Citations:epistolary script

English citations of epistolary script

• 1915 January 19th, Louis Herbert Gray, “Iranian Material in the Fihrist” in Le Muséon: Revue d’Études Orientales, volume XXXIII, page 27; this quotation is part of L.H. Gray’s translation of the passage “Discourse on Persian Writing” (12.15–14.12 in Kitāb al-Fihrist, composed by Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn abī Yaʿqūb al-Nadīm al-Warrāq al-Baγdādī)

  And ‘epistolary script’ (كتابة الرسائد) (was so named) because the language was current in it; and there were no diacriticals in it; and some of it was written in the tongue of the first Syriac in which the people of Bābil conversed³, and it was read in Persian; and the number of its characters was 33 characters. It was called ‘libriscript’ (نامه دبیریه) and ‘similiscript’ (هام دبیریه) ⁴, and belonged to the rest of the classes of the kingdom save the kings alone; and this is a specimen of it.

  ³ Apparently Babylonian is meant, though the specimen does not confirm this conjecture.

  ⁴ The hesitation of Flügel to connect this with هم seems unfounded; in Turfān Pahlavi hām occurs with this meaning (cf. Avesta hāma beside hama, and for Turfān instances see Salemann, Manichaeische Studien, i. Petrograd, 1908, 81–82).