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© 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978 90 04 22229 8 Middle Arabic and Mixed Arab

© 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978 90 04 22229 8 Middle Arabic and Mixed Arabic Diachrony and Synchrony Edited by Liesbeth Zack and Arie Schippers LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012 © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978 90 04 22229 8 CONTENTS List of Illustrations .......................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ ix Introduction: Middle and Mixed Arabic, A New Trend in Arabic Studies ............................................................................................. 1 Johannes den Heijer Moyen arabe et variétés mixtes de l’arabe : premier essai de bibliographie, Supplément no 1 ............................................................. 27 Jérôme Lentin Some Remarks about Middle Arabic and Saʿadya Gaon’s Arabic Translation of the Pentateuch in Manuscripts of Jewish, Samaritan, Coptic Christian, and Muslim Provenance .................. 51 Berend Jan Dikken Linguistic and Cultural Features of an Iraqi Judeo-Arabic Text of the qiṣaṣ al-ʾanbiyāʾ Genre ................................................................. 83 Lutz Edzard Deux types de moyen arabe dans la version arabe du discours 41 de Grégoire de Nazianze ? .................................................................. 95 Jacques Grand’Henry Présentation du livre Le Conte du Portefaix et des Trois Jeunes Femmes, dans le manuscrit de Galland (XIVe–XVe siècles) ........... 113 Bruno Halflants Judeo-Arabic as a Mixed Language ........................................................... 125 Benjamin Hary The Story of Zayd and Kaḥlāʾ—A Folk Story in a Judaeo-Arabic Manuscript ................................................................................................... 145 Rachel Hasson Kenat © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978 90 04 22229 8 vi contents Towards an Inventory of Middle and Mixed Arabic Features: The Inscriptions of Deir Mar Musa (Syria) as a Case Study ......... 157 Johannes den Heijer Qui est arabophone? Les variétés de l’arabe dans la défĳinition d’une compétence native ........................................................................ 175 Amr Helmy Ibrahim Perspectives ecdotiques pour textes en moyen arabe : L’exemple des traités théologiques de Sulaymān al-Ġazzī ........... 187 Paolo La Spisa Normes orthographiques en moyen arabe : Sur la notation du vocalisme bref ............................................................................................. 209 Jérôme Lentin Playing the Same Game? Notes on Comparing Spoken Contemporary Mixed Arabic and (Pre)Modern Written Middle Arabic ............................................................................................. 235 Gunvor Mejdell Middle Arabic in Moshe Darʿī’s Judaeo-Arabic Poems ....................... 247 Arie Schippers Written Judeo-Arabic: Colloquial versus Middle Arabic .................... 265 Yosef Tobi Yefet ben ʿEli’s Commentary on the Book of Zechariah .................... 279 Kees de Vreugd Damascus Arabic According to the Compendio of Lucas Caballero (1709) ................................................................................ 295 Otto Zwartjes and Manfred Woidich List of Contributors ........................................................................................ 335 Index ................................................................................................................... 341 © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978 90 04 22229 8 WRITTEN JUDEO-ARABIC: COLLOQUIAL VERSUS MIDDLE ARABIC Yosef Tobi Summary: Medieval Judeo-Arabic (MWJA) was written with Hebrew characters, and used for the Judeo-Arabic literature shared by all Jewish scholars in the domain of medieval Arab-Muslim culture. Its status was like that of literary Classical Arabic among the Muslim Arabic speakers. However, MWJA had never been a living spoken language and its life did not extend beyond four or fĳive hundred years (tenth–fĳifteenth centuries). Yet, Arabic continued to function as a spoken language. Its numerous dialects also served as a writ- ten communicative vehicle, and for literature in various genres. This is true in regard to medieval Judeo-Arabic, opposed to the notion that MWJA of the school of Saʿadya was the only one used by Jews in the Middle Ages. Actually, colloquial Judeo-Arabic has existed as a written language for almost fĳifteen hundred years, since pre-Islamic time. Today, one of the important assignments is to carry out a meticulous and comprehensive comparative examination of the ancient and later non-classical Arabic languages in order to better understand the history of Judeo-Arabic. 1. Introduction Middle Arabic is the current name used by the recent two generations for medieval non-classical written Arabic. Thus, by the recent two genera- tions it was used for medieval Judeo-Arabic (MWJA), mostly thanks to the enormous life work of Prof. Joshua Blau.1 This Arabic, written with Hebrew characters, was used for the vast production of Judeo-Arabic lit- erature of all genres and was shared by all Jewish scholars in the spacious domain of medieval Arab-Muslim culture. In this respect, its status among the Arabic-speaking Jewish communities was like that of literary Classical Arabic (CA) among the Muslim Arabic speakers, which has been used for written Arabic literature since the seventh century until today. Yet one can distinguish MWJA because of its grammatical, syntactical, and stylis- tic leniency, compared to the extremely strict rules of CA, and its distance from the highly flowery style so typical of CA. As known, although insufffĳiciently heeded by its researchers, MWJA had never been a living spoken language, and its life did not extend beyond four or fĳive hundred years in the centres of literary creativity in the 1 Blau’s studies about MWJA are too many to be detailed here. However, two of them should be mentioned in this context: Blau 1988 and 1999. 266 yosef tobi © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978 90 04 22229 8 Eastern lands, North Africa and Spain from the tenth through the fĳif- teenth centuries. In some of these countries, it stopped being used for writing after the fourteenth century (Vajda 1980; Tobi 2010: 273–4). One notable exception is Yemen, where Jews kept on with it—although not exclusively—for teaching and writing up to recent generations.2 A very signifĳicant testimony is the story of a Jewish scholar in Yemen in the fĳirst half of the twentieth century, who came across a Judeo-Arabic translation of a printed version of Song of Songs:3 Now even though the meaning of his words was difffĳicult for me in certain places, since it was [written in] the Babylonian (Iraqi) language and not [in] pure [Arabic], nevertheless, I corrected it according to the language of Rav Sa’adia Gaon, which is almost habitual in our mouths. Evidently, the disappearance of MWJA did not impact in any respect the use of Arabic as a living spoken language among Jewish communities, whose surrounding majority spoke Arabic. Nor did its existence as a writ- ten language have any impact on the use of Arabic as vernacular. Even its invention in the tenth century was not the real reason causing those communities to speak Arabic. Spoken Arabic was always clearly separated from MWJA, since as a living colloquial language it was much richer than MWJA.4 In fact, there was no common spoken Judeo-Arabic, but scores of diffferent dialects, to such an extent that a speaker of one dialect could not understand a speaker of another, even, and not infrequently, in the same country. In principle, a specifĳic Judeo-Arabic dialect is the same one spo- ken by the Arab or Muslim majority in a certain country, even if it difffers in some respects, such as its Hebrew component and even phonetically, from the majority dialect.5 2 See Goitein in Habshush 1941: 72–81; Blau 1984; Tobi 1991; Tobi 1999: 400–403. 3 Tobi 1991: 138. 4 This may be easily shown if we compare the only comprehensive dictionary we have for the medieval Judeo-Arabic texts (Blau 2006) with the only comprehensive one we have for a single new written and spoken dialect of Judeo-Arabic—that of Iraq (Avishur 2009–2010). Unfortunately, no such work has been carried out for another dialect of Judeo- Arabic. We should, however, mention M. Piamenta’s Dictionary of Post-Classical Yemeni Arabic (Piamenta 1990–1991/1), of which ‛Judæo-Yemeni, the language of the Yemeni Jews is an essential part’ (ibid., I,v). 5 Innumerable studies have been written about the Hebrew component in Judeo- Arabic dialects, of which might be mentioned fĳive wide-ranging ones: Avishur 2001 (Iraq, Syria, Egypt); Ben-Yaacob 1985; Bar-Asher 1992 (North Africa); Bahat 2002 (Morocco); Henshke 2007 (Tunisia). The documentation and study of the Hebrew and Aramaic com- ponent in the Judeo-Arabic dialects is an important part of The Synoptic Dictionary of the Hebrew and Aramaic Component in the Jewish Languages in the Mediterranean Basin, an written judeo-arabic: colloquial vs. middle arabic 267 © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978 90 04 22229 8 2. The Wide Variety of Written and Oral Judeo-Arabic Literature The numerous Judeo-Arabic dialects were not solely used for oral com- munication; they also served as a daily written communicative vehicle, for instance in correspondence, and dialects were even used for literature in various genres. Thus in liturgy, we have biblical translations (šarḥs), poems recited in synagogue, and halakhic material; while in the secular fĳield, mostly in folk literature, we have folktales, folk poems, and prov- erbs. This is true not only in regard to new Judeo-Arabic, but in regard to medieval Judeo-Arabic as well. Opposed to the notion, to which the central scholars of this domain were clinging, namely that MWJA of the school of Saʿadya was the only one used by Jews in the Middle Ages, while ignoring texts found in the Cairene Geniza written not in accordance with the rules of this ‛classical’ MWJA,6 a modifĳied outlook is recently being adopted by new researchers. That is to say, throughout the Middle Ages there existed not only one, unique ‛classical’ MWJA, but there existed a variety of MWJA. This understanding was unequivocally proved in a recent search of letters preserved in the Geniza (Wagner 2010), but, as we shall see below, this is factual in respect to other written genres of Judeo-Arabic. uploads/Litterature/ tobi-written-judeo-arabic-colloquial-vs-middle-arabic.pdf