Some followups

Shoemaker (following Crone) dismisses Heck's hypothesis of gold and even of copper from the Hijazi mines over the first/ seventh century. As far as I know Mu'awiya didn't even mint a gold coinage. But the amir did have copper - from somewhere. He'd conquered Cyprus 30/650ish so that's one source (classically). But just to humour us: has anyone tried a neutron-activation on the Palaestina coins from Jericho up the eastern Jordan to Damascus? Are they all Cypriot? Are they restrikes of old Byzantine coinage?

A lot of Cypriotes had got relocated from Cyprus to, exactly, Jericho and points beyond: Anastasius' Quaestiones 28 apud Hoyland, 100 says some ended up in Zoara. (Arculf apud Adomnán reports similar of Hamitic Sudanese.) Might some copper-mining experts have continued further...?

We agree: Safaitic was mostly graffit'ed by bored herdsmen showing off their mad skillz to other herdsmen (and occasional women). Then - per Hoyland "1997a" and per Whelan - the Safaitic / Hismaic secular graffiti (at Negev anyway) is replaced by Arabic-cursive in a "basic class" of monotheism and prayers-for-mercy. Some of these have a bit of Quran parallel but not a lot, until the Marwanids. If the Quran was penned to parchment before Muhammad, we'd expect - eventually - for the herders of that language to hear some of it. Shoemaker might not be looking for the Basic Class before the first / seventh century; Hoyland and Whelan are dismissed ch2 n93 and there's no Nevo anywhere. I actually think Shoemaker, by accepting Hoyland and Whelan, could have hammered the preMuhammadan codices harder - into atoms. Both of us would love to see any appreciable Arabic-cursive graffiti from that jahilya. UPDATE 1/6/23 - Fred Donner has tried. I don't think he has succeeded.

I should also like to know, on Shoemaker's behalf, on assumption preMuhammadan parchment MSS of Quran exist: where the beast was slaughtered. Obviously the Safaitic-authors herded sheep, goats, bovines. Shoemaker transmits Crone allowing some herding along the Hijaz also - by the way, there's my answer to p. 123 on the supposed expense of Red Sea papyrus, parchment would not be (relatively) expensive for Arabians. First: can we tell what the beast ate. Second: where are the west-Arabian tanneries? Why don't we see some Christian or Jewish scribe mentioning this strange new prophecy before the Didascalia / Doctrina of Jacob? It would be notable, to them, if suddenly Arabian vellum was getting expensive because new holy texts were brewing, nu?

To Shoemaker's comment on how the "Quran" didn't always bear that name, with hamza or no, one could add that Christians knew the Muhammadan book as "Furqan", or maybe as several books plus "The Baqára" - come to think of it, I remember Shoemaker, 49f noting exactly this of the bovine text, from Matthieu Tillier and Naim Vantieghem (n.33, misspelt). Here I think Fred Donner could have helped him out. Also if I may: I am unaware of Abu Musa's Lubāb al-fu’ād (Basrian 3araby may or may not have hamza) but we do hear of Lubāb al-qulub from Arthur Jeffery; "the core of the hearts", I think. There's talk that Ibn Abi Dawud thought this was just a copy of Ubayy's mushaf but Jeffery's summary hints at more than that. In fact it's a primary for Jeffery.