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The religious and strategic importance of Western Palestine in the Islamic period is clearly reflected in the hundreds of Arabic inscriptions found, the texts of which cover a variety of topics including construction, dedication, religious endowments, epitaphs, Qur'anic texts, prayers and invocations, all now assembled in this
Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae (
CIAP). The inscriptions are arranged according to site, and are studied in their respective topographical, historical and cultural contexts. In this way the
Corpus offers more than a survey of inscriptions: it represents the epigraphical angle of the geographical history of the Holy Land under Islam.
About the author
Moshe Sharon, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Islamic History at The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He studied epigraphy under Gaston Wiet, and has been collecting the material for
CIAP since the late 1960s. He has published many books and articles on a variety of subjects on medieval Islam and Arabic epigraphy, as well as on the Bābī-Bahā'ī faiths. In 2014 he was elected Member of the American Philosophical Society.
