Re: Questions about yeh, hamzah on yeh, alef maksura and dotless ba

[Gregg Reynolds <gar at arabink dot com>]

Thomas Milo wrote:
> Gregg,
> 
> You do have a point. Yet, the first one I looked at has no final dots
> anywhere
> (http://ddc.aub.edu.lb/projects/jafet/manuscripts/alsahifa/html/255l.html).
> The second one is inconsistent
> (http://ddc.aub.edu.lb/projects/jafet/manuscripts/taabeer-al-manam/html/005a
> .html). I have images of mus'hafs that use points throughout on any final
> yeh-curve, regardless the semantics, something I also noticed in the second
> example (laylae with dots)
> 
> Anyway, regarding Qur'anic spelling, it would be nice if you could find a
> manuscript that uses dots to distinguish betsween yeh and maqsura.
> 

Actually I am under the impression that dotless final yeh has been
pretty standard in Quranic calligraphy since the beginning, but that's
just intuition, no evidence.  But I wouldn't be surprised to find
counter examples.

For me the moral of the story is that written Arabic has always been
tremendously flexible.  You can see this most obviously in the freedom
with which calligraphers place their letters vertically, especially at
the left margin.  But also in use of dots.  In a few places at the Jafet
site I found examples of "fy" في without *any* dots, not even on the
feh.  Seems reasonable to me; it would be pretty hard to confuse the
shape في with anything else, so why bother with the dots?  I suspect
pragmatism is the general rule historically: if dots (or diacritics) are
needed to disambiguate, use 'em, otherwise they're optional:
"Calligrapher's Choice".  "Corrrectness" (I speculate) has been more
about i'rab, grammar, etc. and hasn't bothered much about letterforms.
But who knows?

-gregg

P.S.  Luckily my job will send me to a major research library with open
stacks on an unrelated topic the next few weeks.  I plan to do quite a
bit of digging around in the Arabic collections, so maybe I'll find
something on this topic.