Contents: Introduction: The development of Arabic as a written language (Christian Julien Robin); Ancient Arabia and the written word (M.C.A. Macdonald); Mount Nebo, Jabal Ramm, and the status of Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Old Arabic in Late Roman Palestine and Arabia (Robert Hoyland); A glimpse of the development of the Nabataean script into Arabic based on old and new epigraphic material (Laila Nehme); The evolution of the Arabic script in the period of the Prophet Mu ammad and the Orthodox Caliphs in the light of new inscriptions discovered in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (‘Ali Ibrahim Al-Ghabban); In search of a standard: dialect variation and New Arabic features in the oldest Arabic written documents (Pierre Larcher); The codex Parisino-petropolitanus and the ijazi scripts (Francois Deroche); The relationship of literacy and memory in the second/eighth century (Gregor Schoeler); The Use of the Arabic script in magic (Venetia Porter); The Old Arabic graffito at Jabal Usays: A new reading of line 1 (M.C.A. Macdonald).