Persian language in Arabic script. The Formation of the orthographic standard and the different graphic traditions of Iran in the first centuries of the Islamic Era

This paper offers a critical review of the orthography of the most ancient original New Persian texts written in the Arabic (11th century), as well as in other scripts (Hebrew, Syriac and Manichaean), to discover any indirect evidence about the beginnings and the formative period of Arabo-Persian orthography. On the basis of the New Persian original documents in non-Arabic scripts here examined, dating to an earlier period than documents in the Arabic script, we can tentatively date and localise the beginning of the Arabo-Persian orthographic influence on the other written traditions of Iran: northeastern Iran, end of the 9th- beginning of the 10th centuries. By then, Arabo-Persian orthography appears as already fixed. Though it cannot be excluded that some scattered and unsystematic attempts at adaptation of the Arabic script to Persian were accomplished here and there in different places of Iran, the hypothesis of a multi-centric origin of the Arabo-Persian orthographic canon seems less probable in the light of our documentation.