Arabic and its Alternatives: Language and Religion in the Ottoman Empire and its Successor States

When in the mid-eighties I entered the field of Semitic Studies via the study of Hebrew and Aramaic, “Classical Syriac” was one of the obligatory courses of the program. Through the careful study of grammar and a variety of texts these classes took me into the world of the Syriac churches. It was to take me some years to start getting the bigger picture of their histories and contemporary situation, but one thing I accepted as a given from the earliest stages of my studies: that there was an undeniable link between the “Syriac” language and the “Syriac” churches. This message was conveyed by the texts we read, by the convenient subdivision into “East” and “West” Syriac scripts and “East” and “West” Syrian Churches,2 and by the references made by the contemporary churches (which at that period were settling in Europe, including the Netherlands) to Syriac as ‘their’ language. This conceptual link was further strengthened by the fact that for the closely related Aramaic languages used by other religious communities (“Jewish,” “Samaritan,” “Mandaic”), different scripts were used and separate literatures had emerged.3