The study of the semiotics of Arabic letters is an entirely new field of research. So far, various aspects of Arabic letters in Islamic cultural history have been worked on, but an overall survey of how these letters function has yet to be done. With the still unedited Ḥilyat ahl al-kamāl bi-ajwibat asʾilat al-Jalāl by Abū Bakr al-Shanawānī (d. 1610), a work has been discovered based on which the semiotics of Arabic letters found there can be compared with modern letter semiotics. Moreover, since this work is also the answer to seven questions set about half a century earlier by the Mamluk polyhistor Jalāl ad-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505) as a touchstone for true scholarship, the Ḥilya is another important source for the study of Arabic scholarship in early Ottoman Egypt. Thus, this project aims to address three sub-areas: first, the editing and translation of the Ḥilyat ahl al-kamāl bi-ajwibat asʾilat al-Jalāl. Second, the analysis of the letter conception presented in the work against the background of current letter semiotic research. Third, the work’s contextualization in the historical development of pre-modern Arabic scholarship, i.e. with the aid of intratextual, paratextual, and extratextual information. The "ABC" metaphor used in the title thus refers not only in a literal sense to Shanawānī's presentation of Arabic letter semiotics, but at the same time to his location in the intellectual history of his time, that is, to Shanawānī's very personal "ABC" of scholarship.

Author: Dr. Berenike Metzler
Metzler@orient-institut.org