Tobi_Written Judeo-Arabic_Colloquial vs Middle Arabic

2012 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978 90 04 22229 8

Middle Arabic and Mixed Arabic

Diachrony and Synchrony

Edited by

Liesbeth Zack and Arie Schippers

LEIDENBOSTON2012


CONTENTS

List of Illustrations .......................................................................................... viiAcknowledgements ........................................................................................ ix

Introduction: Middle and Mixed Arabic, A New Trend in Arabic Studies ............................................................................................. 1Johannes den Heijer

Moyen arabe et varits mixtes de larabe : premier essai de bibliographie, Supplment no 1 ............................................................. 27Jrme Lentin

Some Remarks about Middle Arabic and Saadya Gaons Arabic Translation of the Pentateuch in Manuscripts of Jewish, Samaritan, Coptic Christian, and Muslim Provenance .................. 51Berend Jan Dikken

Linguistic and Cultural Features of an Iraqi Judeo-Arabic Text of the qia al-anbiy Genre ................................................................. 83Lutz Edzard

Deux types de moyen arabe dans la version arabe du discours 41 de Grgoire de Nazianze? .................................................................. 95Jacques GrandHenry

Prsentation du livre Le Conte du Portefaix et des Trois Jeunes Femmes, dans le manuscrit de Galland (XIVeXVe sicles)........... 113Bruno Halflants

Judeo-Arabic as a Mixed Language ........................................................... 125Benjamin Hary

The Story of Zayd and KalA Folk Story in a Judaeo-Arabic Manuscript ................................................................................................... 145Rachel Hasson Kenat


vi contents

Towards an Inventory of Middle and Mixed Arabic Features: The Inscriptions of Deir Mar Musa (Syria) as a Case Study ......... 157Johannes den Heijer

Qui est arabophone? Les varits de larabe dans la dfinition dune comptence native ........................................................................ 175Amr Helmy Ibrahim

Perspectives ecdotiques pour textes en moyen arabe: Lexemple des traits thologiques de Sulaymn al-azz ........... 187Paolo La Spisa

Normes orthographiques en moyen arabe: Sur la notation du vocalisme bref ............................................................................................. 209Jrme Lentin

Playing the Same Game? Notes on Comparing Spoken Contemporary Mixed Arabic and (Pre)Modern Written Middle Arabic ............................................................................................. 235Gunvor Mejdell

Middle Arabic in Moshe Dars Judaeo-Arabic Poems ....................... 247Arie Schippers

Written Judeo-Arabic: Colloquial versus Middle Arabic .................... 265Yosef Tobi

Yefet ben Elis Commentary on the Book of Zechariah .................... 279Kees de Vreugd

Damascus Arabic According to the Compendio of Lucas Caballero (1709) ................................................................................ 295Otto Zwartjes and Manfred Woidich

List of Contributors ........................................................................................ 335Index ................................................................................................................... 341


WRITTEN JUDEO-ARABIC: COLLOQUIAL VERSUS MIDDLE ARABIC

Yosef Tobi

Summary: Medieval Judeo-Arabic (MWJA) was written with Hebrew characters, and used for the Judeo-Arabic literature shared by all Jewish scholars in the domain of medieval Arab-Muslim culture. Its status was like that of literary Classical Arabic among the Muslim Arabic speakers. However, MWJA had never been a living spoken language and its life did not extend beyond four or five hundred years (tenthfifteenth centuries). Yet, Arabic continued to function as a spoken language. Its numerous dialects also served as a writ-ten communicative vehicle, and for literature in various genres. This is true in regard to medieval Judeo-Arabic, opposed to the notion that MWJA of the school of Saadya was the only one used by Jews in the Middle Ages. Actually, colloquial Judeo-Arabic has existed as a written language for almost fifteen hundred years, since pre-Islamic time. Today, one of the important assignments is to carry out a meticulous and comprehensive comparative examination of the ancient and later non-classical Arabic languages in order to better understand the history of Judeo-Arabic.

1.Introduction

Middle Arabic is the current name used by the recent two generations for medieval non-classical written Arabic. Thus, by the recent two genera-tions it was used for medieval Judeo-Arabic (MWJA), mostly thanks to the enormous life work of Prof. Joshua Blau.1 This Arabic, written with Hebrew characters, was used for the vast production of Judeo-Arabic lit-erature of all genres and was shared by all Jewish scholars in the spacious domain of medieval Arab-Muslim culture. In this respect, its status among the Arabic-speaking Jewish communities was like that of literary Classical Arabic (CA) among the Muslim Arabic speakers, which has been used for written Arabic literature since the seventh century until today. Yet one can distinguish MWJA because of its grammatical, syntactical, and stylis-tic leniency, compared to the extremely strict rules of CA, and its distance from the highly flowery style so typical of CA.

As known, although insuffficiently heeded by its researchers, MWJA had never been a living spoken language, and its life did not extend beyond four or five hundred years in the centres of literary creativity in the

1Blaus studies about MWJA are too many to be detailed here. However, two of them should be mentioned in this context: Blau 1988 and 1999.

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Eastern lands, North Africa and Spain from the tenth through the fif-teenth centuries. In some of these countries, it stopped being used for writing after the fourteenth century (Vajda 1980; Tobi 2010: 2734). One notable exception is Yemen, where Jews kept on with italthough not exclusivelyfor teaching and writing up to recent generations.2 A very significant testimony is the story of a Jewish scholar in Yemen in the first half of the twentieth century, who came across a Judeo-Arabic translation of a printed version of Song of Songs:3

Now even though the meaning of his words was diffficult for me in certain places, since it was [written in] the Babylonian (Iraqi) language and not [in] pure [Arabic], nevertheless, I corrected it according to the language of Rav Saadia Gaon, which is almost habitual in our mouths.

Evidently, the disappearance of MWJA did not impact in any respect the use of Arabic as a living spoken language among Jewish communities, whose surrounding majority spoke Arabic. Nor did its existence as a writ-ten language have any impact on the use of Arabic as vernacular. Even its invention in the tenth century was not the real reason causing those communities to speak Arabic. Spoken Arabic was always clearly separated from MWJA, since as a living colloquial language it was much richer than MWJA.4 In fact, there was no common spoken Judeo-Arabic, but scores of diffferent dialects, to such an extent that a speaker of one dialect could not understand a speaker of another, even, and not infrequently, in the same country. In principle, a specific Judeo-Arabic dialect is the same one spo-ken by the Arab or Muslim majority in a certain country, even if it difffers in some respects, such as its Hebrew component and even phonetically, from the majority dialect.5

2See Goitein in Habshush 1941: 7281; Blau 1984; Tobi 1991; Tobi 1999: 400403.3Tobi 1991: 138.4This may be easily shown if we compare the only comprehensive dictionary we have

for the medieval Judeo-Arabic texts (Blau 2006) with the only comprehensive one we have for a single new written and spoken dialect of Judeo-Arabicthat of Iraq (Avishur 20092010). Unfortunately, no such work has been carried out for another dialect of Judeo-Arabic. We should, however, mention M. Piamentas Dictionary of Post-Classical Yemeni Arabic (Piamenta 19901991/1), of which Judo-Yemeni, the language of the Yemeni Jews is an essential part (ibid., I,v).

5Innumerable studies have been written about the Hebrew component in Judeo-Arabic dialects, of which might be mentioned five wide-ranging ones: Avishur 2001 (Iraq, Syria, Egypt); Ben-Yaacob 1985; Bar-Asher 1992 (North Africa); Bahat 2002 (Morocco); Henshke 2007 (Tunisia). The documentation and study of the Hebrew and Aramaic com-ponent in the Judeo-Arabic dialects is an important part of The Synoptic Dictionary of the Hebrew and Aramaic Component in the Jewish Languages in the Mediterranean Basin, an

written judeo-arabic: colloquial vs. middle arabic 267


2.The Wide Variety of Written and Oral Judeo-Arabic Literature

The numerous Judeo-Arabic dialects were not solely used for oral com-munication; they also served as a daily written communicative vehicle, for instance in correspondence, and dialects were even used for literature in various genres. Thus in liturgy, we have biblical translations (ars), poems recited in synagogue, and halakhic material; while in the secular field, mostly in folk literature, we have folktales, folk poems, and prov-erbs. This is true not only in regard to new Judeo-Arabic, but in regard to medieval Judeo-Arabic as well. Opposed to the notion, to which the central scholars of this domain were clinging, namely that MWJA of the school of Saadya was the only one used by Jews in the Middle Ages, while ignoring texts found in the Cairene Geniza written not in accordance with the rules of this classical MWJA,6 a modified outlook is recently being adopted by new researchers. That is to say, throughout the Middle Ages there existed not only one, unique classical MWJA, but there existed a variety of MWJA. This understanding was unequivocally proved in a recent search of letters preserved in the Geniza (Wagner 2010), but, as we shall see below, this is factual in respect to other written genres of Judeo-Arabic. The new conception and its significance to the history of the Arabic language and its dialects, is correctly expressed in the short description of this recent publication:7

The Cairo Genizah has preserved a vast number of medieval and post-medi-eval letters written in the Jewish variety of Arabic. The linguistic peculiari-ties of these letters provide an invaluable source for the understanding of the history of the Arabic language and the development of Arabic dialects. This work compares and contrasts various linguistic features of Judaeo-Arabic letters from diffferent periods, and is one of the first studies to present a comprehensive linguistic investigation into non-literary Judaeo-Arabic. Its main focus is to provide an extensive diachronic linguistic description, while distinguishing between features of epistolary Arabic and vernacular phenomena. This study should be of interest to anyone working on the Arabic language, sociolinguistics, general historical linguistics and language typology.

all-embracing project founded by the late Prof. Shelomo Morag, which is currently carried out at The Jewish Oral Traditions Research Center in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

6Classical MWJA is the variety established by Saadya Gaon and accepted as a com-mon written (only!) language in all countries where Jews spoke Arabic.

7As advertised by Brill: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=30673.

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Beyond doubt, colloquial Judeo-Arabic changes when it is transferred to the phase of a written or printed text; however, it is basically the same language in terms of lexicon, semantics, and grammar, and its orthogra-phy reflects the particular accent of the local Jewish speakers. This kind of popular or so-calledunjustly and incorrectlyvulgar literature, of which only a tiny part has been documented in manuscript or in print, is only now being widely recorded and examined by scholars whose scientific-academic background is not Middle Eastern studies but Judaic studies. However, some of the Judeo-Arabic spoken dialects were studied by pioneer scholars in this field: M. Cohen (1912, Algiers), S.D. Goitein (in Habshush 1941, Yemen), D. Cohen (19641975, Tunis), J. Mansour (1991, Baghdad).

3.The Importance of the Non-Classical Written and Oral Judeo-Arabic Literature for the History and Culture

of the Jews in the Islamic World

Middle East scholars generally focus on literature written in classical lan-guages, and in principle ignore dialectal languages and their literature, oral or written. But it is exactly this kind of literature that is exceedingly significant for Judaic studies researchers, more specifically those who deal with Jewish communities in Arab lands, in the Near East or in North Africa, and not in medieval times but following the expulsion from Spain. These researchers, whose academic field is the social and cultural history of Jewish communities, make use of inexhaustible and diverse sources, oral and written, which in general are ignored and neglected, if not negated, by most Middle Eastern studies scholars. A fundamental contri-bution by Judaic studies researchers should be singled outthe recording of a great many texts from the oral tradition, liturgical as well as popular. In doing so, they have rescued valuable linguistic and literary treasures, otherwise doomed to oblivion with the peoplemen and womenwho carried them in their memory.8 As mentioned earlier, a tiny part of that

8Again, a huge amount of scholarly and unscholarly publications have appeared in the last two generations, mostly in Israel and by scholars who were born in Arab speaking countries or by scholars whose parents came from these countries. By and large, these works refer to linguistic aspects of the written and oral literature in Judeo-Arabic dialects, less to the literary and social-linguistic aspects, while rarely to the historical significance of the Judeo-Arabic literature and to the cultural and social inter-relationship between the Jewish minority and the Muslim majority. We may remark here four of these studies:



oral Judeo-Arabic literature has been documented in manuscripts, but we should draw our attention to sources about which not enough is known or taken into account: thousands of Judeo-Arabic books, booklets, and leaf-lets that were printed in the Jewish print houses in the Near East, North Africa, India, and Livorno during the past one hundred and fifty years. Only some of these sources may be found in academic or public libraries, while others are kept in private collections or are completely lost.9

We may conclude, then, that Judeo-Arabic vernaculars served not only as a vibrant and developing spoken language, but also as a written, liter-ary language. As such, they incorporated a comprehensive set of rules of grammar, syntax, and style. As mentioned, these rules were not as strict and pedantic as CA, and even not as MWJA itself. But nobody who has examined texts in this vulgar language can ignore that they are written according to a quite consistent orthography, answering all problems aris-ing in the process of transferring an oral language to script. This should be especially noted, as dialectal Judeo-Arabic struggled with that issue much earlier than did the Arabic spoken by the surrounding majority.10 That happened simply because the educated class of the majority popula-tion could not agree to write the spoken language. Actually, until recent times, no clear and easy system has been invented in Arab countries for writing the spoken language. Scholars of Arabic language in Arab coun-tries believe that the infiltration of the mmiyya into written Arabic is unfavourable and should be rejected. They denounce it, warn against it, and consequently, avoid from any step which might legitimize it. Ara-bic Language Academies dealt with Arabic transcription of consonants of European languages and took quite clear decisions in this issue, but they apparently have never dealt with transcription of the mmiyya.11

Avishur 1987 (Iraqi womens folk songs); Hary 1992 (Egypt); Tobi 2000 (Tunisia); Bar-Asher 1998; Chetrit 2007 (North Africa).

9Unfortunately, there is only one bibliographical work, in which are listed all prints of popular Judeo-Arabic in a certain country. We allude to Attal 2007 (northern Tunisia, 1427 items, excluding some hundred publications in popular Judeo-Arabic printed in Djerba, southern Tunisia). This bibliography is based on Attals magnificent private collection of Judeo-Arabic prints from Tunisia, which has recently been acquired by the National and University Library in Jerusalem.

10The basic study for how Hebrew characters were adapted in classical MWJA Arabic is Blau 1980: 1756. There is no comprehensive work about how Hebrew characters were adapted in the various, or in a specific, dialectal written Judeo-Arabic. However, partial descriptions are included in not a few of the studies about this written Judeo-Arabic. For a theoretical discussion of this issue see Tedghi 1997; 2002.

11However, there frequently appear on the internet private suggestions for writing the mmiyya, mostly for computer purposes. See for example the recently published

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Certainly, Arabic mmiyya is well represented in print, including whole literary texts, especially folk literature, but no solid system of writing has been consolidated so far. This, as mentioned above, is in sharp contrast to Judeo-Arabic.12

4.The Lifetime of Non-Classical Judeo-Arabic

In contrast to the relatively short life-time of MWJA, four-five hundred years, and its complete vanishing, colloquial Judeo-Arabic has existed as a written language for almost fifteen hundred years. There is valuable evi-dence, basically from early Muslim sources (Tobi 2001: 2025; Tobi 2004b), but partially epigraphic, that Jewish communities in north-west Arabia wrote Arabic in Hebrew characters (Noja 1979: 312fff; Hopkins 2009). This is not surprising: first, because Jews have since ancient times been accus-tomed to writing in Hebrew characters the foreign languages that they spoke, like Aramaic, which was not written by Jews in Syriac characters; second, because prior to Islam, Arabic writing was far from being current; indeed, the first written Arabic book was the Qurn, which certainly was not written down in Muammads life time (Schoeler 2002). We know from many Geniza fragments, only recently noticed by scholars, that non-classical written Judeo-Arabic existed in the Middle Ages alongside MWJA and even preceded it. These findings disabused the common opinion that non-classical written Judeo-Arabic appeared for the first time only with the Sermons (dert) of Maimonides grandson, David Ha-Nagid (12121300) (Tobi 2006: 2133). Although MWJA had greatly reduced the use of non-classical written Judeo-Arabic, it did not eliminate it entirely. The evaporation, as it were, of MWJA, which resulted in part from the loosening of direct links with Muslim Arabic literature, encouraged the use of non-classical Judeo-Arabic as a written language alongside Hebrew. At the other end of the historical scale, Judeo-Arabic was used for corre-spondence and even in publishing by the Jews of Tunisia up to the 1960s (Tobi 2010: 274277).

suggestion, titled arqa ilwa li-kitbat urf al-laha al-mmiyya (it can be found with Google). I thank Dr. Shlomit Shraybom Shivtiel, who studied the Arabic Language Acad-emy in Egypt, for providing me with the information about this question. See Shraybom Shivtiel 1999; 2005.

12In my paper about Judeo-Arabic prints in North Africa 18501950, presented in the Third Symposium on History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East, University of Leipzig, 2427 September 2008, I dealt with the crystal-lization of the orthography of Judeo-Arabic in consequence of its being printed.



5.The Ancient Judeo-Arabic

Once we are aware that non-classical Judeo-Arabic had continuously existed as a written language, we have to inquire how it related to MWJA. If we embrace the possibility that Judeo-Arabic already existed before Islam, and if we take in account that Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) was the first to summarize the rules of the orthography of CA (Haarmann 1981: 169) and that the orthography of CA was consolidated only in the tenth century (Robin 2001: 546), we may realize why non-classical written Judeo-Arabic, which preceded Saadya Gaon (882942), did not adapt the orthography of CA. My impression, based on many fragments of varied literary pieces written in non-classical Judeo-Arabic, is that most of its orthographic dis-tinctions are common to other languages that were current in its vicinity.13 First, naturally, were Hebrew and Aramaic, both used by Jews as spoken and written languages, whichas clearly proved from the Qumrn scrolls of the first century CE and from the fragments from the tenthtwelfth centuries CE preserved in the Cairene Genizawere strictly written in terms of consonants, but very lenient in terms of vowels (matres lectio-nis), In fact, the orthography of Hebrew has never been consolidated in this respect. Secondly, however, we should not rule out the diffferent pre-Islamic north-Arabian languages known only from epigraphic sources, but spoken in the areas where Jewish communities were dispersed in the north-west of the Arabian Peninsula, that their orthography at that time was far from being consolidated. And, of course, there was what is called CA, which existed from the seventh up to the tenth century, when its orthography was eventually stabilized. The study of these languages started at the beginning of the twentieth century, but the past generation has seen enormous advances, based on hundreds of inscriptions. Special attention should be paid to sources from the pre-Islamic city of Fau in southern Saudi Arabia. Of the scholars dealing with the inscriptions found in the Arabian desert, I would cite in particular Michael Macdonald of Oxford and Christian Robin of Paris.14

From early Muslim sources, we know that the Jews of north-west Ara-bia translated the Pentateuch into the Arabic they spoke, the yahdiyya

13For a description of the orthographic distinctions of the ancient Judeo-Arabic see Blau-Hopkins 1984; Tobi 1993: 100110; for other descriptions see the many references in Tobi 2001: 22, n. 53.

14See, for example, Macdonald 2000; 2004; 2009; Robin 2001; 2006; see also Eichmann et al. 2006.

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(Newby 1971; Newby 1988: 2122).15 We may conjecture that this transla-tion was done for students in the Jewish schools, about which we know, again, from early Muslim sources (Lecker 1998, III:259). It is noteworthy, that in Muammads entourage there were people who could read and understand the Judeo-Arabic translations, such as Zayd ibn bit who studied in a Jewish school in Yarib (ibid.), and even the Old Scriptures in Hebrew, such as Waraqa ibn Nawfal, the cousin of Xada, Muammads wife, who,16

during the pre-Islamic Period became a Christian and used to write the writing with Hebrew letters. He would write from the Gospel in Hebrew as much as Allah wished him to write.

It is also said about him, that he used to read the Gospel in Arabic.17However, we could just as well assume the existence of the Judeo-

Arabic translationoral or writtenbased on the tradition of all Jewish communitiessince ever to modern timesto translate the Scriptures, especially the Pentateuch, into the local spoken language. As all Jews were literate at least since the second century CE, we may assume that the Judeo-Arabic translation in Arabia was written down there, and was later transferred to Iraq by Jews who were expelled from north-west Arabia after the advent of Islam. The use of the Judeo-Arabic translation spread not only throughout Iraq, but also to other countries where Jews changed their colloquial language from Aramaic to Arabic. It spread to such an extent that there was more than one translation of the Pentateuch as well as translations of the books of the Prophets and the Hagiography (Tobi 1996; Tobi 2006: 31). The didactic goal of the translation is proved by a later kind of translation, known as alf; namely, a translation or explana-tion of selected words according to their occurrence in a certain biblical book.18

With the passage of time, the texts of additional genres that existed among the Jews of Iraq and neighbouring countries, the main Jewish spiri-tual and national centre during the Fimid Caliphate, were translated from Hebrew or Aramaic into non-classical Judeo-Arabic and written down for the benefit of the younger generations, who became more

15See also Tobi 2001: 21 and the references in n. 17.16a al-Buxr, vol. 1, Book 1:3 (http://www.theholybook.org/content/view/9258/16).17Ibid., vol. 4, Book 55:605.18For this special sort of commentary on the Bible and other canonical texts written in

the ancient Judeo-Arabic see Tobi 1998; 2006: 3132, 5566; Polliack-Somekh 2000; Eldar 2001.



familiar with Arabic than with the traditional national languages (Tobi 2006: 32, 5154, 6773). An on-the-mark illustration of this trend is a responsum by Rav Narunai Gaon from the mid-ninth century in regard to the congregants of a certain Baghddi synagogue who requested sub-stituting the recited traditional Aramaic translation of the weekly portion with an Arabic rendition (Narunai 1994: 152154; Tobi 2001: 2627).

The non-classical Judeo-Arabic and its orthography were used for any text composed in or translated into Arabic, such as private correspon-dence (Blau-Hopkins 1984; 1987), religious law, folkloric essays, and even a philosophical composition (Tobi 2006: 32). Admittedly, the orthography of ancient Judeo-Arabic did not propose an exact and stable system of graphical signs for writing. But this is not exceptional: first, because no language attains perfect matching between its phonetics and orthogra-phy; secondly, all other non-Hebrew orthographies used for Arabic since pre-Islamic times, including Arabic script itself, were not exact and stable. Thus, for instance, during the Medinese Caliphate (622661), four essen-tial principles were established for Arabic script: (a) one, two, or three diacritical points to distinguish between similar letters; (b) a special sign to indicate the long vowel ; (c) the t marbah; and (d) signs to indicate short vowels, the absence of a vowel, and the doubling of a consonant (Robin 2006).

6.Saadya as Stabilisator of Judeo-Arabic

The stabilisation of the orthography of CA in the second half of the ninth century probably gave Saadya, the most eminent Jewish scholar of his time and for some generations thereafter, his main incentive to develop a new system of Judeo-Arabic orthography, one that matched CA as much as possible. But it should be stressed that he did not change the traditional Hebrew script used for writing Arabic for many generations, and this in accordance with his general philosophy regarding Arabic cultureprox-imity and distance. That is, his determination to raise Jewish culture to its highest level, but at the same time to protect its distinctiveness and validity in comparison with other, false cultures (Tobi 2004a: 107fff). Abraham ibn Ezra somewhat vaguely refers to this determination: (=[Saadya] translated the Pentateuch into the lan-guage of the Ishmaelites using their script). Some scholars tend to deduce that Saadya wrote his biblical translation (tafsr) in Arabic characters (Blau 1999: 3941), but no evidence has been found for this contention.

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Now, with the discovery of not a few Geniza fragments of pre-Saadya, non-classical Judeo-Arabic biblical translations, which Saadya unques-tionably had right before his eyes while composing his translation, we have to render the Hebrew word , not in their script, but in their orthography (Tobi 1993: 113114).

7.The Survival of Non-Classical Judeo-Arabic

Despite the swift dissemination of Saadyas new orthographic system and despite the almost complete cutting offf of Arabic-speaking Jewish communities from non-classical Arabic, pre-Saadya non-classical Judeo-Arabic did not disappear, as its literature was copied and re-copied. As mentioned, the first non-classical Judeo-Arabic work indisputably com-posed after the tenth century is David Ha-Nagids Sermons in the thir-teenth century; but we cannot ignore the fact that other works of that kind have been discovered in the Geniza collections. Since Ha-Nagids work, the non-classical language form had gradually taken priority in Judeo-Arabic literature.19

The conclusion is, then, unambiguous: non-classical Judeo-Arabic was a permanent phenomenon as a written language among a proportion of the Jewish people over the course of fifteen hundred years, at least from the sixth century in pre-Islamic Arabia through the mid-twentieth cen-tury, excluding the period from the tenth through the fourteenth century, when MWJA predominated. Our knowledge about ancient non-classical Judeo-Arabic is incomplete, because only its remnants were saved in the Geniza and, in general, they did not draw the attention of researchers, many of whom even rejected these sources.

The general impression arising from a comparison of the orthography of ancient and medieval non-classical Judeo-Arabic with the later orthog-raphy of non-classical Judeo-Arabic after the expulsion from Spain is that the two are analogous. In principle, they similarly solve problems involved with writing Arabic in Hebrew script, not to speak of their relation to the colloquial language. Their common platform, which clearly distinguished

19This kind of texts from what is usually depicted as the late Geniza are examined by Ms. Rachel Hasson Kenat in her doctoral dissertation at the Hebrew University of Jerusa-lem. In the third conference of the International Association for the Study of Middle and Mixed Arabic (AIMA), Florence, October 2010, she presented a paper titled Popular lit-erature written in late Judaeo Arabic from the Firkovitch collection. See also Hasson 2010.



them from Saadyas MWJA, is their independence of the orthography of literary CA.

*Today, one of the important assignments for students of Judeo-Arabic is to carry out a meticulous and comprehensive comparative examina-tion of the ancient and later non-classical Arabic languages in order to better understand the history of Judeo-Arabic in its diffferent and diverse appearances and exposures. Of course, non-classical Judeo-Arabic and its literature should not be referred to as vulgar and defective when judged in relation to CA and its literature. The starting point of the study on written Judeo-Arabic, non-classical and classical, should be completely diffferent, and their interrelationships have to be examined in an unbiased manner by avoiding granting priority to CA.

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