A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic
|II. Reader
31. Excerpts from Yaʿqūb ṣanūʿ’s Abū Naḍḍāra Zarʾa and ʿabd Allāh al-Nadīm’s al-ustāḏ
Texte intégral
1This chapter presents excerpts from two of the most famous 19th- century Egyptian newspapers: Abu naḍḍāra zarʾa ‘The man with the blue eyeglasses’, founded by Yaʿqūb Ṣanūʿ in 1878, and al-Ustāḏ ‘The professor’, founded in 1892 by ʿAbd Allāh al-Nadīm. Both were satirical newspapers, critical of Egyptian society and of the regime, and both were (partially) written in Egyptian Arabic, which could be read aloud in order to make them accessible to the uneducated masses. This makes them interesting subjects for a comparative linguistic study.
Yaʿqūb Ṣanūʿ1
- 1 This is an abridged version of section 2 in Zack (2014). See also http://kjc-sv036.kjc.uni-heidelb (...)
- 2 See Gendzier (1966, 17).
- 3 Gendzier (1966, 6–17, 19).
- 4 Gendzier (1966, 29–38).
2The Jewish Egyptian journalist and playwright Yaʿqūb Ṣanūʿ, also known as James Sanua, was born in Cairo in 1839. His father Rafāʾīl was a Jewish merchant who moved from Livorno in Italy to Cairo at some point in the 19th century, while his mother, Sara, was a Cairene by birth. Rafāʾīl Ṣanūʿ worked as an adviser to Aḥmad Pasha Yagan, the nephew of Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha.2 Aḥmad Pasha Yagan sponsored Yaʿqūb during the course of a three-year period of academic formation in Livorno, where he studied political economy, international law, the natural sciences, and the fine arts. Upon his return to Cairo, Ṣanūʿ began work as a teacher.3 He became a follower of the great thinker Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afġānī, who encouraged him to apply his literary skills to the cause of reform and suggested using the theatre as an instrument of public education. The Khedive Ismāʿīl had opened two theatres in Cairo and Alexandria in 1869, on the occasion of celebrations in honour of the completion of the Suez Canal. Ṣanūʿ translated some European plays into Arabic, but also wrote others in both colloquial and Classical Arabic, setting them in Egyptian society. He was an important figure in the birth of Egyptian drama, and became known as the ‘Molière of Egypt’. However, since his plays contained satirical portrayals of Egyptian society and criticism of government officials, Ismāʿīl withdrew his support and banned his plays in 1872, ending his career as a dramatist.4
- 5 The first issue can be found here: http://kjc-sv036.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de:8080/exist/apps/naddara/ (...)
- 6 Due to censorship, he had to change the name of the newspaper regularly. There are issues entitled (...)
- 7 See also this webpage published by Heidelberg University for more information on Abu naḍḍāra and t (...)
3In 1878, Ṣanūʿ published the first issue of his satirical newspaper Abu naḍḍāra zarʾa ‘The man with the blue eyeglasses’,5 which was his own nickname. The publication was written in large part in colloquial Egyptian Arabic and contained imaginary dialogues and letters, sketches, fictitious minutes from meetings and dreams. In 1878, Ṣanūʿ was banned from Egypt because of his criticism of the regime. He consequently settled in Paris, but continued to publish the newspaper.6 The final issue appeared in December 1910. Ṣanūʿ remained in France for the rest of his life, even when changed political circumstances would have allowed him to return to Egypt. He died in Paris in 1912.7
4The excerpt presented here is from the fifth issue of Abu Naḍḍāra and discusses how Yaʿqūb Ṣanūʿ collected the materials for his newspaper. It is a fictional dialogue between Abu Naḍḍāra and Abu Khalīl. The dialogue is a stylistic device often used by Ṣanūʿ, as well as by the journalist ʿAbd Allāh al-Nadīm (1843– 1896) fifteen years later in his magazine al-Ustāḏ, as the next section demonstrates.
ʿAbd Allāh al-Nadīm
- 8 See Sadgrove (2012).
- 9 It was not uncommon in that era for shops to double as literary salons; see Doss (1998, 144).
- 10 See Sadgrove (2012).
5The Egyptian reformist ʿAbd Allāh b. Miṣbāḥ al-Ḥasanī, known as al-Nadīm ‘the boon companion’, was born in 1843 in Alexandria, where he studied at the mosque of Ibrāhīm Pasha. After completing his education, he worked for some time as a telegraph officer in the Delta and as an udabātī, an itinerant versifier.8 Later he owned a lingerie shop, in order to earn a living beside his work as a journalist. The shop doubled as a literary salon, where poets and writers met.9 In 1879, al-Nadīm joined the secret society Jamʿiyyat Miṣr al-Fatāt/Union de la Jeunesse Egyptienne, but soon left it to establish al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Islāmiyya ‘the Islamic Charitable Society’. In 1881, he first founded the satirical magazine al-Tankīt wa-l-Tabkīt ‘Joking and reproaching’ and then al-Ṭāʾif ‘The wanderer’. The latter became the organ of the followers of ʿUrābī Pasha, an Egyptian army colonel who aimed at ending the British occupation of Egypt. After the failure of the ʿUrābī revolt in 1882, al-Nadīm spent years in hiding and was finally arrested in 1891, exiled, and subsequently pardoned in 1892. Upon his return to Egypt, he founded the satirical newspaper al-Ustāḏ ‘The professor’, which ran from August 1892 until June 1893. He was then once again exiled and spent the rest of his life in Istanbul, where he died in 1896.10
6Al-Ustāḏ is a weekly satirical newspaper in which criticism of the Egyptian regime, the British occupation of Egypt, and various social issues are addressed, often in the form of dialogues. The first excerpt from al-Ustāḏ that is presented here is part of a series of dialogues entitled Madrasat al-banāt ‘the girls’ school’. The dialogue is between Zakiyya and Nafīsa. Nafīsa attends the girl’s school and Zakiyya asks her about the subjects she is learning, questioning the usefulness of subjects such as French and English. The second excerpt is also a dialogue between two women, Laṭīfa and Dimyāna. The text shows the problems caused by drinking alcohol. This fragment is interesting from a linguistic point of view, because *q is consistently written with a hamza, imitating the way it is pronounced in Cairene Arabic.
Transcription: Abu naḍḍāra zarʾa
- 11 = 24 April 1878.
7Excerpt from Abu naḍḍāra zarʾa, issue 5, year 1, 21 Rabīʿ Ṯānī 1295,11 1
Translation
- 13 Literally ‘with her well-being’. See Spiro (1895, 288):(...)
- 14 “(...)
- 15 This is probably the name of the coffee shop or its owner. The layy, pl. layyāt, is the flexible t (...)
- 16 See Badawi and Hinds (1986, 456b). The faʿʿāl-form is an intensive noun, so(...)
9(Abu Khalīl) What’s the matter with you, Abu Naḍḍāra? You haven’t got anything to do now other than writing this fine13 newspaper, or so it seems, because between the first issue and the second approximately two weeks passed, and only one week between the second and the third, and half a week between the third and the fourth, and hardly two days between the fourth and the fifth. By God, we haven’t had time to digest it, surely newspaper writing fever has taken hold of you. All right, so where do you get all this talk from? The guys in town say that in the evening you take off this hat of yours with its veil and your coat and your blue eyeglasses, and put on a turban that weighs ten pounds on the scale, and a turquoise robe, a striped caftan, a belt from Tripoli,14 and red shoes, with an artist’s bamboo cane in your hand, and you glue that wide beard of yours with two bits of gum so it becomes a goatee. Then you go into the Layyāti15 coffee shop, not to smoke hash, may God forbid, but to listen to the amusing words of the hashish-smokers16 and to enjoy the jokes and the funny anecdotes that you put in your famous newspaper, which has become like honey and sugar in everyone’s mouths and has detracted people from reading the great, useful newspapers. Is that right or is it a lie?
10(Abu Naḍḍāra) A bit of this and a bit of that.
- 17 The full title: 1204(...)
11(Abu Khalīl) It is said that you go to the shops of our colleagues the traders and meet up there with the eloquent young men looking for funny news stories, which you then transform into dialogues and theatre plays like the play about the monkey keeper, which took place in the days of the Mameluks,17 and the like.
12(Abu Naḍḍāra) That’s correct.
13(Abu Khalīl) And what is the purpose of this humorous newspaper of yours?
14(Abu Naḍḍāra) Amusing people, and presenting serious information in the form of humour.
- 18 Lit. ‘there you are’.
- 19 Lit. ‘you have spent the blood of your heart’.
- 20 Lit. ‘raised’.
15(Abu Khalīl) Well done, Abu Naḍḍāra! We, the people of this country, understand this matter. Our love for you is growing daily in our hearts, and we wish you all the best of luck. But oh grief, what is all this trouble going to get you? You’ve18 written books in European languages praising Egypt, you have translated the most wonderful poems of the Arabs in order to spread the word in the West about Oriental literature, their good manners, their freedom of religion, and the like, and you’ve founded an Arab theatre for us and have written around thirty comedies using your great talent, prose and poems, and have paid a very high price for it,19 and you have taught the people of our country to perform skilfully in the theatre, and you have started writing newspapers in all European languages and have created Arabic songs and set them to French music—so I wonder what you have gained from all of this? You have only made20 enemies and hostilities. […]
Transcription: Al-Ustāḏ
16Excerpt 1: al-Ustāḏ year 1, no. 11, 1 November 1892, 246
Translation
18The Girls’ School
19Zakiyya and Nafīsa
- 22 Lit. ‘my sister’.
20Z: Did you go to the teacher today? N: I attend school. Z: What are you learning in school, dear?22 N: I’m learning writing, reading, French, sewing and piano, and we have people who are learning English, and people who are learning European dancing. Z: Well, writing and reading, we’d say that, yes, they are useful so one day you can sit and read the Holy Quʾrān, or a book from which you learn things about your religion, but French and English, what are you going to do with those, are you going to marry a Frenchman or an Englishman? N: No, all the upper-class children learn French or English now. A woman may marry one of those men who know the language, so she can talk with him. Z: My dear, isn’t the man whom you’re going to marry a descendant of an Arab or a Turk? N: Yes. Z: Well, then learn the Arabic or Turkish language used by the people of our country when they talk to us. As for the descendant of an Arab or a Turk who puts his language aside and addresses his wife in French or English, he has no manners. He knows that we, girls from the East, are neither Frenchmen nor Englishmen, when he talks to us in their language. N: That means you’re not aware of what’s going in the world these days. Some girls from the Levant learn foreign languages at school and so do their husbands. Z: All right, those girls are dressed ‘à la European’ and have taken to the streets in house clothes like European ladies, but we, who only leave the house covered up, don’t get together with strange men and don’t go to the theatre or the ball, why should we and our veiled sisters in the Levant learn these languages […].
Transcription: Al-Ustāḏ
21Excerpt 2: al-Ustāḏ year 1, no. 7, 4 October 1892, 149–50
- 23 Read midahwil, not madhūl.
22Note23
Translation
23Laṭīfa and Dimyāna
- 24 Lit. ‘the mother of Girgis’, the kunya: calling a man or woman by the name of their eldest son.
- 25 Lit. ‘you don’t know the one who’s coming from the one who’s going’.
- 26 Lit. ‘know your duty’.
- 27 Lit. ‘sunken into the ground’, see Spiro (1895, 171a)(...)
- 28 A liquor made from raisins, see Spiro (1895, 246a) “(...)
- 29 Lit. ‘the two piastres’.
- 30 Diminutive of endearment of her son’s name Ḥinēn.
- 31 Lit. ‘you find me afraid’.
- 32 Lit. ‘the two pieces’. The dual is often used to indicate ‘some, a few’, just like English ‘a coup (...)
24D: Good day. L: Good day to you. What is this? Like the famous saying, you disappear for a year and then you show up for one day. D: I was at the wedding of Umm Girgis,24 may your children follow, and you know that she’s my dear friend and that she’s lonely, so when someone has a crowd like that, you don’t know who’s doing what.25 L: God bless you, by the Prophet, you are always ready to help,26 Umm Ḥinēn. We remembered you the other night when we were at Mrs. Ḥanīfa’s and we said, we wish Umm Ḥinēn were here to watch this. D: Did she have something going on, sister? L: Do you have something specific in mind like a wedding or an invitation? D: Yes, that’s what I’m saying. L: No, we were sitting and talking about drunkards and the nuisance they cause, and she was telling us about Mrs. Nagība and I was telling her a bit about my worries and misery, when her husband came in and fell among us and we sat laughing at him and said, we wish Umm Ḥinēn were here. D: What night did that happen? L: Last Tuesday night. D: You should have come and seen my worries and misery, your man is getting drunk one night a week or two nights a month, now it’s my turn, our man leaves his office and goes straight to the bar and he keeps on drinking that damned27 arrack28 until he can’t see where he’s walking and comes to me a wreck, and sometimes he falls in the street and comes home with his clothes soiled and the few piastres29 that were in his pocket have fallen out. By the Virgin, my sister, I have borrowed the money for the flour from Ḥannūna30 twice and I’m afraid31 that I will get more into debt and will have to sell the few bits32 of jewellery I still have […].
Commentary
Orthography33
- 33 See also Avallone (2016, 81–82), who analysed the orthography in a sample of 22 pages from Abu naḍ (...)
25(Ṣ=Ṣanūʿ, N1=Nadīm, first excerpt, N2=Nadīm, second excerpt)
Morphology
26The demonstrative هد is not fixed to the noun in راهنلأ هد innaharda (N1).
‘that’ is used for something that has been mentioned before:‘that night’ (N2). Nowadays, the distal demonstratives are ms dukha, fs dikha, and pl dukham/dukhum/dukhumma.34 However, until the beginning of the twentieth century, forms without the suffix h- were still found: dāk, dīk, dōk,35 especially in adverbs of time such as dīk innahār ‘that day’,36 dāk innōba ‘that time’.37-u and -um are interchangeable:andare found in the same sentence;yiʾaʿum.yiʾaʿ, which has been reported in 19th-century texts.38 Nowadays, it is pronounced yuʾaʿ.39 However, it may also reflect yuʾaʿ, because al-Nadīm mostly wrote the hamza on the yāʾ when occurring in the middle of the word (see above, Orthography). The kasra inyiʾaʿum confirms that the prefix was in fact pronounced yi-.(m),(f),(N1),(N1). The shortened form ḥa- is used in modern Cairene Arabic.Syntax
(N2) the first part of the genitive construction gets the article. This construction, which can also occur with iššuwayyit ‘the bit of… ’ is found in modern Cairene Arabic as well, but is ‘substandard’.40In this sentence, la, the first part of the negation la… wala, is missing.and‘in order to’, followed by a verb in the imperfect tense, are used in Ṣ. Nowadays, the form without ma is more common.41Notes
1 This is an abridged version of section 2 in Zack (2014). See also http://kjc-sv036.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de:8080/exist/apps/naddara/biography.htmlfor a short introduction to Ṣanūʿ’s life and works.
2 See Gendzier (1966, 17).
3 Gendzier (1966, 6–17, 19).
4 Gendzier (1966, 29–38).
5 The first issue can be found here: http://kjc-sv036.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de:8080/exist/apps/naddara/journals.html?collection=/db/data/commons/Abou_Naddara/Journals/1878/1_GaridatAbi-Naddara-Zarka_issues-001-015. It was published on 21 Rabīʿ al-awwal [12] 95 AH, which corresponds to 25 March 1878.
6 Due to censorship, he had to change the name of the newspaper regularly. There are issues entitled Al-naḍḍārāt al-miṣriyya ‘the Egyptian spectacles’, Abu ṣuffāra ‘the man with the whistle’, and Abu zummāra ‘the man with the oboe’, among others.
7 See also this webpage published by Heidelberg University for more information on Abu naḍḍāra and the other journals that Ṣanūʿ published in Paris: http://kjc-sv036.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de:8080/exist/apps/naddara/intro_journals.html. Scans of all the journals are available on this website as well.
8 See Sadgrove (2012).
9 It was not uncommon in that era for shops to double as literary salons; see Doss (1998, 144).
10 See Sadgrove (2012).
11 = 24 April 1878.
12 This is a typo. It was actually calledal-quradāti. It was published in Abu Naḍḍāra issue 4, 14 Rabīʿ Ṯānī 1295 = 17 April 1878, 2– 4.
13 Literally ‘with her well-being’. See Spiro (1895, 288):دأ this fine gentleman, this good fellow.”
14 “ṭarablus silk sash of Syrian make” (Spiro 1895, 362).
15 This is probably the name of the coffee shop or its owner. The layy, pl. layyāt, is the flexible tube of the water pipe (šīša), and layyāti is the nisba-adjective referring to this: ‘the one with the water pipe tubes’.
16 See Badawi and Hinds (1986, 456b). The faʿʿāl-form is an intensive noun, someans ‘those who take pulls [from the water pipe] often’.
17 The full title: 1204‘The monkey keeper—A historical theatre play taking place in the days of the Mameluks in the year 1204’. The year corresponds to 1789–1790 CE.
18 Lit. ‘there you are’.
19 Lit. ‘you have spent the blood of your heart’.
20 Lit. ‘raised’.
21 From, with l > r.
22 Lit. ‘my sister’.
23 Read midahwil, not madhūl.
24 Lit. ‘the mother of Girgis’, the kunya: calling a man or woman by the name of their eldest son.
25 Lit. ‘you don’t know the one who’s coming from the one who’s going’.
26 Lit. ‘know your duty’.
27 Lit. ‘sunken into the ground’, see Spiro (1895, 171a)‘a damned boy, a young rascal’.
28 A liquor made from raisins, see Spiro (1895, 246a) “native whiskey made of raisins.”
29 Lit. ‘the two piastres’.
30 Diminutive of endearment of her son’s name Ḥinēn.
31 Lit. ‘you find me afraid’.
32 Lit. ‘the two pieces’. The dual is often used to indicate ‘some, a few’, just like English ‘a couple of’. See Woidich (2006, 114).
33 See also Avallone (2016, 81–82), who analysed the orthography in a sample of 22 pages from Abu naḍḍāra and 21 pages from al-Ustāḏ.
34 See Woidich (2006, 46).
35 See for instance Hassan (1869, 88). These forms are very old; there are examples such as dīk ilʿuyūn from 14th-century Judaeo-Arabic texts, see Palva (1993, 181–83).
36 Gairdner (1917, 209).
37 El-Tantavy (1848, 126).
38 See, e.g., Spitta (1880, 223), who, however, remarks that it was more common in the countryside than in Cairo.
39 See Woidich (2006, 81).
40 Woidich (2006, 207).
41 Woidich (2006, 386).
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