Ramona Teepe is a PhD candidate in the fields of Coptic and Arabic studies at Yale University. Her research focuses on the shift from Coptic to Arabic in Egypt and the development of the Coptic grammatical tradition in the 13^th-century as exemplified by muqaddimāt.

In this talk I will share my knowledge on the 13th century which included the end of the literary use of the Coptic language, it was also the pivotal time for the survival of Coptic in other linguistic domains. I investigate how Coptic intellectuals actively and consciously shaped the future use and continuation of their linguistic tradition. My research analyzes the inception and development of the 13^th century Coptic grammatical tradition based on the corpus of grammars of the Coptic language, called muqaddimāt. They were written in Arabic between the 1240s to the 1260s and are the first extant examples of grammatical descriptions of Coptic. Although the muqaddimāt all contribute to the transformation of Coptic into a classical language, I also argue that each individual author intended to shape the future acquisition of Coptic and systematic translation methods in accordance with his own intellectual goals. Beyond its significance for the history of Coptic, the muqaddimāt offer a study of how Coptic intellectuals integrated their heritage into the Arabic grammatical tradition.