountain Will Come: Arabic Letters 174
33. If the Mountain Will Not Come: Official Inscriptions 192
34. Umayyad Official Documentary Standard as Early Islamic Documentary Standard 199
35. Conclusion 212
36. IV A Culture of Ambivalence
37. Negotiating “Arab Style” 215
38. Shifting Boundaries between Scribal Cultures in the Umayyad Empire 239
39. Parallel Scribal Traditions: Numismatics 242
40. Parallel Scribal Traditions: Independent Arab-Style Scribal Practices 254
41. Conclusion 259
42. V An Empire of Words
43. Regional Idiolects in the Use of Administrative Loanwords in Documentary Arabic 261
44. The Loanwords in Imperial Arabic (640–800) 266
45. Regional Diversity in the Use of Administrative Loanwords in Early Islamic Documentary Arabic 310
46. Terminology and Regional Settings: The Role of Umayyad Syria and the Looming Shadow of Abbasid Iraq 314
47. Conclusion 322
48. Summary and Conclusions 324
49. Appendices
50. Appendix 1: Formal and Layout Structure of Early Islamic Arabic Official Letters 337
51. Appendix 2: Formal and Layout Structure of Early Islamic Official Inscriptions 339
52. Appendix 3: Comparative Table of Early Islamic Arab-style Letters 345
53. Bibliography 353
54. Indices
55. General Index 415
56. Index Locorum I: Papyri 427
57. Index Locorum II: Inscriptions 441