Traces of the hamza in the Early Arabic Script: The Inscriptions of Zuhayr, Qays the Scribe, and ‘Yazīd the King’

The present article re-edits three early Islamic inscriptions that exhibit an orthographic feature believed to represent the glottal stop (hamz). Overall, this orthographic device (referred to as ‘proto-hamza’) is employed four times in the three inscriptions, bringing the number of its known attestations to a grand total of nine. The article concludes by making some broad observations on the multifarious nature of the early Arabic writing tradition(s)