The Arabic script is generally believed to have evolved from local cursive varieties of the Aramaic script, which have been adopted to write Arabic, though some, such as Jean Starcky, have postulated that it instead derives directly from the Syriac script since, unlike Aramaic, the scripts of Arabic and Syriac are both cursive. Indigenous speculations concerning the history of the script sometimes ascribe the origins of the script, and oftentimes the language itself also, to one of the ancient major figures in Islam, such as Adam or Ishmael, though others mention that it was introduced to Arabia from afar. In the 7th century AD, the distinctive features of Old Hijazi, such as loss of final short vowels, loss of hamza, lenition of final /-at/ to /-ah/, and lack of nunation, influenced the consonantal text (or "rasm)" of the Qur'an (and many of its readings also) and the later normalized orthography of Classical Arabic as a standard literary register in the 8th century.