OF THE ANCIENT ARABS. 181 



yaric character. The Christian Arabs of Gassau 

 and Hira were acquainted with letters before tlieir 

 brethren in Hejaz ; and the generally received 

 opinion is, that the latter were without an alphabet 

 until the time of Moramur-ibn-Morra of Anbar, who 

 invented the Cufic, and introduced it at Mecca a 

 short time before the birth of Mohammed. After 

 being- used for nearly three hundred years, the 

 Niskhi, a more elegant character, was formed from 

 it by the Vizier Ibn-Mokla of Bagdad ; and this the 

 Arabs regard as the groundwork of their present 

 alphabet. Until of late years the antiquity of the 

 Cufic, and the subsequent invention of Ibn-Mokla, 

 have been universally admitted. Recent discove- 

 ries, however, have overthrown this theory. Med- 

 als, coins, and vases have been found with in- 

 scriptions older than the Cufic. Papyri have been 

 examined, written in a character resembling the 

 present, earlier by two centuries than Mokla's alpha- 

 bet ; hence the presumption is, that the Niskhi, in- 

 stead of being imported from Bagdad in the third 

 century of the Hejira, was in use before the Arabs 

 of Hejaz received the other from Irak. That the 

 arts of reading and writing must have been under- 

 stood at Mecca even in the times of ignorance, we 

 may infer from the Golden Poems suspended in the 

 temple ; but it is impossible that Cufa should then 

 have given its name to an alphabet, because that 

 city was not founded till the reign of Omar, more 

 than half a century after the alleged invention.* 

 The Niskhi underwent several changes, and was at 

 length reduced to its present form by Yakut, secre- 

 tary to Mostasem, the last caliph of the house of Abbas 

 (A. D. 1250). Various Cufic manuscripts on parch- 

 ment or vellum are in existence, and this character 

 Avas common in inscriptions on stone and metal 

 until the 13th and 14th centuries of the Christian 



Asiatic Journal, vol. xxiv. 

 Vol. I.— Q 



