Cursing upside down

How do you express your utter dislike of someone whose name you’re compelled to write? Syriac scribes sometimes recorded the names of unsavory creatures by writing them upside down. I first saw this with the name “Satan” in the Lyon manuscript facsimile of Jacob of Edessa’s Hexaemeron published by Chabot (see f. 15a).[1] I found another example just today in a Garšūnī version of The Story of St. Marina and her Father Eugenius. See here, again the word “Satan” (al-šayṭān), at the end of the second line:

Church of the Forty Martyrs, no. 125, p. 317

This phenomenon has been noted before for Syriac (see below), but, as far as I know, not yet for Garšūnī. It is, of course, not surprising that a known phenomenon of Syriac scribal habits should appear also in Garšūnī. Other examples in Garšūnī include, from a commentary on the Creed, the name “Apollinaris” written upside down (Dayr Al-Za‘faran 6, f. 59v, col. b), and the name “Nestorius” written upside down in a collection of canons (Dayr Al-Za‘faran 73, p. 418).

Relevant references for Syriac known to me are the following:

• Eugène Boré highlighted the practice, also with the word “Satan”, for a manuscript of Barhebraeus’ Candelabrum Sanctuarii.[2]
• Moberg, in the introduction to his edition of the Book of Himyarites, remarks that the name of “the tyrant Jewish king” Masruq is almost always written upside down in the ms.[3]
• the writing of “Barsawma” upside down in Syriac Orthodox manuscripts has been noted.[4]
• J.F. Coakley, notes an exampled of “Satan” thus written in a printed book from Lebanon in 1902.[5]
• Most recently, Michael Penn has noted a manuscript with the names “Bardaisan” and “Marcion” written inverted.[6]

[1] I.-B. Chabot, Iacobi Edesseni Hexaemeron, seu in opus creationis libri septem (CSCO 92/Syr. 44; Paris: Secrétariat duSCO, 1928). Cf. J. Y. Çiçek, Štāt yawmē d-ḥasyā Ya^cqob episqopā d-Urhāy (Glane: St. Ephrem the Syrian Monastery, 1985).

[2] “Analyse de l’ouvrage de Bar-Hebraeus intitulé [mnārat qudšē] le Flambeau des saints,” JA 2e sér. 14 [1834]: 481-508; see p. 503, n. 1.

[3] (Lund, 1924), pp. xvi-xvii, cf. also p. xxii.

[4] J.P. Asmussen, “Christianity in Iran,” in Ehsan Yarshater, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3(2), The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983], p. 944.

[5] The Typography of Syriac: A Historical Catalogue of Printing Types, 1537-1958 [New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2006], p. 63.

[6] “Monks, Manuscripts, and Muslims: Syriac Textual Changes in Reaction to the Rise of Islam,” in Hugoye 12.2 (2009), p. 252.