BLOOM, Jonathan M. — Paper Before Print; the History and Africa, Turkey and the Middle East (Except for Kuwait) Appar- Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

403 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — ARABICA 404

Some subjects which are relevant, and interesting, are rel- egated to paragraphs printed in the margins of the main text (the so-called “sidebars”). Thus, the anatomy of “the typical Islamic book” is described in the margins on pp. 111-113. The accompanying illustration is so small (32 x 44 mm) that the use of a magnifying glass is necessary. The illustrations in general add little or nothing to the text. Of the 86 numbered figures, only 35 actually depict Islamic manuscripts on paper, and only one figure actually shows us paper itself (fig. 22, “… colophon page… showing the long fibres and smooth surface of the paper”, 54 x 76 mm). Most of these 35 figures show pages of famous illuminated manu- scripts. Simple, average administrative papers, of which there must be millions, are not shown. The choice of illustrations ARABICA seems to have been dictated principally by availability. The Photo Credits on p. 270 mention only institutions in the US and in Europe. The holdings of libraries and archives in North BLOOM, Jonathan M. — Paper before print; the history and Africa, Turkey and the Middle East (except for Kuwait) appar- impact of paper in the Islamic world. Yale University ently contain nothing of relevance to the subject. Press, New Haven/London, 2001. (27 cm, xvi, 270). Another problem with this work is the omission of the ISBN 0-300-08955-4. £ 30.00. usual footnotes. The reader has to make do with a “Biblio- The Islamic world has played a crucial role in bringing graphical Essay” (pp. 227-247). The author's heavy reliance paper from Asia to Europe. Much is known about paper pro- on general works of reference such as the Encyclopaedia of duction and paper use in Asia (China) and in Europe, but its Islam, the Dictionary of Art and the Encyclopaedia Britan- history in Islamic lands remains understudied. nica is apparent on almost every page of the Essay. The The author, Jonathan M. Bloom, is a historian and the lengthy list of Works Cited (pp. 249-261) contains only about Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and a dozen works in non-European languages, among them only Asian Art at Boston College. There are serious problems with a handful in Arabic (very well-known and available in trans- this work. The main problem is that the (sub)title does not lation). cover the contents. Chapters one (The Invention of Paper, pp. A point which is particularly irritating to the reviewer is 16-45) and six (The Transfer of Paper and Papermaking to the defective transcription of Arabic names and terms in the Christian Europe, pp. 202-213) deal with paper outside the body of the text. There is really no good reason to ignore Islamic world, a subject about which we are already well standard practice, and omit all the {ayns, subscript points and informed. Chapter seven (Paper after Print, pp. 214-226) macrons. There were obviously no technical problems that equally falls outside the scope of the book as stated in the made such a truncated transcription necessary, as is shown title. Chapter two (The Spread of Papermaking across the by the fact that the Bibliographical Essay and the list of Islamic Lands, pp. 46-89) can be said to deal with the his- Works Cited actually do contain a few names and titles in tory of paper in the Islamic world, as announced in the sub- full transcription (albeit with errors in almost every name and title. title). Are full transcriptions absolutely necessary? Probably The core of the book is formed by chapters three (Paper not. Most of us can do very well without. But for such a lav- and Books, pp. 90-123), four (Paper and Systems of Nota- ishly produced book, published by Yale University Press, this tion, pp. 124-159) and five (Paper and the Visual Arts, pp. is simply a matter of noblesse oblige. 160-201). These three chapters are probably meant to inform As the author rightly says in the Preface, this is a “hand- us about the impact of paper in the Islamic world, but in fact some book”. It is well-designed, nicely printed, richly illus- they do not. trated and neatly bound. But all of this does not make up for A flowering of the visual arts, of literature and the sci- a lack of substance. ences, as described in these chapters, is not dependent on the We do need a book on the history of paper in the Islamic availability of paper, and great achievements in these fields world. Notwithstanding its subtitle, Bloom's work is not that cannot be presented as “impact” of anything. The Romans book. Much of its contents are irrelevant to the subject as cir- never had paper, and the Renaissance in Europe was well cumscribed in the title, and, more importantly, no new underway before paper became widely available. Dante wrote research seems to have gone into the making of this work. It his Divina Commedia on parchment. Indeed, in the Islamic is derivative, it lacks detail and it does not meet modern Maghrib parchment remained the preferred material for illu- scholarly standards in its presentation. minated Qur'ans centuries after the introduction of paper. To sum up, those who are interested in “Islamic” paper The question is whether the introduction of paper as such probably do best to consult Helen Loveday's Islamic Paper: has ever had any real “impact” at all. Sophisticated visual A Study of the Ancient Craft (London: 2001, Don Baker arts, well-developed sciences, an extensive literature and an Memorial Fund). Although modestly produced, this charm- efficient legal and administrative system are all possible with- ing little volume is informative and to the point. It comes out paper. Clay tablets, papyrus, palm leaves, pieces of wood complete with decent footnotes, a good bibliography and rel- and parchment have all proved their usefulness. One might evant illustrations. In addition, the reader is also kindly say that the availability of paper only begins to have any real referred to the reviews of Adam Gacek, The Arabic manu- impact in conjunction with the art of printing with movable script tradition. A glossary of technical terms and bibliogra- type, but this is explicitly not the subject of this book. phy (Leiden etc.: Brill 2001; not mentioned in Bloom’s 405 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXI N° 3-4, mei-augustus 2004 406

Works Cited) and François Déroche (a.o.), Manuel de codi- lexicon, whereas in the case of Tunisian Arabic we are deal- cologie des manuscrits en écriture arabe (Paris: Bibliothèque ing with lexical diffusion. nationale de France 2000; mentioned in Bloom’s Works Cited), in Bibliotheca Orientalis LIX, no. 5/6 (Sept.-Dec. 3. Education as a Speaker Variable, Enam Al Wer 2002), pp. 667-668. In her contribution Enam Al Wer takes issue with ‘educa- tion’ as a speaker variable. Quoting examples from Bahrain, Vlaardingen, September 2003 Nico VAN DEN BOOGERT Jordan and Iraq, she shows that ‘linguistic change in Arabic is determined by the relative status of the native spoken vari- eties (which is determined by the relative status of their ** speakers); in this domain the status of linguistic features * vis- à-vis Classical Arabic is irrelevant’. She draws from her own material from Jordan to convincingly illustrate that (level of) ROUCHDY, A. (ed.) — Language Contact and Language education is not a determining factor in linguistic Conflict in Arabic: Variations on a Sociolinguistic per se change, but rather a ‘proxy variable, which acts on behalf of, Theme. Routledge Curzon, London, 2002. (24 cm, mainly, amount and nature of contact with speakers of the XVIII, 358). ISBN 0-7007-1379-4. £ 45.00. target features.’ This volume presents 17 contributions by various authors and focuses on the central sociolinguistic theme of language 4. Algérie: de l’Arabe à l’Arabisation, Aziza Boucherit contact in Arabic. The book is thematically subdivided into Aziza Boucherit shows, among other things, how Berber four parts, which are of course bound to overlap. The volume does not really rival Standard Arabic or French as a national contains several interesting thoughts and observations, which language in Algeria. cannot all receive the attention here which they deserve. Instead I have limited myself to mentioning the central top- 5. Language Contact, Arabization Policy and Education in ics discussed, while adding my own brief remarks where I Morocco, Moha Ennaji deemed this appropriate. Moha Ennaji discusses peoples’ ambivalent attitudes towards arabization and bilingualism in Morocco and con- Part I: Diglossia and Language Planning cludes that the process of arabization can only fully succeed 1. Approaching Diglossia: Authorities, Values, and Repre- if ‘[…] it is (1) global, (2) continuous, (3) well-planned and sentations, John C. Eisele. (4) takes into consideration the multilingual and the multi- The volume befittingly opens with a reflective contribu- cultural context of Morocco and the necessity to modernize tion by Eisele on the study of diglossia in Arabic. He shows the educational system.’ that much of the research into this field was based on an approach that turns out to have been too limited. He con- Part II: Language and Identity vincingly argues that several authors, failing to recognize the 6. Identity and Language Tension in Lebanon: The Arabic of importance of the social surroundings of speakers while inter- Local News at LBCI, Mahmoud Al Batal preting linguistic practice solely in linguistic terms, have in Mahmoud Al Batal focuses on the interaction between the fact simply accepted unstable research parameters or have formal fuÒÌa and Lebanese colloquial in the sphere of news moved these about to their liking in order to describe the vari- broadcasting. He demonstrates how the tension surrounding ation with which they found themselves confronted. The only national identity in Lebanon has contributed to the emergence way these authors could make some (seeming) sense of the of a new language register of LBCI (Lebanese Broadcasting variation they encountered was to all too liberally shift Company International) local news. research parameters, whereby they were just as ‘dialogic’ in their approach to the research material as the speakers who 7. The Language of Introduction in the City of Fès: The Gen- had produced it. The result of such methodology is then an der-Identity Interaction, Fatima Sadiqi analysis of ‘diglossia’ which is in itself ‘diglossic’. Eisele’s Fatima Sadiqi describes how social variables like local plea is therefore for the incorporation of sociolinguistic prac- geographical origin, class, sex, and age play a role in intro- tice into the study of Arabic. ductions used by inhabitants of the city of Fès, and concludes that local geographical origin tends to weigh heaviest in this 2. Dialect Levelling in Tunisian Arabic: Towards a New Spo- specific context. She states that ‘subsequent conversations are ken Standard, Maik Gibson largely regulated by this indexing.’ Maik Gibson finds that the influence of MSA on spoken varieties of Tunisian Arabic is mainly as a source of vocab- 8. Language Conflict and Identity: Arabic in the American ulary. Investigating four different phonological variables, his Diaspora, Aleya Rouchdy conclusion is that the development of these varieties is not Aleya Rouchdy illustrates with material from the Arab- towards MSA, but towards the variety of the capital. His American community (with its very diverse origins) in valuable methodological point is to clearly distinguish Detroit how Arabic in the diaspora developed into an ethnic between lexical borrowing and phonological variation. He language (or lingua franca), not corresponding to any spe- then points out an interesting paradox: dialectal ‘core-items’ cific dialect or Standard Arabic, which is only understood (quoting Clive Holes) tend to be the most resistant to change, by members of that community. She ends stressing two whereas Labov states that in studies of lexical diffusion a aspects: there will be skill attrition in Arabic in the diaspora, higher frequency encourages the adoption of innovation. but only in the linguistic repertoire of the immigrants which Gibson’s tentative solution to this problem is that Labov’s can easily be reversed for the language to be learned (usu- conclusion was based on rule-governed diffusion through the ally Standard Arabic). She then states that formal learning 407 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — ARABICA 408 of the standard usually leads to the acquisition of a specific 12. Jeux de Langues: Humor and Codeswitching in the dialect. This may seem odd, but her claim is that a speaker’s Maghreb, Dominique Caubet wish to master ‘Arabic’ stems from a felt pan-Arab identity, Although impossible to pin down in a definition, humor is which more or less automatically leads to (the study of) the topic of Dominique Caubet’s contribution. She explores and Classical Arabic, since that is the force (Rouchdy uses the extensively illustrates how popular humorists from the Maghreb term Sprachbund) unifying speakers of Arabic, as opposed use codeswitching and other jeux de langues (playing with to the Sprechbund, a term used to indicate the diversity of phonology, calques, set expressions, translinguistic puns, faulty dialects of the same language among these speakers. The North African French, etc.) and concludes that ‘[T]he use of various dialects are therefore maintained, and the ethnic lan- several languages and of codeswitching is a humorous answer guage is developed, owing to (not in spite of) the study of to the radical monolithic positions who pretend that the Classical Arabic, perhaps a reflection of a speaker’s wish to Maghreb is exclusively Arab (and often Muslim)’. further refine the definition of his identity by going deeper than the pan-Arab surface layer of Classical Arabic. Another Part IV: Arabic in the Diaspora point stressed in this article is that ‘changes in the ethnic lan- 13. Moroccan Arabic in the European Diaspora, Louis guage due to contact with the dominant language should not Boumans and Jan Jaap de Ruiter be considered an erosion of the speaker’s competence in Louis Boumans and Jan Jaap de Ruiter discuss the posi- Arabic, but rather as an accomplishment of performance in tion of Moroccan Arabic in the current European context an ethnic language, or a lingua franca, that acts as a bond from different perspectives. They give an oversight of past among Arab Americans, and which might also help toward and present, and also venture to look ahead. the learning or maintenance of one’s ancestral language.’ 14. Arabic and English in Conflict: Iraqis in the UK, Farida 9. Speak Arabic Please!: Tunisian Arabic Speakers’ Lin- Abu Haidar guistic Accommodation to Middle Easterners, Sonia S’hiri Farida Abu Haidar discusses language contact in terms of Sonia S’hiri describes the strategies used by Tunisian borrowing and interference (which she collectively refers to as speakers to interact with speakers from the Middle East. She transference) as it occurs in the Iraqi community in the UK identifies a number of linguistic, sociocultural and ideologi- (predominantly London). She reports that Iraqi Arabic is slowly cal reasons that lie behind the process of the linguistic con- losing ground to English, and although speakers will often vergence that is the result. As crucial parameters she men- switch to more prestigious dialects like Levantine and Egypt- tions […] ‘“Arabness” and “native speakerness of Arabic” ian, competition from these varieties is relatively minimal. of power allocation designating linguistic dominance to the Mashreq and subordination to the Maghreb in contact situa- 15. Repetition Phenomena in Insertional Codeswitching, tions.’ In addition, she hopes to put aside the myth that Arabs Louis Boumans of different origins converse in fuÒÌa when they meet. Louis Boumans presents his views on the insertional Finally, she suggests that the accommodation theory should approach (i.e. insertion of constituants from an ‘embedded also cater for such notions as ‘passive accommodation’ (the language’ into a ‘matrix language’) to codeswitching and the listener does not impose his own variety on his interlocutor) forms and functions of repetition, and how these influence and ‘showing off’ as a goal in linguistic convergence. codeswitching patterns. One conclusion is ‘that repetition is often involved when speakers produce relatively rare patterns Part III: Language Choice of codeswitching’, for which part of the reason appears to be 10. De la Variation Linguistique dans le Prêche Populaire that ‘[codeswitching] often represents a speech style, which Mauritanien, Catherine Taine-Cheikh still lacks an overall conventionalization of grammatical pat- Catherine Taine-Cheikh discusses linguistic variation in terns’. religious sermons by MuÌammad O. Sidi YaÌya in Maurita- nia, where a situation of ‘triglossia’ (l’arabe dialectal, l’arabe 16. Second Generation Shifts in Sociopragmatic Orientation littéraire, l’arabe médian) exists. With ample illustration she and Codeswitching Patterns, Janice L. Jake and Carol Myers- concludes that the linguistic variation encountered in Scotton (O.S.Y.’s) sermons appears to serve a planned discourse strat- Janice L. Jake and Carol Myers-Scotton examine how the egy and that changes in code (the term is here used to indi- difference in sociopragmatic orientation of young Arab- cate a different variety of the same language) correspond to American adults as opposed to their parents affects the struc- motivated choices. ture of their codeswitching. They conclude that although the former are not leaving Arabic behind, their language patterns 11. Language is a Choice: Variation in Egyptian Women’s clearly differ from those of the latter. They also conclude that Written Discourse, Mushira Eid the younger generation are more oriented toward the identity Mushira Eid proposes an analytical approach to treat symbolized by the use of English than are their parents. Fur- women’s language (in terms of the duality colloquial vs stan- thermore, whereas the older generation appear to keep Ara- dard Arabic) of written discourse based on and comparing bic and English relatively separate, a composite (components short stories by eight Egyptian (female) authors from ‘a per- are both Arabic and English) matrix language is concluded spective of integration, rather than separation, of language from the codeswitching patterns used by their children. varieties’. Focusing her search on the integration of colloquial into standard, she concludes that in the case of the majority 17. Codeswitch Fluency and Language Attrition in an Arab of these authors a strict interpretation of standard-as-written Immigrant Community, K. Dallas Kenny (the predominant view on Arabic asserting that standard is the K. Dallas Kenny investigates codeswitch fluency and written variety) can no longer be maintained as a norm. (first) language attrition based on his own material collected 409 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXI N° 3-4, mei-augustus 2004 410 among twenty-four Arab immigrants, originally from Ramal- RAK-ISL (not available to the public). Nor does the present lah, in the Detroit area. He takes an interesting approach to work go into matters of Arabic calligraphy, the understand- examining codeswitching by focusing on speech fluency fac- ing of which is necessary in ‘deciphering’ an Arabic title tors, rather than on the syntactical and structural aspects of page. It is not within everyone’s competence to correctly read speech. He identifies a great number of positive and negative the elegant but often mystifying swirls of Thuluth or Diwani. correlations, weighing repeats/codeswitch disfluency, false The result is a main seventy-two-page Arabic-German starts, filled pauses, word lengthenings and silent pauses in glossary of technical terms and their abbreviations, enhanced relation to length of stay, age, age on arrival in the US, ver- by a supplement of separate glossaries arranged according to boseness, social and cultural habits and self-appraisal of Ara- subject. The subjects treated are (without being exhaustive) bic and English proficiency. Although some of these (posi- authors, traditional or academic titles and honorifics, corpo- tive or negative) correlations may seem quite predictable, rate authors, subtitles, the structure of multi-volume mono- others are truly surprising. graphs and serial and periodical publications, editions and The great value of this volume is that it offers a highly reprints, copyright, printing and publishing, cover design and diverse picture of the wide spectrum of topics found in the illustrations, the structure of prefaces, introductions and study of language contact (and conflict) in relation to the indexes, bibliographies of cited works, errata lists, Arab cur- study of the Arabic language today. Owing to the excellent rencies, calendars and places and countries of publication. quality of the contributions, the trap of merely compiling a Keeping in mind that the target group of this publication con- long list of anecdotal information has been avoided, and sists of bibliographers with a limited knowledge of Arabic, Eisele’s plea for the somewhat overdue introduction of soci- the author has abstained from using the system of radicals olinguistic practice is adequately answered. The added value that is common in Arabic lexicography. Thus, maktaba of this collection is that the contributors present new, and ‘library, bookshop’ is entered under m rather than k-t-b. Bro- their own, material. They have furthermore made their arti- ken plurals are often (but not always) listed separately with cles accessible enough to introduce students of Arabic, and a see-reference. In addition to this, Repp’s work contains a indeed other linguists as well, into the different branches of section on Arabic script, numerals and transliteration tables, this sociolinguistic theme, without giving their readers the including comparison tables for other systems like German feeling of having stooped to offer such access. The collec- DIN and North American ALA-LC, as well as a short list of tion holds numerous suggestions for further research, as well bibliographic tools. In order to provide the readers with as valuable material for discussion. An adequate index pro- examples from real life, the book is interspersed with fac- vides immediate access to the topics treated. I therefore do similes of Arabic title pages, which to some extent makes up not hesitate to recommend it! for the lack of attention to Arabic calligraphy. In preparing this glossary, the author has used a corpus of University of Amsterdam, Rudolf DE JONG relevant parts of Arabic printed works (title pages, colophons) March 2004 in addition to a list of library terms provided by her colleague Annegret Ellerichmann, as well as a number of specialised Arabic dictionaries. With regard to the development of Arab ** lexicography in the field of librarianship, it must be noted * that it flourished from the seventies until the early nineties of the last century, but it seems to have stagnated since, with REPP, H. — Glossar bibliothekarischer Fachtermini Ara- the possible exception of the enlarged 1995 edition of Mif- bisch-Deutsch. Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, taÌ MuÌammad Diyab’s Ò† Ìa 2001. (30 cm, 215). ISBN 3-447-04388-1; ISSN 1436- Mu{jam al-mu ala t al-{ilmiyya i a i ‘Dictionary of technical terms 5405. /39. f {ilm al-maktab t wa’l-tawth q in Library Science and Documentation’, a work not used by The Landesspracheninstitut Nordrhein-Westfalen, a pro- Repp. It is for good reason that AFLI, the Arab Federation fessional language-training centre in Bochum attached to the for Libraries and Information, defines uniformity of library regional government of Bundesland Nordrhein-Westfalen, terminology as one of its goals and has committed itself to offers courses in a variety of languages, including Arabic. the preparation of a dictionary of information networks, a The present work is the offshoot of a number of courses given work that has not yet materialised. in the years 1995 and 1996 to librarians with a basic knowl- Given the state of affairs in Arab lexicography in this par- edge of the Arabic language and script, who are engaged in ticular field, and the absence of any comparable work in other cataloguing printed Arabic language materials. The purpose modern European languages, Repp’s pioneering work is a of the book is to make these librarians acquainted with the valuable and useful bibliographic tool. However, the pio- technical terms encountered in the title pages and colophons neering character of the work inevitably makes it susceptible of Arabic books. In her introduction, author Hanna Repp to criticism, of which I shall cite only a few examples: points out that it is not a comprehensive course in Arabic bib- A main point of criticism is the arrangement of the subject liography, which would indeed be impossible within the lim- glossaries. The main glossary is in strict alphabetical order, its of a training course, even an intensive one. For instance, but the entries in the subject glossaries appear to be arranged the intricate structure of Arabic personal names, a famous in a random order, which is incompatible with the principles stumbling block for even the most experienced bibliographer, of lexicography. In the ‘Wirtschaft’ list on p.126, for instance, is not part of Repp’s work. Fortunately, these rules are laid the entries are given in the sequence b — m — b — f — gh down in the current official standard for German librarian- — gh — sh — m — m — m — Ò, thus making it difficult to ship, Helga Rebhan and Winfried Riesterer’s Regeln für die retrieve separate items. Ansetzung von Personennamen in Staaten mit arabischer, There is no strict one-to-one relationship between the main persischer und türkischer Sprache, commonly known as glossary and the subject glossaries. For instance, p. 141 gives 411 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — ARABICA 412 the term †ab{a tadhkariyya ‘Gedächtnisausgabe, memorial Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart: Arabisch edition’, but it is not listed in the main glossary under †ab{a, —Deutsch (5th ed., Wiesbaden 1985) and Lorenz Kropfitsch’s and neither does the adjective tadhkari ‘commemorative’ Langenscheidts Handwörterbuch Arabisch-Deutsch (Berlin have a separate entry in the main glossary. [etc.] 1996), but it omits Götz Schregle’s Arabisch-Deutsches ‘Alphabet und Zahlen’ (p. 18-27): in the Eastern Mediter- Wörterbuch (Wiesbaden [etc.] 1981-….), a valuable but ranean, ‘g’ in loanwords such as garaj or sigara is mostly unfinished work that has never equalled the fame of its Ger- written with kaf rather than a three-dotted {ayn. In Egypt, the man-Arabic counterpart. three-dotted jim stands not only for z but also for j in loan- Nevertheless, Hanna Repp’s work fully deserves its place words, which makes it difficult to transliterate (p. 22). among the bibliographic tools of Arabic cataloguers, espe- ‘Arabische Abkürzungen’ (p. 31-33): tdmk (for al-Tarqim cially in the German-speaking world. Fortunately, the fact al-Duwali al-Mi{yari lil-Kitab) for ISBN has become almost that the publishing house of Harrassowitz has taken it upon obsolete, the usual abbreviation now being rdmk (al-Raqm itself to co-publish this work at the very reasonable price of al-Duwali al-Mi{yari lil-Kitab). /39 will ensure its wide availability to the public. As possible additions to the glossary (p. 35-106) I would suggest: ibda{ in combination with a personal name, ‘created Leiden University, April 2004 Arnoud VROLIJK by’; azjal as plural of zajal, a verse form (see p. 67); a{mal in the sense of ‘congress proceedings’; i ‘coordination’ tans q ** (whereas ‘coordinator’ is mentioned on p. 98); Ò munassiq fi la * ‘offprint’; watha’iqi (‘documentary’, adj.). Furthermore, I doubt whether Ì ‘refereed journal’ (p. 88) majalla mu akkama SCHOELER, G. (ed.), G. SCHUBERT and R. WÜRSCH is correctly translated as ‘Fachzeitschrift’ since it misses the (co-eds.) — Die Handschriften der Universitätsbiblio- point of the peer review, but this may be due to my imper- thek Basel. Arabische Handschriften unter der Leitung fect knowledge of the German language. von Gregor Schoeler beschrieben von Gudrun Schubert ‘Währungen’ (p. 184-185): the traditional abbreviation und Renate Würsch. Vorarbeiten von Frits Meier, for the Egyptian pound is LE or £E (‘Livre égyptienne’), Gertrud Spiess, Hedwig Djeddikar. (Schriften der Uni- not E£. versität Basel, No. 4). Schwabe & Co AG Verlag, Basel, ‘Jahreszahlberechnung’ (p. 193): mention is made of the 2001. (XXV, 603; illustrations). ISBN 3-7965-1089-2; common Islamic lunar calendar and the Coptic calendar, but ISSN 1422-7517. / 150. it would have been useful to add the ‘Jamahiriyya’ calendar used in Libya. As it exists in more than one version (for If one defines the purpose of a manuscript catalogue in a instance, solar years counted from the date of birth of the dual way, namely as the annotated inventory of a certain col- Prophet or his death), it can be baffling to the bibliographer. lection on the one hand, and, at the same time, as a source Its absence is all the more surprising in view of the fact that for the literary history of the people or area from which the the names of the Libyan months are given in a table on p. manuscripts in question originate, this catalogue can be con- 191. Repp also provides a number of internet links to calen- sidered a success on both counts. The physical descriptions dar conversion programs. Needless to say, printed informa- of the manuscripts are exhaustive enough, very detailed in tion about websites is quickly outdated and the link to the fact, and when compared to what is given about the contents Computus program at the Library of the University of of the works described is perhaps overdetailed. Although this Chicago is broken. It is perhaps advisable to refer readers to codicological smallprint occasionally distracts from the reliable information portals, such as Lutz Wiederhold and description of the contents of the catalogue, the catalogue Sibylle Wegener’s MENALIB, maintained by the University shows the authors’ mastership in the field and love for their of Halle (http://ssgdoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/vlib/html/), work. where a quick search reveals eight different calendar con- That said, it is time for the book itself, which was written version sites. by Gudrun Schubert und Renate Würsch and made with Ger- ‘Verlagsorte’ (p. 195-199): this list also contains a num- man thoroughness. Gregor Schoeler’s preface gives a sum- ber of places of publication outside the Arab world, such as mary overview of Swiss libraries possessing Islamic manu- Istanbul, Budapest, Cologne, London, Leiden, New York or scripts, and the state of research on their Islamic collections. Hyderabad. However, it does not include Iran, an important The short introduction by the authors gives an idea of the his- source for publications in Arabic. In fact, the large output tory, the development and the content of the collection in of Shi’ite Arabic text editions from a place like Qum is too Basel. The authors give a useful list of what they see as the well known not to be mentioned. The fact that Iranian pub- highlights of the collection and they mention several uniquely lications in Arabic pose their own problems in terms of bib- known manuscripts in the Basel Library, which is a modest, liographic control (for example, the honorifics used for the but not unimportant collection. higher Shi’ite clergy, the Iranian Shahanshahi or Hijri It is interesting to read that the first Islamic book whose Shamsi calendars or the slightly different shape of Persian presence in Basel is attested is a Qur’an dated 639/1242, numerals) would have justified their inclusion in this glos- which is illustrated in two black-and-white images at the sary. end of the book (Catalogue No. 1). If one looks up the ‘Länder und Staaten’ (p. 200-205): this list of countries of description in the catalogue itself — which is not made easy publication is given in the German alphabetical order instead for any of the manuscripts, since the catalogue does not con- of Arabic, which is incompatible with the idea of an Arabic- tain direct references to the numbers in the catalogue text, German glossary. only to the Library’s class-marks — in order to see from ‘Hilfsmittel’ (p. 210-215): the list of Arabic-German dic- where the manuscript originates, there is no information. tionaries (p. 214) mentions both Hans Wehr’s Arabisches About the possible provenance, the Franciscans in Pera and 413 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXI N° 3-4, mei-augustus 2004 414 its subsequent owners including the bishop of Ragusa who Basel’s University Library (if I am right), there is a detailed, first brought the book to Basel in 1437 are mentioned but as yet unpublished study on the phenomenon of Tasliya, there is nothing about where the manuscript originally invoking God’s blessing on the Prophet Muhammad. A ref- comes from. If the authors had made an educated guess erence to this study would not have been out of place in the about this, it would have given an added value to their catalogue’s description of the manuscripts of the Dala’il al- description of this manuscript. The Qur’anic manuscript has Khayrat. been reasonably well researched in the past few decades, so The oldest manuscript in the Basel collection dates from why not make more out of this? Furthermore, they call this 634/1237 (No. 159, a Hamasa by Abu Tammam, a gift from Qur’an a copy made for educational purposes (‘zu the Mufti of Sarajevo to Rudolf Tschudi in April 1926), while Lernzwecken geschrieben’, p. 4). What on earth can they the other 13th-century manuscript is the Qur’an already men- mean by that? When one looks at the reproduction of the tioned. From the 14th century there are three manuscripts, colophon and the final sura, it does not look like a piece of from the 15th century there are also three, from the 16th cen- calligraphic art, although the handwriting is expert enough, tury there are nineteen, from the 17th century there are but would that mean that the book had a utilitarian purpose twenty, from the 18th century there are forty-five, and from only? I doubt it. the 19th century there are thirty manuscripts. These numbers The catalogue describes one hundred and seventy-three are based on the dated manuscripts only, an overview of manuscript volumes, containing a considerably larger num- which can be gathered from the paleographical index at the ber of texts since there are several collective volumes. The end of the catalogue. This means that of the one hunderd and collection contains a wide range of subjects, which is indi- seventy-three volumes described, some one hunderd and cated by an analytical index to the catalogue, with, not sur- twenty-two contain dates of copying, a percentage of around prisingly, a clear preference for religious texts especially in seventy. To see where the manuscripts were made is not so the fields of Qur’an reading, theology, sufism and prayers. easy to tell however, as the catalogue’s geographical index I could not refrain from looking up the four Basel manu- is contaminated by references to geographical names occur- scripts of al-Gazuli’s Dala’il al-Khayrat, on whose wide- ring in the description of the contents. My first impression is spread prayer book I recently published a study, in order to that a considerable part of the collection was made in the see how this book, about which I have an intimate knowl- Balkans, or had the Balkans as their last stop before coming edge, had fared in the hands of the cataloguers. This concerns to Christian Europe. As the larger part of the Basel collec- the following manuscripts: tion comes from the private collection of Turkologist Rudolf No. 11. A Maghribi copy, dated 1011/1602, containing a sin- Tschudi (1884-1960) this is not so surprising. gle illustration of the grave chamber in the Prophet’s mosque The system of the Basel class-marks as given in the cata- in Medina, better known as al-Rawda al-Mubaraka. logue has remained somewhat of a mystery to me. They do No. 41. A Mashriqi copy, not dated, but estimated to date not seem to reflect a chronological accession order, but what from the 11th/17th century, containing a double illustration they in fact are I could not understand. A schematic survey of al-Rawda al-Mubaraka and the Prophet’s Minbar. of earlier European provenances of the manuscripts would No. 90. A Mashriqi copy, dated 1154/1741, apparently with- not have been out of place. It could easily have been gath- out illustration(s). ered from the data of each manuscript. I find the references No. 139. A West African copy, estimated to date from 12th- to earlier European owners in the introduction of the Cata- 13th/18th-19th century, and containing a double illustration logue somewhat meagre. The catalogue gives ample refer- of ‘the Prophet’s mosque in Medina’. Why it is thought that ence to earlier Oriental provenances, and I was able to rec- this latter volume was used for ‘missionary’ activities in Mali ognize the name of an early-17th century collector in Istanbul or Chad (Catalogue, p. 338) is unclear to me. The book is as the former owner of the Basel Library’s most ancient MS, normally used in Dhikr-like ritual. namely someone signing on No. 159 with his ex-libris: min Having looked at the descriptions of the four Basel man- Kutub al-{Abd Waysi, with mention of the year 1015 (1606- uscripts of the text I must say that first of all it was a relief 1607). The authors tentatively identify him (and rightly so) to see that my own theories about the historical development with the Ottoman poet and littérateur Uways b. Muhammad, of illustration in this prayer book (first unillustrated; then by who used the takhallus Waysi, and who died in 1037/1628 one single illustration; then by a double Medina illustration; in Üsküb. Waysi must have had an important library, as is then by a double illustration showing Mecca and Medina) already testified by the importance of the Basel manuscript. were not contradicted by the information in the catalogue. His name occurs in a number of Leiden manuscripts as well With an extremely popular book such as the Dala’il al- (e.g. Or. 370, with year 1027; Or. 560; Or. 640, with year Khayrat, working with a formal paradigm of bibliographical 1015; Or. 766, when he was a Qadi in Üsküb in 1013, and description is not always sufficient, however. One would be more may emerge after a further analysis of the provenances interested to know, for example, how the internal division of of the Leiden collection) and also in MS Utrecht Or. 42; all the text was realized in the four Basel manuscripts of the of these manuscripts stand out by their great rarity and high texts. In course of time an internal division of eight Awrad value. has developed for the days of the week, from Monday It is regrettable that the catalogue has so few illustrations, through the following Monday. And there are more pecu- twenty-three in all, one of which is in colour. With a little liarities in the textual development of the text of this prayer extra effort and money this number could have been multi- book which, especially in its many printed editions, seems to plied by several times. A single image often says more than grow until the present day. A manuscript catalogue should a page of text. This is really a lost opportunity. also cater for such exceptional intricacies. It may be men- Finally I wish to draw the attention to a serious objection, tioned in this respect that among the papers of the Basel namely against the language in which the catalogue is writ- scholar Fritz Meier (1912-1998), which are also kept in ten, but this reproach is not primarily directed to the two 415 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — ARABICA 416 authors, who have done an admirable job. The present work contrast to Classical Arabic (CA). A highly valuable and acces- is, by its very nature, addressed to an international reader- sible tool is the extensive “Grammatical outline” (pp. 23–56), ship, but the choice of its language, German, makes it acces- in which the main grammatical features of MA are discussed sible only in a very limited way. Scholarly German — beau- in no less than 153 sections. The fact that syntactic issues tiful as it can be — is not known or read except in a few receive ample attention in this grammatical compendium countries in Europe, and the subject matter of this and other (§74–153) should be noted as especially commendable. similar catalogues is too important to let it be restricted to The bulk of the book consists of a chrestomathy with sev- these few and relatively insignificant areas. Apparently eral very interesting Muslim, Christian and Jewish texts of nationalism has gotten the better of common sense here — various types (pp. 57–67, 68–96 and 97–154 respectively), or was the book written in German because it is easier if that each provided with ample footnotes pointing out all kinds of language is your mother tongue? Anyway, I am also well linguistic features exemplifying deviations from CA and with aware of the fact that in other German-speaking countries constant reference to the relevant sections in the Grammati- great and important cataloguing projects of non-western man- cal outline. This latter aspect makes the book very easy to uscripts are being undertaken, and that these are almost use; in order to get a complete introduction to Middle Ara- always written in German. The impressive and standard set- bic, one could simply read through the texts, consult the foot- ting project of the Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Hand- notes and refer to the grammar section on every occasion. schriften in Deutschland is a case in point. This cultural lan- But obviously, the grammar section also makes for instruc- guage policy (if it is indeed a policy), however, whether tive reading in its own right. consciously implemented or not, unnecessarily limits the The Muslim texts comprise: i) a papyrus from 758 AD con- book’s readership (and printrun) and thereby makes the prices taining a letter from the governor of Egypt to the ruler of Nubia of these books excessive, as is the case with the present cat- and Muqurra; ii) a papyrus from the end of the eighth century alogue. It also conveys an implicit, though probably AD; iii) four passages from {Abdallah b. Wahb’s Ìadi† collec- unwanted, message to the readership: ‘You learn our lan- tion Jami{, preserved in a papyrus copy from 889 AD. The guage, we give you your heritage’. I am sure that such a Christian texts are: i) a Psalm fragment in Greek transcription; thought has never occurred to the authors of the present cat- ii–iv) several texts written in the Melkite lingua franca from alogue, yet it is an additional message that is brought home the second half of the first millennium (from a Summa The- by the choice of language of this otherwise excellently com- ologiae from the ninth century AD; from Kitab al-Burhan by piled catalogue. Bu†rus the Deacon; from an Arabic translation of Daniel). The large selection of Jewish texts contains: i) two passages from Leiden, May 2004 Jan Just WITKAM Sa{adya Gaon’s Tafsir (Gen. 43:29–44:20 and 50:8–26); ii) from al-Qirqisani’s Kitab al-Anwar wa-l-Maraqib; iii) from the tenth-century Karaite David ben Abraham al-Fasi’s ** Hebrew-Arabic dictionary a a a ( o ); iv-vi) * Kit b J mi{ al-Alf Agr n some JA texts in phonetic Hebrew transcription. Interestingly, there is an appendix (pp. 155–174) contain- BLAU, Joshua. — A Handbook of Early Middle Arabic (The ing some vocalized substandard MA texts, which are strictly Max Schloessinger Memorial Series, Monographs 6). speaking not from the first millennium but from the first quar- Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation/Hebrew Uni- ter of the second millennium. These are some passages from versity of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 2002 (25 cm, 262). a Christian Arabic text in Coptic script and a vocalized JA ISBN 965 7258 00 6. $47.00. letter from the 12th/13th century. The extensive Glossary at The study of Middle Arabic in all its varieties has come a the end of the book (pp. 175–262) makes the texts easily long way since Blau’s Grammar of Christian Arabic accessible. (1966–1967), not least due to his own contributions, such as The texts in Coptic script and the vocalized JA letter, as his Grammar of Medieval Judeo-Arabic (2nd enl. ed.; 1980) well as the Christian Psalm fragment in Greek transcription, written in Hebrew, his Emergence and Linguistic Background deserve to be mentioned especially, since they provide those of Judaeo-Arabic (3rd ed. 1999), and his chrestomathy interested in dialectology with the opportunity to study the Judaeo-Arabic Literature. Selected Texts (1980). Another MA vowel system; one is immediately reminded of the so- source of major importance is Simon Hopkins, Studies in the called ‘secunda’ in Origen’s Hexapla for the reconstruction Grammar of Early Arabic. Based on Papyri Datable to of the pre-massoretic Hebrew vowels. To mention only one Before 300 A.H./912 A.D. (Oxford 1984). remarkable feature, clear signs of imala and tafÌim are dis- The book under review is a stimulating and well-organized cernible, e.g. in Greek script: el.insén (CA al-insan), introduction to various kinds of early Middle Arabic, mainly elmeleikeü (CA al-mala}ika), but oasat (CA wasa†); containing texts from the first millennium. It is intended both fádat (CA fa∂at), ïex.fa.doÕ (CA yaÌfaÂu); in Coptic for students who have already acquired a sound basic knowl- script: ieàod (the Arabic transcription ór NÉr jn should probably edge of Classical Arabic and wish to explore Middle Arabic read róoNÉnj here; CA ya}Ìu∂); pe#e (CA biha), eléenep texts and their linguistic features, as well as for Arabic schol- (CA al-janib), but alla (CA Allah), essoltan (CA as- ars who intend to broaden their understanding of Arabic in sul†an), kalpak (CA qalbuka); in Hebrew script: gr∂k¤∂ (CA its historical development. Ìaraja), but alÎyÎ (CA {ala). However, there are also excep- In the “General introduction” (pp. 14–22) the main terms tions to what one might expect, e.g. oa· aboab (CA wa- and categories of variations of Arabic are explained, including }abwab), esl (CA }aÒl), vlÊq∂p (CA fa-qalu). Middle Arabic (MA; subdivided into Standard MA [SMA] and Any search for features deserving of serious criticism in Substandard MA [SSMA]), Postclassical Arabic (PcA), Old this book would be futile, but the present reviewer has noted Arabic (OA), Neo-Arabic (NA) and Judaeo-Arabic (JA) in one or two points for discussion. 417 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXI N° 3-4, mei-augustus 2004 418

There is a partial overlap in the choice of JA texts with a Third International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Blau’s earlier chrestomathy Judaeo-Arabic Literature. The Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira (Leiden 2000) 26–39. first of the JA texts in this volume is the passage Gen. The phrase “historical final conjunctions” (p. 27) should 43:29–44:20, while the earlier anthology contained the entire probably read “historically final conjunctions”; an alterna- passage Gen. 37–45. tive phrase which is used is “original final conjunctions” On several occasions, Blau mentions the edition of some (§133, p. 54). papyri and refers to facsimile reproductions of them. In that This stimulating and well-organized introduction to Early respect, mention might have been made of R.A. Khoury’s Middle Arabic and its literature is a study for which the Chrestomathie de papyrologie arabe (Leiden 1993), which scholarly world should be grateful. It provides students with also contains excellent facsimile reproductions, along with an excellent tool to take their first steps in the study of the transcriptions and translations of many Middle Arabic papyri linguistic peculiarities of Middle Arabic. It deserves now to from the first millennium; students find this stimulating to have a sequel, with more texts annotated in the same way, work with. including some from later periods. From the general introduction it becomes clear that there is room for progress in the study of MA when it comes to the Leiden, May 2004 Martin F.J. BAASTEN choice of terminology for the classification of linguistic vari- eties. For instance, texts in which CA and PcA interchange are called SMA, whereas those abounding in NA elements are called SSMA. “Yet the delimitation between SMA and SSMA may be blurred”. “Moreover”, Blau tells us, “a con- tinuum of style variations obtains, stretching from pure CA, via CA with NA admixture (…) to rather vulgar SSMA”. As for PcA, we are told, “it is not easy to demarcate it against SMA and, even more, against CA, from which it differs mainly in syntax, vocabulary, and phraseology, less often in orthography and morphology”. In addition, however, “there appear some CA features (…) which are not dealt with in the usual treatises on the classical language” and hence might appear to us as being post-classical. Furthermore, the history of Arabic is divided into two periods: Old Arabic (“mainly represented by CA”) and Neoarabic. This latter category “is known, mainly, from the Modern A[rabic] dialects, mostly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”. The reader soon learns, however, that Usama b. Munqidh’s Kitab al-I{tibar (12th century) for example, is considered to also belong to NA, which “enables us to reconstruct the early layers of NA from 700 A.D. onwards.” Finally, “[t]he result is somewhat surprising: early NA, as reflected in SSMA texts, exhibits almost all the structural characteristics of the modern A[rabic] dialects.” In this context, it is not entirely clear what the reader should conclude when some features described in the grammatical outline are tagged either as “CA+PcA” or as “PcA+NA”. The present reviewer wonders whether these alleged early NA elements have not been identified in the first place on account of their similarity with features in contemporary spo- ken Arabic. Moreover, if early medieval texts display such a wealth of consistent features which are also known from modern spoken Arabic, there does not seem to be much point in choosing a historically-oriented terminology, especially when some features in these texts are even identified as “pre- classical” (§§14, 25). The interesting grammatical feature of the addition of the definite article to a noun in the construct state (such as ˙Só≤dG ìhôdG, mentioned in §§93, 102) has been described within a broader Semitic context by A. Borg, “Some Maltese Toponyms in Historical and Comparative Perspective” in P. Wexler, A. Borg and S. Somekh (eds.), Studia linguistica et orientalia memoriae Haim Blanc dedicata (Wiesbaden 1989) 62–85; see also Id., “Some Observations on the iwwe jvi Syn- drome in the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls” in T. Muraoka and J.F. Elwolde (eds.), Diggers at the Well. Proceedings of