‘The Tale of the Cairene and the Countryman’: A Late Judaeo-Arabic Narrative Revisited*

This short article offers a revised transcription and English translation of Qiṣṣat al-maṣrī wa-l-rīfī ‘The Tale of the Cairene and the Countryman’ as found in AIU VII.C.16, with grammatical notes. This new edition of the text demonstrates that Goitein’s (1972) rendering of the manuscript concealed significant orthographic features, which indicate a later date of composition than Goitein proposed. Since its publication, Goitein’s (1972) edition of AIU VII.C.16 has been widely used among students and scholars of Judaeo-Arabic as a guideline for dating other Judaeo-Arabic texts of the Ottoman era. The fragment’s importance in contemporary scholarship continues, rendering a revised edition an indispensable resource for future generations of Judaeo-Arabic scholars.


Introduction
Among the many treasures of the renowned Cairo Genizah collections 1 are a number of Judaeo-Arabic (henceforth JA) and Arabic-script folk narratives. These range from renditions of ʾAlf layla wa-layla 'A Thousand and One Nights' to adaptations of Qiṣaṣ al-ʾanbiyāʾ 'The Tales of the Prophets'. In the following article, a new transcription and English translation of the JA text Qiṣṣat al-maṣrī wa-l-rīfī 'The Tale of the Cairene and the Countryman' as found in the fragment AIU VII.C.16 is offered, prefaced by a brief discussion of its treatment in recent scholarship, and followed by a summary of its most notable orthographic features. 2 * This work was funded by the generous support of the Leverhulme Trust in the form of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. -I am indebted to Prof. Guth and the reviewers for their invaluable suggestions. That being said, any errors herein are mine alone.
2. AIU VII.C.16: Text, transcription and translation AIU VII.C.16 comprises one folio, with writing on both recto (22 lines) and verso (23 lines), and a catchword in the lower left-hand corner of the latter. In its extant form it is in good condition, with only a few lacunae, slight rubbing, and some staining. The opening phrases of the text are written in large, square script, while the remaining text is written in a smaller, more cursive script-style. This combination of script-styles is often encountered at the opening of eighteenth and nineteenth-century JA narratives (see for example, BnF Hébreu 583; NLI Cairo JC 104).
In what follows, a transcription of the original text, AIU VII.C.16, is placed beside a grapheme-for-grapheme transcription into Arabic script, 7 and an English translation.
Where lacunae or rubbing obscure the reading, reconstructions in the transcription are indicated by square brackets []. Instances in which the scribe or author added a formerly omitted letter are marked with curly brackets {}. Additions to the English translationintended to ensure readability-are indicated by parentheses ().
14 ‫קובטייא‬ is probably a mistake for qubṭariyya 'fine linen', in which the grapheme reš for Arabic rāʾ has simply been omitted by mistake (see KAZIMIRSKI 1860: 663).

Tav for tāʾ marbūṭa in construct state
In another continuation of classical JA orthography, when the first term of the construct state ends in a tāʾ marbūṭa ‫)ة(‬ it is denoted phonetically with tav rather than its orthographic equivalent heh, e.g., ‫מצרי‬ ‫אל‬ ‫קצת‬ ‫בכתאבת‬ '…with the tale of the Cairene…' (recto, line 1); ‫ע‬ ‫מוצ‬ ‫אל‬ ‫בדיקת‬ '…with the narrowness of the place' (recto, line 10); ‫אל‬ ‫לחמת‬ ‫בקרי‬ 'beef' (lit. 'the meat of the cow') (verso, lines [21][22]. Although this phonetic representation of tāʾ marbūṭa in construct state occurs in classical JA, it becomes notably more common in late JA folk narratives and letters (Connolly 2018b: 60).

Tanwīn
The preservation in classical JA writings of tanwīn ʾalif on (i) adverbials, (ii) some commonly occurring 'short' nouns, such as ʾaḥad 'someone' and šayʾ 'something', and (iii) after an indefinite noun followed by an adjective, prepositional phrase or attributive clause is well-documented (Blau 1981: 167-202). In the first two instances, tanwīn ʾalif is most commonly expressed with the Hebrew grapheme ʾalef, e.g., ‫אחדא‬ 'someone', while in the latter, an independent morpheme, comprising ʾalef + nun (i.e. ‫)אן‬ occurs (see Baneth 1945Baneth -1946and Blau 1981). In AIU VII.C.16, we find three instances in which tanwīn ʾalif is employed. In two of these, a solitary nun is attached to the indefinite noun ʾaḥad when used in the negative construction 'there is no'/there is not' (lā li-nafy al-ǧins): ‫ולא‬ ‫אחדן‬ ‫יהא‬ ‫פ‬ ‫ישבע‬ 'and no one there is satisfied' (recto, line 9); ‫ואן‬ ‫מות‬ ‫וחדי‬ ‫מא‬ ‫אחדן‬ ‫בחאלי‬ ‫לם‬ ‫אדרי‬ 'and if I died alone, no one would know of my situation!' (verso, lines 11-12). So, rather than the accusative without tanwīn one would anticipate in CA (i.e. lā ʾaḥada 'there is no one…'), the nun used here indicates that the indefinite (accusative) marker -(a)n is intended; the phrase would have been pronounced wa-lā ʾaḥadan (see Blau 1981: 29). In the third example, the ʾalef + nun particle is attached to the indefinite noun šayʾ: 'Then the Cairene said, 'In Cairo, I have something…'' (verso, lines 18-19). Unlike in the examples drawn on by Blau (1981) and Baneth (1945Baneth ( -1946, in this example, ʾalef + nun act as a bound morpheme rather than an independent entity, and are not followed by an adjective, prepositional phrase or attributive clause.

Genitive case ending
In the final few lines (20-23) of verso, the Hebrew grapheme yod, expressing the genitive case ending -i, is found on four definite nouns, which are either in a prepositional phrase or the second term of the construct state. The plene spelling of the genitive case ending grants us insight into the rhythm in which the tale would have been recited:

Independent preposition fy (CA: fī) + definite article
Another feature often noted in analyses of late JA texts is the writing of the independent preposition fy 'in' (CA: fī) as a bound morpheme, when preceding the definite article. This phenomenon has various manifestations in late JA: the definite article and the independent preposition fuse, forming a separate entity, which retains either the ʾalef of the definite article ‫,)פאל ( 17 Referred to in Arabic grammars as the 'sun ' and 'moon' letters (al-ḥurūf al-šamsiyya wa-l-ḥurūf alqamariyya, respectively).
18 For a more detailed explanation of the possible origins of the separation of the definite article from the noun it modifies in late Judaeo-Arabic, see CONNOLLY 2018b: 101-102. 19 In one instance, the definite article and independent preposition are represented as ‫:פאל‬ ‫ריפ‬ ‫פאל‬ 'in the countryside' (verso, line 7). However, the peh appears to have been initially omitted, and then inserted at a later date.
However, it is also worth noting that the merging of these two entities is not always found here. The two are also regularly written as separate entities, e.g., ‫חאל‬ ‫אל‬ ‫פי‬ 'in the circumstance' (verso, lines 14-15); ‫ייעאת‬ ‫צ‬ ‫אל‬ ‫פי‬ 'in the estates' (recto, line 18).

Peh for fāʾ + diacritical dot
Another development in late JA orthography is the common inclusion of a diacritical dot or dash above peh for fāʾ, often accompanied by a shift in its graphical representation with a vertical tail, i.e., ‫ף‬ (as in Hebrew orthography) to a curved tail, which descends below the line and then curves back upwards, i.e., ‫פ‬ (perhaps in imitation of its Arabic equivalent (see Connolly 2018a; 2018b: 14-17 for more detailed discussions of this late JA orthographic development)). In AIU VII.C.16, these parallel burgeoning trends are apparent; peh for fāʾ is written with a supralinear diacritical dot in 26.8% of instances (ibid.: 14), and the grapheme's tail curves upwards at the end in final form (ibid.: 16-17).

Tafḫīm and tarqīq
Tafḫīm is a term employed by the Arab grammarians to describe the diffusion of 'emphasis' from a single 'emphatic' phoneme to adjacent vowel(s) and consonant(s). The direction of this emphatic diffusion may be either regressive or progressive, affecting the pronunciation of an adjacent syllable or of an entire word (Davis 1995: 466;Watson 1999: 289-290;Davis 2009: 637). Tarqīq refers to the opposing phenomenon in which 'emphasis' is lost.
As Goitein notes, there are several instances of these two phenomena in AIU VII. C.16 (1972: 258 The representation of the initial letter of the following word with the Hebrew grapheme sin rather than ṣādeh (its orthographic cognate) may be indicative of the realisation of qāf as a glottal stop [ʔ], which is its general pronunciation in MCA, e.g., ‫סקעא‬ ‫ואל‬ 'and the frost' (verso, line 8) (ECA: saʾʿa; CA: ṣaqʿa). The same may be said of the following word; ‫בדיקת‬ 'about the narrowness of… (recto, line 10) (ECA: dīʾa; CA: ḍayqa, ḍīqa).

Evidence of ʾimāla
The raising of the long vowel /ā/ and short vowel /a/ towards /ī/ and /i/ (referred to as ʾimāla), respectively, is a well-documented phenomenon in a number of spoken Arabic dialects (see Levin 1971).

ʾImāla in tāʾ marbūṭa (construct state)
In AIU VII.C.16, there is one instance in which the feminine ending /a/ of a construct state's first term is written with yod + tav: ‫לחמית‬ '(the) meat of…(i.e. beef)' (verso, line 24). This indicates that the pronunciation would be akin to [laħmɛt ̴ laħmɪt] rather than 20 MCA also has a voiced pharyngealised alevolar fricative reflex of ẓāʾ that is not uncommon (WATSON 2002: 15).

Summary
The contents of AIU VII.C.16 adheres to the general principles of late JA orthography (in so far as they are currently understood) in its continued use of some classical JA spelling practices, its high degree of phonetic features, revealing the influence of colloquial Arabic, and the discernible Hebrew spelling influences.