Chapter 9. Conclusions

The concluding chapter synthesises the findings of the preceding chapters and draws out their broader implications for three overlapping domains: the manuscript of Vat. Ar. 13 itself, early Christian Arabic writing more generally, and the methodology of pre-modern Arabic linguistic studies. On the manuscript, the chapter argues that the differences in grammar and writing practice across the four scribal hands suggest a complex production history: Hands A and B — which display a strong preference for Old Ḥiǧāzī/Quranic forms — likely produced the manuscript in a monastic context, while Hand C, whose linguistic profile more closely resembles Gospel manuscripts produced in Palestinian monasteries, appears to have filled in damaged portions at a later point after the manuscript was brought to Palestine. More broadly, the chapter argues that the book's evidence compels the abandonment of the assumption that any early Arabic author was by default attempting to write normative textbook Classical Arabic: the linguistic landscape of the ʿAbbāsid Levant was genuinely multipolar, with scribes drawing selectively on a variety of grammatical norms and aesthetics, each of which was to one degree or another prestigious, in ways paralleled in the Quranic qirāʾāt themselves. The chapter proposes several avenues for future research, including comparative quantitative studies of other early Christian Arabic manuscripts and further investigation of the relationship between Christian scribal linguistic practice and popular Quranic recitation traditions.