Dotan Arad, 'Syria's Links with the Jews of Cairo in the 15th and 16th Centuries', Fragment of the Month, Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit's website, August 2009. (original) (raw)
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aleppo's "egyptian" majlis of 1838
It is well admitted that the Ottomans began their late reforms, known as the Tanzimat, as an attempt to modernize their bureaucracy and their sharia-based legal system. This was in reaction to British and other western pressures to treat more fairly the Christian minorities, to open up regional and international trade to consuls and foreigners, and to abolish the aging rent system known as the iltizam. However, what has often been overlooked is the crucial role of the Egyptian Tanzimat which were fostered by Muhammad Ali. What in effect may have triggered the Ottoman Tanzimat in 1839 was the Egyptian Expedition in Greater Syria (1832–1840) and the attempt of the occupiers to reorganize the local “Syrian” bureaucracy on new grounds, primarily by establishing local councils, known as the majalis, in Aleppo and Damascus. This paper explores for the first time the workings of Aleppo’s majlis in 1838. Composed of a dozen or so notables from the city, the majlis adjudicated iltizam conflicts, fixed prices on commodities, and found solutions to finance the expenses of the occupying Egyptian army. With that kind of work, Aleppo’s “Egyptian” majlis has set a precedent for the councils that would be instituted in the aftermath of the 1839 Gülhane edict. We therefore have to roads for modernization on the eastern Mediterranean, one Egyptian and the other Ottoman. The two survive until this day.
The aleppo dialect according to the travel accounts of ibn ra'd (1656) ms. sbath 89 and Hanna Dyab (1764) ms. sbath 254, 2012
The aim of this study is to compare some linguistic markers that are present in the mss. Sbath 89, containing an account of the journey made by a Greek Orthodox, Ibn Ra\u2c1d (IR), from Aleppo to Venice (1656), and Sbath 254, containing an account written by the Maronite \u1e24anna Dy\u101b (HD), who was hired in 1707 as a guide and interpreter by the French royal explorer Paul Lucas during his voyage in the Near East, North Africa, Italy and France. Both are autograph manuscripts and they currently belong to the Vatican Library. The authors were both Christians from Aleppo and their writing has a markedly colloquial tone. In selecting the linguistic features to be examined in the mss., two main criteria were considered: their present diatopic relevance and their originality. The selected features were compared with three more recent surveys fully transcribed in Latin characters: 1) that collected in Aleppo (1842-1845) by the Russian Orientalist Elie B\ue9r\ue9zine (EB); 2) the corr...
Gorgias Press eBooks, 2023
In his list of the seventeenth-century scribes, Joseph Nasrallah forgets the name of a prolific scribe: Marqus al-kātib. 1 This laqab (title) reveals his profession as a scribe; he copied manuscripts for at least forty years between 1647 and 1707, from which at least thirty-two manuscripts survived. It is possible that Marqus was the secretary of the patriarch, as was the case with his predecessor, Thalgah al-kātib brother of the patriarch Euthymius Karmah. 2 I will try in this article, through the colophons, to outline the biography of this tireless scribe. I will also provide an edition and translation of his colophons. Marqus was born in Kafr Buhum in the region of Hama (Syria). His father's name was Dūġān (mss. no 1&2 below), or Saqr (n o 11), which is the synonym of Dūġān, the eagle. In my estimation, Marqus was born round 1630 A.D. He, therefore, could be considered as the most eminent of the second generation of scribes of the renouveau era that started with the Metropolitan of Aleppo, Meletius Karmah. This future patriarch, known as Euthymius Karmah, collected a good number of manuscripts containing Byzantine texts in Arabic translation and corrected them. He also translated other texts from Greek. His brother Talǧa, along 3 Five years earlier, Anthony the monk was the tutor of Miḫāyīl ibn ʿAssāf ibn Srūr from Kfurbuhum as well. Miḫāyīl writes colophons in a similar manner as his colleague Marqus. This Anthony could be the father of Yūsuf al-Musawwir; Yūsuf signs ms Balamand, Monastery of Our Lady 36 (1936) as follows: Yūsuf son of Anthony disciple of Euthymius (name of Meletius Karmah as patriarch). I am not sure whether he refers to himself or to his father as disciple of the famous patriarch. If he refers to his father, another question should be investigated: when did his father become monk and under which circumstances? 4 Ibrahim, "Talǧat an-nāsiẖ fils du prêtre Ḥūrān al-ḥamawī",
A North African Judaeo-Arabic letter from the Prize Papers Collection
Astarté. Estudios del Oriente Próximo y el Mediterráneo, 2019
This paper presents an edition, translation and linguistic analysis of a Judaeo-Arabic letter from the Prize Papers Collection. The letter introduces previously unexplored Algerian Judaeo-Arabic documents from the Prize Papers Collection, which constitute a unique chance to study the history, language and culture of Jewish trading across the Mediterranean and North Africa during the late 18th century.