Greek Arabic/Arabic Greek – From Contact to Transition, Survival, Antagonism: Some Shades of Interactions

Bilingual texts in Greek Arabic/Arabic Greek include a vast array of material: from manuscripts and papyri to inscriptions, mosaics, numismatic and everyday objects. This evidence mirrors multifarious forms of textual coexistence: transcriptions, translations, independent messages in each language, allographic texts, and “inclusions” of Arabic portions of text in Greek manuscripts. This panoply of cases and their changing layout, evidenced by bilingual correspondences on papyri, or by Arabic texts with rubricae in Greek in Christian Arabic codices, attest to various stages in the Arabization and Islamization of Middle Eastern regions during the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods. In this paper we will explore, through an ongoing discussion, textual hierarchies and the strategies of bilingual communication for translation, and the symbolic and religious meanings conveyed by the use of a specific alphabet/language, as well as graphic and linguistic choices, and the content of marginalia. In particular, the vast production of two different areas—namely the Bilād al-Shām and Egypt, from Damascus to the Sinaitic region—will be investigated. Christian Arabic and Islamic written evidence are both considered, adopting a bidirectional approach to the complex relations between Greco-Byzantine and Arabic languages and writing practices.