Introduction

Regional diversity of the Arabic language is usually understood as differences between local variants of countries or regions. Hence the interest in regionalisms arises on the ground of dialectology. However, despite the fact that Standard Arabic is generally considered to be a variant common to the Arab World, a certain degree of territorial differentiation can also be identified in this case. This differentiation is particularly visible in the lexical layer. Janusz Danecki writes:

Zeinab Ibrahim identifies the causes of lexical variation both in intra-linguistic factors, such as the nature of the language itself, and external conditions – geographical, social, situational, as well as in the activities of language academies and the influence of the media. In her dictionary entry in the Encyclopaedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Ibrahim cites examples of such variation, referring, among other things, to the peculiarities of the Moroccan area.

Compared to older studies, such as “Searching for Modern Fuṣḥa: Real- life Formal Arabic” by Dilworth B. Parkinson, the analyses carried out by Ahmed Abdelali, the results of which were published in the article “Localization in Modern Standard Arabic,” also seem methodologically interesting. Their aim was to examine the actual language used in communication addressed to broad strata of society. The source material excerpted from national newspapers has been used to investigate the lexical characteristics of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) of ten different countries where Arabic is spoken. A specialized spider program was applied as a data mining tool, which kept track of websites on an ongoing basis.

Objective of the study

This article does not attempt to index the regional variants of the vocabulary of Modern Standard Arabic of the Moroccan area. Its aim is a pragmatic- linguistic reflection on the complex nature of regionalisms and the reasons for their appearance in the language.

The publication at hand is the second volume of the monograph series entitled Contemporary Arab World. Literary and Linguistic Issues. As in the previous volume, the authors of individual papers are academics from the Department of Arabic Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. We present seven papers, which are the results of research conducted in the field of Arabic and Semitic linguistic and literary studies, and are devoted to subject matters important for the contemporary Arab world.

In the chapter entitled “Karīm Maʿtūq and Other Winners of Amīr ashshu ʿarāʾ (Prince of Poets) First Contest,” Barbara Michalak-Pikulska presents profiles of five poets coming from different Arabic countries, winners of the TV show Amīr ash-shuʿarāʾ, which is an example of combining the Western form of talent show with the Eastern literary tradition – promoting poetry and, at the same time, recalling the common cultural heritage in the era of globalization of the Arab world.

In the chapter entitled “Muḥammad Ibn Dāniyāl al-Mawṣilī – Arabic Aristophanes of Shadow Theatre,” Sebastian Gadomski reminds us of one of the few Arab authors of the shadow theatre plays, whose literary works have survived to our days. Ibn Dāniyāl al-Mawṣilī (1248–1310), due to the subject and language of his dramas, is sometimes compared to Aristophanes. Sebastian Gadomski first of all examines Ibn Dāniyāl’s theatrical output and presents it in the context of the socio-political situation of Egypt during the reign of Aẓ-Ẓāhir Rukn ad-Dīn Baybars in the second half of the thirteenth century.

“Connotations of Home in Contemporary Palestinian Poetry – ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā’s Texts as an Example” by Yousef Sh’hadeh focuses on examining the connotations of the word “home” and its synonyms often used in the poetry of ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā. “Home” has special implications in modern Palestinian poetry, expressing the peculiar situation of the Palestinian people scattered in the cities and villages of the Occupied Territories, and in the diaspora camps. “Home” appears in different linguistic and rhetorical contexts, creating meditative meanings, including multiple perceptions of it in different forms, such as: family home, homeland, sacred places, and the like.

This paper is aimed at discussing the ways in which the suffix -at functions in nouns in Modern Standard Arabic in creating derivative forms as well as (much less frequently) inflectional forms. Descriptions of the formal aspects of these transformations are accompanied by descriptions of new meanings obtained by them.

The existing studies (I quote them later in this paper) focus mainly on the category of gender and the suffix -at is discussed as one of the feminine morphemes. Some word formation functions of the category of gender or the suffix -at are also listed there, but without any detailed discussion of semantic transformations, hence the topic of this article.

Examples of analyzed lexemes come from the cited studies, from Hans Wehr’s Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic and the online dictionary Al-maany.com.

In Afro-Asiatic languages, the consonantal morpheme t has been the marker of feminine grammatical gender since ancient times. It can stand alone or it can be a part of the suffix -at. In Arabic, it appears primarily as a component of the suffix -at. Only in very few words does t appear alone, for example in بِنْتٌ bint “girl” or أُخْتٌ ʾuḫt “sister.” The latter is currently not productive and even gives way to the forms with the suffix -at, e.g. بِنْتٌ bint is replaced by ابِنْةَ ibna (with the same meaning). Thus, the suffix -at is not the only one, but it is the most common morpheme to indicate grammatical feminine gender. On the other hand, in inflection the suffix -at appears in some plural forms of nouns, but only to a very limited extent.

The suffix -at occurs in nominal parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals. This paper is limited to nouns.

Lexemes with the suffix -at (both feminine and plural) are triptotes, that is, there are three separate markers for three cases (these are: for nominative – u vowel, for genitive – i vowel, and for accusative – a vowel), followed by the marker of indefiniteness n (so-called nunation), when they are indefinite.

Despite a number of researches and studies led by successive generations of specialists, it has not been possible to determine in what circumstances and when shadow theatre performances first reached the Arab world. The main obstacle to establishing these facts is a very small number of written accounts that would be the key point of reference in the debate on this issue. The oldest known historical sources referring to shadow theatre in the Egyptian context date back to the Fatimids. One example is the work of an eleventh-century optician Ibn al-Hayṯam, in which the author confirms the presence of this form of art. Nonetheless, it is the account of Ibn Ḥiǧǧa al-Ḥamāwī’s which clearly states that in 1171 a shadow theatre performance was watched by Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn al-Ayyūbī in the company of his minister al-Qādi al-Fāḍil. Ibrāhīm Ḥamāda in his monograph titled Ḫayāl aẓ-ẓill wa-tamṯīliyyāt Ibn Dānyāl (Shadow Theatre and Ibn Dāniyāl’s Plays) mentions that during the Fatimid dynasty, the shadow theatre was present both at court and in the street among the lower social classes. He also suggests that it might have appeared at the end of the tenth century as a new phenomenon. ʿAlī Ibrāhīm Abū Zayd, on the other hand, is of the opinion that this form of art was originally intended only for the court, and it gradually grew more and more popular over the years, to the point that it became a very important part of local folklore. The author of the monograph titled Tamṯīliyyāt ḫayāl aẓ-ẓill (Shadow Theatre Plays) believes that the Fatimid rulers, known for their wealth and affinity for art, could attract groups of shadow theatre artists who, together with merchants, sought a source of income for themselves in wealthy mansions by offering new and interesting entertainment.

Ibn Ḥiǧǧa al-Ḥamāwī’s account says that al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil approached the idea of watching the shadow theatre with some reservations and it was only the encouragement of Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn which persuaded him to participate in the performance. However, after the show was finished, he rated it very positively.

Research aims and methods

1.a. Deverbal verbs as against deadjectival and denominal verbs in bilingual lexicography

Henryk Wróbel pointed out in his work that the derivation of Polish verbs involves mainly prefixes added to the base, and to a lesser extent suffixes that determine the inflection of the derived verb. The base for creating a verb can be another verb (for example the base: pisać ‘to write’ > deverbal verbs: odpisać ‘to write back,’ pisywać ‘to write from time to time,’ podpisać ‘to sign’), an adjective (the base: biały ‘white’ > deadjectival verbs: bieleć ‘to be seen as white,’ wybielić ‘to whiten’) or a noun (the base: dom ‘a house’ > denominal verbs: udomowić ‘to domesticate,’ zadomowić się ‘to get settled’) (Wróbel 1999: 536, the examples are mine). The derivation of Semitic verbal lexemes consists in forming stems that merge two “discontinuous morphemes”: the consonantal root of the base and the transfix assigned to a given stem, called “pattern” (Joüon 1996: 109–110; Boudelaa, Marslen-Wilson 2005: 207, 209; Broselow 2008: 552, 554). As in Polish, the base of a derived Hebrew verb can be another verb (the base: katav ‘to write’ > deverbal verbs: hiħtiv ‘to dictate,’ hitkatev ‘to correspond’), an adjective (the base: adom ‘red’ > deadjectival verb: heʾedim ‘to become red / redden’) or a noun (the base: bayit ‘a house’ > denominal verbs: biyet ‘to domesticate,’ hitbayet ‘to get settled’).

When translating between Hebrew and Polish, in most cases one easily finds equivalents for deadjectival and denominal verbs: heʾedim = zaczerwienić się, biyet = udomowić, because in both languages their meaning is often expressed by a single, distinct verbal lexeme, as in the provided examples, and at least one member of the pair of mutual translational equivalents is listed in bilingual dictionaries. What is meant here by distinct lexeme, is the fact, that due to a substantial difference in grammatical function between the base and the derived verb in the case of deadjectival or denominal verbs, which is a result of moving from one part of speech (adjective, noun) to another (verb), it seems inconceivable that both the base (adjective or noun) and the derived verb of one language would have as their translational equivalent the same lexeme of the other language.

The notion of “home” in modern Palestinian poetry has special implications, expressing the peculiar situation of the Palestinian people scattered in the cities and villages of the Occupied Territories, and in the diaspora camps where millions of Palestinian refugees live, after they were expelled from their homes in 1948 and then in 1976. ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā belongs to a family that lived in the Galilee region, and was forced to seek refuge in Syria in the course of the 1947–1949 Palestine war and the establishment of the State of Israel. Perhaps that is why this Palestinian poet, born in 1964 in Babbīlā near the Yarmūk refugee camp in Damascus, attaches so much importance to the home, which is mentioned in most of his poems. ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā, who holds a PhD in arts from Moscow University – is a poet, journalist, political analyst, film producer, and winner of several literary awards. He worked as an editor for cultural affairs at Voice of Russia radio (broadcasting in Arabic) since the early 1990s, and then as the director of the Arab News Agency. In 2015, he became the First Secretary of the Embassy of Palestine in the Russian Federation and received the highest award of the State of Palestine for “Achievement in Culture, Art and Science – The Degree of the Creator.”

It can be said that in ʿAbd Allāh ʿIsā’s poetry, the word bayt (home/ house) and its synonyms have significant semantic meanings due to their different symbolic, historical and socio-cultural connotations. ʿĪsā not only repeats the word bayt and its synonyms (manzil, dār), but also lists words that are associated with it – such as, a fence around a house, a garden, a well, and the like. Moreover, these expressions appear in different linguistic and rhetorical contexts, creating meditative meanings, including multiple perceptions of the home in various forms – such as: family home, homeland and sacred places, and so forth. Since most of ʿĪsā’s texts contain words associated with home, this study will be limited to analysing poems published in three collections of poetry, namely: Qiyāmat al-aswār (The Resurrection of the Walls), Ruʿāt as-samāʾ, ruʿāt ad-diflā (Shepherds of Heaven, Shepherds of Oleander) and Waṣāyā Fawziyya al-Ḥasan al-ʿašr (The Ten Commandments of Fawziyya al-Ḥasan).

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937) is one of the most important characters who shaped contemporary supernatural horror fiction – understood both as a literary and film genre, and an important element of popular culture. Although he was not commercially successful in his lifetime, Lovecraft inspired dozens, if not hundreds, of writers. Stephen King wrote about him:

A huge fan community has formed around the Cthulhu Mythos, the center and axis of the universe in which many of Lovecraft’s stories take place. The Great Cthulhu himself broke into pop culture with impetus and achieved popularity that its creator could only dream of.

The distinguishing feature of Lovecraft’s prose is the horror which has its source in a bottomless cosmic abyss, against which man is an insignificant element. Powerful beings inhabiting the void space influence their followers, whose rituals are to accelerate the arrival of the demonic Great Old Ones, which can tear our reality to shreds and end the existence of the human race. At least that is how it is recorded in the most sinister book of dark arts, that is, in the Necronomicon. According to the Cthulhu Mythos, the purported author of this filthy grimoire is to be the “Mad Arab” poet of the Umayyad period, Abdul Alhazred.

The Arab world appears ceaselessly in the works of Lovecraft. The inspirations of the Orient are very clear and they reappear in numerous stories. Some oriental threads (storylines) return, develop, and occupy an important place in the Cthulhu Mythos.

In this work, selected oriental themes in the literary output of the Loner from Providence will be presented. The book of Al-Azif and its author Abdul Alhazred are direct references to the Arab world, from which the author also drew some of the creatures that populate his horrors, including sinister ghouls. I will show how and for what purpose Lovecraft referred to the Orient, which perfectly matched the theory of orientalism proposed by Edward Said in his 1978 work.

BARBARA MICHALAK-PIKULSKA

Karīm Maʿtūq and Other Winners of Amīr ash-shuʿarāʾ (Prince of Poets) First Contest

Abstract

In 2007, the Abu Dhabi Festival and Heritage and Culture Program Commission (Lajnat Idārat al-Mahrajānāt wa al-Barāmij ath-Thaqāfiyya wa at-Turāthiyya) set before itself the goal of promoting Arabic poetry, which has lied at the heart of the Arab culture for centuries. The resulting annual media event is presented by the Abu Dhabi television channel under the name Amīr ash-shuʿarāʾ (Prince of Poets). The program, which similarly to the shows X-Factor or Idol belongs to the talent show genre, has already promoted dozens of outstanding poets. The jury together with the audience choose the best poet, who receives the title of Amīr ash-shuʿarāʾ (Prince of Poets) in honor of one of the most eminent Egyptian poets, Aḥmad Shawqī.

I would like to present here the winner of the first season and of the title Amīr ash-shuʿarāʾ (Prince of Poets), the Emirati poet Karīm Maʿtūq (b. 1963). He has published the following volumes of poetry: Manāhil, Ṭufūla, Hadhā anā, Aʿṣāb as-sukkar, and the novel Ḥadath fī Isṭanbūl. He actively participates in the cultural life of the Emirates, publishing widely in literary newspapers and magazines. Undoubtedly, he is one of those modern Emirati poets who with their works have left a lasting mark on contemporary Arabic poetry.

The Mauritanian Muḥammad Wuld aṭ-Ṭālib (b. 1968), a teacher who studied Arabic literature at university, took second place in the Amīr ashshu ʿarāʾ competition. After winning an award in a poetry contest in Libya, he published a book of poetry Al-Layl wa-l-arṣifa (2013). Jāsim Muḥammad al-Ṣaḥīḥ from Saudi Arabia came in third place in the Abu Dhabi competition. He is a mechanical engineer by profession and works for the Saudi company Aramco. Apart from the podium place in the program Amīr ash-shuʿarāʾ, he was also awarded in Kuwait by the ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Al-Babtain Foundation. He has published a book of poetry Aʿshāsh al-malāʾika (Angels’ Nests).

In 2007, the Abu Dhabi Festival and Heritage and Culture Program Commission (Lajnat Idārat al-Mahrajānāt wa al-Barāmij ath-Thaqāfiyya wa at-Turāthiyya) set before itself the goal of promoting Arabic poetry, which has lied at the heart of the Arab culture for centuries. The contest which is known as Amīr ash-shuʿarāʾ (Prince of Poets) is organized in the Theater Shāṭī ar-Rāḥa in Abu Dhabi. The purpose and condition of admission to the program is to create poetry in Arabic literary language (fuṣḥā). To qualify for the program, poets must submit a previously unpublished poem: either in free verse (ash-shiʿr al-ḥurr), in traditional form (al-ʿamūdī at-taqlīdī), or in the literary language (al-fuṣḥā).

Recitations are judged by a jury, which in the year 2007 included: ʿAlī bin Tamīm from the United Arab Emirates, ʿAbd al-Malik Murtāḍ from Algeria, and Ṣalāḥ Faḍal4 from Egypt. Poets, who come from all over the Arab world and must be aged 18–45, present their poems during live broadcast. After preliminary qualification, the jury selects twenty participants who go on to present their poetry to a vast audience on live television.

This annual media event presented on the Abu Dhabi television channel is called Amīr ash-shuʿarāʾ (Prince of Poets). The program, which similarly to the shows X-Factor or Idol belongs to the talent show genre, has already promoted dozens of outstanding poets. In addition, volumes of poetry are published in print. The program gathers a multi-million audience throughout the Arab world. When assessing poems, the judges pay attention to rhyme, rhythm and the way of recitation. The jury together with the audience chooses the best poet who receives the title of Amīr ash-shuʿarāʾ in honor of one of the most eminent Egyptian poets, Aḥmad Shawqī. This program brings together all the participants and observers throughout the Arab world and shows the common cultural heritage that goes back to the sixth century AD. It also plays an educational role in teaching about poetry, and thanks to the mass reach of television and the internet, it can be viewed in every Arabian home.

Abstract

The paper presents a rather marginal type of ClassicalJapanese poems called mono nona (or,butsumei), i.e. ‘names of things,’ whichcontain an expression deliberately hidden in theirtext. It discusses various kinds of concealed words,phrases, Sino-Japanese elements, sentences and wordseries. Popular in the Heian period, these poems maynow constitute a significant source of interestinglinguistic information not easily availableotherwise (e.g. rare lexical items or unusual usageof certain grammatical morphemes). All examples aretaken from two imperial anthologies of Japanesepoetry, Kokin waka shū and Shūiwaka shū, and are translated into Englishand Polish.

Keywords: mono no na(butsumei), names ofthings, Kokinshū,Shūishū

In Classical Japanese poetry, waka 和歌, there is a –rather marginal – type of poems called mono no na 物の名 or butsumei 物名, i.e. ‘names ofthings.’ Its exceptionality consists in a worddeliberately hidden in it, a word whose boundariesdo not coincide (at least partially) with thoseimposed by the whole text of the poem. To give asimple illustration of the mechanics of this device,in Oriental Languages andCivilizations one can find sand in the two middlewords. Such a concealed word, of which there may bemore than one in a given poem, is called kakushidai 隠し題 ‘hiddentopic’ or komedai 籠め題‘topic put into.’

These “names of things” have at times been treated inliterary studies with a certain dose of contempt, asfor instance by Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner(1961) in their classic book on the Japanese courtpoetry, who after noting their “baroqueeccentricity” conclude:

They are not particularly valued by Donald Keene (1999)either and described by him tersely as being “notcomposed in order to express the poet’s emotions butin the hopes of winning the approbation of the courtby a display of wit” (p. 286).

Relatively few books in Persian solely devoted to theart of cooking are known. The earliest classicalPersian cookbook that has survived, comes from theSafavid period (16th century). Howeverreferences to a highly developed cuisine in Persiain Mediaeval times are found in Arabic manuscriptsand compiled cookbooks written under the rule of theAbbasid caliphs since the 10th century.They have preserved many recipes of the dishes withPersian names and clearly derived from Persiancuisine. In this article I will present some of themrecorded in the 13th century Kitāb al-ṭabīkh byal-Baghdādī.

Keywords: Mediaeval Arabic cookbooks, Persian cuisine,names of dishes

Kitāb al-ṭabīkh (Book of dishes), betterknown in English as “A Baghdad cookery book” is amasterpiece of early Mediaeval Arabic languagecookbooks. It presents the immense wealth andingenuity of cooking in the golden age of Arabcivilization strongly influenced by the Persiancuisine. The original book contained 160 recipesdivided into 10 chapters: (1) sour and milk dishes,(2) plain dishes, (3) fried and dry dishes, simpleand sweet dishes, chicken dishes, (4) harīsa and baked dishes, (5)fried, soused and turned dishes, pie, etc., (6) fishdishes (fresh, salted and ṭirrīkh, i.e. salted with vinegar andmustard), (7) sauces, relishes and savouries, (8)jūdhāb, khabīṣ (mixed), (9) ḥalwā’, (10) breadvarieties: khushknānaj, muṭbaq and qaṭā’if. The book was copied for atleast three centuries, even into other languages(e.g. Turkish), and often with additional recipes(about 260) added by the transcribers ortranslators. For centuries, it had been the favoritecookbook of Turks and Arabs. The original13th century text was for the firsttime translated into English by famous Britishorientalist Arthur John Arberry in 1939.

Kitāb al-ṭabīkh wascompiled in 1226 by the scribe of Baghdad, Muḥammadbin al-Karīm al-Kātibal-Baghdādī (b. 1184/85 – d.1239/40 A.D.), of whom we know almost nothing (cf.Brockelmann, 1898, p. 904).