A North African Judaeo-Arabic letter from the Prize Papers Collection (original) (raw)
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Journal of Semitic Studies, Volume 69, Issue 2, Autumn 2024, Pages e42–e44, 2024
The historiography of Mediterranean mercantile activities has largely relied on medieval sources from the Cairo Genizah collections, particularly emphasizing the 10th to 13th centuries. Notable works, including the letter editions by Gil (1997), Goitein (1967-93; 1973), and Goitein/Friedman (2009; 2013), have formed the foundation of our understanding. In conjunction with the recently released Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic by Wagner (2021), the volume under review marks a noteworthy progression, effectively closing the existing research gap. Arab Traders in Their Own Words delves into the history of Arab trade networks during the Ottoman period, with a particular focus on its later stages. By delving into the particulars of the late Ottoman period, Arab Traders provides valuable insights into the organization and composition of business letters and accounts. The forthcoming publication of the Arabic Prize Papers Letters held at the National Archives in Kew in two volumes by Esther-Miriam Wagner and Mohamed Ahmed offers an excellent opportunity for comparative analysis. The collection discussed in Arab Traders promises to deepen our exploration of the material culture and postal arrangements associated with late Ottoman letters. Moreover, the linguistic nuances and writing styles observed in these newly discovered letters, coupled with insights from the Cairo Genizah and the Prize Papers collections, offer a richer understanding of the epistolary nature of mercantile and clerical correspondences during this period. The analytical segment of the book features an insightful introduction that elucidates the corpus of 1600 Arabic letters and documents preserved in Gotha. Arab Traders exclusively presents the edition and analysis of 191 letters along with their corresponding lists, all affiliated with the Christian merchant network of that era. It includes valuable indices that facilitate the retrieval of specific names, commodities, or locations, a crucial feature in editions of this nature. The author adeptly explores the historical context of this collection, highlighting its distinctive attributes in comparison to other repositories. Notably, the majority of correspondence within this collection predominantly involves Christian merchants, spanning the first half of the 18th century to the early years of the 19th century. The author's nuanced examination unveils the unique historical panorama encapsulated by the Gotha collection, enhancing its significance within the broader context of epistolary research. Following the comprehensive listing of all letters in the published corpus, the author embarks on an exploration of the geographical locations and trade network landscapes alluded to in the correspondence. Principal cities, including Alexandria, Jaffa, Damietta, and Acre, take centre stage in the discussion. The author then briefly addresses the ethical values and economic practices of the merchants, drawing insights
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Journal of Semitic Studies, 2017
The Prize Paper Collections in the National Archives in Kew Gardens contain more than fifty-five Arabic letters and another two dozen accounts and other documents, which were seized in 1759 by British privateers as part of the loot on a Tuscan ship, set out from Livorno towards Alexandria. Virtually untouched since that time, they present a most exciting source of documentary Ottoman Arabic. The letters were written by Christian merchants trading in the Mediterranean and by Christian clergy in Rome to their co-religionists in Egypt and Turkey. This article presents an introduction to the Arabic Prize Papers, a short linguistic analysis of a preliminary corpus of eleven letters, the edition and translation of three sample letters. Particular attention is paid to the linguistic divergence between those letters written by merchants and those composed by church dignitaries, as well as to the sociolinguistic variation found in specific writers.
22. A Judaeo-Arabic Letter from the Prize Papers Collection, HCA 32/1208/126.2 (1796)
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New Texts in the Arabic Dialect of Essaouira (Jewish and Muslim Varieties)
Semitic Dialects and Dialectology : Fieldwork—Community—Change, 2022
This paper consists of a collection of oral texts in the Arabic dialect of Essaouira (Mogador), providing updated linguistic data on the Jewish and Muslim dialects of the Moroccan town and the Chiadma territory. The transcription and translation of the texts are followed by comments which highlight salient features of these communal dialects, including linguistic variants registered for the first time in southern Morocco. The texts comprehend personal experiences, memories of the old times of religious coexistence and popular local stories. The interviewees present a wide range of backgrounds: Jewish and Muslim, urban and rural, young and elder, male and female. In this way, these oral texts are a first step to understanding how the Muslim dialect and the Judeo-Arabic of Essaouira have evolved and interacted through time.
Ph.D. dissertation. University of Oslo, 2018
This dissertation is based on a number of unpublished Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts written by the indigenous Karaite Jews of Egypt who lived in the Jewish Quarter of Cairo during the early modern era. These 17th- through 19th-century manuscripts, all of which seem to have been copied from earlier archetypes, display narratives about Biblical and Qurᵓānic prophets in poetry and prose. The narratives are adaptations of Jewish and Islamic sacred folklore, Biblical and Qurᵓānic exegetic material and medieval Arabic poetry which seem to have been transmitted orally before acquiring their present shape. Whereas the material exhibits features typical for the spoken variety employed in Cairo today and the normative language of Classical Arabic, the texts also hold many remnants of medieval Arabic linguistic features which have fallen out of contemporary spoken or literary use, or which can be considered non-standard or pseudo-correct. This dissertation argues that Arabic vernacular features were initially adopted by the Jewish community during times of prosperity and a high level of rapprochement between Jews and Muslims, then, at a later stage during times of hardship, became maintained and fossilized in the dialect of the Jews. Many of these features appear to have been preserved by the Jewish Egyptian community, mainly due to its initially strong social, cultural and linguistic integration into society towards the peak of the so-called Islamic golden age around the 11th and 12th centuries, and later its equally strong segregation from the overall society when under Mamlūk and Ottoman rule, a situation which seems to have persisted until the days of Muḥammad ᶜAlī in the early-19th century. For this reason, whereas old features have fallen out of use in the variety of the overall society in Cairo, it is natural to believe that some of these have been preserved in the oral and literary heritage of the indigenous Karaite Jewish community. Moreover, this dissertation discusses how language features such as these prove to correspond to dialects which are historically and demographically relevant to that of Cairo, as well as to waves of migration and other significant societal changes which have taken place in Egypt and Cairo since the Islamic conquest and until early modern times. As the title indicates, it attempts to identify and reconstruct historical and demographical layers of the Arabic language employed all through this period in Egypt, predominantly in Cairo, and to offer possible explanations for the emergence and development of particular written and spoken features — of a particular medieval vintage.