Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 297

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THE ALPHABET On the other hand, it is quite possible that the vertical direction of writing was introduced under Chinese influence, either by early Arab traders orby MalayoPolynesian immigrants; in any case, at a very early period. Finally, there is also the possibility of some influence, probably an indirect one (through south-western India?), of the very active Nestorian missionaries. Whatever the result of the research on this question may be, some important points of the history of that region will have to be revised.
MENTION has been made of the various languages for which the Arabic script has been adopted and the languages, to which it has been adapted (Fig. 138). There are, however, some instances in which scripts may be considered as in part adaptations, the shapes of their letters being arbitrary inventions and not imitations of the signs of the prototype. I should include the following three scripts into this category:
1-Yezidi Cryptic Script The sect of Yezidis constitute a community of about 25,000 people, concentrated mainly in the Balad Sinjar and Shaikh 'Adi districts of northern Iraq; some Yezidis live in Syria (at Aleppo), Turkey (Mardin and Diarbekr) and in the Caucasus (Tiflis, and in Azerbaijan). Their origin is uncertain; they seem to be mainly of Kurdish race. They speak Kurmanji, a Kurdish dialect, but also Arabic. They are called also "devil-worshippers" because of their religion, which is said to be based on the propitiation of the Evil Principle, termed Melek Tans, the "Peacock King": their religion is on the whole a strange mixture of paganism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and other creeds. It is easy to understand why they employ a cryptic script, if one considers the fact that they live amongst the Moslems whom they hate and by whom they are hated. It is written in the Yezidi holy books: "If any Yezidi hears a Moslem in prayer he should kill the Moslem or commit suicide," while one of the most scomful expressions of the Moslem neighbours is Ya ibn Yezidi! "O thou, son of Yezid":
For the Yezidis, see Henry Field and J. B. Glubb, The Yezidis, Sulubba, and other Tribes of Iraq and Adjacent Regions, General Series in Anthropology, Number ro, Menasha, Wisconsin, U.S.A., 1943; see also the bibliography mentioned there on p. 17.
Curiously enough, the Field-Glubb monograph does not mention the two main holy books of the Yezidis, and their cryptic script. The two books are Kitab al-Jaltceh (ca. A.D. 1162-3), the "Book of the Revelation", a kind of New Testament, attributed to the secretary of Shaikh 'Adi, the founder of the community of the Yezidis, and Miskhaf Resh, known also as Mashaf-i räsh, or Miskhefa Resh (ca. A.D. 1342-3), the "Black Book," a kind of Old Testament, attributed to Khasan al-Bashi. There are also poems attributed to Shaikh 'Adi, stories about Shaikh 'Adi and Yezidi notabilities, genealogies and proclamations. An edition of these "literary monuments" is written in a hitherto unknown script.
The al-Jaleceh consists of loose pages, made of fine gazelle-skin parchment; the pages are roughly shaped in the form of a crescent moon, the sun, the earth, two rivers, a man's head with two ears or homs, and so forth. The pages are not numbered, but at the bottom of each page is written the word with which the next page begins. Each page contains 16 lines of writing. Since 1911, when these