The Sacromonte forgers’ almost undotted Arabic script made readings exponentially ambiguous

Evidence

One method employed by the forgers to make these works difficult to read was to write them in an unusual Arabic script. This is not the place to enter into a full technical description of this distinctive writing system. Suffice it to say that the only parallels for this angular form of writing are to be found on certain astrolabes (and possibly on early tombstones: see EI (2d. ed.), s.v. “kitabat,” plate 6). All Arabic scripts in normal use at the relevant time (and still nowadays) are cursive and depend heavily on a system of subscripted and superscripted dots (nuqat). The Sacromonte script is only vestigially cursive. The distinguishing dots are written only sporadically and erratically. To provide a simple example of the ambiguities that may result from these features, we may take ı, a character almost exactly identical to the undotted modern Turkish letter ı. If it does carry a superscripted dot, it represents in this script n (in nonfinal positions), but if the superscripted dot is not present, then the same basic letter form could equally well be a t (two dots), th (three dots), b (one underdot) or y (two underdots), not to mention p (one dot with a gemination [tashdid]). If a number of such letters with “missing” dots occur within a triliteral word, the possible permutations, and so the possible number of words that can be read from the same outline, rapidly become dauntingly large. If it were not for the fact that composition is highly formulaic, translation would be virtually impossible. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1760

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how the Sacromonte script works — vestigially cursive, sporadically dotted — and why its ambiguity made translation near-impossible without formulaic composition.
• CANDY: A single letter form could be read six different ways depending on absent dots; that’s a vivid, low-context fact about script forgery.