A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic
|II. Reader
9. Lebanon: chronicle of al-ṣafadī (early 17th century [?])
Texte intégral
1In the first annex to their edition of al-Ṣafadī’s chronicle (about the period 1612–1624) Bustānī and Rustum (1969, 208–41) published a section dealing specifically with the years (1613–1618) Faḫr al-Dīn spent in Italy. For them, al-Ṣafadī (a scholar born in Ṣafad, who studied in Al-ʾAzhar in Cairo, and the author of learned works as well as of travelogues) is not the author of this text, an opinion which seems reasonable, but is not shared by all scholars.
2A recent edition is the 2007 volume Riḥlat al-ʾAmīr Faḫr al-Dīn ʾilā ’Īṭāliyā, 1613–1618. Faḫr al-Dīn al-Maʿnī al-ṯānī, ḥaqqaqahā wa-qaddama lahā Qāsim Wahb. Beirut: Al-Muʾassasa al-ʿarabiyya li-l-dirāsāt wa-l-našr and Abu Dhabi: Dār al-Suwaydī li-l-našr wa-l-tawzīʿ (Irtiyād al-ʾāfāq).
Transcription
Translation
3In the town of Florence, as in others, there are hospitals for ill people. Whoever falls ill and wants to go to the hospital will find there doctors and everything needed by an ill person. Even those with the most limited means, if medicines costing one thousand piasters are necessary, they treat them without any return obligation. They also get food, drink, bed, and blankets. People are there ready to provide all the care patients need. When the doctor sees that the ill person has recovered, they let him out without paying anything: he doesn’t pay a single dirham. All these expenses are funded from the endowment income [waqf-s] of the hospitals. They also have monasteries with attendants and wet nurses. Every time a woman of disrepute gives birth to a child, or a woman wants to keep the birth of her child a secret, or even when a poor man with many children has a [new] child, [in all these cases] they can leave the child at this place, to have it brought up. This monastery has a marble window the size of a new-born child. The woman brings the baby in swaddling clothes and drops it at night through this window. People are there inside waiting for her and when the baby comes down, they catch it and give it to the wet nurses who take charge of it. When the children grow up, they pay for them to learn to read [and write] and to learn a handicraft— but only the boys. As for the girls, when they reach puberty, they go around the city with them and marry any one of these girls to whoever agrees to do so. Whether it is to one of the children raised in the monastery or to one of the people outside, they give to him as a wife the girl he has singled out. The costs of their upbringing and marriage are covered by the endowment income of the monastery and at the expense of the sultan, because this is their way of doing things: the woman gives to the man the dowry—each according to his situation and to their [respective] rank. They also have monasteries for the daughters of the notables and monasteries for the daughters of the common people, where they turn them into nuns. And the same goes for the monasteries for boys and men. All those who enter the monasteries [in the case of the children of the common people] have their costs paid from the endowment income [waqf-s] of the monastery. As for the children of the notables, they are funded by their families.
Commentary
ʾaymǝn44rāḥ (and less frequently rawwaḥ) is the usual verb in MA for ‘to go’ and ‘to go to’. For this last meaning, the more stylistically elevated جوت ّ ه is also widely.
ūūnūnū fard īnnūnḫiliq ma bidd-hon yišǝhrūrabbātǝrbāytǝrbāyežābyžīb žuwwāžuwwātbarrābarrāt kibirzawājzawwajamitrabbyīn rǝžžālrijālržālTable des illustrations
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