This document features a chancery script. The script is highly cursive. There is little to no lifting of the pen between strokes, resulting in frequent abusive ligatures. Letters are highly compressed and often written with a notable diagonal slant which contradicts the baseline, which is perfectly flat and straight. Words are crowded across the line, occasionally alleviated using madd (letter lengthening). The curves of letters such as rāʾ, zāyy, and lām have been flattened.

These features — flattened letter shapes, obtuse angles, open curves, diagonal descenders, frequent abusive ligatures, and compressed letterforms — are also found in contemporary Pahlavi documents. It is possible that bilingual Arabic-Pahlavi administrators imported the ductus of Pahlavi script into their Arabic writing.

Further Reading

• Rustow, Marina. 2020. The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Glossary

Abusive ligature — the joining of canonically non-connecting letters (e.g. alif) to a succeeding letter; a feature of both cursive and chancery scripts

Baseline — the line on which letters sit

Cursive — in Arabic palaeography, a technical term describing scripts characterized by obtuse angles, open curves, and diagonal strokes

Descender — the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline, as in rāʾ, zāyy, and lām

Ductus — the movement of the pen caused by the gestures of the scribe when writing; particularly relevant when describing variation in stroke width between thick and thin strokes

Madd — horizontal extension of letter strokes, used to fill space or as a decorative and calligraphic feature; also referred to as mashq in some traditions