Research on Arabic allography — the practice of writing Arabic in non-Arabic scripts — has traditionally focused on two well-documented traditions: Judeo-Arabic, used by Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa, and Garshuni, prominent among Christian communities of the Levant. These codified traditions have provided systematic evidence for orthographic adaptation, phonological representation, and the complex interaction between Arabic and other script systems. In LiteRaS, they serve as comparative reference schemes and are designated as “major” traditions owing to their historical and literary impact and the considerable scholarly attention they have received.
Beyond these, however, the field remains uneven. LiteRaS focuses on Arabic written in Greek, Coptic, Ethiopian and Latin script — the minor allographic traditions identified for the project’s corpus, while remaining open to additional cases should further evidence emerge. These practices have attracted only isolated and unsystematic studies. No comprehensive digital repository of these manuscripts exists, leaving resources dispersed across editions, catalogues, and collections. Without a comparative framework integrating multiple traditions, cross-script and cross-confessional patterns remain largely invisible.
LiteRaS addresses these gaps by focusing on these lesser-studied traditions, establishing the first open-access encoded repository of Arabic allographic manuscripts with linguistic annotation, conducting a comparative analysis, and applying corpus-based linguistics and computational palaeography to identify cross-script and diachronic patterns. Drawing on the New Literacy Studies framework, which understands literacy as a socially and ideologically situated practice, allographic traditions are approached here as a key lens for reconstructing how peripheral communities negotiated cultural belonging and expressed identity through writing in the complex religious and political landscape of the pre-modern Middle East.
Objectives
Objective 1 — Creating an open-access TEI-XML encoded digital archive of minor Arabic allographic manuscripts. Conceived as a reference hub for the study of Arabic allography, the repository will connect currently fragmented research communities and is intended to expand with additional specimens beyond the project.
Objective 2 — Defining the key orthographic and linguistic features of minor allographic texts and analysing how they vary across regional communities. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools applied to the digital corpus, the project will systematically compare orthographic and linguistic features across diverse allographic traditions, revealing patterns of variation and adaptation.
Objective 3 — Identifying the key visual features of manuscripts from the minor traditions and illuminating what they reveal about the literacy of peripheral Arabic-speaking Christian communities. Cutting-edge computational tools for visual manuscript analysis will be used to study non-standardised handwriting styles as indicators of literacy, focusing on individual scribes and regional styles.
Methodology
LiteRaS combines philological and digital methods. The corpus — projected at up to c. 100 folia — will be transcribed and encoded in TEI-XML with linguistic annotation targeting key features of Middle Arabic. Linguistic and orthographic analysis will rely on NLP tools, enabling cross-tradition comparisons and feeding into an Orthographic Atlas of Arabic Minor Allographies. Visual analysis will apply computational palaeography tools to examine scribal practices and handwriting as markers of literacy.
Supervision
LiteRaS is supervised by Prof. Valentina Sagaria Rossi (University of Rome Tor Vergata). Prof. Maurice A. Pomerantz (New York University Abu Dhabi), and Dr Hussein Adnan Mohammed (University of Hamburg).
Funding
LiteRaS is funded by the European Union under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowships programme (Grant Agreement ID: 101281167). EU contribution: € 290,752.44. The project is hosted at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, with an outgoing phase at New York University Abu Dhabi and a secondment at the University of Hamburg.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA).