It was a productive Year in Books for me this year! Lots of excellent books, and a bunch of terrible ones. Let's do some quick mini-reviews of my year in books.

After the major technical difficulties last time, me and Gabriel Reynolds decided to do another Live Q&A. So, of course, the first thing that happened was that my WiFi died, and then we got audio issues. After some editing it is now put back online! www.youtube.com/live/vkiji1e...

My next in-person Manuscript Kufi course (early Arabic calligraphy) has already been announced for April over at the Arab British Centre, London: details at www.arabbritishcentre.org.uk/courses/joum...

@yvanspijk.bsky.social kwam vandaag met het lezen van wat een woord dat ik niet kende "maint", uit de context was het wel duidelijk dat het "menig" betekende, maar ik vond het leuk dat het dus ook echt gewoon ontleent is uit menigte! Dat leek me er eentje voor jou :-) en.wiktionary.org/wiki/maint

After a brief detour to the Lord's Prayer in a bilingual manuscript, our Advent calendar continues today with the Christmas Gospel: The angel appears to the shepherds.

Libyco-Berber (LB) Tombstones - the Monday edition. Today, we will have a look at an inscription from Morocco. LB tombstones are written in two different scripts, commonly called "eastern" and "western". For the eastern script we have enough useful bilinguals to be certain about their reading. 🧵

#artcalendar day 1: Mudāwama مداومة Persistence, constancy through circumstances that may be less than easy. A piece from the archives (2012!) in acrylic, ink, and metal leaf on paper. shorturl.at/4drDH

#artcalendar Day 2: Rūḥ روح Meaning spirit, soul, breath. Watercolour and ink on paper, from 2011.

#artcalendar Day 3: Dream منام From 2013. Watercolor, iridescent medium, metal leaf on cut and layered paper.

#artcalendar Day 4: Majnoun Leila مجنون ليلى Egg tempera with mineral pigments, red gold 23 ct, hand-cut paper on mount board, from 2014. shorturl.at/63iHF

#artcalendar Day 4*: Perplexity حيرة Acrylic and gold leaf on hand-cut paper, from 2017. majnouna.com/portfolio/pe... *sshhh, don't know how I missed a day but I'll post #5 later today.

Oxford dating be like "We'd like to invite you to give a talk during Week -2 of Hogfather term."

"takubbanit n tukksa n lmelḥ i waman n yilel Bgayet" Interesting that they went for a puristic neologism for "sea" (ilel instead of lebḥeṛ), but not for "salt" (lmelḥ instead of tisent).

As a little treat for you, here's an #ArabicBible Advent calendar 🧵. Every day I'll post a verse from the Christmas story from one of the oldest Arabic Gospel lectionaries, Sinai ar. 72, dated 897 CE (and a few other texts in between). [2nd attempt, I won't be offended if you point out my nonsense.]

If you don’t know, then who knows in your language? For Dutch, we say ‘Joost mag het weten’ (Joost may know it), where Makhuwa says ‘Nluku tantsuwela’ (God is the one who knows). What do you say?

An important 'time out' by a very clear thinker. Much of what Shoemaker claims about the Hijaz on the eve of Islam is conclusively disproved by material evidence, which grows by the year. I have a surprise, too, from my last survey mission (May 2025) between Taif-Mecca and Medina shorturl.at/8IG8f

More Numidian mysteries! Most Numidian stelae have at least two lines or (à la limite) one line containing several words. Only in one cemetery do we find a series of really short inscriptions (Mechta el Maza, near Bouchegouf, Guelma province, Algeria), esp. RIL 1085-1092. But…

Pre-Islamic Arabic and Greek! The #Safaitic abecedary we posted earlier this week was far more interesting than originally thought. A close re-reading of the stone revealed the entire Safaitic alphabet in the Greek letter order! See the study here: www.academia.edu/144853577/Al...

Taking suggestions 👇

A short thread on onomastics in Numidian inscriptions (eastern script). Indexes of names in eastern Numidian inscriptions (Chabot 1940, Rebuffat 2018) provide us with an almost ridiculous number of different names. I wondered if this is correct, or if this is due to the messiness of the corpus.

Sanskrit/Tibetan/Tangut quote of the day: Bodhicaryāvatāra 6.10 (ed. Solonin 2025 www.academia.edu/144598049/Bo...)

The Quran displays various arrangements of mysterious, disconnected letters. The magico-sacred aspect of the alphabet stretches far into the pre-Islamic past. This Safaitic text begins with a prayer to Allāt followed by a partial abecedary. Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Whenever you find yourself annoyed at someone spelling إن شاء الله as إنشاء الله, just remember people have been doing that at least since 1156 AH/1753 CE (the date of this manuscript of the al-Dani's Taysir).

hahaha jk jk... unless?

#Incredible ! There is good evidence that Greek literacy was relatively widespread among the ancient Arabs east of Ḥawrān. Here, our #Safaitic author partially writes out the Safaitic letters in the Greek order, omitting vowels! Find more on #OCIANA: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

You'd think that Microsoft Word, being a Word processor would, you know, be able to process words. But my god, feed it anything more than 5000 words, and it just absolutely shits the bed.

Another reason to study Sībawayh: Not only are his linguistic descriptions completely alien to a western paradigm, but *also* what he actually describes as Arabic is extremely worth actually studying. It's much broader than the strict norms of Classical Arabic western scholars usually assume.

It's a busy month: join me on Nov. 18, the UNESCO International Day of #IslamicArt, for an in-depth talk about "Kufi" as defining a self-contained early tradition of Arabic calligraphy. For Islamic Art Week 2025, I've prepared a brand new, exhaustive (& kickass) presentation that will take us from…

the origin of the term "Kufi", to the formation of the script, examples of its many faces, its particularities, its decline, ending with samples of my own artworks and artist books. There will be plenty of time for…

@sibawayhi.bsky.social Just read your blogpost here. YES! That's it. I had no idea Carter misunderstood this 🤦‍♂️. In his section on the harmony of the pronoun -hû, uses another strategy: /marartu bihî qabl#/, /marartu bihû qabl/, witih qabl protecting the -hî/-hû. www.sibawayhi.org/as-you-see-o...

Near East X Midwest podcast - The fall and rise of comparative Semitic linguistics | a conversation with Prof. Na'ama Pat-El. Listen in: youtu.be/vPUhcfPrLqM

De eerste recensie van 'Woord voor woord' is binnen - en daar ben ik heel gelukkig mee! José Vandekerckhove, auteur, taalkundige en lector aan de KU Leuven, noemt het een aantrekkelijk boek voor een breed publiek, met 'mooie en inzichtelijke infographics': www.netdidned.be/publicaties/...

Some further thought about BNS in Numidian inscriptions The term is mostly interpreted as “his stone”, but Rössler suggests that “his wife” would be better (unbeknownst to him, it even could make sense etymologically) Personally, I find this unexpected for a grave stone, but that is irrelevant.

New Blog Post on the Najdi demonstrative hāḏī phdnix.wordpress.com/2025/10/28/w...

Not the "e macron letter" I was looking for, thanks though

An Ayt Hdiddu Text (Bynon) Maš da ttinin mddn adday da tsawal tslmya ž tmẓy ns ž wr ssin mddn mayd ttini: hat aynnaɣ ayd yžan da tsawal d lmalayša "But people say when a baby is speaking in its early days and people do not know what it is saying: "Look at what it's doing, it's speaking with Angels!"

Yet another blogpost in my ongoing series Making Sense of Šāḏḏ: The Written and the Oral. We explore the unusual reading Q2:33 ʾambiʾhim which is no longer canonical, but its discussion gives us great insight into the pre-Ibn Mujahid written sources. phdnix.wordpress.com/2025/10/21/m...

We need help. My wife is suffering from daily intense pain and insurance won't fully cover the procedure and the hospital is demanding up front payment. www.gofundme.com/f/help-amber...

New #OpenAccess paper on what 'first', 'second', 'third' tell us about the #Semitic family tree, including new evidence for Aramaeo-Canaanite! Note that unfortunately, the names of Ethiopian scholars have been metathesized, something that will hopefully be remedied before the final print version. 🐦🐦

#New on #OCIANA - from the cosmopolitan world of ancient Arabia: ʾAkzam son of Ġawṯ, of the people of Rm (Rome?), records being driven away from the road (𝑠𝑎𝑏𝑖̄𝑙!) by the tribe of Thamūd, mentioned in the Quran! From near ʿarʿar عرعر KSA. Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

This is a detail of a braided pattern decoration in a Christian Arabic codex from the 9th/10th century CE (Sinai Ar. 461, f. 25br). I only recently noticed that the scribe used five differently coloured inks for this. It's just stunning how vibrant they still are after more than a millennium.

Great interview of Dr. Charles Häberl on Mandaïc and other forms of Aramaïc and his work on them. youtu.be/UJLZBMGxjZ4?...

SNK having a wall in a popup shop dedicated to an instakill

I've published a new blogpost on the question of what "shâdhdh" of Qira'at mean. You can read it here: phdnix.wordpress.com/2025/10/17/m...

In recent months I’ve been very busy exploring the concept of šāḏḏ within the literature of Quranic Reading Traditions. This term is frequently translated as “non-canonical”, and thus the šāḏḏ readings are “non-canonical readings”.

Zaterdag is mijn boek 'Woord voor woord: de verleden tijd van taal' officieel gelanceerd op het Taalfeest. Twee quizwinnaars en vele tientallen kopers gingen naar huis met een exemplaar. Intussen landt het boek ook al op de deurmatten. Ik ben heel benieuwd wat de lezers ervan zullen vinden.

I've written about the life and just some of the achievements of my former classmate Andy West aka 魏安, Ando, and BabelStone @babelstone.co.uk www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

A really interesting observation of Ibn Qutaybah (d. 276/889) in his ʾadab al-kātib. Commenting on why balā, matā and ʾannā are spelled with yāʾ he said: "because the ʾimālah (i.e. balē, matē, ʾannē) for these is better and more eloquent than tafḫīm (balā, matā, ʾannā)"

Tot grote frustratie van Onze Taal en mij heeft de drukker 'Woord voor woord' nog steeds niet geleverd. Vandaag is het niet de feestelijke dag waar ik op hoopte. In het thema van 'niet' deel ik daarom een nieuwe preview. Waar komt het woord 'niet' vandaan? En wat is de grote ontkenningscyclus? 1/