Musa Alloush reads texts of Schmidt/Kahle/Dschirius

One of the most compendious and beautiful collections of Arabic dialect texts are beyond any doubt "Volkserzählungen aus Palästina - gesammelt bei den Bauern von Bir-Zet und in Verbindung mit Dschirius Jusif in Jerusalem herausgegeben von Hans Schmidt und Paul Kahle" (Band 1: Göttingen 1918; Band 2 mit den Geschichten 65-132: Göttingen 1930). According to their frontispiece this collection is usually cited as "Schmidt/Kahle". But doing this does not make clear, that a main part of the work, according to the preface to the second volume written by Hans Schmidt, the writing down and transcription, was carried out by Dschirius (Abu) Jusif from Bir Zeit (also his sister took part). That is the reason why I cite the work "Schmidt/Kahle/Dschirius". The texts originate not only from Bir Zeit, but also from the numerous villages in the neighbourhood. Their grammar is largely homogenous and agrees with the data Leonhard Bauer collected in his major work "Das Palästinensische Arabisch - Die Dialekte des Städters und des Fellachen" (4. Edition Leipzig 1926) in respect of the grammatical explanations and the chrestomathy containing vernacular texts of the same type. According to these works, one of the most striking characteristics of the rural Palestinian dialects is the bound object pronoun of the 3. m. sing -e(h).

During the year of my research leave in the West Bank I found out that Bir Zet was part of a small, not geographically connected group of villages, where a feminine ending with Imala and a bound object pronoun -e occurs, and that hûte and hîte in the Bir Zeit-group form variants of the disjunctive pronoun of the 3. sing. (not mentioned by Schmidt/Kahle/Dschirius). In comparison with the central Palestinian dialects, the dialect of Bir Zeit is rather a rare case, and the central Palestinian type has a special position among the Palestinian dialects, for all other rural Palestinian dialects I know have an Imala of the feminine ending and a bound object pronoun -u for the 3. m. sing. and differ also in other points not mentioned here.

How could it happen, under the given circumstances, that only the rare Bir-Zeit type represents rural Palestinian Arabic in the works of Schmidt/Kahle/Dschirius and Bauer? The first case can easily be explained: Dschirius Jusif wrote down the tales first in Arabic script and then a considerable amount of time later, transcribed what he wrote; doing this he transcribed the tales originating from the villages in the neighbourhood, as if they were spoken at his home in Bir Zeit; it leaves you only wondering about why he never made use of the forms hûte and hîte, that were also part of the common speech in Bir Zeit. More complicated is Bauer's case: he should have noticed that the dialect of the villages north of Jerusalem differed from the one used in Bir Zeit. From the preface to his "Deutsch-Arabischen Wörterbuch der Umgangssprache in Palästina und im Libanon" (2. Edition Wiesbaden 1957) we learn that his most important informant came from it-Tayybe. it-Tayybe is as Bir Zeit up to now a mainly Christian village (one of the two villages in the West Bank without a mosque; but it owns a brewery) and has, as I was able to verify, the dialect of the Bir Zeit group. It can be assumed that Leonhard Bauer had contact only with the Christian Arabs; and the share on Christian villages is considerably high in the Bir Zeit group. Among them is e.g. Ramalla itself. Probably it was this selective perception caused by his acquaintances that led to these false generalizations.

During my research leave I also considered, how reliable the transcriptions of Dschirius Jusif and his sister were, that Paul Kahle revised, that is to say whether they matched the dialect I found about one hundred years later (admittedly only spoken by very old people from Bir Zeit). Indeed, disregarding the often confusing and inconsistent transliteration of the consonants Dad and Dha, which are pronounced in the same way, Dschirius' and his sister's work is admirable, and it would be pedantic to list more inconsistencies (as for the transliteration of Dha v. also Paul Kahle on p. 48 of the introduction to the grammar of the texts contained in the first volume).

Musa Alloush (please click on a picture)

Musa Alloush is the owner of the oldest pharmacy of Bir Zeit; besides his work as a pharmacist he is a publisher and interested in local history. He published an Arabic version of the two volumes Schmidt/Kahle/Dschirius - unfortunately not available anymore today. It was at most parts a photomechanical reprint, in which the transcription has been rendered by Arabic script. For this, Musa Alloush developed specifically modified and adapted Arabic characters, any letter corresponding with the transcription. I asked him to read some of the stories contained in his edition aloud. Although in everyday life he used to speak a moderate dialect he is aware of how his parents talked to each other, and it can be taken for sure that his pronunciation matches in most parts what Schmidt and Dschirius heard in Bir Zeit in earlier times. I owe to Musa Alloush not only the recordings, but also advice and help for the project during my leave, and I want to express my gratitude for his help.

Listen to the following stories read by Musa Alloush from Schmidt/Kahle/Dschirius as MP3- or RealPlayer-stream:

© Ulrich Seeger