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

Orum, Olav G., . 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. Leiden: Brill, 2017. First edition. xv, (1), 207, (1)pp. Index. Parallel text in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Green buckram lettered in white with red band near top of spine. Illustrated with a 13 page manuscript facsimile (of 26 leaves) of “Ramle–Rabbi Yosef Algamil 25.” A fine, as new copy.

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. (Publisher)

Note: This work grew out of the author’s updating and revising his Masters thesis written in 2014.

Contents: ‎Contents; ‎Preface; ‎Acknowledgements; ‎Technical Notes and Abbreviations; ‎Chapter 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; ‎Chapter 2. The Jews of 19th-Century Cairo and Their Storytelling Tradition; ‎2.1. The Jewish Community in Cairo during the 19th Century; ‎2.1.1. 19th-Century Demography in Cairo; ‎2.1.2. The Social and Legal Status of the Egyptian Jews; ‎2.1.3. Muslim and Jewish Storytelling Traditions‎2.2. On the Story ʼUṣṣit il-Gumguma; ‎2.2.1. The Muslim Version; ‎2.2.2. The Judaeo-Arabic Version; ‎Chapter 3. Three Parallel Judaeo-Arabic Versions and an English Translation of ʼUṣṣit il-Gumguma ‘The Story of the Skull’; ‎3.1. Introduction to the Three Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts; ‎3.2. Reading Guidelines; ‎3.3. ʼUṣṣit il-Gumguma ‘The Story of the Skull’; ‎
Chapter 4. Linguistic Analysis; ‎4.1. Orthography and Phonology; ‎4.1.1. Judaeo-Arabic Orthography in 19th-Century Egypt; ‎4.1.1.1. Inventory of Consonants and Vocalization Signs; ‎4.1.2. Consonants; ‎4.1.2.1. tafxīm and tarqīq; ‎4.1.2.2. tarqīq: t for SA ṭ; ‎4.1.2.3. tafxīm: ṭ for SA t; ‎4.1.2.4. Reflexes of SA ṯ; ‎4.1.2.5. Reflexes of SA ḏ; ‎4.1.2.6. tafxīm: ḍ (or ṣ) for SA d; ‎4.1.2.7. d for SA ḍ; ‎4.1.2.8. Reflexes of SA ẓ (ḏ̣); ‎4.1.2.9. tafxīm: ṣ for SA s‎4.1.2.10. s for SA ṣ; ‎4.1.2.11. š for SA s; ‎4.1.2.12. s for SA š; ‎4.1.2.13. Voicing: z for SA š; ‎4.1.2.14. tafxīm: r in the Place of Emphatic l; ‎4.1.2.15. l for SA r; ‎4.1.2.16. n for SA l; ‎4.1.2.17. De-voicing: k for EA g (SA j); ‎4.1.2.18. ʼ for SA q and q for SA ʼ; ‎4.1.2.19. Double Spelling of Consonants; ‎4.1.3. Vowels; ‎4.1.3.1. Reflexes of SA i; ‎4.1.3.2. Reflexes of SA a; ‎4.1.3.3. ʼimāla: Reflexes of SA a, ā and āʼ; ‎4.1.3.4. tafxīm: ạ̄ / ō Reflexes of SA and EA ā; ‎4.1.3.5. Epenthetic Vowel between SA Consonant Clusters; ‎4.1.3.6. Reflexes of SA ay

Volume 70 in the Brill series “Etudes sur la Judaisme Medieval.” (EJM). (52321) $75