Folia Orientalia

In view of the first Italian translation of the Kitāb al-ifāda wa-l-iʿtibār by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, this article intends to provide a brief critical report of the mentions of Aristotle found in the Account of Egypt.

Contemporary Arabic literature is slowly approaching a local production of the “fantasy” genre through attempts that can be considered an important starting point for this new genre still being defined in the Arab world. During the last decades the influence exerted by Western countries on the production of this literary genre, that reaches the Arab world around the twentieth century, has been evident mainly through the translations of Western fantasy novels. Among the various genres of fantasy novels which still enjoy international fame and have been translated into Arabic we find: The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien; A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–2005) by Raymond Richard Martin and Harry Potter (1997–2007) by Joanne Kathleen Rowling. The delay in the introduction of the fantasy genre in the Arab countries has begun to be overcome in recent years, in fact many Arab authors have tried to write new fantasy novels. The fantastic tradition of Arab Islamic civilization is also an important part of drawing on the creation of original fantasy works. The study shows a general propensity of the contemporary Arab world to create a local fantasy, in which the Arab authors try to put the accent on the characteristic elements of Middle Eastern culture, though also drawing on the Western fantasy tradition.

A purpose of the present study is an evaluation of various models of classification of the South branch of the Cushitic languages. The South Cushitic languages are studied in their narrow sense here, i.e. without Dahalo and Ma’a, although their probable cognates are registered.

The pharmacologist of al-Andalus, born in Malaga and died in Damascus, Ibn al-Bayṭār (576/1180 or 583/1187–646/1248) composed a dozen works among which we must highlight: The Kitāb Mīzān al-Ṭabīb. The work presented here studies the only manuscript of this work that has been preserved, number 351 or Vet. 58 of the Universitetsbibliotek of Uppsala (Sweden) and describes the content of the same, a medical-pharmacological dissertation, divided into eighty chapters, each of which is dedicated to one or more diseases, going through all the organs of the body, starting with the head and ending with the feet.

The objective of this paper is the Arabic edition and the English translation of the Dissertation on thirst (الكلام في العطش), an anonymous text included in the miscellaneous manuscript nº 888 of the Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in Madrid (Spain). This small treatise describes what thirst is, the types of thirst that exist, the causes why hydroponics are averse to water, the reason why diabetic people are continuously thirsty, the causes why people with fever are thirsty, the reason why some foods produce thirst and others do not, and so on. The whole manuscript is composed of fourteen works, written by the same copyist along 170 folios under the general title The book of medical and philosophical curiosities and utilities (كتاب النكت والثمار الطبية والفلسفية) and their subject are curious matters that are generally out of the span of most works on these two branches of knowledge.

The object of the essay is prophecy in the Qur’ān, through the stories of the prophets and the language they use. Specifically, the Qur’ānic narrative and Joseph’s speeches have been systematically examined, with the intention of introducing a symmetrical reading of the story between incidents and the specific language. Emphasis has been placed on the philological aspects, by focusing the analysis on the Arabic version of the Qur’ān, in order to try to draw up a personal profile of Joseph and, at the same time, to attempt to counter an approach that claims to see all the Qur’ānic envoys only in their instrumental function in the mission of Muḥammad.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the reasons behind mapping three sites of Narasiṃha worship (Kāñcī, Ahobilam, Ghaṭikādri) in terms of the 3rd chapter of the Vaiṣṇavaoriented Kāñcīmāhātmya. Textual analysis of the Narasiṃha myth of the text reveals that it has been inspired by various local narrations related to the places located on the route sketched by the deity’s travels. The most effective means of connecting these places is the mythical narrative on Narasiṃha’s race after the demons, which frames the story and hence unifies single episodes inspired by appropriate local traditions. The purpose of such a literary technique is to produce a certain area that for some reasons was, or was intended to be, important for its inhabitants. Remarkably, maintaining the Andhra-bounded motif of Narasiṃha, who kills Hiraṇyakaśipu at Ahobilam, the furthest destination on the route, makes this particular site an indispensable and especially meaningful spot on the KM 3 literary map. Since the demarcated territory transgresses in a way the land of the Tamils, the paper also attempts to determine whether the particular version of the Narasiṃha myth in the KM 3 may reflect the religious and political reality of South India under the rule of Vijayanagara kings, i.e. after the 14th century.

The aim of this article is to present and review the research methods employed in Laura Gago Gómez’s recent study, Aproximación a la situación sociolingüística de Tánger-Arcila: variación léxica y grafemática (2018). Moreover, this article intends to evaluate the possibility of applying the methods of Hispanic research on lexical availability to Middle Arabic texts, after considering what kind of Middle Arabic texts should be taken into account for this purpose.

The purposes of this paper are threefold. The first and the most general purpose is to provide an update of Ingham’s analysis of the southern lexical features that is based on data gathered more than forty years ago (Ingham 1973). On this basis, I will reconsider the lexical link postulated by Ingham (2009: 101, 2007: 577) between the southern gilit-dialects continuum, on the one hand, and the dialects of the Gulf Coast, on the other hand. The second purpose is to reconsider the hitherto maintained lexical frontiers of the southern continuum suggested by Ingham (1994), discussing a range of items that so far have always been treated as ‘southern’, though they are widely spread in other gilit- and, to a less extent, in qeltu-dialects in the western and northern parts of Iraq. The third purpose involves proposing the dichotomy Šrūgi/non-Šrūgi as a new and efficient way of classification of the gilit-dialects. At the end of this paper, a list of Šrūgi lexical features is given.

A short description of Gali, an East Chadic language, based on field notes taken in 1972.

Five years ago Vasilis Orfanos published an excellent monograph on the Turkish lexical borrowings attested in the Cretan dialect of Modern Greek (Orfanos 2014). In this paper the present authors increase the number of the possible Cretan Turkisms, providing and explaining additional items not listed in Orfanos’s book.

This contribution aims at presenting the arguments produced by Arabic grammarians in the discussion on the ẓarf. By providing different viewpoints, the paper addresses various aspects of the issue, focusing in particular on its definition(s) and features, as well as its collocation within the overall Arabic grammatical system.

This article shows that Classical Arabic expresses verbal number. Arabic, of all the Semitic language family, meets the typological tests of the languages expressing verbal number. In addition, I will show that Classical Arabic provides a morphological verb form to express number. I will, however, show that for the form to express verbal number it requires a combination of morphological and semantic conditions. Without which the designated form does not express number, but expresses transitivity or the transfer of agency. These conditions are: form II must come from a root that has a form I, form I must be the transitive meaning of the root and the root must express an instant action. Form II, therefore, does not exclusively express number. Verbal number in Arabic is conditional. However, I will also propose that when form II verb expresses number, it does not express the transfer of agency.

In halachic give-and-take conversations in the Mishnah and Tosefta, the sages-interlocutors use the a fortiori (qal-vaxomer) arguments. Following the previous description of a fortiori arguments that appear in the halachic give-and-take conversations in the Mishnah (Shemesh-Raiskin 2019, pp. 132–164), this article presents a corresponding description of those arguments in the Tosefta. Chapter 2 presents the inventory of arguments in both compilations. In the various sections of Chapter 3 the discourse features of the arguments are described: elements that precede the a fortiori arguments (3.1), additions to the a fortiori arguments (3.2), responses to the arguments (3.3), and additions that appear after the arguments (3.4). In general, it was found that these elements are used more in the Tosefta than in the Mishnah. Chapter 4 presents the syntactic patterns of the a fortiori arguments in the halachic give-and-take conversations in the Mishnah and Tosefta. From the patterns which were found by Azar (1991) in his article about the a fortiori arguments in the Mishnah, the most frequent pattern in the arguments in both compilations isאינו

דין + ש-מ 2 ([= (and) what if + S1 + is it not logical + that-S2]), whereas the pattern

מה) אם + מ 1 (חיובי) + מ 2 (שלילי: לא + יפעל) ) ([= (what) if + S1 (positive) + S2 (negative:

no + Yif‘al)])

די is frequent only in the Mishnah. Another structure that appears in both compilations, is used to reject arguments, and is the most frequent of all the structures – ? לא, אם אמרת/אמרתם ב+צ"ש 1 + ש-מ 1 + תאמר/תאמרו ב+צ"ש 2 + ש-מ 2 ([= No, if you (sing./pl.) have said in+NP1 + that-S1 + will you (sing./pl.) say in+NP2 + that-S2]).

On January 14, 2011, Zayn al-‘Ābidīn Bin ‘Alī resigned, left Tunisia and took refuge in Saudi Arabia following the revolts born in Sīdi Būzīd after the suicide of Bū-‘Azīzī. The Arab Spring in Tunisia was not a popular uprising perpetrated by the lower class and the unemployed young people: the committees of the lawyers and the magistrates who joined the protests, proved the active participation of the middle class. However, the Revolution did not alleviate the popular unrest, and it did not reduce the social imbalances. The diastratic varieties, already existing before the Revolution, are the linguistic reflection of the social situation. After 2011 the main actors of the protests, proceeding from the lowest and youngest class, came back to the Ḥū ma, the ghetto, in which anger and frustration flourish. The description of the life in the Ḥūma, has become the main topic of many songs written by the new generation of Tunisian artists who sing in the slang of the lower class. Despite they proceed from the upper class, they have become the spokesmen of the malaise that hovers in the poor neighborhoods. Guerrero (2012) analysed linguistically Rāyǝs lǝ-Blād, a song by the Tunisian rapper El Général, appeared on internet on February 8th, 2011, few days before the escape of Bǝn ԑAlī. Rāyǝs lǝ-Blād is an example of the artistic denunciation of the political oppression and the social degradation. The songs of artists such as Kafon, Hamzaoui Med Amin and Balti, which appeared after the Revolution instead, are not acts of protest, they just represent the ordinary life of the ūlād ǝl-Ḥūma in the ghetto. What linguistic dynamics are put in place by these singers? After a historical-etymological reconstruction related to the word Ḥūma, it will be shown how this group of artists practiced, on the one hand, the divergence with respect to the prestigious variety of the capital, on the other, the convergence towards the language of the tunisian poorest class.

There is no agreement on the etymology and meaning of Phoen. ḥsp in the Aḥirom sarcophagus inscription, but the corresponding Egyptian verb ḥsb, “to break”, may help to resolve both issues. In support, several other words where Eg. /b/ corresponds to Semitic /p/ are discussed.

In the artcile the author deals with a controversis between the Turkologist, Mongolist, Tungusologist and Altaicist G. Doerfer and the Turkologist O.F. Sertkaya from the years 1983–1991. The whole matter was starting with a paper written by Doerfer to demonstrate the principles of writing reviews which led to the unnecessary dispute between the two scholars based on deeeply misunderstandings.

In this brief article five bronze fibulae, being exposed in the museum of Şanlıurfa and belonging to the Iron Age, will be presented. At least two of these five were found at Lidar Höyük.

Powerful European countries in late 18th and early 19th centuries supported religious minorities and expanded missionaries’ activities, thus paving the way for social changes and evolutions. Having understood international circumstances and internal situations, Iranian Jews took influential and useful steps in changing social system. The Qajar Dynasty, in line with the demands of international Jew institutions, agreed with the establishment of new Jew institutions. The present paper tries to find an answer to this question: How did the Jews change their social system during the mentioned period? The paper hypothesis is that with the support of their international institutions as well as powerful European countries, the Jews urged Qajar Dynasty to provide a suitable background for the evolution of their social system.

I am going to collect dispersed items of information which clearly refer or seem to be suggestive of the Aeolic, Pergamene or Attalid school of art historians which developed in the first half of the 2nd century BC and discuss their idiosyncratic methods and original contribution to the Greek intellectual life of the Hellenistic period. Even the fragmentary history of the Attalid art collections which can be reconstructed from the archaeological data and the scarce information in the literary sources shows that the collections grew as a result of various factors: 1. wartime robbery. 2. purchases of artworks. 3. a well‑thought out programme of reproducing original Greek artworks. The Attalids must have had professional art historians at their side as consultants. We can identify two of them by name: Antigonus of Karystos and Polemon of Ilion. A number of passages testify to a lively academic debate between them. In the course of their professional polemics they discussed the problems of authorship and authenticity of artworks, they adduced biographical details in their efforts to establish the personal identities of the artists and paid tribute to their heroes with colourful anecdotes. They attributed artworks to alternative authors. They also constructed complicated genealogical trees of schools of painting and sculpture, along the principle of master/pupil relations. Their epigraphic studies must have been inspired and influenced by the editors of the Aeolic Archaic poets.

The last years of Cambyses’ reign are marked by the extension of Achaemenid rule to Egypt and the prolonged absence of the king and his ministers from the Persian heartlands. Reliable subordinates were obviously essential to the smooth functioning of the Empire, and the role played by Prexaspes, whom Herodotus describes as pre-eminent in loyalty (3.30.3), illustrates what might be required of highly placed officials if the charisma of kingship, the cement that held the Empire together, was to be preserved. Prexaspes’ activity imposes unity on a series of episodes illustrating his unfailing competence in the service of an unbalanced autocrat, and his end brings commendation from Herodotus (3.75.3). An Assyrian counterpart is offered by the story of the wise counsellor Ahiqar, first attested in an Aramaic text from the latter part of the fifth century BC and subsequently translated into a wide range of languages; the tale of Ahiqar’s vicissitudes provides a framework for an assemblage of moral precepts, emphasising loyalty to the sovereign as a religious duty and offering advice to the ambitious. Under Darius self-sacrificing loyalty inspires the extraordinary expedient by which Zopyrus contrives the reduction of the rebellious city of Babylon (3. 150–160). While the narrative of the means by which this was achieved is absurd, it brings out the importance under Darius of incentives to dedicated service, above all the hope of winning recognition from a ruler who could express his appreciation on an extraordinarily generous scale. Merit awards did not depend on whim or haphazard observation; it is significant that Herodotus reports (8.90.4) the presence of scribes recording details of distinguished service at the battle of Salamis. But the list of those termed the King’s benefactors, orosangai (8.85.3), was clearly liberal as to the kinds of activity deemed to qualify for such recognition. To Greeks dedication to the ideology represented by the Persian Empire might seem to entail a distortion of normal values while its rewards appeared rather questionable to those who did not appreciate the advantages of the strong centralized rule which prevented disintegration into lawless tribalism.