Social integration and dialect divergence in coastal Palestine

The history of Palestine has caused communities to be displaced and relocated, entailing that speech communities have been dismantled and created anew. The coastal cities of Jaffa and Gaza exemplify this reality. This study analyzes speakers from Jaffa, some of whom remained there and others residing in Gaza as refugees. Through an examination of three variables, (ʕ), (AH), and (Q), we shed light on the effects of dialect contact while highlighting the link between dialect contact and identity formation and maintenance. All three variables are found to be in varied states of change as a result of contact with other varieties of Arabic, as well as with Modern Hebrew. We conclude that (Q), through its high social salience, works to create and maintain a sense of community identity for Jaffan refugees in Gaza at a time when the speech of the larger Jaffa community is undergoing substantial linguistic change

Creativity, Random Selection, and \u3ci\u3epia fraus\u3c/i\u3e: Observations on Compilation and Transmission of the Arabian Nights

The number alf (1,000) in the Arabic title has been a permanent challenge for copyists and compilators committed to the transmission of texts of the Arabian Nights. “Complete” sets of the work seem to have survived in their entirety only a short time. So copyists must have felt invited to (re)create a complete Nights. This paper presents the different solutions applied by copyists and compilators in order to achieve their ambitious goals, the honest and deceitful methods and the tricks displayed in the Arabic texts as well as in the European translations of the Nights

Orienterlebnis und orientapperzeption bei Ulrich Jasper Seetzen und Joseph von Hammer.

Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from : Ulrich Jasper Seetzen (1767-1811): leben und werk-- Gotha: Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek, 1995

Professor dr. Franz Taeschner

Donated by Klaus Kreise

The Age of the Galland manuscript of the Nights: Numismatic Evidence for Dating a Manuscript?

The importance of the age of the Galland manuscript of the Nights derives from its being the oldest manuscript extant of this text. There is no date of transcription in the manuscript. In an earlier study, the present writer postulated 1426 as a date post quem because of the mention of the coin ashrafī (first issued by al-Ashraf Barsbāy in 1426). This date post quem has been rejected by Muhsin Mahdi, the editor of the manuscript, in a recent publication in which he attempted to identify the ashrafī mentioned in the text with the gold coin issued by al-Ashraf Khalil (1290–93). This article shows that his identification is untenable, and that the Galland manuscript, in all likelihood, was not copied earlier than 1450