scholarly journals Features of Arabic Scripts in Aljamiado Manuscripts

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 146-158
Author(s):  
Oxana V. Tikhonova
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Spanish Poetry ◽  
Spanish Translation ◽  
Arabic Poetry ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
Arabic Script

One of the most famous works of aljamiado literature (literature in Spanish in Arabic script) is the Poem of Yusuf (“Poema de Yúçuf” in Spanish). The poem was written by an anonymous Morisco poet at the end of the XIII – the beginning of the XIV centuries. The poem is based on the most common plot among the Moriscos – the twelfth sūrah of the Qur'an. The poem includes a scene of lament at the grave, which is not found either in the Qur'an or the Old Testament. Researchers of the middle nineteenth century considered the scene original. However, later it was defined that the scene had appeared due to the influence of the Jewish apocrypha. Modern researchers called into question the originality of the scene and the poem itself. Nevertheless, in the lament scene, we can trace not only the influence of the Qur'an or the Old Testament Apocrypha, but also the traditions of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry [A1], which were developed in Al-Andalus. The objective of this study is to show this influence. Undoubtedly, the author of The Poem of Yusuf created a touching image of the protagonist, which was appreciated by the Moriscos. The beginning of the poem was borrowed by the author from another aljamiado poem. Despite the persecution of the Spanish Inquisition, the poem has survived in several copies. Together, they represent a combination of traditions of Islamic, pre-Islamic and Christian versification. The article also contains the text of the lament at the grave in the original (Arabic) script and its scientific transcription by V. Menendez Pidal. It also includes a modern Spanish translation made by G. Ticknor. Thanks to his publication, the poem became known as a unique example of “amalgam elements of Eastern and Western civilizations, which were later reflected in Spanish poetry.”

Translating the Scribe: Lithographic Print and Vernacularization in Colonial India, 1857–1915

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 281-300
Author(s):  
Amanda Lanzillo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
North India ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Focusing on the lithographic print revolution in North India, this article analyses the role played by scribes working in Perso-Arabic script in the consolidation of late nineteenth-century vernacular literary cultures. In South Asia, the rise of lithographic printing for Perso-Arabic script languages and the slow shift from classical Persian to vernacular Urdu as a literary register took place roughly contemporaneously. This article interrogates the positionality of scribes within these transitions. Because print in North India relied on lithography, not movable type, scribes remained an important part of book production on the Indian subcontinent through the early twentieth century. It analyses the education and models of employment of late nineteenth-century scribes. New scribal classes emerged during the transition to print and vernacular literary culture, in part due to the intervention of lithographic publishers into scribal education. The patronage of Urdu-language scribal manuals by lithographic printers reveals that scribal education in Urdu was directly informed by the demands of the print economy. Ultimately, using an analysis of scribal manuals, the article contributes to our knowledge of the social positioning of book producers in South Asia and demonstrates the vitality of certain practices associated with manuscript culture in the era of print.

Hebrew School in Nineteenth-Century Bombay: Protestant Missionaries, Cochin Jews, and the Hebraization of India's Bene Israel Community

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 1764-1808 ◽  
Author(s):  
MITCH NUMARK
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
American Missionaries ◽  
Hebrew School ◽  
Hebrew Language ◽  
Bene Israel ◽  
Jewish Liturgy

AbstractThis paper is a study of cultural interaction and diffusion in colonial Bombay. Focusing on Hebrew language instruction, it examines the encounter between India's little-known Bene Israel Jewish community and Protestant missionaries. Whilst eighteenth and nineteenth-century Cochin Jews were responsible for teaching the Bene Israel Jewish liturgy and forms of worship, the Bene Israel acquired Hebrew and Biblical knowledge primarily from nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Bene Israel community was a Konkan jati with limited knowledge of Judaism. However, by the end of the century the community had become an Indian-Jewish community roughly analogous to other Jewish communities. This paper explores how this transformation occurred, detailing the content, motivation, and means by which British and American missionaries and, to a lesser extent, Cochin Jews instructed the Bene Israel in Jewish knowledge. Through a critical examination of neglected English and Marathi sources, it reconstructs the Bene Israel perspective in these encounters and their attitude towards the Christian missionaries who laboured amongst them. It demonstrates that the Bene Israel were active participants and selective consumers in their interaction with the missionaries, taking what they wanted most from the encounter: knowledge of the Old Testament and the Hebrew language. Ultimately, the instruction the Bene Israel received from Protestant missionaries did not convert them to Christianity but strengthened and transformed their Judaism.

Towards a systematic corpus analysis of Arabic poetry

2001 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 103-112
Author(s):  
Georges Bohas ◽  
Djamel Eddine Kouloughli
Keyword(s):  
Computer Program ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Automatic Recognition ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Arabic Poetry ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
Metrical Analysis

Recent work on Arabic metrics aims at developing a coherent research programme which relies on the systematic analysis of electronic corpora. The computer program XALIYL performs, for any line of ancient Arabic poetry, an automatic recognition of the metre used. This operation takes place whatever the length of the verses, and regardless of whether they are encoded in ordinary Arabic script (with the addition of vowels) or by means of the TRS system, which relates functionally to ordinary Arabic script. XALIYL produces a textual database that contains the syllabic decomposition for each hemistich of each line, as well as its metrical analysis. It can cope not only with the general problems linked to re-syllabification and sandhi, but also with problems of syllabification specific to Arabic metrics. Errors due to the metrical scanning or to the editing of poems can be located automatically. Moreover, by allowing a computerised search for formulae, XALIYL provides significant information on the “formulaic systems” of ancient Arabic poetry.

An 1804 Slaving Contract Signed in Arabic Script From the Upper Guinea Coast

1987 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 341-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
George E. Brooks ◽  
Bruce L. Mouser
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Merchant Ship ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
Image Position

Few slaving agreements contracted between African sellers and American purchasers appear to have survived. They were rarely committed to paper, were destroyed after commitments were fulfilled, or were removed from business records kept by slave traders. The contract discussed here is of considerable interest as a document which, although brief, records important information and offers intriguing insights concerning African-European and African-African relationships in Guinea-Conakry at the turn of the nineteenth century.The slaving contract is dated 15 November 1804, and apparently was negotiated aboard the merchant ship Charlotte of Bristol, Rhode Island, Jonathan Sabens, master, anchored at the Iles de Los archipelago.Nov. th[ursday] 15-1804Shipe Charlottefortay days after date I Promas to pay Jno. Sabens or orde[r] nin[e] hundard and ni[ne]ty five Bars to be Pade in Rice and Slave Say fore tun of Rice at nity Bars par tun the Remandr in Slaves at one hundard and Twenty Bars par Slave.[signed in Arabic] Fadmod [Fendan Modu Dumbuya][signed in Arabic] Muhammad Sa'ab shokr Mohammed Sakib Fana/Ta/ Mohammed Shabaan(the month before Ramadan)Respecting the American traders involved, the Charlotte was jointly owned by George D'Wolf and Jonathan Sabens of Bristol, Rhode Island. Captain Jonathan Sabens was an experienced mariner, involved in at least three previous slaving voyages, including one as master of the Charlotte. Members of the D'Wolf family were associated with numerous slaving voyages to west Africa and continued to invest in slaving ventures long after Rhode Island made the trade illegal in 1787.

Creation, Fall and Political Order — Prussian Conservatism and the Old Testament

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-181
Author(s):  
Laura C. Achtelstetter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Wars

Abstract This article examines differences within the theological basis of early nineteenth-century Prussian conservatism. By exploring the usage of the Old Testament in the writings of conservative thought leaders Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and Friedrich Julius Stahl, this article contributes to scholarship of both traditions of biblical interpretation and that of the relation of theology and political theory. The focus of this article centers on three concepts of the Old Testament and their implementation in conservative political doctrine. I will discuss Hengstenberg’s concept of biblical historicity and unity of Scripture, Gerlach’s use of the Old Testament as the source of a role model for just religious wars and a theocratic concept of law, as well as Stahl’s bible-based political philosophy of history and the resulting model of political order. Thus, the basis for different, resulting concepts of church, state, and nation that were merged into an overall religion-based political conservative doctrine in pre-1848 Prussia are analyzed.

The Spanish Translation of Hugh Blair's Lectures: An Early Anglo-Hispanic Canon

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-72
Author(s):  
María Eugenia Perojo Arronte
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Spanish Translation ◽  
Cultural Paradigms ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Belles Lettres ◽  
Cultural Dominance ◽  
Intense Debate ◽  
Romantic Aesthetics

The Spanish translation of Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783) at the turn of the nineteenth century was one of the most remarkable literary events of the period in Spain. It appeared at a crucial time of shifting cultural paradigms and provoked an intense debate on some literary issues that were key in the transition to a new Romantic aesthetics, by introducing a view of the creative process based on pre-Romantic versions of the concepts of genius, the imagination and the sublime. But in its adaptation to the Spanish context Blair's work underwent a singular nationalization process. It also helped disseminate an Anglo-Hispanic canon that advanced the shift from French cultural dominance to an increasing Anglophilia that became noticeable in many Spanish authors and critics in subsequent decades. Thanks to the official adoption of the Lecciones as a rhetorical and literary handbook in schools and universities in the first half of the nineteenth century, the pre-Romantic canon established through Blair's work may have even contributed to the consolidation of literary eclecticism in Spain.

“Publishing” the Gospel, Reading the Nahda: Protestant Print Culture in Late Ottoman Syria

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-142
Author(s):  
Deanna Ferree Womack
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Arabic Poetry ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
American Mission ◽  
A Site ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
Literary Renaissance

Chapter 2 turns to the American Mission Press in Beirut, which was a site of American-Syrian collaboration and a resource for Syrian Protestants to participate in the Arab cultural and literary renaissance. Locating the Nahda in Beirut within the context of broader nineteenth-century Ottoman reform movements, the chapter explores the socio-cultural contributions of Protestant men who wrote for the American Mission Press beginning in the 1870s. It demonstrates that these authors - including the nahdawi scholar Ibrahim al-Hurani - engaged in Nahda production not only through Arabic poetry, scientific studies, and other “secular” publications, but also in their writings on Islam and through press debates with Jesuit missionaries, Syrian Catholics, and Greek Orthodox leaders.

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