Projecting a New Empire: Formats, Social Meaning, and Mediality of Imperial Arabic in the Umayyad and Early Abbasid Periods

Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Illustrations
Note on Conventions
Maps
Introduction
Becoming Empire
Semantics of Empire
Empires and Arab History
Views on Early Islamic History
A Review of the Documentary Evidence and Coping with its Limitations
Previous Studies
Approach and Methodology: Form over Substance
The Definitional Trap: A Note on Terminology and Anachronism
Timeframe
Organization of this Study
I Towards an Ecology of Documentary Arabic
Introduction
A Sudden Language: Pre-Islamic Arabic Writing and the Epigraphical Habit
The Rise and Dissolution of “Imperial Arabic” (From Reichssprache to Lingua Franca)
Concluding Remarks
II Imperial Arabic: Between Text and Visual Text
Introduction
Images of the Word
The Word and the Image: An Arab Late Antiquity
From Image to Word
The Eye of the Beholders
Conclusion
III Shaping Official Umayyad Arabic
Introduction: Reichsarabisch or Early Islamic Official Arabic?
If the Mountain Will Come: Arabic Letters
If the Mountain Will Not Come: Official Inscriptions
Umayyad Official Documentary Standard as Early Islamic Documentary Standard
Conclusion
IV A Culture of Ambivalence
Negotiating “Arab Style”
Shifting Boundaries between Scribal Cultures in the Umayyad Empire
Parallel Scribal Traditions: Numismatics
Parallel Scribal Traditions: Independent Arab-Style Scribal Practices
Conclusion
V An Empire of Words
Regional Idiolects in the Use of Administrative Loanwords in Documentary Arabic
The Loanwords in Imperial Arabic (640–800)
Regional Diversity in the Use of Administrative Loanwords in Early Islamic Documentary Arabic
Terminology and Regional Settings: The Role of Umayyad Syria and the Looming Shadow of Abbasid Iraq
Conclusion
Summary and Conclusions
Appendices
Appendix 1: Formal and Layout Structure of Early Islamic Arabic Official Letters
Appendix 2: Formal and Layout Structure of Early Islamic Official Inscriptions
Appendix 3: Comparative Table of Early Islamic Arab-style Letters
Bibliography
Indices
General Index
Index Locorum I: Papyri
Index Locorum II: Inscriptions