Documentary Arabic Private and Business Letters on Papyrus. Form and Function, Content and Context

Youssef, Eva Mira (2010). Documentary Arabic Private and Business Letters on Papyrus. Form and Function, Content and Context. Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete - Beihefte: Vol. 29. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter

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Arabic letters on papyrus challenge the modern reader. There are few to no diacritical dots to distinguish homographs, no systematic spacing between single words, and in the majority of cases a low degree of graphical structuring. However, contemporary readers usually read and understood these documents easily – probably because the recipient of a letter knew what to expect. The letters are formulaic, and their information packaging follows an algorithm typical for their time and content. Here formulaic letter writing means not only the reuse of the same formulae or topoi but expressing thoughts in a predictable linguistic way and order, both as a matter of readability and as one of adequacy and politeness. The main concern of this work is to discover these unwritten rules and norms behind Arabic letter writing on papyrus.

Item Type:	Book (Monograph)
Division/Institute:	06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institut für Studien zum Nahen Osten und zu muslimischen Gesellschaften
UniBE Contributor:	Youssef, Eva Mira
Subjects:	200 Religion > 290 Other religions 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 380 Commerce, communications & transportation 400 Language 400 Language > 490 Other languages
ISSN:	1868-9337
ISBN:	978-3-11-024705-3
Series:	Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete - Beihefte
Publisher:	de Gruyter
Language:	English
Submitter:	Eva Mira Youssef
Date Deposited:	02 Apr 2019 09:17
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 15:27
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/129327