ARABOGRAPHIC TEXTS IN TIME AND SPACE

ABSTRACT

Classical African and Asian studies consider the text as the core and the main object of scholar research and take into consideration both the socio-historical context that influenced its formation and the content of the document under consideration. In the case of Arabic scholars deal with a linguistic continuum that has existed for more than 14 centuries. The system of the Arabic script existed as early as in the sixth century AD. The codification of the Qurʾān played a crucial role in the evolution of the Arabic alphabet when special signs for diacritics and vowels were introduced. The spread of the Arabic script beyond the borders of the Arabian Peninsula went simultaneously with the spread of Islam and formation of the caliphate when local types of writing in the territories of Africa, Asia and Europe (Greek, Aramaic, Pahlavi scripts, etc.) were replaced by Arabic. The Arabic script itself was perceived at that time as a symbol of affiliation with Islam, and Muslim cultural and historical traditions. For centuries the Arabic writing had been represented by handwritten manuscripts and initially books in Arabic, including the Qurʾān, were printed in Italy and Granada at the end of the 15th - the beginning of the 16th centuries AD and only then in the Muslim world - in the printing houses of Cairo, Tehran and Tabriz. In the Ottoman Empire, and later in the Republic of Turkey Arabographic texts had been in use until 1928. In Russia and USSR Romanization of the Arabic alphabets of national languages in Volga region and the Caucasus took place in 1927. Nowadays Arabographic texts are on the one hand an object of cultural and historical heritage, on the other - an important element of the development of modern civilization.

Keywords: text, script, language, Arabic.