# **Points of Contact**

The Shared Intellectual History of Vocalisation in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew

**NICK POSEGAY**

**OBP**

**10**

**Points of Contact**

**Posegay**

In the fi rst few centuries of Islam, Middle Eastern Chris� ans, Muslims, and Jews alike all faced the challenges of preserving their holy texts in the midst of a changing religious landscape. This situa� on led Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew scholars to develop new fi elds of linguis� c science in order to be� er analyse the languages of the Bible and the Qurʾān.

The Shared Intellectual History of Vocalisation

Part of this work dealt with the issue of vocalisa� on in Semi� c scripts, which lacked the le� ers required to precisely record all the vowels in their languages. Semi� c scribes thus developed systems of wri� en vocalisa� on points to be� er record vowel sounds, fi rst in Syriac, then soon a� er in Arabic and Hebrew. These new points opened a new fi eld of linguis� c analysis, enabling medieval grammarians to more easily examine vowel

Many aspects of this new fi eld of vocalisa� on crossed the boundaries between religious communi� es, fi rst with the spread of 'rela� ve' vocalisa� on systems prior to the eighth century, and later with the terminology created to name the discrete vowels of 'absolute'

This book inves� gates the theories behind Semi� c vocalisa� on and vowel phonology in the early medieval Middle East, tracing their evolu� on to iden� fy points of intellectual

This is the author-approved edi� on of this Open Access � tle. As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher's website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material, can also be

*Cover image: MS Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Arabic 53.1 (anonymous Masoreti c treati se on vowels and accents). Courtesy of the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library. Cover design: Anna Gatti .*

> ebook and OA edi� ons also available

book

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contact between Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew linguists before the twel� h century.

phonology and explore the rela� onships between phone� cs and orthography.

vocalisa� on systems.

Nick Posegay

Points of Contact

in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew

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# POINTS OF CONTACT

# Points of Contact

## The Shared Intellectual History of Vocalisation in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew

*Nick Posegay*

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Cover image: MS Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Arabic 53.1 (anonymous Masoretic treatise on vowels and accents). Courtesy of the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library.

Cover design: Anna Gatti

*For Andrew, Amanda,*

*Emma, and Noah*

## CONTENTS

## **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**

The research and open access publication of this book were supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a Gates Cambridge Scholarship [OPP1144], as well as the Leverhulme and Isaac Newton Trusts through an Early Career Fellowship. I could not have completed it without the help of a great many incredible people.

First, thank you to Fred Donner for introducing me to the Middle East, to Jim Robinson for starting me on a path to Cambridge, and to Nichole Fazio-Veigel for making that journey possible. Thank you to all my teachers over the years—from Chicago to Cambridge and Amman to Tangier—this would not have been possible without you.

Thank you to everyone who helped in some way with research, editing, or proofreading, including: Roger-Youssef Akhrass, Sebastian Brock, François Déroche, Nehemia Gordon, Ben Kantor, Jonathan Loopstra, Johan Lundberg, Elvira Martin-Contreras, Kara McCauley, Seth Musser, Jordan Ng, Amanda Posegay, Andrew Posegay, Dana Rodriguez, Lev Tsypin, Hannah Weller, and Peggy Xu. Thank you to Aaron Hornkohl for his assistance in revising and copyediting, Anna Gatti for the cover design, and Alessandra Tosi for managing the publication process. Additional thanks to the librarians and registration staff at the FAMES, Parker, and University Libraries in Cambridge; the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago; the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in Minnesota; the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha; and the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchal Library in Damascus.

Thank you to the entire staff of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, especially Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Nadia Vidro, for their expertise and continuous support.

Thank you to George Kiraz, Ben Outhwaite, and Daniel King for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this book, without which it could never have gone to print.

Special thanks to Magdalen Connolly for her kindness, professional expertise, and patience in the face of collaboration; to Noah van Renswoude for wisdom, linguistic knowledge, commiseration, and friendship; and to Sophia Johnson for just about everything else.

Finally, most of all, thank you to Geoffrey Khan for his many years of instruction, guidance, and care.

## **1. INTRODUCTION**

*But the Hebrews, Syrians, Persians, Kushites, Elamites, Medes, Phoenicians, Alans, and Arabs, as well as others unknown to us, do not have enough letters to express the sounds that they write in their languages, or to read them correctly, just as they are. Accordingly, they are forced to place dots on the letters, to distinguish the vowels and words from each other, and they are only able to read correctly by an act of divination, by tradition, or by means of much toil.* (Elias of Nisibis [d. 1046], *The Correct Form of Syriac Speech* [Gottheil 1887, ܘ([

The Arab expansion out of the Hijaz threw people across the Middle East into a state of linguistic flux. From the seventh century onwards, Arabic-speaking Muslims increasingly came into contact with speakers of other languages, and new converts to Islam brought their own languages with them. This development jeopardised the proper pronunciation of Qurʾānic recitation, as new Muslims in disparate areas learned Arabic for the first time. Conversely, Aramaic-speaking Jews and Syriac Christians gradually began to adopt Arabic as a lingua franca within the growing Islamic empire. As Arabic spread and fewer people mastered Aramaic, those Jewish and Christian communities risked introducing mistakes into their liturgical traditions, both of which required accurate recitation of the biblical text in Hebrew or Syriac. Consequently, by the beginning of the eighth century, Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike needed to take steps to preserve their recitation traditions against the impacts of linguistic change. This situation coincided with an increasing importance in the culture of writing, including the writing of historically oral traditions, between the seventh and ninth centuries (Schoeler 2006, 111– 41, esp. 129, 140; Shah 2008; Khan 2017, 270; 2020, I:12; see also, Bloom 2010). However, the Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew scripts lacked sufficient letters to record every phoneme in the Bible and the Qurʾān, so to transcribe them more accurately would have required wholesale changes to the orthography of sacred texts.

One story that highlights the resistance to changing the holy texts comes from ʿAbd Allah ibn Ṭāhir (d. 845 CE), a ninthcentury Abbasid governor of Khurasan (Bosworth 1982). Famously a patron of culture and scholarship, Ibn Ṭāhir once saw a magnificent example of Arabic calligraphy, but rather than admire it—so the story goes—he lamented: "How beautiful this would be, if there were not so much coriander seed scattered over it!" (Hughes 1895, 686). The wayward coriander seeds were the diacritic points that are now essential to the Arabic script, but for Ibn Ṭāhir they were an undesirable innovation. Opinions such as this did not prevent scribes from adding further innovations to the Arabic writing system, but they did direct them to be as noninvasive as possible with respect to modifying the writing of the Qurʾān. Similar attitudes influenced Syriac and Hebrew scribes as they attempted to record the fine details of their recitation while also preserving traditional biblical orthography.

This opposition to change was especially problematic for the issue of vocalisation, as Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew all lacked dedicated letters for vowels. Theological concerns notwithstanding, it was impossible for scribes to precisely record biblical or Qurʾānic vowel phonology with their abjad scripts alone. Instead, the scribes and scholars of all three languages faced the same challenge: to determine how to record vocalisation without creating new letters or radically amending the text of their scripture. They accomplished this goal first with diacritic points, but between the seventh and eleventh centuries they invented and deployed many other graphical tools for recording vowels. These innovations also prompted medieval linguists to begin writing about vocalisation to explain the function of the new vowel signs. In doing so, they developed novel linguistic theories with technical terminology that merged their pedagogical traditions with the growing fields of Semitic grammar.

This book examines these ideas about Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew vocalisation as they emerged in the early medieval Middle East. It traces their evolution during the period before 1100, following the story of each tradition as it matured from the first attempts at partial vocalisation to the complete vowel systems known in the modern day. J. B. Segal told a related story in his book, *The Diacritical Point and the Accents in Syriac* (1953), which examines the origin and development of pointing in Syriac. In its preface, he writes: "To have discussed possible points of contact with Hebrew manuscripts or with Arabic would have disrupted the continuity of the story" (Segal 1953, vii). This choice is understandable, given the scope of his project, but none of these linguistic traditions developed in a vacuum. Syriac grammarians and Hebrew Masoretes exchanged theories of vocalisation as early as the seventh or eighth century, and the first Qurʾānic vocalisers adapted their system from Syriac at the same time. From the ninth century onwards, both Syriac and Hebrew scholars also adapted elements of Arabic phonological thought to explain their own languages. It is thus impossible to achieve a comprehensive understanding of any one Semitic vocalisation tradition without placing it in the proper context of its neighbours. The story, so to speak, has many characters, and if any are absent, then its clarity declines dramatically. As such, this book will compare the phonological theories that Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew linguists used to describe vocalisation in order to demonstrate how their three traditions were linked in the period between 600 and 1100 CE.

#### **1.0. Organisation and Scope**

In writing this introduction, I cannot help but think of the preface to Shelomo Morag's book, *The Vocalization Systems of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic* (1961). He begins it by saying:

This study is not a complete history of the vocalization systems of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic, nor does it pretend to be one. The time for writing a full history of these vocalization systems has not yet come; much work remains to be done in the examination of mss. and printed texts before such a history can be written. (Morag 1961, 5)

Morag wrote this preface in 1959, and his caveat—"[t]he time… has not yet come"—is no longer true. While Morag already had access to some foundational books that remain relevant, including Nabia Abbott's *The Rise of the North Arabic Script* (1939), J. P. P. Martin's *Histoire de la ponctuation* (1875), Theodore Nöldeke's *Compendious Syriac Grammar* (1904), J. B. Segal's *The Diacritical Point and the Accents in Syriac* (1953), and S. Baer and H. L. Strack's *Dikduke ha-Ṭeʿamim des Ahron ben Moscheh ben Ascher*  (1879), these works were insufficient for establishing a clear history of vocalisation. *The Rise of the North Arabic Script*, for example, focused on the history of the Arabic script, to which the vowel signs were merely an accessory that Abbott did not systematically evaluate (Abbott 1939, 21, 39, 65; see Posegay 2021c). Similarly, Nöldeke's discussion of the vowels is almost entirely descriptive, and makes up just a fraction of his grammar (Nöldeke 1904, §§4–21, 40–54). Segal's analysis is more detailed and incorporates more medieval primary sources on vocalisation (Segal 1953, 7–47), but his heart really belonged to the accent signs. Moreover, *Dikduke ha-Ṭeʿamim des Ahron ben Moscheh ben Ascher* has turned out to contain a number of texts that Aharon ben Asher did not actually write (see Dotan 1967). None of these books were comprehensive accounts of vocalisation and could only serve as starting points for Morag—hence the statement in his preface. The result is that his own book is mainly a description of the forms and functions of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic vocalisation systems, not an analysis of their formative principles and connections. However, our understanding of vocalisation has advanced considerably in the last 60 years, with new studies of both manuscripts and medieval philological texts allowing for a more complete reconstruction of the history of vocalisation.

Regarding Arabic, Abbott herself supplemented her conclusions on vocalisation in *The Rise of the North Arabic Script* with *Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri* (1972, 5–11), and her work, plus studies like Geoffrey Khan's *Arabic Papyri* (1992a), have illuminated the origins of vocalisation signs in non-Qurʾānic manuscripts. Meanwhile, books like François Déroche's *Les Manuscrits*  *du Coran* (1983) and *The Abbasid Tradition* (1992), 1 along with Alain George's *The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy* (2010, esp. 74–80) have clarified the early landscape of vocalised Qurʾānic manuscripts. E. J. Revell (1975), Yasin Dutton (1999; 2000), and George (2015) have also explored the origins and development of the Arabic dot systems, while scholars like Kees Versteegh (1977; 1993), A. A. al-Nassir (1993), and Rafael Talmon (1997b; 2003) have surveyed the technical terminology that the first Arabic grammarians used for vocalisation. There are also now many more published editions of medieval Arabic linguistic texts than there were in Morag's day, including: *al-Muḥkam fī Naqṭ al-Maṣāḥif* (1960), *Risāla Asbāb Ḥudūth al-Ḥurūf* (1983), *Kitāb al-ʿAyn* (1985), *Kitāb Sībawayh* (1986), and *Sirr Ṣināʿa al-Iʿrāb*  (1993). These sources reveal the theoretical principles behind Arabic vocalisation as well as links to Syriac and Greek.

For Syriac, since Morag, a number of authors have examined the use of vowel points in the manuscript tradition of medieval Syriac scribes, as well as the tradition of Syriac grammarians after the seventh century. In particular, George Kiraz's *Tūrrāṣ Mamllā: A Grammar of the Syriac Language* (2012) has widened the view of the Syriac manuscript tradition, and his book *The Syriac Dot* (2015) has reconstructed the history of the diacritic dot with somewhat more readability than that of Segal. Jonathan Loopstra (2009; 2014; 2015; 2019) has also done considerable work to bring the East Syrian *mashlmɔnutɔ* tradition to the fore.

1 See also, Déroche (2014) and Déroche et al. (2015, 222–24), the latter of which is only a brief overview, but contains extensive references to early vocalised Arabic manuscripts.

Similarly, J. F. Coakley (2011) has shown that the 'Western' vowel signs were a fairly late innovation, greatly clarifying the history of the vowel signs, especially as they relate to Jacob of Edessa. Other Syriac scholars have placed great emphasis on Jacob of Edessa as the first and most important source of early medieval Syriac grammar (Revell 1972; Salvesen 2001; ter Haar Romeny 2008; Farina 2018), and rightly so, as Jacob's works remain central to understanding Syriac vocalisation. We also now have a more precise understanding of Classical Syriac morphophonology, thanks to studies like Ebbe Knudsen's *Classical Syriac Phonology* (2015) and Aaron Butts' *Language Change in the Wake of Empire* (2016). Scholars like Adam Becker (2003; 2006; 2010), Aaron Butts, and Simcha Gross (2020) have also investigated the degree of intellectual contact between Jews and Syriac Christians in the late antique and early Islamic periods, a situation which has direct bearing on the early history of vocalisation. Daniel King (2012) and Raphael Talmon (2000a; 2000b) have done similar work comparing Syriac and the early Arabic grammatical tradition. All of this material together means that not only are we in a better position than Morag to chart the history of Syriac vocalisation, but we can also more easily examine its relationships with Hebrew and Arabic.

Morag himself did some further work on Hebrew vocalisation history, particularly examining early Masoretic technical terminology (1973; 1974; 1979), and other scholars have made great strides to advance the understanding of Hebrew vocalisation since then. Aron Dotan has dominated this field, editing a more accurate version of Ben Asher's *Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim* (1967), investigating the origins of Masoretic activity (1974; 1981), and producing one of the most comprehensive summaries of Hebrew vocalisation in his *Encyclopedia Judaica* article, 'Masora' (2007). Israel Yeivin's *Introduction to the Tiberian Masora* (trans. Revell, 1983) condensed the notes of the Tiberian Masora into a digestible form for the first time, and he also wrote what remains the seminal work on Babylonian Masora and vocalisation (1985). As for the Tiberian tradition, Geoffrey Khan's work on Karaite transcriptions of Hebrew in Arabic script (1990; 1992b) and the recovery of additional medieval linguistic texts from the Cairo Genizah have proven essential for understanding its features since Morag's time. Most importantly, nearly the full text of *Hidāya al-Qārī* has emerged from the Firkovich Collection, which Khan utilised for his monumental work, *The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew* (2020). Several other scholars have also published medieval Judaeo-Arabic sources, mostly from the Cairo Genizah, that are critical to the history of Hebrew vocalisation, notably Nehemiah Allony (1964; 1965; 1983), Allony and Yeivin (1985), and Ilan Eldar (1981). All of this work allows us to reconstruct much of the history of the Tiberian Masoretes and compare their vocalisation tradition to those of Syriac and Arabic grammarians (e.g., see Talmon 1997a; 2000a).

So while for Morag the time for writing a full history of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic2 vocalisation had "not yet come," such a history can feasibly be written today. Still, it is not my intention to write that history, at least not in its entirety. This book does not, for example, survey the use of vocalisation signs

2 By which he mainly means Syriac; see Morag (1961, 46–59).

in any manuscript corpora, nor does it exhaustively account for all the signs that saw use during the medieval period. Mostly for reasons of time and space, it also does not take up any sources related to Samaritan vocalisation system, which surely has some bearing on other systems, and it mentions the Babylonian and Palestinian Hebrew systems only occasionally.3 Instead, it focuses on the phonological concepts that medieval scholars developed to describe the new technology of 'vocalisation signs' in the Arabic, Syriac, and Tiberian Hebrew writing systems. These concepts changed over time, and the history of that evolution is also a record of interchange between scholars of different languages and faiths.

#### **1.1. Summary of Sections**

Broadly speaking, medieval Semitic linguists exchanged ideas over the course of three phases in the history of vocalisation. The phases overlap and their duration differs somewhat between languages, but Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew all follow this same trajectory. First, a 'relative' phase, near the infancy of the graphical vocalisation systems, when people explained vowels by describing their phonetic features in contrast to other vowels. This phase spans the period from the first Syriac diacritic dots to roughly the end of the eighth century. Second, an 'absolute' phase, when the graphical vocalisation systems solidified in their final forms, and grammarians began assigning names to their vowels on an absolute, one-to-one basis. This phase begins with the introduction of

3 For details on these systems, see Morag (1961, 30–41); Dotan (2007, §§5.1–2, 6).

the Arabic red-dot vocalisation system and the eighth-century Arabic scholars who first applied absolute vowel-naming conventions. It continues through the tenth century. Third, a 'consolidation' phase, mainly in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when scholars sought to tie together the disparate theoretical threads that their predecessors created to explain vocalisation. This period is marked by the growing dominance of Arabic in the Middle East and an increase in its influence on the phonological ideas of Syriac and Hebrew.

While the following discussion traces each language through these phases, its main goal is to detect and explore points of contact between different linguistic traditions. The chief method for finding these connections is the identification of technical terms that appear in primary sources across multiple traditions. This study thus includes a wide survey of the technical terminology that Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew scholars used to explain vowels, aiming to define them as accurately as possible in their native contexts. It then examines the usage of the shared terminology to determine how and when certain terms may have crossed between traditions. Sometimes these terms are direct loan words, but more often they are calques, usually from Syriac, Arabic, or Greek, that were adapted to fit a new purpose in another tradition. From these shared terms it is then possible to analyse the chronology and direction of intellectual exchange among medieval Semitic linguists.

This book addresses the intellectual history of vocalisation in three sections. The first, chapter 2, surveys the different ways that medieval linguists described vowels as a phonological category that was distinct from consonants. It includes three subsections, each addressing a fundamental principle that links Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew scholars in the field of vowel phonology: the idea of 'sounding' letters (§2.1); the perception of vowels as 'movements' (§2.2); and the dual nature of the *matres lectionis* (§2.3). These principles provide the foundation for further lines of inquiry related to vocalisation.

Chapter 3 examines the phenomenon of 'relative' vocalisation, drawing on some of the earliest sources that address Semitic vowel phonology in the eighth century. Its first subsection describes the similarities between Syriac grammarians and Hebrew Masoretes in the first attempts to distinguish homographs in their versions of the Bible (§3.1). Specifically, it highlights the apparent exchange of a phonological concept of 'height' as it relates to vowel articulation and the placement of vocalisation points. The second subsection then applies the same relative principle to early Arabic vowel phonology, linking it to the names of the Arabic inflectional cases and to the Sībawayhan description of allophones of the letter *ʾalif* (§3.2).

Chapter 4 follows the transition from relative vocalisation to the first 'absolute' vowel naming systems in each language, comparing all three histories to show where they intertwine. It first addresses the chronological development of vowel names in Arabic grammar, putting it in context with the Syriac grammatical tradition during the eighth and ninth centuries (§4.1). Next, it traces Syriac vowel names from their earliest occurrence in the late eighth century to the grammars of the eleventh century (§4.2). It then surveys the various conventions by which Hebrew scholars named their vowels in comparison with both Arabic and Syriac (§4.3). Each of these subsections extends to the attempts of relatively later authors to consolidate earlier ideas about vocalisation, examining conceptual and terminological developments in the late tenth and eleventh centuries.

Altogether, these discussions show that medieval Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew linguists had many points of contact with each other as they dealt with the problem of vocalisation in their respective languages. The links between them reveal an interconnected, interfaith intellectual landscape between the seventh and eleventh centuries, one that continues to have implications for the modern reading of these three languages.

#### **1.2. Defining Terms**

As will soon become apparent, this book is intensely interested in technical terms, and many of its questions would be much easier to resolve if modern vocalisation studies did not maintain a long tradition of vague and confusing terminology. I define my own terms here.

'Vocalisation' refers both to the process of physically adding vowel signs to a text and to the intellectual domain that explains the creation, function, and application of those signs. This application process may also be called 'pointing.' A 'vocalisation system' is a set of signs that represent the vowel inventory of a particular pronunciation tradition. These include the Syriac dot system, the Syriac miniature letter-form system,4 the Arabic reddot system, the modern Arabic system, the Tiberian Hebrew system, the Palestinian Hebrew system, and the Babylonian Hebrew system. A 'vocalisation sign' or 'vowel sign' is a point, dot, or other small grapheme that stands for a vowel phoneme, for example: an Arabic red dot, the Syriac *zqɔpɔ* dots, or the Tiberian *qɔmeṣ* symbol. A 'vowel name' is an individual term that refers to a single vowel, although, depending on its context and author, it may refer to either a phoneme or a grapheme. For example, Arabic *fatḥa* 'opening', Syriac *ptɔḥɔ* 'opening', and Hebrew *pataḥ* 'opening' all indicate the phoneme /a/, but may also refer to different graphemes that represent /a/.

By contrast, 'diacritic mark', 'diacritic dot', or 'diacritic sign' refers to a grapheme that is added to a word to clarify the pronunciation of it or one of its letters in some way. These include the Arabic consonantal *ʾiʿjām* dots, the Syriac dots on *rish*  and *dalat*, and the Hebrew *dagesh*, as well as signs like *shadda*, *sukūn*, *seyame*, *qushshɔyɔ*, *rafe*, and *mappiq*. This category does not include any graphemes that regularly represent vowels.

'Accents points', 'cantillation signs', and 'reading dots' (Loopstra 2019, 160–61; Kiraz 2015, 114–19) refer to the systems of dots and signs that indicate intonation and cadence in Hebrew

4 Traditionally known as the 'Western' Syriac system (though not limited to Western Syriac), my designation is based on terms that Nabia Abbott ("small-letter vowels" or "letter signs"; Abbott 1972, 9–11) and E. J. Revell ("letter-form signs"; Revell 1975, 180) coined to describe Arabic diacritics and vocalisation.

and Syriac texts of the Bible. They are generally tangential to the discussions below.

'Punctuation' is a troublesome word and I avoid it whenever possible. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars of vocalisation used it ambiguously to refer either to all dots in manuscripts (regardless of their function), or to refer to the process of adding dots (the process which I call 'vocalisation' and 'pointing').5 These meanings are now slightly archaic, and they have become conflated with the idea of 'punctuation' as the set of signs that separate clauses in English syntax (comma, semicolon, full stop, etc.).

'Relative vocalisation' is a term for a method of vocalisation that identifies vowels relative to other vowels in the same position, often by comparing homographs that have the same consonants but different vowels. It extends to the comparative terminology which some medieval linguists used to differentiate vowels. These systems include the Syriac diacritic dot system, the early Masoretic *milleʿel-milleraʿ* system, and the early Arabic system for describing allophones of *ʾalif*.

'Absolute vocalisation' is my term for vocalisation systems which can mark and name their phonemic vowels on a one-toone basis. These are the systems that readers of Semitic languages are most familiar with, including the modern Arabic system, the Syriac miniature letter-form system, and the Tiberian pointing system.

A glossary of vocalisation terminology used in primary sources appears at the end of this book.

5 For example, see Nutt (1870).

#### **2.0. Primary Sources**

While I am indebted to the many contemporary scholars who have taken up these topics before me, the core of this book relies on readings of primary texts written by medieval linguists. The following is a chronological overview of the sources that make up the bulk of my corpus. This study is limited to authors who were active before the end of the eleventh century, as after that time the main Semitic vocalisation systems were fully developed. These sources do not exhaustively represent the grammatical traditions of their respective languages, but I have chosen them in order to best show the relationships between Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew within a manageable corpus. Additional minor sources will be introduced as needed throughout. Unless otherwise noted, translations of Semitic sources are my own.

#### **2.1. Sources for Arabic**

Our earliest substantial source for Arabic phonological thought is also the oldest extant Arabic lexicon, *Kitāb al-ʿAyn* (*The Book of the ʿAyn*), compiled mainly by al-Layth ibn al-Muẓaffar (d. c. 803) around the year 800 (Makhzumi 1985; Sellheim 2012a; 2012b; Schoeler 2006, 142–63). It contains a sizable introduction by al-Layth's teacher, al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī (d. 786 or 791), in which al-Khalīl describes the phonetic features of the Arabic alphabet. This introduction is our primary focus, but the definitions of some terms in the lexical portion of the book are also relevant to the discussion, as they contain important early grammatical teachings (Talmon 1997b).

Sībawayh (d. 793 or 796), the most famous of al-Khalīl's students, needs little introduction. He is the most influential Arabic grammarian, and his *Kitāb Sībawayh* (*Sībawayh*'s *Book*), also known simply as the *Kitāb*, was the foundation for the Basran school of Arabic grammar (Sībawayh 1986). No other grammar has matched its comprehensive coverage of the Arabic language, and it contains several sections devoted to Arabic phonology (al-Nassir 1993). The vocalisation terms in these sections persist in Arabic to this day, and they also appear in medieval texts that describe Syriac and Hebrew.

An important source for understanding the theories behind Arabic technical terminology is *al-Īḍāḥ fī ʿIllal al-Naḥw* (*Clarification of the Reasons of Grammar*) by Abū al-Qāsim al-Zajjājī (d. 948/949). Al-Zajjājī was a student of the more famous grammarian Abū Isḥāq al-Sarī al-Zajjāj (d. 922/928), and his *Īḍāḥ* explains the reasons behind the naming of the Arabic inflectional system that relates to vocalisation (al-Zajjājī 1959).

Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUthmān ibn Jinnī (d. 1002) was a direct intellectual successor to Sībawayh, and his *Sirr Ṣināʿa al-Iʿrāb* (*The Secret of Making Proper Arabic*) is critical to understanding the development of Arabic vocalisation (Ibn Jinnī 1993). It is the first comprehensive study of Arabic phonology (Alfozan 1989, 2), and in it, Ibn Jinnī clarifies and expands the principles of vocalisation laid out in *Kitāb Sībawayh*. This book is particularly important for showing the refinement of Arabic vocalisation terminology in the tenth century.

A less grammatical source is the encyclopaedia *Mafātīḥ al-ʿUlūm* (*The Keys to the Sciences*), written by Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Khwārizmī (d. 997) around 977. It is one of the earliest Arabic encyclopaedias (Bosworth 1963, 19; see Fischer 1985; Talmon 1997b, 263–64), and in it al-Khwārizmī—a Persian scholar who was not a grammarian—gathers vowel names from multiple different traditions (al-Khwārizmī 1968). He claims to draw on the work of al-Khalīl, as well as Greek sources, and lists several terms that refer to non-cardinal vowels.

Another source by a non-grammarian is *Risāla Asbāb Ḥudūth al-Ḥurūf* (*The Treatise on the Causes of the Occurrence of Letters*), an essay by Abū ʿAlī ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) (al-Tayyan and Mir Alam 1983). Ibn Sīnā was a polymath, but he made his career as a physician and philosopher, and he analyses Arabic vocalisation through the lens of biomechanics. The first half of the essay is an acoustic study of Arabic, while the second half classifies the Arabic letters, revealing connections to Greek and Syriac phonetic concepts.

*Al-Muḥkam fī Naqṭ al-Maṣāḥif* (*The Rules for Pointing the Codices*), by the *tajwīd* scholar Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī (d. 1053), details the history and proper usage of the Arabic vowel points, emphasising the appearance of the dots in manuscripts (al-Dānī 1960). It provides evidence for the evolution of Arabic vocalisation terminology in the eleventh century and explains the relationships between phonetic features and dots.

#### **2.2. Sources for Syriac**

The most important sources that explain early Syriac vocalisation are three works by Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), a renowned West Syriac bishop and grammarian (ter Haar Romeny 2008; esp. Salvesen 2008; Kruisheer 2008). 6 His *Letter on Orthography* explains the significance of the diacritical point to Syriac writing, while the tractate *On Persons and Tenses* (Phillips 1869) links vowel phonology directly to diacritic dots. After these two short works, Jacob also wrote the first true Syriac grammar, the *Turrɔṣ Mamllɔ Nahrɔyɔ* (*The Correct Form of Mesopotamian Speech*). Although it survives only in fragments (Wright 1871), 7 the introduction to this book presents vowel letters in a way that allows us to connect Greek phonology to the Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew vocalisation traditions.

Other early Syriac sources include the works of Dawid bar Pawlos (fl. c. 770–800), an abbot from northern Mesopotamia who lived during the late eighth and early ninth centuries (Brock 2011; Posegay 2021b, 152–55). He wrote a few fragmentary works on Syriac grammar, including sections on the nature of speech and vocalisation (Gottheil 1893), as well as several letters on philological topics (Barsoum 1987, 325–29; Moosa 2003, 372–76). Dawid's grammatical writings provide important clarifications related to the descriptions of vowels in Jacob of Edessa's work, and they show the importance of poetry in the history of Syriac vocalisation. Also of note is a grammatical *scholion* which

6 See also, Baumstark (1922, 248–56); Barsoum (1987, 291–306); Brock (1997, 57–60); Moosa (2003, 334–50).

7 On the status of Jacob's extant grammatical works, see Farina (2018). Gorgias Press is about to republish Jacob's grammar with accompanying English translation in a forthcoming reprint of Merx's *De Artis Grammatica*.

he wrote on the *bgdkt* letters, which contains some of the earliest attested Syriac vowel names.8

Another early source for absolute vowel names in Syriac is the version of *Ktɔbɔ d-Shmɔhe Dɔmyɔye* (*The Book of Similar Words*) by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 873) (Hoffmann 1880, 2–49). Ḥunayn was a key figure in the Syriac-Arabic translation movement, and he expanded this text from an earlier work by ʿEnanishoʿ, a seventh-century monk (Childers 2011). Besides *Ktɔbɔ d-Shmɔhe Dɔmyɔye*, Ḥunayn also wrote one of the first Syriac-Arabic lexica. While no longer extant, this lexicon was foundational to further Syriac lexicographic activity during the tenth century.

The first known lexicographer to make use of Ḥunayn's translation work was ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī (d. c. 900), and his Syriac-Arabic lexicon saw several revisions over the course of the tenth century (Hoffmann 1874; Gottheil 1908; 1928; see Butts 2009). It includes a considerable number of technical terms related to vocalisation, and it offers a terminological link between the work of Ḥunayn and that of the eleventh-century Syriac grammarians.

The second major extant Syriac-Arabic lexicon is that of Ishoʿ bar Bahlul (fl. 942–968) (Duval 1901). This book straddles the line between dictionary and encyclopaedia, and Bar Bahlul frequently cites other lexicographers from the ninth century. It saw several expansions in the centuries after his death, but remains an important source for examining the practical usage of vocalisation terms to describe vowel phonemes and morphology.

8 MS Jerusalem, St. Mark's Monastery (SMMJ) 356, fols 164v–166r and MS Mardin, Dayr al-Zaʿfarān (ZFRN) 192, fols 199r–200r. An edition and French translation of this text will appear in Farina (2021).

It also contains several definitions that connect Syriac phonology to other linguistic traditions.

Another relevant source for vowel naming is MS London, British Library Additional 12138, the well-known codex of East Syriac *mashlmɔnutɔ* completed in 899 (Wright 1870, I:101; Loopstra 2014; 2015, II:XIII, XXXVIII–XXXIX). This text is also sometimes referred to as the East Syriac 'Masora', based on some similarities with the Hebrew Masoretic tradition (Merx 1889, 29– 30). It contains several dozen marginal notes, mostly added after the ninth century, that are useful evidence for the detection of early vowel names.

Elias bar Shinɔyɔ of Nisibis (d. 1046), also known as Elias of Ṣoba, was an East Syriac bishop who wrote extensively in both Arabic and Syriac throughout the first half of the eleventh century (Merx 1889, 109; Teule 2011b). His most significant work for the history of Syriac vocalisation is the *Turrɔṣ Mamllɔ Suryɔyɔ* (*The Correct Form of Syriac Speech*) (Gottheil 1887). 9 This grammar draws on the earlier work of scholars like Jacob of Edessa and Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq while also incorporating concepts from the Arabic grammatical tradition. It is notable for including a set of absolute names for every Syriac vowel.

Another Eastern bishop, Elias of Ṭirhan (d. 1049), was a contemporary of Elias of Nisibis, and he wrote a Syriac grammar known as the *Memrɔ Gramaṭiqɔyɔ* (*The Grammatical Essay*) (Merx 1889, 137, 154–57; Teule 2011a). Elias wrote this book prior to

9 Gottheil's edition includes an English translation. Bertaina (2011, 199–200) summarises the contents of the entire book, which Elias apparently wrote for a deacon who was also a scribe.

his promotion to Catolicos in 1028, adapting substantial elements from the Arabic grammatical tradition to fit Syriac for the benefit of an Arabic-speaking audience. This work is also known as *Turrɔṣ Mamllɔ Suryɔyɔ* (*The Correct Form of Syriac Speech*), based on the title which appears in the main manuscript of Baethgen's edition (1880). However, due to his perception of Elias's work as somewhat ad-hoc in its organisation, Merx argues that the identification given by ʿAbdishɔ is more appropriate (1889, 157); that is, *Memrɔ Gramaṭiqɔyɔ* (*The Grammatical Essay*). Merx seems particularly keen to minimise the importance of Elias of Ṭirhan, due to his status as one of the 'Arabising' grammarians, in contrast to Syriac writers like Elias of Nisibis, who did not adopt as many Arabic grammatical ideas (1889, 112–24, 138, 157). In an effort to reduce the already substantial confusion between Elias of Nisibis and Elias of Ṭirhan, I will refer to the latter's grammatical book as *Memrɔ Gramaṭiqɔyɔ*, but my use of this title is not intended to reinforce Merx's unfair reductionism. This work includes several important sections on vocalisation and uses absolute vowel names that differ from those of Elias of Nisibis.

#### **2.3. Sources for Hebrew**

One of the most important sources for Hebrew vocalisation is the corpus of Hebrew and Aramaic word lists from the Tiberian Masora. These include lists that compare homographs that differ in their vowels (Dotan 1974),10 as well as lists of vowel names and their signs (Steiner 2005). These lists are nearly all anonymous,

10 Several of the lists relevant to this book are published in Ginsburg (1880); see §3.1.2.

but they illuminate the early development of Masoretic vocalisation practices and show remarkable similarities with the work of Syriac grammarians.

*Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim* (*The Fine Details of the Accents*) by Aharon ben Asher (d. c. 960) is probably the most famous Masoretic treatise (Dotan 1967). It examines difficult sections of the Tiberian recitation tradition with respect to accents, but it also utilises early Hebrew terminology related to vowel names. Ben Asher lived in the tenth century, during a period when most Masoretic treatises were written in Arabic, but *Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim* is in Hebrew, suggesting that some of its material may predate the tenth century (Khan 2020, I:116–17).

*Kutub al-Lugha* (*The Books of the Language*), the Judaeo-Arabic grammar of Hebrew by Saadia Gaon (d. 942), is one of the earliest true Hebrew 'grammatical' works (Dotan 1997; see Brody 2016; Malter 1921). Its fifth chapter, *al-Qawl fī al-Nagham* (*The Discourse on Melody*), deals directly with Hebrew vocalisation (Skoss 1952). It includes the most complete description of the Hebrew 'vowel scale', a key concept that helps link the Masoretes to Syriac grammarians. Saadia also adopts plenty of Arabic grammatical terminology and additional concepts from Arabic phonology. In 931, sometime after *Kutub al-Lugha*, Saadia wrote his *Commentary on Sefer Yeṣira* (*Commentary on the Book of Creation*), which contains several passages that are also relevant to vocalisation and vowel naming (Lambert 1891, 45, 52 [Arabic]; 76 n. 1 [French]).

Some of the most overlooked sources on Hebrew vocalisation are a subgenre of Masoretic texts which I refer to as *muṣawwitāt* 'vowels' works (see Eldar 1986). These are Judaeo-Arabic treatises on Hebrew vocalisation and accents that preserve terminology that does not appear in the Tiberian Masora, *Diqduqe ha-Ṭeʿamim*, or *Kutub al-Lugha*. They are known mainly from anonymous fragmentary manuscripts in Cairo Genizah collections, most likely written in the tenth or eleventh centuries. This study analyses five such works published by Allony and Yeivin (Allony 1965; 1983; Allony and Yeivin 1985), and occasionally refers to unpublished texts from other manuscripts in the Genizah. They are critical for reconstructing the internal development of Hebrew vocalisation as well as for demonstrating links with the Arabic grammatical tradition.

A similar text from the Genizah that does have a title is *Kitāb Naḥw al-ʿIbrānī* (*The Book of Hebrew Inflection*), probably from the eleventh century (Eldar 1981). Only one fragment is extant, but it contains another version of the Hebrew vowel scale arranged according to the Arabic case system, providing additional data for the development of the scale and Hebrew vowel names. Its version of the scale appears to be an Arabic translation of a Hebrew Masoretic text, known as *Nequdot Omeṣ ha-Miqrɔ* (*The Dots of the Greatness of the Scripture*), found in Baer and Strack's *Dikduke ha-Teʿamim* (1879, 34–36, §36).

Two further tenth-century Arabic sources are *Kitāb al-Tanqīṭ* (*The Book of Pointing*) and *Kitāb al-Afʿal Dhuwāt Ḥurūf al-Līn* (*The Book of Verbs with Soft Letters*) by Judah ben David Ḥayyūj (d. c. 1000), an Andalusī scholar who adopted Arabic grammatical terminology and actively compared Hebrew with Arabic (Nutt 1870; Jastrow 1897; Basal 1999, 227). The former work is a short text that shows the evolution of some early Hebrew vowel-naming conventions, while the latter is a lexicographical account of weak roots in Hebrew, including considerable morphophonological analysis based on concepts from Arabic grammar.

Finally, the most comprehensive medieval source on the Tiberian recitation tradition is *Hidāya al-Qārī* (*The Guide for the Reader*), a Judaeo-Arabic book by Abū al-Faraj Hārūn (d. c. 1050) (Khan 2020, I:119–20; II). He wrote two versions of this work one long and one short—but this book relies on the long version as a more comprehensive source. It consists of three sections, one each on consonants, vowels, and accents, but naturally the section on vowels is our main interest. It consolidates vowel names from multiple traditions, makes frequent use of Arabic technical terms, and includes another version of the vowel scale divided accorded to Arabic grammatical principles. It is thus an appropriate capstone for the history of vocalisation at the end of the Masoretic period.

Now, with all of that said, we can get to the points.

## **2. CONCEPTUALISING VOWELS**

*The discussion on the 'kings'; but if you want to say the discussion on the 'melodies' or the discussion on the 'inflections', then that has the same meaning.* (Abū al-Faraj Hārūn [d. c. 1050], *The Guide for the Reader* [Khan 2020, II:117])

Even from our earliest sources, Semitic linguists had long grappled with the differences between vowels and consonants, both phonetically and in terms of their traditional orthography. The primary distinction for many was that vowels could be pronounced on their own, whereas consonants required a vowel to facilitate their articulation. They were ultimately familiar with this concept due to contact with the Greek grammatical tradition, and they adopted the ideas of 'sounding' letters and phonetic 'movement' to explain it. Conversely, many linguists also recognised that Semitic writing systems did not clearly delineate vowels and consonants, leading to diverse interpretations as to the nature and function of the *matres lectionis* letters. These three concepts—sounding letters, movement, and *matres lectionis*—were fundamental for talking about vocalisation, and their principles crosscut the Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew philological traditions. This section addresses each of them in turn.

## **1.0. Sounding it Out: Construction of a Vowel Category**

One of the most common ways that medieval Semitic linguists described vowels was with the concept of 'sounding' letters. Quite simply, vowels were called 'sounding' because they had some inherent sonorous quality, whereas consonants were 'soundless' unless accompanied by a vowel. This idea can be traced back to the Greek linguistic tradition, but entered Semitic linguistics through the Syriac grammarian Jacob of Edessa (d. 708). Jacob first adapted the Greek concept of sounding letters in order to solve a particularly thorny issue in his career: it was impossible to write a satisfactory grammar with only the rudimentary Syriac diacritic system. As a result, he calqued a Greek concept of vowel letters from Dionysius Thrax's *Technē Grammatikē*—*phōnēenta* 'sounded ones'—into Syriac as *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*. Jacob's eighth-century successor, Dawid bar Pawlos (fl. c. 770–800), clarified the meaning of this term (Gottheil 1893), and by the tenth century, Hebrew scholars had adopted the concept as well. The word—now calqued into Arabic as *muṣawwitāt*—appears in phonological contexts in Judaeo-Arabic linguistic texts from this time, including the work of Saadia Gaon (d. 942) and several Masoretic treatises. The division of 'sounding' and 'soundless' letters is also attested in Ibn Sīnā's writing (d. 1037), even as his Syriac contemporary, Elias of Ṭirhan (d. 1049), modified Jacob of Edessa's original *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ* model to fit a different Syriac phonological understanding.

These terms—*phōnēenta*, *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*, *muṣawwitāt—*are often translated as 'voiced', reflecting modern linguistic terminology (e.g., Talmon 2000b, 250). This is also the etymology of the English word 'vowel', ultimately descended from Latin *vocalis* 'sounding, vocal', itself a calque of Greek *phōnêen*. However, none of the authors discussed below use these terms to refer to the modern concept of linguistic voicing. Instead, they indicate a distinct phonological category which includes the vowels (indeed, all of them 'voiced'), but (generally) not consonants, voiced or otherwise. I translate them as 'sounding' to avoid conflating these concepts.

#### **1.1. The First Sounding Letters**

The earliest evidence of Syriac sounding letters comes from Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), a seventh-century bishop and grammarian whose work reflects a combination of Greek concepts and Syrian terminology. Even in the seventh century, Jacob was already part of a Syriac tradition that had dealt with vowel notation for hundreds of years, and had developed a written system of diacritic dots to indicate non-consonantal phonetic information. These dots were placed based on the relative quality of vowels in a given word when compared to a homograph, and were thus a form of relative vowel notation (Segal 1953, 3–6, 9–12, 28; Kiraz 2012, I:12, 20, 64; 2015, 36–37, 94–98). The diacritic system evolved throughout the sixth and seventh centuries, eventually allowing scribes to use multiple dots to mark more than one vowel in a single word, but it did not reach a level of one-to-one correspondence between vowels and signs until the eighth century (Segal 1953, 9, 29–30; Kiraz 2012, I:12, 21, 70–71; 2015, 101–2). Thus, at the end of the seventh century, Jacob of Edessa lacked graphemes for the absolute marking of Syriac vowels. To some extent, it seems that he was content with this writing system, as he composed a short grammatical tractate, *On Persons and Tenses*, which laid out some rules for Syriac morphology as they related to the placement of the dots. He also wrote his *Letter on*  *Orthography* to one George of Sarug, pointedly detailing instructions for how scribes should use the diacritic dot (Phillips 1869; see also, Farina 2018). However, this relative dot system was insufficient for writing a proper grammar of Syriac, so later in his career Jacob took more drastic measures (Segal 1953, 40; Talmon 2008, 167).

In the introduction to his landmark grammar *Turrɔṣ Mamllɔ Nahrɔyɔ* (*The Correct Form of Mesopotamian Speech*), Jacob explains the process by which the Greeks increased the number of letters in their alphabet from an original seventeen to its full twenty-four (Wright 1871, ܐ ;Farina 2018, 176–77). He then addresses an unknown correspondent—their name is lost from the manuscript—who has requested that Jacob create additional letters to complete the Syriac alphabet (see Merx 1889, 51; Segal 1953, 41–43). Whether or not this correspondent was real, the idea of adding new letters to Syriac seems to have weighed on Jacob for some time, and he acquiesces, saying:

ܩܢ ܡܬ ̈ ܐܡܪܢܐ ܕܝܢ ܕܢܗܘܘܢ ܘܢܐ ̈ ܖܨܢܐ ܠܡܡܠܠ ܐ ܗܢܐ . ܣܛܪ ܡܢ ܬܘܣܦܬܐ ܘܬܐ ܕܐܬ ܠܢܝܬܐ ̈ ̈ ܩ ܗܠܝܢ ܕ ̈ ܚܣܝܖܢ ܡܢ ܣܦܪܐ ܗܢܐ . ܕܝܗܝܢ ܕܒܐܝ ܡܫܟܚ ܐܢܫ ̈ ܚܘܝܘ ܠܡ ܚܫܚܬܗܘܢ ܕܝܠܗܘܢ ܢܘܢܐ ̇ ܕܩ . ܘܬܘܪܨܐ ܗܐ ̈ ܕܫܡ ܠ ܐ ̈ ܘܕܡ ܕܒܗܘܢ ̈ . ܘܟܕ ܡܢ ܬ ܖܬܝܗܝܢ ܐܙܕܪܒܬ : ܡܢ ܫܐܠܬܟ ܘܡܢ ܩܝܢܕܘܢܣ ܕܐܒܕܢܐ ܒܐ ̈ ̈ ܕܟܬ : ܘ ܗ ܕܐܙܝܥ ܢܘܢ ̇ ܠܗ ܕܡܢ ܩܕܡܝ . ܗܕܐ ̇ ̇ ܐܬܚܫܒܬ . ܕܟܕ ܡܛܠ ܗܘܢܐ ܘܬܘܩܢܐ ̈ ܕܝܠܗܘܢ ܢܘܢܐ ܕܩ ܒܠܚܘܕ ܣܦܢ ܡܬܬܘ ܬܐ ̈ ̈ ܐܬܘ : ܠܘܬ ܝ ̇ ܚܘܝܢ ܫܘܚܠܦܐ ̈ ܗ ܕܢ ܕܒ ܠ ܐ ̈ ܘܡܦܩܐ ܕܝܠܗܝܢ ܢܬ ܩ : ܘܠ ܐ ܗܘܐ ܡܛܠ ܠܝܐ ̈ ̇ ܫܘܡ ܘܬܘܩܢܐ ܕܝܠܗ ܕܣܦܪܐ

Thus, I say that there should be established accurate [morphological] rules for this speech, without the addition of these 'sounding letters' which this script lacks, [letters] through which one can demonstrate the application of the rules and the proper forms of the nouns and verbs that are established by them. But I have been compelled by two things: by your request, and by the danger of the loss of [previous] books, which is what motivated those who came before me. This I have considered: that only for the sake of the meaning [of words] and the construction of rules are the letters added—insofar as they may show the change and pronunciation of the sounds—and not for the sake of perfecting and re-arranging the script. (Wright 1871, ܐ, Bodl. 159 fol. 1a, col. 1)

Diverging from *On Persons and Tenses*, Jacob admits that the Syriac writing system is insufficient for writing a comprehensive grammar and that the diacritical dots cannot compensate for that deficit.1 Consequently, he introduces seven letters of a new type—*ʾatwɔtɔ qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ* 'sounding letters'—solely for grammatical explanations, and he uses them throughout the text to transcribe examples of Syriac morphology. Six of these letters are novel symbols, likely modified forms of the Greek vowel letters, and this addition is an imitation of the process that Jacob claims occurred in the Greek script (Segal 1953, 42). 2 However, he does retain the *ʾalaph* to represent a low backed *a*-vowel. He does away

1 Judith Olszowy-Schlanger (2011, 366) and Nabia Abbott (1972, 6–7) suggest that complete vocalisation systems were prerequisites for the production of true 'grammars' of Hebrew and Arabic, respectively. Jacob seems to have reached the same conclusion for Syriac.

2 Note that despite their similarity to the Greek vowels, Jacob's vowel letters are not the source of the West Syriac vocalisation system that uses Greek letter-form signs. J. F. Coakley (2011) has shown that these signs are not attested until approximately the tenth century; see also, Kiraz (2012, I:79–80); Loopstra (2009, 279).

with the other Syriac *matres lectionis*, with *waw* and *yod* both becoming regular consonants in the classification of sounding letters. Moreover, unlike the Greeks, Jacob only intended for his letters to be pedagogical tools, not permanent additions to the Syriac alphabet, and accordingly, they are only used in *Turrɔṣ Mamllɔ Nahrɔyɔ* and in Bar Hebraeus' discussions of Jacob (Segal 1953, 44; Kiraz 2012, I:73–74).

Strange orthography notwithstanding, the term *ʾatwɔtɔ qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ* (sing. *ʾɔtɔ qɔlɔnɔytɔ*) reveals Jacob's conception of vowels as a phonological category. He uses it twice in the extant introduction (Wright 1871, ܐ, Bodl. 159 fol. 1a, and ܒ, Bodl. 159 fol. 2a, col. 1), setting it against the *ʾatwɔtɔ dlɔ qɔlɔ* 'letters without sound' (Wright 1871, ܒ, Bodl. 159 fol. 2a, col. 1), that is, the consonants. As Rafael Talmon points out, these two categories are calques of Greek terms for vowels and consonants: *phōnēenta* 'sounded' and *aphōna* 'soundless' (Talmon 2008, 177; 2000b, 250).

Jacob's source for these words is likely the *Technē Grammatikē* (*The Art of Grammar*) of Dionysius Thrax, a Greek grammarian who lived in the second century BCE (Fiano 2011; see Merx 1889, 9–28, 50–72; Talmon 2000a, 337–38). In it, he classifies the Greek alphabet according to the amount of airflow through the mouth during the articulation of each letter, saying: "Of these letters, seven are vowels (*phōnēenta*), α, ε, η, ι, ο, υ, and ω. They are called *phōnēenta* because they form a complete

sound (*phōnē*) by themselves" (Davidson 1874, 5).3 The other seventeen letters are consonants, which "are called consonants because by themselves they have no sound, but produce a sound only when they are combined with vowels." The defining feature of a vowel in the *Technē* is thus that it can be pronounced alone, whereas consonants need a vowel to accompany them. The consonants are then further divided into 'half-sounding' (*hēmiphōna*): ζ ξ ψ λ μ ν ρ σ; which "are called *hēmiphōna* because, being less easily sounded than the vowels, when attempted to be pronounced alone, they result in hisses and mumblings" (Davidson 1874, 5–6). That is, these eight consonants are continuants4 (/z/, /ks/, /ps/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /r/, /s/) which allow the partial passage of air, but cannot be fully articulated without a vowel. Finally, nine consonants are 'soundless' or 'mute' (*aphōna*): β γ δ κ π τ θ φ χ (Davidson 1874, 6). These nine are stop-plosives (/b/, /g/, /d/, /k/, /p/, /t/, /th/, /ph/, /kh/), which do not allow continuous airflow without an adjacent vowel.

This division of letters into 'sounding', 'half-sounding', and 'soundless' is traceable to Aristotle's *Poetics* (Davidson 1874, 5, n. §), where Aristotle refers to the vowels as *phōnēen*, the continuant liquid consonants (/r/, /l/, /m/, /n/) plus /s/ as *hēmiphōnon*, and the rest of the consonants as *aphōnon* (Morag 1979, 87; see also, Merx 1889, 191). This arrangement differs slightly from that of Dionysius Thrax, but the division is still based on how long a particular phoneme can be held in continuous pronunciation,

3 Greek text published in Bekker (1816, II:629–43). Quotations in this paragraph are from Davidson's (1874, 630–32) translation of §7. 4 Including the double consonants, i.e., /ks/, /ps/.

similar to the *Technē*'s division according to relative amounts of obstructed airflow. It is more likely that Jacob adapted his terms from the *Technē* than from Aristotle. While Jacob was quite adept at Greek in general, it is clear that Syriac grammarians engaged with the Greek grammatical tradition specifically via the *Technē*, as evidenced by Joseph Huzaya's translation of the text into Syriac in the first half of the sixth century (Talmon 2000a, 337–38; Van Rompay 2011b; King 2012, 191; Farina 2018, 168). Notably, though, Joseph did not translate the phonetic portions of that work, which included the section on sounding letters (Merx 1889, 28–29; King 2012, 191). Additionally, Jacob does not adopt Dionysius Thrax's 'half-sounding' category at all. Instead, he dispenses with the *hēmiphōna* subdivision and separates the Syriac letters into just two groups: either 'sounding' (i.e., vowels) or 'soundless' (i.e., consonants), according to whether or not a letter can be pronounced on its own.5 As such, Jacob's implementation of Syriac sounding letters is likely his own interpretation of the *Technē*, and not derived from Joseph Huzaya.

This distinction between 'sounding' and 'soundless' letters persisted within the Syriac grammatical tradition, and a fuller explanation of them appears in the work of Dawid bar Pawlos (fl. c. 770–800). A Miaphysite monk and grammarian from the second half of the eighth century (Brock 2011), Dawid is the author of a fragmentary grammatical text, which reads:

5 Later in his *Turrɔṣ Mamllɔ*, Jacob does adapt a separate Greek tripartite division of consonants, likely also borrowed from the *Technē* (Talmon 2008, 167–69).

ܡܬܦܠ ܕܝܢ ܐܬ ̈ܓܢ ܘܬܐ : ܝܬܐ ̈ ܠܩܠܢ ܘܠܕܠ ܐ ܠ ܐ ܵ ܩ . ܬܐ ܵ ܘܩܠܢܝ ܕܝܢ ܡܬ ̈ ̈ ܩܖܝܢ ܆ ܡܛܠ ̈ ܕܗܢܝܢ ܡܢܗܝܢ ܘܠܗܝܢ ܩܠ ܐ ܡܫ ̱ܡܠܝܐ ܘܠ ܐ ܩܢ ܣܢܝ ̈ ܠܚܒܖܬܗܝܢ ܒܫܘܡܠܝܐ ܬܐ ܕܢܩܫ ܠ ܐ ̈ ̈ ܕܩ ܕܝܠܗܝܢ . ܐܠ ܐ ܚܕܐ ܡܢܗܝܢ : ̇ ܡܢܗ ܘ ܠܗ ܡܫ ̱ܡܠܝܐ ܣܘܠܒܐ ̇ ܕܝܠܗ . ܘܒܪܘܟܒܗܝܢ ܡ ̇ ܕ ܥ ܗܢܝܢ ܕܕܠ ܐ ܩܠ ܐ . ܟܠܗܝܢ ܬ ܲ ܒܢ ܠ ܐ ̈ ̈ ܩ ܘܝܢ ܡܬܚ ܆ ̈ ܚܬܐ ̈ ܘܡܘܫ ܒܗܝܢ ܡܢ ̈ ܩ ܡܣܬ . ܘܟܡܝܘܬܐ ܬܐ ̇ ܕܢܩܫ ܕܝܠܗܝܢ ܬܐ ̈ ܕܡܘܫܚ̈ ̈ ܕܡ ܐ ܡܖܐ ܕ ܘܕ ܡ ܲ ̈ ܖܫܐ ܆ ܒܗܝܢ ܡܬܝܕܥܐ ܘܡܬܚܘܝܐ . ܢܝܢ ܗ ܕܝܢ ܕܡܬ ̇ ̈ ܩܖܝܢ ܕܠ ܐ ܡܫܟ ܒܠܚܘܕܝܗܝܢ ܡܠܝܘ ̈ ܩܠ ܐ . ܥܠ ܕܠ ܐ ܚܢ ܠܡܫ ܬ ̇ ܒܢ ܠ ܐ ̈ ܩ ܐܝܟ ܬܐ ̈ ܩܠܢܝ ܀ ̈

Letters are divided into 'sounding' and 'soundless'. The sounding are so called because they are a complete sound, in and of themselves, and do not need partners for the completion of the beats of their sounds. Instead, one of them is, in and of itself, its own complete syllable, and by combining them with those which are soundless, all units of sounds are manifested. The poetic metres are measured by them, and the quantity of the beats of the metres of homilies and hymns are known and revealed by them. Then those which are called 'soundless' are thus because they are unable to make complete units of sounds alone, as the sounding do. (Gottheil 1893, cxvii, lines 5–12)

He maintains the two-way division of sounds into vowels and consonants, using the same 'sounding' terminology as his Greek and Syriac predecessors. For Dawid, just as for Jacob, the distinguishing feature of the *ʾatwɔtɔ qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ* is that they can be pronounced alone, each forming a complete syllable without the addition of consonants (the *dlɔ qɔlɔ*). This feature of vowels was central to Syriac poetry and prosody, which measured verses according to their number of syllables (Brock 2016, 9–10). As Dawid points out, each syllable—or 'beat' 6—necessarily contains

6 In fact, the word 'beat' (*nqɔshtɔ*) is sometimes used in Syriac grammar as a general term for 'vowel'; see Segal (1953, 7, 54, 171); Kiraz (2012, I:59).

a single vowel, and consequently sounding letters are his most basic unit for quantifying metre. However, while this concept of vowel phonology became important in the Syriac linguistic tradition from as early as the seventh century, it appears that early Arabic grammarians adopted a different interpretation of the Greek 'sounding' terminology.

This alternative Arabic conception of phonetic 'soundingness' was related to the Greek divisions of letters, but it did not apply to vowels, and the pathway by which it entered the Arabic tradition is less clear. Talmon argues that due to the dual function of the *matres lectionis* in Arabic, eighth-century grammarians did not perceive vowel letters as a 'sounding' category distinct from the consonants. As such, while they were, to some extent, aware of the three-way Greek division of *phōnēenta* (vowels), *hēmiphōna*  (liquids or continuants), and *aphōna* (all other consonants or stop-plosives), they dispensed with the 'vowel' category and adapted the Greek concepts only to describe groups of consonants (Talmon 1997a, 217–21; 1997b, 285). The clearest of these adaptations is from the teachings of the Kufan grammarian al-Farrāʾ (d. 822), who—at least according to the commentary on *Kitāb Sībawayh* by Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī (d. 979)—described the consonants *ṣād* and *ḍād* as *muṣawwit* 'sounding'. He further describes the consonants *bāʾ* and *tāʾ* as *ʾakhras* 'mute'. In addition to *ṣād*  and *ḍād*, al-Sīrāfī suggests that al-Farrāʾ's *muṣawwit* letters also included *thāʾ*, *dhāl*, *ẓāʾ*, and *zāy*. He further equates the *ʾakhras*  category with Sībawayh's *shadīd* 'strong' letters (i.e., *bāʾ*, *dāl*, *tāʾ*, *ṭāʾ*, *jīm*, *kāf*, *qāf*, and *hamza*) (Talmon 1997a, 211–12).

The connection here is that al-Farrāʾ's *ʾakhras* and Sībawayh's *shadīd* letters both describe plosive consonants in Classical Arabic (Semaan 1968, 56, 60–61; Sībawayh 1986, IV:434). 7 These consonants allow no passage of air at the moment of their articulation, and so they are 'mute'. They contrast with the continuous airflow of what Sībawayh calls the letters of *rikhwa* 'softness', namely the fricatives (al-Nassir 1993, 38–39; Brierley et al. 2016, 164), which roughly correspond with al-Sīrāfī's interpretation of *muṣawwit*. Talmon thus suggests that *muṣawwit* 'sounding' and *ʾakhras* 'mute' were al-Farrāʾ's adaptation of the Greek *phōnēenta* and *aphōna*, reapplied to suit an Arabic phonological tradition that did not have a distinct subset of vowel letters (1997a, 212–13). In this understanding, 'sounding' consonants were those that allowed some continuous airflow during articulation, whereas the 'soundless' consonants were those that required the addition of a vowel in order to produce a stream of air.

Talmon also suggests that there is a second interpretation of these terms which is attributed to al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī (d. 786/91), preserved partly in the lexicon *Kitāb al-ʿAyn*  and partly by the later lexicographer al-Azharī (d. 980) (Makhzumi 1985; Arzandeh and Umar 2011). In this system, the consonants are divided into two groups. The first is called *mudhliq*  'smooth', which includes the liquids and labials (*nūn*, *mīm*, *lām*, *rāʾ*, *bāʾ*, *fāʾ*). This group may correspond to Aristotle's *hēmi-*

7 Sībawayh also includes *jīm*, which was probably an affricate (Brierley et al. 2016, 160, 172; see also, Ibn Jinnī 1993, 61).

*phōnon*, which likewise included the liquid consonants. The second group is then called either *ṣutm* 'solid' or *muṣmit* 'silent', which includes the rest of the consonants, and parallels Aristotle's *aphōnon* group (Talmon 1997a, 215–17; 1997b, 261–62). Consequently, these three pairs of early phonetic terms—*muṣawwit*–*ʾakhras*, *shadīd*–*rikhwa*, and *mudhliq*–*muṣmit/ṣutm*—may all be variations of the same Greek linguistic concept of 'sounding' letters (Talmon 1997a, 221; 1997b, 285; 2000b, 250). However, that concept seems to have permeated the Arabic grammatical tradition at several different points, and was not systematically calqued or applied to vowels during the eighth century.8 This situation would change during the ninth century, as the Greek-Syriac-Arabic translation movements facilitated a more systematic transfer of Greek technical language into Arabic.

#### **1.2. Sounds in Translation**

From the late ninth century on, the Arabic word *muṣawwita* took on a meaning much closer to the original 'vowel' meaning of *phōnēenta*, although it remained uncommon for Arabic grammarians to use it to describe their vowel phonology. Likely the earliest extant examples of this new usage are in the book known as *al-Muqtaḍab* (*The Digest*) by the Basran grammarian al-Mubarrad (d. 898). He uses the term twice, first writing: "Among the letters of interchange are the letters of lengthening and softness, and the sounding [ones], which are *ʾalif*, *wāw*, and *yāʾ* ( البدل حروف فمن

8 On early contact between Arabic and Greek grammatical teaching, see Versteegh (1977). See also, Talmon (1997a, 209, n. 3); Mavroudi (2014).

لف والواو والياء If ":says he ,on Later .)حروف الم د واللين والمصوتة وهي الأ you make a diminutive from a quintiliteral noun and its fourth [radical] is one of the sounding letters—which are *yāʾ*, *wāw*, and *ʾalif—*then no part of its plural or diminutive is apocopated ( اذا صغرت اسما على خمسة ورابعه احد الحروف المصوتة وهي الياء والواو واللف ف ان ;119 :61,I 1965, Mubarrad-al)" (جمعه وتصغيره غير محذوف فيهما شيء Talmon 1997a, 210–11). In both instances, the word 'sounding' (*muṣawwita*) indicates some quality of the three Arabic *matres lectionis*, especially when they act as 'letters of lengthening and softness' (*ḥurūf al-madd wa-al-līn*). That is, when they represent long vowels (see below, present chapter, §3.0). Talmon also notes that each time, al-Mubarrad lists the letters which fall into this 'sounding' category, possibly because he is aware of a foreign origin of the term *muṣawwita* and does not expect his audience to know exactly what it refers to.

Likely the earliest extant example of *muṣawwita* outside of grammar is in the translation of Aristotle's *Poetics* by the Christian philosopher Abū Bishr Mattā (d. 940), which he produced from a Syriac version in the late ninth or early tenth century. Interpreting through the Syriac technical terms of his source text, Abū Bishr ultimately calques *phōnēen*, *hēmiphōnon*, and *aphōnon*, respectively, as *muṣawwit* 'sounding', *niṣf al-muṣawwit* 'half of the sounding', and *lā muṣawwit* 'not sounding' (al-Badawī 1953, 126; Morag 1979, 87). Al-Fārābī (d. 950/951), perhaps the foremost Islamic scholar of Aristotle, also commented on the *Poetics*, although he does not include Aristotle's classification of sounds. Nevertheless, he does use *muṣawwita* to describe "a letter representing a long vowel" in other works (Morag 1979, 88).

*Muṣawwita* in these contexts is a calque of the Syriac *qɔlɔnɔytɔ* as used by Jacob and Dawid bar Pawlos, and by extension, it is an indirect calque of the Greek *phōnēenta*. Each of these terms is derived from the basic word for 'voice' and 'sound' in its respective language—*ṣawt*, *qɔlɔ*, and *phōne*—and classifies vowels as a specific phonological group according to their 'sounding' quality. This quality is the fact that they can be pronounced on their own with a continuous and unobstructed airstream. Morag has noted that the Greek *phōnēenta* was "conveyed to Arabic via Syriac (the middle link being missing)" (Morag 1979, 89), but the 'missing link' is the use of *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ* among ninth-century Syriac translators.

This transmission of calques occurred amidst the Greek-Syriac-Arabic translation movements of the Abbasid Caliphate, during which time Syriac translators, most famously the Christian physician Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 873), used Syriac as a tool for converting Greek technical terms into Arabic. Sebastian Brock describes Ḥunayn's translation process as follows: "having collected together the best and oldest Greek manuscripts he could find, he translated from Greek into Syriac and only then from Syriac into Arabic" (Brock 2016, 11–12; see also, Versteegh 1977, 3; Butts 2011). Syrian translators thus assigned Greek terms which already had Syriac calques—for example, *phōnēenta* and *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ—*a direct Arabic technical equivalent; in this case, *muṣawwitāt*. The tenth-century lexicographer Ḥasan bar Bahlul (fl. 942–968) confirms this connection in his Syriac-Arabic lexicon. He gives only one Arabic word to define *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*, and that word is *muṣawwitāt* (Duval 1901, 1794, 1931). Bar Bahlul claims to have compiled much of his lexicon from the lexica of Ḥunayn and another ninth-century scholar, Ḥenanishoʿ bar Serosheway (d. c. 900) (Van Rompay 2011a). 9 He even names Bar Serosheway as his source for the term *muṣawwitāt*, suggesting that it was known by Syriac-Arabic translators well before Bar Bahlul's lifetime.

At the same time that *muṣawwitāt* began to appear occasionally in Arabic grammatical texts and translations of Greek works (e.g., al-Mubarrad and Abū Bishr), it also saw some use referring to vowels in Masoretic texts that analysed Hebrew phonetics (Talmon 1997a, 209–10). These texts constitute a subgenre of Masoretic treatises written mainly in Arabic around the tenth century to discuss the functions of the Hebrew vowels and accents. They often classify vowels with the term *muṣawwitāt*, and I refer to treatises of this type as '*muṣawwitāt* texts'. 10

One of the most significant of these texts is known as *Kitāb al-Muṣawwitāt* (*The Book of the Sounding Ones*), first published by Allony based on a partial manuscript from the Cairo Genizah (Allony 1964; 1965). 11 Allony adopts the title *Kitāb al-Muṣawwitāt* for this work and attributes it to Moshe ben Asher, the father of

9 Unfortunately, these other lexica are not extant.

10 Following the usage of Ilan Eldar, Nehemia Allony, and Israel Yeivin; see below, and also Allony (1965); Allony and Yeivin (1985); Eldar (1986).

11 Allony published a description of the manuscript fragments (Cambridge, UL: T-S Ar.32.31 and Paris, AIU: IX.A.24) and their contents in 1964, before publishing the full Arabic text, with Hebrew translation, in 1965. He later discovered another fragment (Cambridge, UL: T-S Ar.33.6), which he argues is also part of this text (Allony 1983).

the famous Tiberian Masorete Aharon ben Asher (d. c. 960) (Allony 1965, 136). He justifies this attribution simply by the appearance of the word *muṣawwitāt* in it along with other medieval references to a lost work by Moshe ben Asher with that same title (Allony 1964, 9–10; Eldar 1986, 52). However, while the extant fragments do include the word *muṣawwitāt* several times, they do not actually contain a title, nor do they indicate that this particular treatise should be associated with Moshe ben Asher.12 Noting this inconsistency, Eldar undertook a study to ascertain a sturdier provenance for Allony's text. He argues that the use of word *muṣawwitāt* to refer to vowels is more common than Allony initially thought, and thus cannot be used to infer the title of the text. He further suggests that the phrase *kitāb al-muṣawwitāt* may refer to this genre of Arabic-language Masoretic texts that dealt with vowels and accents, rather than to a specific treatise with that title. Consequently, he concludes that it is doubtful Moshe ben Asher wrote this particular *muṣawwitāt* text, and that it is impossible to determine the true author or title without further evidence (Eldar 1986, 53–55).

The first fragment of this text begins with a passage that is reminiscent of Jacob of Edessa's alphabetical struggles:

12 The closest extant text to this title is probably *Kitāb al-Muṣawwitāt al-Watariyya* (*The Book of Stringed Instruments*) by the ninth-century polymath Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb al-Kindī (d. 873). It discusses the musical properties of instruments with various numbers of strings and includes an accurate citation of Psalm 33 according to the Septuagint numeration (al-Kindī 1962, 67–92, esp. 90). On early Arabic Bible translations, see Griffith (2013, 106–8).

אבין אן אל]עבר[אנין יסתעמ]ל[ מנטיקהם אל ז ]אלתי תסתע[מל חרפהם פליס תזיד עלי אלז שי כאל ]אחרף אל[די לא יוגד שי מסת]עמל[ אלא כב ]חרף[

...I specify that for the Hebrews,13 their speech utilises the seven, which [in turn] utilise their letter[s]. You cannot increase the seven, just like the letters, for which nothing is used except twenty-two letters. (Allony 1965, 136, lines 1–3)

'The seven' in this passage refers to the seven vowels of the Tiberian Hebrew recitation tradition (see Khan 2020, I:244), and the author insists that one cannot add to that number.14 Similarly, there are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and that number is fixed, such that there are two groups—the seven and the twenty-two—that do not overlap. From this point on, the author refers to the seven as *al-muṣawwitāt* 'the sounding ones' (Allony 1965, 138, line 9; 140, lines 24 and 28; 144, line 53), maintaining the same two-category phonological distinction as Jacob of Edessa. The author also refers to the letter *yod* as *al-ṣūra almuṣawwita*—literally 'the sounding form'—when it functions as a *mater lectionis* representing the vowel /i/ (Allony 1983, 119–20, lines 106–9).

13 Allony notes that the lacuna in this word could allow 'Syrians' (*suriyyāniyyīn*) or 'Babylonians' (*kasdāniyyīn*), though given the rest of the text, 'Hebrews' is the most reasonable reconstruction (1965, 136, n. 1). 14 Similar descriptions appear in Arabic grammars of Coptic, which refer to the seven Coptic vowels as *ʾaḥruf ṣawtiyya* or *ʾaḥruf nawātiq* (Bauer 1972, 147–48; K. Versteegh 2011).

Allony and Yeivin (1985) published four more of these *muṣawwitāt* texts, and together they show that the idea of distinguishing vowels from consonants according to 'soundingness' was not a rare phenomenon among Masoretes. Two of the four use the word *muṣawwita*, the first of which is T-S Ar.53.1.15 Most of this fragment is an explanation of Masoretic accents, but the first few lines read, "Know that the *muṣawwitāt* are seven, excluding the *shewa*… (…אלשוא סוא מן ז אלמצותאת באן אעלם) "(Allony and Yeivin 1985, 91, lines 1–2). It proceeds to list the Tiberian Hebrew vowels. The second fragment is T-S NS 301.62, which discusses the accents and the *bgdkpt* letters, but says in passing, "If two accents are adjacent, then none of the *mulūk*—I mean, the אן אלתקיא אללחנין לם יכן בינהם ) them between be may*—muṣawwitāt* 16,–115 1985, Yeivin and Allony )" (שי מן אלמלוך אעני אלמצותאת lines 38–39). *Mulūk* 'kings' was another name for the Hebrew vowels in the medieval period, so this text represents a combination of vocabulary from different sources, and the author does not expect that their reader will necessarily know both terms.

Another of Allony and Yeivin's fragments, T-S Ar.31.28, reads:

אעלם באן אלאחרוף אואכרהא עלי ג אקסאם אלאול הם אליח חרףבעד אויה כלהא גזם אעני שְׁ וָ א ליס יכרג מנהא שי אלי אלז מלוך Know that for endings [of words], the letters are according to three groups. The first is those eighteen besides *ʾaleph*,

15 Baker and Polliack identified this fragment as part of ʿAlī ben Judah ha-Nazir's *Kitāb Usūl al-Lugha al-ʿIbrānīyya*, but this designation is unverified (and seems to me unverifiable) since the rest of that book is not extant (Baker and Polliack 2001, no. 7717)

*waw*, *yod*, and *heʾ*. All of them are *jazm*; I mean, *shewa*. Nothing is pronounced from them towards any of the seven *mulūk*. (Allony and Yeivin 1985, 101–2, lines 53–58)

While this fragment does not contain the word *muṣawwita*, it is clearly familiar with the idea that consonants are unique in their 'soundlessness'. The author has adopted the Arabic grammatical term for the jussive mood, *jazm* 'cutting off' (i.e., a vowelless inflectional ending), to describe the characteristic of the consonants that causes *shewa* to be silent at the end of a word. This quality is opposed to that of the Hebrew *matres lectionis*, which, as the text later explains, have more vowel-like effects (Allony and Yeivin 1985, 103–5). It is worth noting that, in contrast to Jacob of Edessa, the Masoretic *muṣawwitāt* texts tend to account for the *matres lectionis* with an additional group of 'letters' which have characteristics of both vowels and consonants.

Besides these fragments, there is a more well-known Masoretic source which may also be considered a *muṣawwitāt* text: *The Treatise on the Shewa*. This anonymous tenth-century treatise is part of a larger work, but the extant portion focuses on the features of the Tiberian *shewa*. 16 It describes the *shewa*, saying: "Know that the *shewa* […….], and that is that it serves symbols by which I mean the seven kings, which are called *al-muṣawwitāt*

16 Hence the name. See Levy (1936); Khan (2020, I:117–18). Eldar has argued that this treatise is from the same work as Allony's *Kitāb al-Muṣawwitāt*, but I am sceptical of this association. The two texts employ different, somewhat idiosyncratic terminology to name the Hebrew vowels (see below, chapter 4, §3.0), which suggests that they have different authors. It is possible that the two works share some source material; see Eldar (1988); Khan (2020, I:119).

אעלם אן אלשוא ].....[רה וד לך אנה יכ דם סי]מני[ם אעני אלסבעה מלוך אלד י ) אלמצותאת תסמא) "(Levy 1936, א(. This author directly equates the *muṣawwitāt* with other categorical terms for Hebrew vowels, including 'symbols' (*simanim*) and 'kings' (*mulūk*). This variation suggests there was a pluriformity of vowel terms in the *Treatise*'s Masoretic source material, which includes some Hebrew texts that are likely from the ninth century.17 It likewise confirms that some Masoretes had adopted the idea of *muṣawwitāt* by the tenth century.

It is clear that the phonological distinction of vowels as 'sounding ones' in contrast to consonants was known to certain Masoretes, but the concept also extended to other sectors of the Hebrew linguistic tradition, including Saadia Gaon's (d. 942) commentary on *Sefer Yeṣira* (The Book of Creation) (see Khan 2020, I:127–29). While Saadia generally favours the term *naghamāt* 'melodies, tones' to refer to vowels,18 he does use *muṣawwitāt* a few times in the second chapter of this book (Lambert 1891, 24–28). While explaining the units of speech, Saadia says that the most basic audible unit is a *ṣawt* 'sound', "and it is what one does not comprehend, as someone says, *ʾāā* or the rest

17 Hebrew passages and quotations occur frequently throughout the *Treatise*. On changes in authorial language in Masoretic sources, see Khan (2020, I:116–17).

18 For brief discussions of this term, see below, present chapter, §§2.2 and 4.0.

.(12–11 lines 26, 1891, bert-Lam)" (فهو ما ل يعقل كقول قائل اا او سائر المصوتات ) *muṣawwitāt* the of 19 Like Dawid bar Pawlos, Saadia interprets the vowels as the smallest units of pronounceable speech, which can be articulated without the aid of any other letters. Interestingly, Saadia does not use the term *muṣawwitāt* when he describes the vowels in the fifth chapter of his Hebrew grammar, *Kutub al-Lugha* (*The Books of the Language*) (Skoss 1952; Dotan 1997; see Khan 2020, I:124–25). It is not clear if he changed or updated his vocabulary on this topic, but we do know that he wrote the commentary in 931, after *Kutub al-Lugha*. 20 It may be that he drew some connection between *naghama*, which can indicate both the vowels and accents in Hebrew recitation, and the Arabic verb *ṣawwata*, which is a common term in Arabic musicology (Morag 1979, 89–90). Either way, Saadia maintained nearly the same conception of 'sounding' ones that Jacob of Edessa introduced to the Syriac grammatical tradition in the seventh century.

As already discussed, the most likely path by which the concept of 'sounding letters' entered Arabic linguistics was through ninth-century Syriac translators, but how did it reach the

19 Saadia probably wrote this commentary in Hebrew characters, but Lambert transcribed the non-Hebrew portions of the text in Arabic script. My quotations follow Lambert's transcription. Saadia also mentions that the introduction to the "books on *manṭiq* (speech/logic)" is about *al-muṣawwitāt* (Lambert 1891, 26, line 20).

20 Saadia refers to *Kutub al-Lugha* at least twice in his commentary (Lambert 1891, 45, 52 [Arabic]; 76, n. 1 [French]; see also, Malter 1921, 44, n. 57).

Masoretic tradition? It could have been through contact with Arabic grammarians, but Talmon argues that this explanation is unlikely, as the use of *muṣawwitāt* as a word for vowels remained quite rare in Arabic grammar even in the tenth century (Talmon 1997a, 221). Instead, the similarities between the Masoretic 'sounding' category and the Syriac *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ* letters suggest that the Hebrew interpretation is more closely related to Syriac grammar. As we will later see,21 there is significant evidence of early contact between Masoretes and Syriac grammarians in the realm of vocalisation, but for the case of the *muṣawwitāt* the point of transmission may also be the translation movement. As Syriac translators converted Greek and Syriac texts into Arabic, they became readable not just to Arab grammarians, but also to Masoretes and other Jewish scholars who were native Arabic speakers. Bar Bahlul, the tenth-century lexicographer who recorded the ninth-century use of *muṣawwitāt* to calque *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*, even reports personal contacts with his Jewish contemporaries. In his lexical entry on the Syriac word *brɔshit* 'in the beginning', he claims to have read a Jewish *tafsīr* 'commentary' before going and asking a Jew to explain the meaning of *reshit* in Hebrew (Duval 1901, 435). This account suggests that Bar Bahlul interacted with educated Jews in the course of his lexicographic work, and these interactions—or similar ones by his predecessors22—could have facilitated the transfer of *muṣawwitāt* into Masoretic circles.

21 See below, chapter 3, §1.0.

22 Another possible contact is Timothy I (d. 823), an Eastern Catolicos who reports the discovery of some Hebrew manuscripts in a cave near Jericho that were read with the assistance of Jews from Jerusalem

Even as the tenth century passed, the term *muṣawwitāt* to describe vowels did not gain popularity among Arabic grammarians. The phonologist Ibn Jinnī (d. 1002) does make a passing reference to *al-ḥurūf al-thalātha al-layyina al-muṣawwita* 'the three soft sounding letters' in his *Kitāb al-Khaṣāʾis* (*The Book of Characteristics*) (Talmon 1997a, 210, n. 5; Ibn Jinnī 1952, 44, n. 112), but he does not apply it to their technical usage in his large book on Arabic phonology, *Sirr Ṣināʿa al-Iʿrāb*. He briefly explains *ṣawt*  and the verb *ṣawwata* more generally, but this discussion appears unrelated to sounding letters (Ibn Jinnī 1993, 9–11).

The only other Arabic author in our corpus who discusses 'sounding' vocalisation is Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), a Persian physician and polymath who wrote mostly in Arabic and was more of a philosopher than a grammarian by trade. He produced his own Arabic version of Aristotle's *Poetics*, in which he translates *phōnēen* and *hēmiphōnon* as *muṣawwit* and *niṣf al-muṣawwit*, respectively, like Abū Bishr a century before him (Morag 1979, 87– 88). However, he translates *aphōna* not as *lā muṣawwit* (like Abū Bishr), but rather as *ṣāmit* 'soundless, silent', using the same root as al-Khalīl's *muṣmit* category of non-liquid (or non-labial) consonants.

Ibn Sīnā also wrote one work that specifically classifies Arabic vowel phonology: *Risāla Asbāb Ḥudūth al-Ḥurūf* (*The Treatise on the Causes of the Occurrence of Letters*). He wrote this essay near the end of his life, apparently at the request of a grammarian in

(Butts and Gross 2020, 18). Timothy also had some contact with the Arabic grammatical tradition (King 2012, 199–201).

Isfahan, to lay out his understanding of speech on both mechanical and phonological levels (al-Tayyan and Mir Alam 1983, 9). As such, the first three sections focus on the physics of sound waves and the anatomy of the mouth and throat (al-Tayyan and Mir Alam 1983, 53–71). Then, in the fourth section, he explains the articulation of each Arabic *ḥarf* 'letter, phoneme' (pl. *ḥurūf*) as it relates to the mechanical principles. Two of these *ḥurūf* are *al-wāw al-ṣāmita* 'the soundless *wāw*' and *al-yāʾ al-ṣāmita* 'the soundless *yāʾ*' (al-Tayyan and Mir Alam 1983, 83–84). He groups them with the other consonants, indicating the quality of *wāw*  and *yāʾ* when they are consonantal (i.e., /w/ and /y/, respectively).  *Muṣawwita* is thus Ibn Sīnā's term for a *mater lectionis*  acting as a vowel, similar to the occasional usages found in the works of al-Mubarrad, al-Fārābī, and Ibn Jinnī as well as the 'sounding form' (*al-ṣūra al-muṣawwita*) of *yod* mentioned by at least one Masorete (see Allony 1983, 119–20, lines 106–9; Talmon 1997a, 211 n. 7).

There is a second version of the *Risāla* which contains substantial variations from the first, especially in the sections on phonetics. It is not clear that Ibn Sīnā himself edited or rewrote the text (al-Tayyan and Mir Alam 1983, 13). The extant version begins, "The foremost *shaykh* said… ( ...الرئيس الشيخ قال(, "in reference to Ibn Sīnā, possibly indicating that it was written by someone who heard or studied the original.23 In any case, the alternate

23 For this type of scholastic transmission, see Schoeler (2006, 32–33).

text of the section on *ṣāmita* and *muṣawwita* letters warrants further discussion. This version places *al-wāw al-ṣāmita* and *al-yāʾ alṣāmita* among the other consonants, according to the order of their articulation points in the mouth, rather than at the end of the alphabet before the vowels (al-Tayyan and Mir Alam 1983, 124). It then introduces the vowel section, saying, "As for the *muṣawwitāt*, their status and influence are problematic for me ( اما المصوتات فاأمرها وتاأثيرها كالمشكل علي ";( he proceeds to explain "the small and large *ʾalif*s," "the two *wāw*s," and "the two *yāʾ*s" (al-Tayyan and Mir Alam 1983, 128). While *muṣawwita* appeared in the first version of the *Risāla* to describe a few letters, in this version it is a categorical term, indicating a group which contains all of the *matres lectionis* as well as the Arabic short vowels. This usage corresponds to both the *Turrɔṣ Mamllɔ Nahrɔyɔ* and the Masoretic *muṣawwitāt* texts, both of which use 'sounding' to differentiate vowels and consonants as phonological categories. Notably, in Ibn Sīnā's system, *ʾalif* does not have a *ṣāmita* form, precisely because the Arabic *ʾalif* has no consonantal quality.24 This concept may correlate with Jacob's understanding of the Syriac *ʾalaph*, which he used to represent one of his 'sounding' letters. On the other hand, *ṣāmit* does not mean 'soundless' in the same way as Jacob of Edessa's *dlɔ qɔlɔ*, literally 'without a sound'. Rather, it is an adjective ('soundless, silent'), more immediately similar to Greek *aphōna* 'soundless' and al-Farrāʾ's *ʾakhras* 'mute'.

24 Ibn Sīnā gives *hamza* a separate entry, effectively the consonantal form of *ʾalif* (al-Tayyan and Mir Alam 1983, 72). For the quality of *ʾalif*  in Classical Arabic, see Alfozan (1989, 37); Semaan (1968, 57–58).

C. H. M. Versteegh has noted the similarity between this Arabic terminology and the Greek, pointing out that the *ṣāmitāt*  and *muṣawwitāt*—which also appear in Ibn Sīnā's *Fann al-Shiʿr*  (*The Art of Poetry*)—are calques of *aphōna* and *phōnēenta*. He further highlights that Ibn Sīnā refers to fricative consonants as those letters which have *niṣf ṣawṭ* 'a half sound', a calque of *hēmiphōna*, the term which Aristotle used for liquids (and /s/) and which the *Technē* used for continuants (Versteegh 1977, 21). It seems that Ibn Sīnā, specialising as a physician and philosopher, was more likely to engage directly with translations of Greek ideas—such as those of Aristotle and Dionysius Thrax—than the Arabic grammarians who preceded him.

Meanwhile, Ibn Sīnā's contemporary, the Syriac grammarian Elias of Ṭirhan (d. 1049), modified Jacob of Edessa's original *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ* terminology in his grammar*, Memrɔ Gramaṭiqɔyɔ* (*The Grammatical Essay*). He lays out his understanding of sounding letters explicitly, saying:

ܕܩ ܙ ܕܝܢ ܠܡܕܥ ܬܐ ̇ ܕܐܬܘ ܠܢܝܬܐ ̈ ̈ ܩ . ܬܠܬ ܐܢܝܢ .. ܗ.. ܐ .. ܘ.. ܝ.. ܘܫܪ ܬܐ ܕܐܬܘ ܐ ̈ ̈ ܚܖܢܝܬܐ ܠܗܠܝܢ ܩܦܢ ܢ .. ܗܠܝܢ ܬܐ ̈ ܐܬܘ ܠܪܘܟܒܐ ܗܐ ̈ ܕܫܡ ܐܘ ̈ ܠ ܐ ܡ ܢܐ ̈ ܡܫܘܕܥ ܥܠ ܣܘܥܪܢܐ ܘܬܐ ̈ ̈ ܡܬܬܙܝܥܢ ܐܬܦܪܣܝܘ ܠܡܝܠܕܘ ܡܢ ܗܠܝܢ ̈ ܬܠܬ ܬܐ ܩܠܢܝ

It is necessary to know that the sounding letters are three, being *ʾalaph*, *wāw*, *yod*, and the rest of the other letters [are pronounced]25 with them. They are the letters for the construction of nouns or verbs (which indicate action), the vocalisations made known by production from these three sounding ones. (Baethgen 1880, ܠܓ, lines 11–15)

25 Baethgen's edition reads ܩܦܢ ̈ ܢ' they cling to', but this is probably an error for ܦܩܢ ̈ ܢ' they are pronounced'.

Even though Eastern Syriac had six distinct vowel qualities (see Segal 1953, 33; Knudsen 2015, 91–99), Elias asserts that only the three Syriac *matres lectionis* are *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*. The implication here is that the sounding ones are the letters *ʾalaph*, *wāw*, and *yod*, and not the vowel phonemes themselves. This explanation contrasts the Masoretic *muṣawwitāt* texts, which consistently list seven 'sounding ones'—the seven unique Tiberian vowel phonemes and do not refer to any of the twenty-two Hebrew letters as inherently *muṣawwita*. This difference might be traced back to Jacob of Edessa, who referred to his new vowel letters specifically as sounding letters (*ʾatwɔtɔ qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*), but it is also similar to Ibn Sīnā's use of the word *muṣawwita* as an adjective for the Arabic *matres lectionis*. Elias' view that the sounding letters are required for the pronunciation of other letters is also consistent with Dawid bar Pawlos and the Masoretic *muṣawwitāt* authors, who all maintained that the vowels were essential to the articulation of the consonants.

With the help of the *ʾatwɔtɔ qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*, Elias discusses how the *matres lectionis* function in Syriac orthography, and here he adds a concept that we have not yet seen:

ܚܢܢ ܕܝܢ ܘ ܠܘ ܡܙܕܩܝܢܢ ܡܬܬܙܝܥܢܘܬ ̈ ܚܖܘܪܐ ܩ ܘܡ.. ܦܪܝܫܐ.. ܚܠܝܡ ܐ.. ܦܘܪܩܢܐ.. ܕܗ ܐܢܝܢ ܬܐ ̈ ܦܪܝܩܐ.. ܡܛܠ ܢ̤ܝܢ ̈ ܝܬܐ .. ̈ ܝܬܐ .. ܐܘ ̤ܦܠܓܘܬ ܩܠܢ ̈ ܐܬܘ ܩܠܢ ܗ.. ܢܢ ̈ ܕܡܫܟ ܡܬܬܙܝܥܢܘܬܐ ܒܡܡܠܠ ܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ. ܘܛܝܝܐ.. ܘܝܘܢܝܐ.. ܗ.. ܘ.. ܝ..

We consider the *waw* [and the *yod*] 26 to be the vocalisation of *ḥrure*, *qum*, *prishɔ*; *ḥlimɔ*, *purqɔnɔ*, and *priqɔ*, because these are sounding letters, or half-soundings: those which

26 This phrase seems to have dropped out of Baethgen's edition, but the following examples imply that Elias also meant *yod* here.

bestow vocalisation in Syriac, Arabic, and Greek speech. That is, *waw* and *yod*. (Baethgen 1880, ܟܒ, lines 18–21)

The words which Elias lists are usually spelled with *waw* or *yod*  as *matres lectionis* representing their internal vowels. Because these letters function as vowels rather than consonants, Elias designates them 'sounding letters', just like Ibn Sīnā does for the Arabic *matres wāw* and *yāʾ*. Elias then adds a Syriac concept that is reminiscent of the Arabic short vowels: the *pelgut qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*, literally 'half of the soundings'. These half-soundings can still bestow vocalisation on consonants, but the phrase designates vowels which do not have individual letters. Instead, they are represented by vocalisation points alone. Due to the standard practice in Syriac of nearly always representing *u-* and *i-*vowels with a *mater lectionis*, these 'half-soundings' are most commonly /a/, /e/, and /ɔ/ (Baethgen 1880, ܟܕ, lines 1–2). This half-sounding terminology notably contrasts Ibn Sīnā's idea of letters with 'half of a sound', which are fricative consonants, ultimately derived from the Greek concept of *hēmiphōna* 'half-sounding' liquids or fricatives. It seems that rather than copying this Greco-Arabic category (just as Jacob of Edessa did not adopt it), Elias reapplies the idea of a half-sounding letter to the vowels that do not appear with *matres lectionis*. His description thus diverges from the Greek notion (e.g., from the *Technē*) of a 'half-sounding' being a letter that allows partially-obstructed continuous airflow.

As for the letter *ʾalaph*, Elias grants it even more 'soundingness' than *wāw* and *yod*, again aligning with Ibn Sīnā's interpretation of the *muṣawwitāt*. Shortly after arguing that *ʾalaph* is silent by itself (Baethgen 1880, ܟܒ, lines 3–4), 27 Elias writes:

ܐܢܕܝܢ ܐܢܫ ܢܐܡܪ ܡܕܝܢ ܟܕ ܢܐܡܪ ܐܠܗܐ ܥܒܕܐ ܒܪܢܫܐ. ܠܘ.. ܗ.. ܕ.. ܫ.. ܡܬܬܙ .. ܐܠ ܐ.. ܐ.. ܕܫܠܝܐ ܕܝܢ.. ܐ.. ܚܪܩܝܬܘܢ .. ܡܦܢܝܢܢ.. ܕܐܠܦ ܒܪ ܩܠܢܝ ܓܡܝܪܐܝܬ ܫܟ̤ܢܬ ܙܘܥܐ ܬܐ ̈ܬܐ ܠ ܐܬܘ ܐ ̈ ̈ ܚܖܢܝܬܐ ܘܩܕܝܡ ܐ ܠܫܪܟܐ.. ܘ.. ܝ.. ܩܠܢܝܢ ܐܢܝܢ ܐܝܟ.. ܐ.. ܥܠ ܗܕܐ ܠ ܐ ܙܕܩ ܠܡܟܢܫܘ ܙܘܥܐ ܠ ܐ ̈ ܚܖܢܝܬܐ

If someone were to say, "Therefore, when we say *ʾalɔhɔ*, *ʿabdɔ*, and *barnɔshɔ*, the *heʾ*, *dalat*, and *wāw* are not vocalised, but rather the *ʾalaph* [is vocalised], the *ʾalaph* that you assert that is silent." We respond: *ʾalaph* is completely one of the sounding ones. It bestows movement to other letters, and since it precedes the rest [of them], *wāw* and *yod* sound out, just like *ʾalaph*. Therefore, it is not correct to associate movement with the other [letters]. (Baethgen 1880, ܟܓ, lines 10–14)

Elias claims that *ʾalaph* is entirely a sounding letter, and so has no inherent phonetic quality at all—hence, it is silent. Nevertheless, it always provides 'movement' (*zawʿɔ*; i.e., a vowel) to other letters. Meanwhile, *wāw* and *yod* are modelled after *ʾalaph* in that they are sounding letters that can bestow movement, but are not "completely one of the sounding ones." That is, they do not exclusively represent vowels. The idea of *ʾalaph* as the most sounding of the Syriac *matres lectionis* again likely extends back to Jacob of Edessa, who took *ʾalaph* alone from the Syriac alphabet to

27 Arabic grammarians make a similar designation for the *matres lectionis* letters, which are called *sākin* 'still' when they represent long vowels. See present chapter, §§2.0–3.0.

serve as one of his vowel letters. It also corresponds to Ibn Sīnā's description of the Arabic *ʾalif*, which was a pure *muṣawwita* letter, whereas *wāw* and *yāʾ* had both *muṣawwita* and *ṣāmita* 'soundless' forms. In this way, both Elias' and Ibn Sīnā's views on the sounding letters are distinct from the Masoretic and earlier Syriac understanding, which considered the 'sounding ones' as a category that included all vowel phonemes, rather than just the *matres lectionis* letters.

The notion of sounding letters as an explanation for the difference between vowels and consonants is fundamental to much of medieval Semitic vocalisation, and the comparison of sources from different linguistic traditions reveals a clear continuation of the idea from pre-Islamic sources until the eleventh century. This chain of transmission begins in Greek works, including Aristotle's *Poetics*, but especially the *Technē Grammatikē* of Dionysius Thrax, which categorised letters as *phōnēenta*, *aphōna*, and *hēmiphōna*. From there, early Syriac grammarians, like Jacob of Edessa and Dawid bar Pawlos, adapted these terms to create two categories of Syriac letters: 'sounding' (*qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*) vowels and 'soundless' (*dlɔ qɔlɔ*) consonants. At the same time, their Arabic contemporaries did not adopt any 'sounding' categories for vowels, although they did interpret the earlier Greek terminology in different ways to describe groups of consonants. The ninth-century translation of Greek technical terminology did allow for the penetration of 'sounding' vowel phonology into Arabic, but most Arabic grammarians did not adopt it. That said, the translation movement did allow Hebrew Masoretes to write their own *muṣawwitāt* texts in the tenth century, adopting the same 'sounding category as Syriac grammarians to describe their seven vowels. Also building on earlier Syriac foundations, Elias of Ṭirhan adopted the sounding letters for his *Memrɔ Gramaṭiqɔyɔ*, although he modified Jacob of Edessa's original concept to suit his understanding of the *matres lectionis*. Meanwhile, the sounding terminology did see some use among Muslim scholars to describe vowels, but it seems that that use was limited to non-grammatical realms. Evidence of this usage comes from translations by Abū Bishr and al-Fārābī, as well as Ibn Sīnā's discussions of *muṣawwitāt* and *ṣāmitāt*. By contrast, the idea of vowels as 'motion' was much more widespread in the Arabic grammatical tradition, a concept that became practically universal among medieval scholars of Semitic languages, as we will now explore.

#### **2.0. Vowels as Phonetic Motion**

The most common and well-known Arabic term for 'vowel' is *ḥaraka* 'movement' (pl. *ḥarakāt*), which somehow describes the phonetic transition between two consonants which are *sākin* 'still'. It appears in the earliest eighth-century Arabic grammatical sources (see Talmon 1997, 135–37), and continues to see use in grammars of modern Arabic. However, the origins of the term are obscure, and other words that translate as 'movement' were used in relation to vowels and recitation in both Greek (*kinesis*) and Syriac (*zawʿɔ*/*mziʿɔnɔ*) prior to the earliest attestations of *ḥaraka* in Arabic grammar. It is difficult to draw a direct conceptual link between these early terms and the Arabic word, although some scholars have argued for such a connection. That said, both Syriac and Hebrew scholars eventually adapted *ḥaraka*  and *sākin* to describe their own respective vowels and consonants.

This section traces the application and development of these words for 'movement' and 'stillness' in the field of vowel phonology. It begins with the origins of the word *ḥaraka* in the Arabic grammatical tradition, discussing the theories of C. H. M. Versteegh and Max Bravmann regarding potential connections between *ḥaraka* 'movement' and the Greek word *kinesis* 'movement'. Next, it addresses the late antique Syriac accent system(s) known from sources like Thomas the Deacon (fl. c. 600) and MS BL Add. 12138 (written 899), placing the accent names *zawʿɔ* 'movement' and *mziʿɔnɔ* 'giving movement' in context with *ḥaraka* and *kinesis*. It then explains how terms derived from *ḥaraka* and *sākin* describe vowels in the Arabic grammatical tradition, specifically discussing Sībawayh's (d. 793/796) *Kitāb* and Ibn Jinnī's (d. 1002) *Sirr Ṣināʿa al-Iʿrāb*. Finally, it analyses the ways in which later Syriac and Hebrew grammarians adapted the Arabic concepts of *ḥaraka* and *sākin* to suit their languages. For Syriac, this analysis relies on the lexica of ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī (d. c. 900) and Ḥasan bar Bahlul (fl. 942–968), as well as the eleventh-century grammars of Elias of Nisibis (d. 1046) and Elias of Ṭirhan (d. 1049). For Hebrew, it relies on *The Treatise on the Shewa*, other *muṣawwitāt* literature, the writings of Saadia Gaon (d. 942), and Abū al-Faraj Hārūn's (d. c. 1050) *Hidāya al-Qārī* (*The Guide for the Reader*).

### **2.1. Greek Declension, Arabic Vowels, and Syriac Accents**

Though the word *ḥaraka* may be an internal invention as the term for 'a vowel' in the Arabic grammatical tradition, it may also be a calque of a technical term from another tradition—namely, Greek or Syriac. However, the connections between *ḥaraka* and potential source words in these languages are tentative at best. While both Greek and Syriac linguistic texts contain technical terms referring to some fashion of 'movement', neither tradition clearly uses those terms to define the phonetic category of 'vowel' before the eighth century.

Versteegh presents potential links between Arabic *ḥaraka*  and Greek grammar in his 1977 book, *Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking*. He argues that the early Arabic grammatical tradition had contact with a living teaching tradition of Greek logic and grammar before the ninth century. This contact may have been between Greek and Arabic scholars directly, though it may also have been facilitated by Syriac-speaking intermediaries (Versteegh 1977, 6–10, 38–42; see also, King 2012, 203–4; Mavroudi 2014). He adds that such contact need not have resulted in Arabic grammarians systematically copying large swathes of Greek grammatical teaching, but rather that specific technical terms may have passed individually between the Greek and Arabic traditions (Versteegh 1977, 15, 89). We have already seen this sort of ad hoc transfer in the borrowing of 'sounding' terminology in early Arabic grammatical texts, and the same process may have allowed Arabic grammarians to calque the Greek word *kinesis* 'movement' as *ḥaraka*.

Versteegh's two main pieces of evidence that this calquing occurred rely on the scholastic tradition surrounding the *Technē Grammatikē* (*The Art of Grammar*) by Dionysius Thrax (Versteegh 1977, 23–24). He calls attention to the importance of the *scholia* of the *Technē—*that is, its marginal commentaries—in understanding *kinesis* as a grammatical term. First, he notes the similarity between a line in the *scholia* (Hilgard 1901, 383, lines 3–4, and 550, line 24) and a passage in *al-Īḍāḥ fī ʿIllal al-Naḥw* (*Clarification of the Reasons of Grammar*) by the grammarian Abū al-Qāsim al-Zajjājī (d. 938/939) (al-Zajjājī 1959, 72, line 2–3), observing:

There is a striking terminological similarity between Zajjājī's words 'It (sc. the declension) is a vowel ['movement'] that enters speech after the completion of its phonetic structure' (*hiya ḥaraka dākhila ʿalā ʾl-kalām baʿda kamāl bināʾihi*) and a text in the scholia on Dionysios Thrax where a grammatical case is defined as 'a movement that occurs at the end of a noun' (*onómatos katà to télos ginoménè kinesis*). (Versteegh 1977, 23)

In both texts, the author describes an inflectional ending as a 'movement' added to the end of a word, and the latter suggests that this 'movement' (*kinesis*) was a technical term in the Greek grammatical tradition. Second, Versteegh finds additional evidence for this technical usage of *kinesis* elsewhere in the *Technē*'s *scholia*, remarking that "the Greek word *kineisthai* is used in the sense of 'to be declined,'28 and the word *akinetos* sometimes has the meaning 'undeclined'" (Hilgard 1901, 427, line 11; Versteegh

28 See Hilgard (1901, 230, line 26).

1977, 24). In this way, Versteegh argues that *ḥaraka* originally also meant 'declension', and its usage eventually expanded to include vowels that did not represent case endings (Versteegh 1977, 24). Notably, the *Technē* itself does not use this *kinesis* terminology, but the parallels between the *scholia* passages and the technical usage of *ḥaraka* in the Arabic grammatical tradition are indeed striking.

Also striking is that the *Technē*, in conjunction with the grammatical teaching tradition surrounding it, is the most likely source for the introduction of the 'sounding' letters to the Syriac grammatical tradition. As discussed above (present chapter, §1.1), Jacob of Edessa (d. 708) probably had in mind Joseph Huzaya's sixth-century Syriac translation of the *Technē* (Merx 1889, 28–29) as well as the Greek vowel term *phoneenta* when he categorised vowels as *ʾatwɔtɔ qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ* 'sounding letters' in his *Turrɔṣ Mamllɔ*. This term eventually proliferated from Syriac into the Arabic and Hebrew linguistic traditions with the additional calque *muṣawwitāt*, although this transfer did not fully occur until the translation movement. If *ḥaraka* in fact derives from *kinesis*, then it likely emerged in such a Greco-Syro-Arabic linguistic context where the *Technē* was a well-known source.

Versteegh himself hints at this possibility of a connection to *muṣawwitāt*, suggesting that after the translation movement and the broad introduction of Greek logic into Arabic grammar, grammarians reinterpreted the term *ḥaraka* as a signifier of physical movement, rather than inflection. This reinterpretation, he suggests, resulted from an understanding of *muṣawwita* within the Stoic framework of aural sound as a 'body' with movement (Versteegh 1977, 24–25; see King 2012, 204–5). He again cites al-Zajjājī, who describes the Arabic case endings as descriptions of jaw 'movements' related to their phonetic articulation (al-Zajjājī 1959, 93–94). Another supporting source is Ibn Sīnā's *Risāla Asbāb Ḥudūth al-Ḥurūf*, where he describes the *muṣawwitāt* in terms of the upward and downward motion of air (al-Tayyan and Mir Alam 1983, 84–85). As such, the two notions of *ḥaraka* as grammatical 'declension' and of physical 'motion' could have entered the Arabic grammatical tradition from Greek twice, at two different times.

Versteegh's argument—that *ḥaraka* is derived from a Greek *grammatical* term—is itself a response to the earlier theory of Max Bravmann, who first hypothesised that *ḥaraka* was a metrical term meant to indicate the musical 'movement' from one stationary consonant to the next. As such, *ḥaraka* originally meant 'syllable'. For Bravmann, *ḥaraka* was also a calque of *kinesis*, but it was based on the Aristotelian logical conception of *kinesis* as "a specific form of change, namely the realisation of something potential" (Versteegh 1977, 22–23; Bravmann 1934, 12–18). Versteegh takes issue with the possibility that such an Aristotelian idea could have entered the Arabic intellectual milieu prior to the ninth-century translation movement, while *ḥaraka* is attested in Arabic grammar even before al-Khalīl (d. 786/91) and Sībawayh (d. 793/6). Aristotelian *kinesis*, he reasons, could not then be the source of *ḥaraka*. Hence his search for a grammatical usage of the Greek word.

Despite this quest, he does not consider the possibility of whether the word *kinesis* as a grammatical term in the *Technē scholia* could itself have developed from a Greek metrical term or from the Aristotelian idea of 'realising potential', so that grammatical *kinesis* could then appear, now calqued as *ḥaraka*, in eighth-century Arabic sources without any philosophical baggage. In fact, the use of *kinesis* to mean 'declension' or 'inflection' may have both been more widespread and persisted later in Greek grammar than Versteegh thought. The term appears in the Greek grammatical text *Peri tēs tou Logou Suntaxeōs* (*On the Construction of Speech*), written by the ninth-century Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michael Synkellos (d. 846) (Browning and Kazhdan 2005). He produced this work in Edessa around the year 810 and was clearly influenced by the teachings of the *Technē Grammatikē* (Wouters 1983, 321–22; see edition of Donnet 1982). 29

Versteegh and Bravmann's competing hypotheses are not necessarily mutually exclusive, though neither unequivocally tells the full story of *kinesis* in the early Islamicate Middle East. For despite Versteegh's scepticism, this idea that a vowel is the necessary movement after a consonant, and thus nearly equivalent to 'syllable', almost exactly matches the description that Dawid bar Pawlos (fl. 770–800) gave for the Syriac *qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ*, even though the term 'movement' does not appear in his grammatical writings. He noted that only the sounding letters can be pronounced "in and of themselves" (Gottheil 1893, cxvii, lines 5– 12; see above, present chapter, §1.1). In fact, we have seen that this precise quality, namely for a vowel to be pronounced *in and*

29 I am grateful to Daniel King for drawing my attention to this source.

*of itself*—the very ability to create a syllable—was the defining characteristic of 'sounding' letters for a number of medieval linguists, including Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), Saadia Gaon (d. 942), and Elias of Ṭirhan (d. 1049).

These 'sounding' principles are directly linked to the Greek grammatical tradition, and their appearance among Semitic authors like Dawid bar Pawlos reinforces the possibility of an intellectual pathway that could convey *kinesis* from Greek into Syriac or Arabic. Additionally, Talmon (2003, 32–33) has shown that Dawid may have had knowledge of early Arabic grammatical principles, and so could be one of the 'Syriac intermediaries' that Versteegh suspects transferred Greek concepts into the pre-Sībawayhan Arabic tradition. Similarly, Daniel King (2012, 199– 201) has identified a letter written in 785 by the Catolicos Timothy I, an Eastern patriarch who lamented the success of Arabic grammarians in comparison to contemporary advancements in Syriac, and seems to have had direct interactions with some Arabic scholars. It seems then that some Syriac scholars in the latter half of the eighth century knew of developments within the Arabic linguistic tradition at the time of Sībawayh and al-Khalīl, and could have been conduits between the Greek and Arabic traditions for ideas about vowels and *kinesis*. Conversely, Dawid bar Pawlos' description of the *ʾatwɔtɔ qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ* could have been influenced by contemporary conceptions of vowels (i.e., *ḥarakāt*) in Arabic. This type of intellectual exchange could have occurred—as Versteegh suggests—around just a few technical terms, with Greek, Syriac, and Arabic scholars all understanding vowels as vocalised 'movements' in similar, if slightly varied, ways. Furthermore, and again in line with Versteegh, this exchange would not have required a full pre-ninth-century importation of Aristotelian logic into Arabic (or even into Syriac), but rather just the description of vowels and syllables as given by Dawid bar Pawlos and a few lines from the *Technē*.

Versteegh briefly revisited the topic of *ḥaraka* and *kinesis* in another book, *Arabic Grammar and Qurʾanic Exegesis* (1993). In it, he simultaneously asserts that there was new evidence of pre-Sībawayhan contact between Arabic scholars and sources of Greek logic (Versteegh 1993, 23–25), while also backtracking on his original claim that *ḥaraka* began as a term for 'declension' on analogy with a Greek *kinesis* term (Versteegh 1993, 32). After analysing the vowel terminology in eighth-century *ḥadīth* (see below, chapter 4, §1.1), he concludes that the Arabic declensional terms *naṣb* 'standing upright', *khafḍ* 'lowering', and *rafʿ* 'rising' were originally names for vowel phonemes, and their use as the names for case endings was a secondary development. Extrapolating from this discovery, Versteegh asserts that the naming of vowels, rather than cases, with these terms precludes *ḥaraka* from originally being a term for 'declension' in the same way as Greek *kinesis*. He goes so far as to admit specifically that he was incorrect when he made that claim in 1977. However, his first idea may actually be more accurate than this revision. It seems to me that there is no reason that the Arabic case names could not have originated as phonetic descriptors of vowels (as Versteegh argues), while the category of vowels in general (i.e., *ḥarakāt*) was derived from a Greek term for declension; or rather, a term for 'sounds at the end of nouns'.

At any rate, Versteegh does not explain why these two separate naming conventions could not coincide. The early use of the Arabic declensional terms (*naṣb*, *rafʿ*, *khafḍ*) as names for vowels—even as late as the ninth century (Versteegh 1993, 18– 19)—demonstrates that the line between inflection and vocalisation in early Arabic grammar was blurry at best. That fluidity must have been almost necessary if a Greek term for 'declension' were to make the leap to meaning 'vowel' in Arabic. Still, while it remains unclear whether *ḥaraka* was originally a term for 'declension' or 'vowel' (or 'syllable'), in some sense it does not matter for the present discussion. Either way, the most plausible—if by no means confirmed—source of *ḥaraka* is the Greek word *kinesis*, and it encompassed, to some extent, all of the vowel phonemes that could potentially occur at the ends of Arabic words.

One fact that does seem certain is that in contrast to Arabic, there is little evidence of a grammatical term of 'movement' being used to define vowels in Syriac before the second half of the ninth century.30 This later development was likely a result of continued contact with Arabic grammar, rather than an import from Greek, and suggests that there may not have been a Syriac 'intermediary' in the transfer of *kinesis* to Arabic. That said, the Syriac *recitation* traditions do include the names of certain accent signs based on the concept of 'movement', a phenomenon curiously similar to what Bravmann argued for Arabic.

The earliest Syriac accent signs appear in the fifth or sixth century, and they seem to reflect an early tradition that predates the split between the East and West Syriac accent systems. These

30 See discussions of Bar Bahlul and Ibn ʿAlī's Syriac lexica below.

include thirteen early signs, possibly invented in part by Joseph Huzaya (fl. c. 500–530) and known from the appendix of MS BL Add. 12138 (written in 899); as well as a few pre-seventh-century manuscripts (see Loopstra 2009, 46; 2014, I:VII–VIII, XIII, L–LVI; Segal 1953, 60–66; see also, Kiraz 2015, 108–19; Loopstra 2019). Segal notes that some of these accents derived their names from Greek (1953, 75), but none of them had names equivalent to 'movement'.

New accents developed in both the East and West Syriac recitation traditions between the seventh and tenth centuries. In the Eastern system, the new signs included *mziʿɔnɔ* 'causing movement', a supralinear dot that appears at the end of a clause to mark a pause with rising tone (Segal 1953, 81). It appears throughout BL Add. 12138 (Loopstra 2014, I:LXVI), so it developed no later than the ninth century, and is likely much earlier. Segal speculates that its name comes from the energy or stress in the noticeable movement of breath or vibration that accompanies this rising tone, although he notes that Elias of Ṭirhan (d. 1049) attributes it to the movement of the tongue (Segal 1953, n. 5). As for the Western tradition, new signs appear in a short work on accents by Thomas the Deacon from the first half of the seventh century (Martin 1869, ܝܓ –ܚ ;Kiraz 2015, 120–21). He refers to *zawʿɔ* 'movement' (Martin 1869, ܝܐ, lines 15 and 22), a single supralinear dot at the end of a word that originally emphasised a word or phrase in contrast to that which followed it. Over time, the usage of *zawʿɔ* expanded to indicate any emphatic accent with a rising tone, similar to the Eastern *mziʿɔnɔ* (Segal 1953, 122). This accent persisted in the Western tradition as Jacob of Edessa (d. 708) revised the accent system near the end of the seventh century, and by the eleventh century Elias of Ṭirhan claims that the Western *zawʿɔ* and Eastern *mziʿɔnɔ* are equivalent (Segal 1953, 145).

Segal points out that the West Syriac linguistic tradition experienced greater influence from Greek rhetoric than the East Syriac tradition did, and Western authors match the names of accents to Aristotelian categories of speech as early as the sixth century (Segal 1953, 120–21). 31 It would not be surprising if *zawʿɔ* as a general term for 'final rising tone' was related to *kinesis*  in a similar manner, but it is not clear how or why a Greek term for 'inflection' might have been adapted to refer to 'accentuation' in recitation. Moreover, there is no obvious connection between the Syriac accent names and the word *ḥaraka* in Arabic, except to say that they could have a common origin in *kinesis*. It is perhaps best to think of the respective Greek, Syriac, and Arabic conceptions of phonetic 'movement' as the products of an interlinked network of contemporaneous grammatical traditions, rather than a single linear pathway whereby terms moved from Greek to Syriac, and then to Arabic.

To summarise, the Greek word *kinesis* developed a meaning close to 'declension' in the Greek grammatical tradition of the late antique world. This word may have begun as a metrical term, but it came to refer to the inflected vowels at the ends of Greek nouns in at least some grammatical circles related to the *Technē*  of Dionysius Thrax. This idea may have allowed seventh- or

31 Note especially Thomas the Deacon's use of *paroksotonos* as the name of an accent (Martin 1869, ܝܐ(.

eighth-century Arabic grammarians to calque *kinesis* as *ḥaraka*, most likely to refer to their own case vowels, but this meaning then expanded to refer to vowels in general. The same use of 'movement' does not appear in the eighth-century Syriac grammatical tradition, so it is not clear that Syriac intermediaries would have been responsible for this transmission of *kinesis* into Arabic. Furthermore, Syriac authors used 'movement' terms (*mziʿɔnɔ* and *zawʿɔ*) to name certain pausal accents in their recitation tradition as early as the seventh century, but the sources examined here suggest no obvious connection between this usage and the technical term *ḥaraka*.

### **2.2. Movement between Languages:** *Ḥaraka* **in Hebrew and Syriac**

*Ḥaraka* is so ubiquitous in Arabic grammatical texts that it hardly needs further explanation. It is a categorical term specific to the three short vowel phonemes—/a/, /i/, and /u/—and it appears from grammatical sources in the eighth century. It actually represents one half of a conceptual pair in these Arabic sources, with the 'movement' of a vowel contrasting with the 'motionless' or 'still' (*sākin*) consonants. Syriac and Hebrew authors adapted these phonological concepts by the ninth or tenth century, and modified them to fit their own languages. In the Syriac linguistic tradition, 'moving' and 'still' classifications first appear in lexicographical works from the late ninth century, and they continue into the eleventh-century grammars. In the Hebrew tradition, they appear in Masoretic treatises and grammatical sources during the same timeframe. For all three languages, 'movement' is essential for facilitating speech.

Sībawayh demonstrates the baseline usage of these classifications in his *Kitāb* by describing individual consonants with the adjectives *mutaḥarrik* 'moved' and *sākin* 'motionless, still' (e.g., Sībawayh 1986, IV:144). A letter that immediately precedes a vowel (*ḥaraka*) is considered *mutaḥarrik*, while a letter that does not precede a vowel is *sākin*. In fully vocalised Classical Arabic, every *mutaḥarrik* letter has a *fatḥa*, *kasra*, or *ḍamma* vowel sign, while every letter that does not have a vowel takes the *sukūn*  'stillness' sign. This fact also leads Sībawayh to classify every *mater lectionis* letter *ʾalif*, *wāw*, and *yāʾ* as *sākin*, even though they stand for long vowels, as they cannot ever take *ḥarakāt* signs (al-Nassir 1993, 109). Sībawayh clarifies part of his understanding of *ḥarakāt* by quoting his teacher, al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad (d. 786/791):

ُ وه ن يلحقن الحرف و َصل وزعم الخليل أا ن الفتحة والكسرة والض مة زوائد، لي ُ الى التكلم به. والبناء هو الساكن الذي ل زيادة فيه.

Al-Khalīl claimed that the *fatḥa*, *kasra*, and *ḍamma* were additions, and they attach to the letter in order to connect it into speech; and [a letter of] the base structure is the *sākin*, which is not an addition. (Sībawayh 1986, IV:241– 42)

Al-Khalīl states that the vowels are not inherent to Arabic words, but rather they are added to consonantal structures in order to create speech. Without them, the base consonants are *sākin*. Thus, for Sībawayh, the vowels are the connective energy that allows groups of consonants to form words and speech.

Ibn Jinnī takes up Sībawayh's division between 'movement' and 'stillness' in his tenth-century book on phonology, *Sirr Ṣināʿa al-Iʿrāb* (*The Secret of Making Proper Arabic*). He devotes a great deal of ink to describing the different ways that one can classify the Arabic letters, and one of these divisions is into *sukūn* and *ḥaraka* (Ibn Jinnī 1993, 62). This contrast is particularly apparent in his description of one Arabic letter—the *hamza bayna bayna* 'in-between *hamza*'—which has characteristics of both a vowel and a consonant. Sībawayh uses this term to refer to a weakened *hamza* that functions more like a *mater lectionis* that lengthens a vowel than as a typical consonant (e.g., the *hamza* in *saʾala* 'he asked') (al-Nassir 1993, 81–82). Ibn Jinnī clarifies what he believes Sībawayh meant, writing: "by saying *bayna bayna*, Sībawayh's meaning was that it is weak, not able to be properly pronounced, but not the total loss of the letter which its vowel is َن ومعنى قول سيبويه ) from َن بي بي اأي: هي ضعيفة ليس لها تمكن المحققة ول the ,is That .)49 1993, Jinnī Ibn )" (ُخلوص الحرف الذي منها حركتها *hamza bayna bayna* is pronounced a little like *ʾalif*, *yāʾ*, or *wāw*  when they stand for a vowel. However, in Ibn Jinnī's own words, "even though it has approached *sākin*, it is actually *mutaḥarrika*, such that you count it, in the measure of prosody, as a moved و ا ن كانت قد قُربت من الساكن ف انها في الحقيقة متحركة، اأنك تعت دها) letter  *bayna hamza* The .)48 1993, Jinnī Ibn)" (في وزن العروض حرفا متحركا *bayna* in this context becomes nearly motionless (*sākin*), but not completely still like in Sībawayh's conception of the *matres lectionis*, so it retains its status as a vocalised (*mutaḥarrik*) letter at the onset of a distinct syllable.

The explanation of *mutaḥarrik* and *sākin* letters extended far beyond the Classical Arabic grammatical tradition, with the same terms occurring in Judaeo-Arabic Masoretic treatises. The tenth-century *Treatise on the Shewa* sometimes refers to vowels as *ḥarakāt*, and speaks of specific vowels with phrases like "the movement of *pataḥ*" (*ḥaraka pɔtaḥ*) for /a/ or "the movement of *qameṣ*" (*ḥaraka qɔmeṣ*) for /ɔ/ (Levy 1936, ג, lines 18–19, and כא, line 8). The author demonstrates the full range of their Arabic technical terms in a passage describing the vocalisation of *shewa*  on certain pharyngeal consonants when they close an onset syllable:

פאמא תחת הד ה אלארבעה אחרף אעני אחהע פאנה לא יתחרך תחתהא בתה לא בפתח ולא בקמץ ולא בת נתין ולא בחרכה מן אלחרכאת בל תגדה תחתהא אבדא סאכן ולא יחרכהא לחן ולא תחרכה געיה ולא שיא אכ ר מן אלאסבאב אלמחרכה בתה בל תגדה עלי הד א אלחאל דאים כקול בָ אְׁ שָ א מַ הְׁ רַ י מַ חְׁ לָ ה בַ עְׁ לִ י נַ חְׁ בַ י וג ירהמא ליס פיהא שיא יתחרך וד לך ביאנה.

As for [the shewa] beneath these four letters—namely, *ʾaleph*, *ḥet*, *heʾ*, and *ʿayin*—it is not moved at all, not with *pɔtaḥ* nor *qɔmeṣ* nor *ṣere* nor any *ḥaraka*. Rather, beneath them you will always find a *sākin*, and no accent or *gaʿya* or anything else among the causes of movement can move them at all. Instead, they are always found according to this pattern [with a closed initial syllable], as is said: *bɔʾshɔ*, *mahray*, *maḥlɔ*, *baʿli*, *naḥbay*, and others which lack anything that is moved. That is its explanation. (Levy (14–9 lines ,כא 1936,

As the author explains, in specific words, a *shewa* sign beneath a pharyngeal consonant always indicates *sākin*, representing silence at a syllable break, and does not move (*lā yataḥarrik*). These consonants will never take a *ḥaraka*, not even with one of the "causes of movement" (*al-ʾasbāb al-muḥarrika*) that typically "imparts movement" (*yuḥarrik*), such as an accent that elsewhere would change a word's syllable structure and the realisation of the *shewa*. 32

The above terminology closely resembles that found in *Kitāb Sībawayh* and *Sirr Ṣināʿa al-Iʿrāb*, but the *Treatise on the Shewa* uses this vocabulary for a uniquely Hebrew purpose, applying *mutaḥarrik* and *sākin* to distinguish the types of *shewa*. Broadly speaking,33 the Tiberian *shewa* comes in two flavours, usually designated in English as 'silent' and 'mobile' (also called 'quiescent' and 'vocalic'). In the Tiberian reading tradition, both types are marked by a vertical pair of dots below a letter, but silent *shewa* indicates the close of a syllable, while mobile *shewa*  represents an epenthetic short vowel (usually /a/) (Khan 2020, I:305). Naturally, this fact causes a certain amount of ambiguity, and many Tiberian Masoretes—including the author of the *Treatise on the Shewa*—wrote about how to differentiate the two *she-*

32 See also, another section of the *Treatise on the Shewa*: "The Rules of *Shewa* and How Accents and *Gaʿyot* Move It" (Levy 1936, ה, from line 7).