The pre-modern Islamic world was a diverse and multilingual space. Yet, its literary outputs are typically studied from the perspective of single languages in isolation, giving the false impression of linguistic “purity.” This is particularly true for Arabic, which held a special status as the sacred language of the Quran. However, multilingualism played a major role in shaping the language, the scripts it was written in, and its literary genres. Focusing on the interaction of Arabic with other local languages spoken and written in the Islamic world, this panel explores the various ways in which the language and its literary output was shaped, adapted, and transformed by the diverse communities that were in contact with it. The three chosen papers highlight less-studied moments of contact with Arabic, including Syriac, Swahili, and Indic languages, presenting a unique opportunity to reincorporate communities that have been historically marginalized in Arabic studies, expanding and enriching our understanding of the Arabic language and its literatures.

George Kiraz will explore the influence of Syriac on Arabic in a paper entitled “In the evening, I am a an Aramaic speaker... In the morning, I am an Arab: Syriac-Arabic Contact.” Syriac- contact Arabic in classical and middle Arabic can be tracked in the historical and archaeological records since before Islam and traces of it show up in Quranic Arabic and in Classical Arabic texts. As Syriac-using communities become largely Arabic-speaking (and Arabic-writing) prior to the Early Modern Era, we begin to see an influx of lexical transfer from Syriac to Arabic, primarily in the liturgical and grammatical genres. This paper attempts to trace the history of Syriac-Arabic contact, concentrating primarily on lexical transfer, and will demonstrate how some of this contact remains in spoken Arabic until this day.

Francesca Bellino, in turn, will explore the adaptation and transformation of a genre of Islamic conquest legends (maghāzī) into Aljamiado and Swahili in a paper entitled “Multilingualism and legendary maghāzī literature: the case of the Ghazwat Ḥunayn.” Legendary maghāzī literature represents an outstanding example of multilingualism in the pre-modern Islamic world. This genre consists of a large and varied corpus of narratives providing a fictionalised recounting of the early Muslim military expeditions (in Ar. ghazawāt, sing. ghazwa) that occurred during the lifetime of the Prophet Muḥammad and has been transmitted in multiple languages from the Mamluk period (13^th century) onwards. Bellino proposes the analysis of the Ghazwat Ḥunayn relating the expedition of the Prophet Muḥammad and his followers against the Bedouin tribe of Hawāzin in 630. The Qur’an as well as all major historical sources mention this ghazwa, which Bellino will examine in its later and more popular versions in Arabic, Aljamiado and Swahili. In her analysis, she will use the concepts of “narrative repertoire” and socio-linguistic “contact” to outline modes of and actors in the complex processes of translation, adaptation and transmission of this ghazwa - and thereby of this literary genre - across centuries and in different linguistic-cultural areas such as al-Andalus, Maghreb, Sub-Saharan and Eastern Africa.

Finally, Wafi Momin, in a paper entitled “Arabic and the Social World of South Asia: The Manuscript Culture of the Ismaili Communities,” will explore the place of Arabic in a manuscript tradition that unified several Indic languages as well as Arabic and Persian in a single, unique, and little known script called Khojki, developed by the Ismaili Muslims of South Asia. A plethora of languages and religio-literary genres are represented in Khojki manuscripts, including those in Gujarati, Hindi/Urdu, Sindhi and Punjabi, as well as in Arabic and Persian. The Arabic textual materials in these manuscripts include prayers and invocatory formulas of varying lengths, Qur’anic selections, and the use of Arabic phrases and terminology in talismans, magical squares, amulets, and prognostic texts (in some cases using Arabic script or through an admixture of Khojki and Arabic both). Much of this material is frequently accompanied by contextual information in Indic languages, highlighting their usages or efficacies in a variety of situations. Momin proposes to problematize the layered transmission of such a wide pool of Arabic materials by asking questions about their social, religious, and aesthetic roles in a tradition which is multilingual.

This panel will encourage a reconceptualization of the history of the Arabic language and literature within a multilingual sphere, probing questions of audience, the cultural significance of Arabic for the various communities and religions of the Islamic world, as well as the social, political, and aesthetic implications of the encounter with Arabic.