«A THING THE SIZE OF YOUR PALM»: A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF RIDDLE STRUCTURE *

BY

MICHAEL L. CHYET

little of a theoretical nature has been written on the ArabicPRECIOUS riddle. The only published works in English are Charles T. Scott's book Persian and Arabic Riddles: a -Centered Ap- * I have used a standardized transliteration of Arabic, with the necessary ad- ditions to accurately reflect the various spoken dialects. The transcription of in the Moroccan riddles follows the system used by Harrell and Sobelman in A Dictionary of (1966). The following table explains the transcription system: a = as in cat; e = as a in date; I = as i in machine; 6 = as o in bone; u = as oo in boot; e = as a in about (schwa); a = short a (in vicinity of a such as h); d = be- tween a in cat and e in bed; 6 = short u, as oo in wood, but shorter. d = voiced emphatic ; emphatic d d = as th in this g = always hard, as in good g = voiced uvular , voiced counterpart to h, similar to French ' grasseye' h = voiceless pharyngal fricative; like first sound in `Hugh' said in a stage whisper g = as jin jet h = voiceless uvular fricative: as German ch in acht q = voiceless uvular top: a <`throaty»k r = trilled as in Spanish s = voiceless emphatic postdental fricative: emphatic s = as sh in ship, ash t = voiceless emphatic alveolar stop: emphatic t t = as th in thing z = voiced emphatic interdental fricative: emphatic d z = as s in ' pleasure = , like t in the Cockney pronunciation of 'bottle' (bo'el) c voiced pharyngal fricative: guttural' The following abbreviations for the names of Arab countries are used: Alg = Algeria; Eg = Egypt; Ir = Iraq; Leb = Lebanon; Lib = Libya; Mor = Morocco; Pal = Palestine/Israel; Sau = Saudi Arabia; Sud = Sudan; Tun = Tunisia. The following is a list of abbreviations referring to riddle collections. For the full citation, see ReferencesCited. Numbers after the two-letter abbreviation refer to page numbers, followed by a colon and the number of the riddle on said page, if applicable. E.g., [IH 278:19] means Ibn Azzuz Haquim, page 278, riddle /& 19; [Hi 86] means Hillelson, page 86, with no riddle number available. Ba = Bauer; FA = Folklore Archives; Hi = Hillelson; IH = Ibn Azzuz Haquim; Li = Littmann; Me = Meissner; Mu = al-Murtad; Pa = Panetta; Ql = Quemeneur 1944; Q2 = Qu6m6neur 1945; Ru = Ruoff; Sc = Scott; We = Webber. 268 proach to Genre Definition ( 1 965) , and an article on Maltese riddles by George M. Chircop (1978)'. Sabra J. Webber's unpublished thesis «It's About Our Bean-Colored Hen»: a Preliminary Look at Tunisian Rid- dles (1975) presents fifty riddles she collected herself, and deals in depth with their cultural context, also touching briefly on Arab/Muslim riddle content, riddle structure and riddling devices, and riddle functions. One of the earliest and best known collections of Arabic folk riddles by a Western scholar is Giacobetti's Recueil d'enigmes arabes populaires (1916), which contains 619 riddles in Arabic script with Latin transcription and French translation. In his introduction, Giacobetti gives helpful bibliographical references for Arabic literary riddles. He also briefly discusses such topics as the use of riddles in Algerian peasant life, rules for versification, and common objects about which riddles are told. This book was reviewed by Rene Basset in Revue des Traditions Populaires, vol. 32 (1916-17: 186-190). In 1938, the Algerian professor Abdelhamid Hamidou came out with a collection of Algerian folk riddles in French translation only, preceded by a brief discussion similar to Giacobetti's, including the riddling terms used by Algerian peasants, plus a few more references for Arabic literary riddles. Because his riddles appear in French translation only, little or nothing can be said about their texture. I should also mention Jean Quemeneur's book in French, Énigmes Tunisiennes (1944?), which has an introductory essay supplying valuable information on the categories and types of Tunisian riddles, as well as emic terms for the riddle, with brief comparative comments for Algeria. Like Giacobetti's collection, here too the riddles are presented in Arabic script with Latin transcription and French translation. Nor has much been written on the subject by modern Arab scholars: the only comprehensive study that I have seen is a new book by an Algerian scholar, 'Abd al-Malik al-Murtad, entitled al-Algiiz al-Gaza'iriya: Dirasa fi algaz at-Garb al-Gaza'iri [Algerian Folk Riddles: a Study in the Riddles of the Algerian West] (1982). In this book, Professor al-Murtad attempts a serious study of Algerian folk riddles, with separate chapters on content, space, time, form, language, and style, giving an appendix of 176

1 The Maltese language is basically North African Arabic with many borrow- ings from Italian.