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A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic

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Esther-Miriam Wagner

II. Reader

14. Egypt: Damurdāšī’s chronicle of Egypt (first half of 18th century)

Jérôme Lentin

Texte intégral

1Chronicle of al-ʾamīr ʾAḥmad al-Damurdāšī (middle of the 18th century), Al-durra al-muṣāna fī ʾaḫbār al-kināna (manuscript: British Museum OPB MSS OR 173, copied by Miḫāʾīl Ṣabbāġ, Ms pp. 218–19; ed. Crecelius and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb 1991, 198; ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 1989, 121–22)1

Transcription

Translation

2(Crecelius and ʿAbd al-Wahhab Bakr 1991, 199)

3Let us come back to ʿAbdīn Bāšā. At the end of his year [as governor], some people worked to set him against ʿAbdallah ʾAfandī the rūznāmjī (executive director of the Treasury) and he planned to kill him. But this latter got informed. He distributed the possessions dear to him, cut his beard, dressed up as a Kalandar dervish [qarandalī yūldāš], took a saddlebag where he put clothes and things he could need, and went to Būlāq disguised as a servant. He embarked on a germe boat and sailed to Damietta, from where he embarked on a galleon to Syria. We will come back to him later. On Tuesday, he [= ʿAbdīn Bāšā] searched for him but he could not find him. He ordered that everything that could be found in his house be seized. He [= ʿAbdallah ʾAfandī] had two houses, one for his women, and one for his servants and the kitchen. When the appointed ʾāġā wanted to enter the house of the women, the people of the quarter prevented him, saying: “He has nothing in this house.” The ʾāġā [just] confiscated what he had found and left. They [= ʿAbdallah ʾAfandī’s friends] claimed that he owed money to the land administration and that he had rented his shares to the elders [commanding officers] of the Jawīšiyya unit since he was their fellow. By doing that, they protected his shares from the Pasha. They pretended that they had bought them from him two years earlier, and that the renting-contracts are the best source of information on who pays. ʿAbdallah ʾAfandī lived in Damascus for eight years.

Commentary

41 b- has inexplicably been omitted in the two editions.

. For ḍamma in هـ representing the vowel [u] or [o] of the 3ms suffixed pronoun, see Lentin (2012, §3.9, 225–26).‘saddleback’ (classical ḫurj, colloquial ḫǝrǝž).. In Egyptian MA texts, verbs of movement often take a direct object (as they do in colloquial); cf.(but note.)م‘clothes, dress’ (colloquial).a kind of (small) boat. []. The formis rightly restored by the editors. This expression is frequently used in the text, as is also common in ‘popular’ literature, especially in the sīras.On lam used with the suffix conjugation, see Lentin (1997, 764–67).Similar to baʿaṯa/baʿat, the verb ʾarsal (a) often functions as a factitive auxiliary (see Lentin 1997, §14.5.1, 633–36); the auxiliary verb is generally in the perfect.. In Egyptian MA texts,is the most common quantifier for ‘all, whole, entire’, even before a singular (pro) noun, as is the case here. It is the exact equivalent of Levantine MA(see text II.9, no. 5).. The former oblique case of the dual form -ayn/ - ēn is the dominant form used in MA, regardless of the syntactic function of the noun (exactly like -īn in the sound mpl form, see text II.9, no. 13).Modal auxiliaries are very often asyndetically constructed in MA texts.. For lam negating some types of nominal clauses see Lentin (1997, 782). The colloquial verbis the normal (Near Eastern) MA verb for ‘to walk out, go away, leave’.. For the meaning ‘to claim, pretend to’, see Dozy (1881, I 198).. Plural of‘old man, senior’.. Colloquial turn of phrase indicating duration: prep. l (a)- + pers. pron. + noun indicating a period of time + predicative clause ‘he… for a (two, three…) year (s)/month (s)’.

Notes

1  For images see https://ia801308.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/ 21/items/M-0004/09794-.zip: 114/الدرة المصانة.tif (pp. 217–18); الدرة 115المصانة/.tif (pp. 219–20).

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