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ᵓUṣṣit il-Gumguma or 'The Story of the Skull’
With Parallel Versions, Translation and Linguistic Analysis of Three 19th-century Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts from Egypt. Supplemented with Arabic Transliteration
Series: - Études sur le judaïsme médiéval, Volume: 70
Author:
In
ᵓUṣṣit il-Gumguma Olav G. Ørum translates and analyzes three parallel 19th-century Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts from Egypt. These manuscripts present a story (whose earliest version is attributed to Kaᶜb al-ᵓAḥbār) about Jesus reviving the skull of a deceased king. The skull narrates his encounter with the Angel of Death, a painful purgatory and descension to hell.
The manuscripts reveal a wide spectrum of interesting written and spoken Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic variety features in which Ørum pays special attention to signs of linguistic divergence from the standardized written ( fuṣḥā) and spoken ( ᶜāmmiyya) variety. The unique sociolinguistic situation of the Jewish Egyptian community makes this book an important contribution to those working on Judaeo-Arabic in general, but also for students or scholars interested in Egyptian Arabic historical dialectology and sociolinguistics.
The manuscripts reveal a wide spectrum of interesting written and spoken Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic variety features in which Ørum pays special attention to signs of linguistic divergence from the standardized written ( fuṣḥā) and spoken ( ᶜāmmiyya) variety. The unique sociolinguistic situation of the Jewish Egyptian community makes this book an important contribution to those working on Judaeo-Arabic in general, but also for students or scholars interested in Egyptian Arabic historical dialectology and sociolinguistics.
Olav G. Ørum, M.A. (2014), University of Oslo, is a Ph.D.-fellow at that university. This is his first major publication. He is currently writing a doctoral thesis on Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic prophetic legends, to be finished in 2018.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Technical Notes and Abbreviations 1
Introduction 1.1
Judaeo-Arabic Texts: The Presence of a Wide Spectrum of Written and Spoken Varieties 1.2
Middle Arabic 1.3
Standard Arabic and the Nahḍa 1.4
Egyptian Arabic, Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic and Non-Standard Cairene 2
The Jews of 19th-Century Cairo and Their Storytelling Tradition 2.1
The Jewish Community in Cairo During the 19th Century 2.2
On the Story ʾUṣṣit il-Gumguma 3
Three Parallel Judaeo-Arabic Versions and an English Translation of ʾUṣṣit il-Gumguma ‘The Story of the Skull’ 3.1
Introduction to the Three Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts 3.2
Reading Guidelines 3.3
ʾUṣṣit il-Gumguma ‘The Story of the Skull’ 4
Linguistic Analysis 4.1
Orthography and Phonology 4.2
Morphology 4.3
Syntax 4.4
Lexical Features 5
Summary and Concluding Remarks 5.1
Orthography and Phonology 5.2
Morphology 5.3
Syntax 5.4
Lexical Features
Appendix 1: Arabic Transliteration of the Parallel Versions
Appendix 2: Facsimile of ‘Ramle—Rabbi Yosef Algamil 25’ (GAM)
References
Index
All interested in Judaeo-Arabic as well as historical sociolinguistics and dialectology in Egyptian Arabic, and anyone concerned with prophetic and other sacred narratives of Jewish, Muslim and/or Christian origin.