Judeo-Arabic

{{further|History of the Jews under Muslim rule}}

Jewish use of Arabic in Arabia predates Islam. There is evidence of a Jewish Arabic dialect, similar to general Arabic but including some Hebrew and Aramaic lexemes, called al-Yahūdiyya, predating Islam. Some of these Hebrew and Aramaic words may have passed into general usage, particularly in religion and culture, though this pre-Islamic Judeo-Arabic was not the basis of a literature.{{rp|41-42|quote=There is some evidence that the Jews on the Arabian Peninsula during the pre-Is-

lamic period used a type of Jewish Arabic dialect called al-Yahūdiyya (Gil 1984:

206; Newby 1971, 1988: 21–23). This dialect was similar to the Arabic dialect used

by the general public but included some Hebrew and Aramaic lexemes, especially

in the domains of religion and culture. Some of these Hebrew and Aramaic words

passed into the speech and writing of the Arabs. This may explain the appear-

ance of words of Hebrew and Aramaic origin in the Quran. There is no evidence,

however, that Pre-Islamic Judeo-Arabic ever served as the vehicle of a distinct liter-

ature (see below in 4.2, as-Samaw'al bnu 'Ādiyā''s case). Yet al-Yahūdiyya writings

in Hebrew characters may also have existed (Newby 1971: 220).}}

There were Jewish Pre-Islamic Arabic poets, such as al-Samawʾal ibn ʿĀdiyā, though surviving written records of such Jewish poets do not indicate anything that distinguishes their use of Arabic from non-Jewish use of it, and their work according to Geoffrey Khan is generally not referred to as Judeo-Arabic. This work is similar to and tends to follow Classical Arabic, and Benjamin Hary, who calls it Classical Judeo-Arabic, notes it still includes some dialectal features, such as in Saadia Gaon's translation of the Pentateuch. This period includes a wide array of literary works.{{rp|42|quote=The second phase of Judeo-Arabic began in the eighth century in Egypt and

the ninth century elsewhere. This was the period in which the Judeo-Arabic Pho-

netic orthography was used, though alongside the Arabicized orthography (see

below). The appearance of Saadia ibn Yosef al-Fayyūmī's (882–942 CE) transla-

tion of the Pentateuch into Judeo-Arabic at the turn of the tenth century marks

the beginning of the third phase, Classical Judeo-Arabic. Although the written

form of this language contained dialectal features as well as pseudocorrections,

according to Blau (1999), it tended to follow the model of Classical Arabic to a

large extent. The works written in this period covered the entire spectrum of lit-

erary composition: theology, philosophy, biblical exegesis, philology, grammar,

lexicography, law, ritual, and literature, in addition to commercial and private

correspondence. Much of the material from this period has survived in several

genizot, most notably the Cairo Geniza. The number of works in this period

exceeded the number of Judeo-Arabic works of any other single period.}} Scholars assume that Jewish communities in Arabia spoke Arabic as their vernacular language, and some write that there is evidence of the presence of Hebrew and Aramaic words in their speech, as such words appear in the Quran and might have come from contact with these Arabic-speaking Jewish communities.

Before the spread of Islam, Jewish communities in Mesopotamia and Syria spoke Aramaic, while those to the West spoke Romance and Berber. With the Early Muslim conquests, areas including Mesopotamia and the eastern and southern Mediterranean underwent Arabization, most rapidly in urban centers. Some isolated Jewish communities continued to speak Aramaic until the 10th century, and some communities never adopted Arabic as a vernacular language at all. Although urban Jewish communities were using Arabic as their spoken language, Jews kept Hebrew and Aramaic, traditional rabbinic languages, as their languages of writing during the first three centuries of Muslim rule, perhaps due to the presence of the Sura and Pumbedita yeshivas in rural areas where people spoke Aramaic.

Jews in Arabic, Muslim majority countries wrote—sometimes in their dialects, sometimes in a more classical style—in a mildly adapted Hebrew alphabet rather than using the Arabic script, often including consonant dots from the Arabic alphabet to accommodate phonemes that did not exist in the Hebrew alphabet.

By around 800 CE, most Jews within the Islamic Empire (90% of the world's Jews at the time) were native speakers of Arabic like the populations around them. This led to the development of early Judeo-Arabic.{{Cite web |title=Judeo-Arabic |url=https://www.jewishlanguages.org/judeo-arabic |access-date=2024-01-25 |website=Jewish Languages |language=en}} The language quickly became the central language of Jewish scholarship and communication, enabling Jews to participate in the greater epicenter of learning at the time, which meant that they could be active participants in secular scholarship and civilization. The widespread usage of Arabic not only unified the Jewish community located throughout the Islamic Empire but also facilitated greater communication with other ethnic and religious groups, which led to manuscripts like the Toledot Yeshu, being written or published in Arabic or Judeo-Arabic.{{Cite journal |last=Goldstein |first=Miriam |date=2021 |title=Jesus in Arabic, Jesus in Judeo-Arabic: The Origins of the Helene Version of the Jewish "Life of Jesus" (Toledot Yeshu) |journal=Jewish Quarterly Review |volume=111 |issue=1 |pages=83–104 |doi=10.1353/jqr.2021.0004 |issn=1553-0604 |s2cid=234166481}} By the 10th century Judeo-Arabic would transition from Early to Classical Judeo-Arabic.

File:Letter_(T-S_8J18.5).jpg handwritten by Judah ha-Levi (1075–1141) found in the Cairo Geniza. While Muslims did not write in vernacular registers of Arabic, Jews would sometimes write in vernacular registers of Arabic using Hebrew script.{{Cite book |last=López-Morillas |first=Consuelo |title=The literature of Al-Andalus |date=2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |others=Maria Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, Michael Anthony Sells |isbn=978-1-139-17787-0 |location=New York |chapter=Chapter 2: Language |oclc=794678936}}]]In al-Andalus, Jewish poets associated with the golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, such as Judah Halevi, composed poetry with Arabic. The muwaššaḥ, an Andalusi genre of strophic poetry, typically included kharjas, or closing lines often in a different language. About half of the corpus of the more than 250 known muwaššaḥāt in Hebrew have kharjas in Arabic, compared to roughly 50 with Hebrew kharjas, and about 25 with Romance.{{Cite book |last1=Menocal |first1=María Rosa |title=The literature of al-Andalus |last2=Scheindlin |first2=Raymond P. |last3=Sells |first3=Micheal |date=2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-17787-0 |oclc=819159086}}{{Rp|page=185}} There are also a few kharjas with a combination of Hebrew and Arabic.{{Rp|page=185}}

During the 15th century, as Jews, especially in North Africa, gradually began to identify less with Arabs, Judeo-Arabic would undergo significant changes and become Later Judeo-Arabic. This coincided with increased isolation of Jewish communities and involved greater influence of Hebrew and Aramaic features.{{rp|42|quote=The fourth phase, Later Judeo-Arabic, lasted from the 15th to the 19th cen-

turies. The shift from Classical to Later Judeo-Arabic was accompanied by "the

increased social isolation of the Jews of the Arab world at the end of the Middle

Ages within restrictive quarters, such as the məllāḥ and ḥart il-yahūd" (Stillman

1988: 5). During this period, many more dialectal elements penetrated into the

written language, and the tradition of the šarḥ – the literal translation of Hebrew

and Aramaic religious sacred texts into Judeo-Arabic – developed. Historical,

halakhic, liturgical, and other texts were written in this period, many of them

aimed at the general public rather than the erudite elite. Toward the end of this

period, and even more so in the following period, an extensive folk literature also

came into being. This period witnessed the development of the Hebraized orthog-

raphy (Hary 1996), i.e., Judeo-Arabic written with spelling conventions that were

heavily influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic.}}

Some of the most important books of medieval Jewish thought were originally written in medieval Judeo-Arabic, as were certain halakhic works and biblical commentaries. Later they were translated into medieval Hebrew so that they could be read by contemporaries elsewhere in the Jewish world, and by others who were literate in Hebrew. These include:

• Saadia Gaon's translations of the Pentateuch,{{Citation |last=Schlossberg |first=Eliezer |title=Chapter Four: R. Saadia's Translation of the Pentateuch |date=2023-10-31 |pages=98–116 |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9798887192659-005/html |access-date=2024-11-03 |publisher=Academic Studies Press |language=en |doi=10.1515/9798887192659-005 |isbn=979-8-88719-265-9|url-access=subscription }}{{Cite journal |last=Vollandt |first=Ronny |title='The Arabic Pentateuch of the Paris Polyglot: Saadiah Gaon's advent to the republic of letters' |url=https://www.academia.edu/1215875|journal=Linguistic and Cultural Aspects of Arabic Bible Translations|pages=19–35}} Emunoth ve-Deoth (originally {{lang|ar|كتاب الأمانات والاعتقادات}}), his tafsir (biblical commentary and translation) and siddur (explanatory content, not the prayers themselves)
• David ibn Merwan al-Mukkamas
• Solomon ibn Gabirol's Tikkun Middot ha-Nefesh
• Bahya ibn Paquda's Kitab al-Hidāya ilā Fara'id al-Qulūb, translated by Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon as Chovot HaLevavot
• Judah Halevi's Kuzari
• Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah, Sefer Hamitzvot, The Guide for the Perplexed, and many of his letters and shorter essays.

File:0001 FL168254346 (cropped).jpg translation of the Pentateuch.{{cite thesis|journal=National Library of Israel|url=https://www.nli.org.il/en/dissertations/NNL_ALEPH990026502740205171/NLI|title=The transmission of the Judaeo-Arabic Pentateuch translation of Rav Saadiah Gaon in Arabic letters|last1=Vollandt|first1=Ronny}}]]

Sharch (šarḥ, pl. šurūḥ, šarḥanim) is a literary genre consisting of the translation of sacred texts, such as Bible translations into Arabic, the Talmud or siddurim, which were composed in Hebrew and Aramaic, into Judeo-Arabic, prevalent starting in the 15th century, and exhibiting a number of mixed elements. The term sharḥ sometimes came to mean "Judeo-Arabic" in the same way that "Targum" was sometimes used to mean the Aramaic language.{{cn|date=November 2024}} The texts of the sharh are based on and dependent on Hebrew.

The significant emigration of Judeo-Arabic speakers in the 1940s and 1950s to Israel, France, and North America has led to endangerment or near-extinction of the ethnolects.{{Rp|page=63|quote=The large emigration of Arab Jews, or Jews of Arab lands in the late 1940s and 1950s ofthe last century is the main reason for this situation. Most of the Jews cameto Israel (although some immigrated to France, North America, and otherplaces), where the Zionist Israeli pressure to drop Judeo-Arabic and adopt Hebrew was immense. Today there is still a sizeable Jewish community in Morocco but most of the Jewish speech community there uses French rather than Moroccan Judeo-Arabic.}} Judeo-Arabic was viewed negatively in Israel as all Arabic was viewed as an "enemy language".{{Cite web |last=Yudelson |first=Larry |date=2016-10-22 |title=Recovering Judeo-Arabic |url=https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/recovering-judeo-arabic/ |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com}} Their distinct Arabic dialects in turn did not thrive, and most of their descendants now speak French or Modern Hebrew almost exclusively; thus resulting in the entire group of Judeo-Arabic dialects being considered endangered languages.{{Rp|page=44|quote=the religiolect again experienced a dramatic change in the 20th

century, with the rise of Arab and Jewish national movements, the outbreak of

the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the consequent emigration of Jews from (mostly)

Arabic-speaking areas. The religiolect lost ground due to migration, struggle,

and nationalism (and the resulting pressure from other languages). This change

brought about the near loss of the religiolect}}{{Cite journal |last1=Benor |first1=Sarah Bunin |last2=Tirosh-Becker |first2=Ofra |date=2024-09-12 |title=Practices and Challenges in Documenting Endangered Jewish Languages: A Researchers' Forum |url=https://brill.com/view/journals/jjl/12/2/article-p201_4.xml |journal=Journal of Jewish Languages |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=201–211 |doi=10.1163/22134638-bja10047 |issn=2213-4638|url-access=subscription }}{{Cite journal |date=2003-09-24 |title=Judeo-Arabic: a diachronic reexamination |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ijsl.2003.047/html |language=en |issue=163 |pages=61–75 |doi=10.1515/ijsl.2003.047 |issn=1613-3668 |last1=Hary |first1=Benjamin |journal=International Journal of the Sociology of Language |url-access=subscription }} There remain small populations of speakers in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, the United States,{{cn|date=November 2024}} and Israel.

Cultural critic Ella Shohat notes that Jewish speakers of Arabic did not refer to their language as 'Judeo-Arabic' but simply as 'Arabic'.{{Cite journal |last=Shohat |first=Ella |date=2017-02-17 |title=The Invention of Judeo-Arabic |journal=Interventions |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=153–200 |doi=10.1080/1369801X.2016.1218785 |issn=1369-801X |s2cid=151728939}} In the period of 'massive dislocation' from the late 1940s through the 1960s, Jewish speakers of Arabic in diaspora and their descendants gradually adopted the term 'Judeo-Arabic' and its equivalents in French and Hebrew.

The 19th century rediscovery of the Cairo Geniza gave the study of Judeo-Arabic prominence within Judaic Studies, leading to publications such as Shelomo Dov Goitein's series A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza.

Shohat identifies linguist Yehoshua Blau as a key figure in the development of the notion of Judeo-Arabic, within what she describes as a Zionist linguistic project invested in prioritizing the uniqueness and separateness of isolatable 'Jewish languages'. Shohat cites the first issue of the Israeli journal Pe'amim, which featured a "Scholars' Forum" ({{Lang|he|בימת חוקרים}}) on "The Jewish Languages – the Common, the Unique and the Problematic" ({{Lang|he|הלשונות היהודיות – המשותף, המיוחד והבעייתי}}){{Cite web |title=חוברת 1, אביב תשל"ט, 1979 of Pe'amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry / פעמים: רבעון לחקר קהילות ישראל במזרח on JSTOR |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/i23421633 |access-date=2024-10-27 |website=www.jstor.org |language=en}} with articles from Chaim Menachem Rabin "{{Lang|he|מה מייחד את הלשונות היהודיות}}" ('What Distinguishes the Jewish Languages'){{Cite journal |last=רבין |first=חיים |date=1979 |title=מה מייחד את הלשונות היהודיות |journal=Pe'amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry / פעמים: רבעון לחקר קהילות ישראל במזרח |issue=1 |pages=40–45 |jstor=23421968 |issn=0334-4088}} and Yehoshua Blau "{{Lang|he|הערבית-היהודית הקלאסית}}" ('Classical Judeo-Arabic').{{Cite journal |last=בלאו |first=יהושע |date=1979 |title=הערבית-היהודית הקלאסית |journal=Pe'amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry / פעמים: רבעון לחקר קהילות ישראל במזרח |issue=1 |pages=45–49 |jstor=23421969 |issn=0334-4088}} This project explicitly sought to describe the Arabic of Jews as a distinct, Jewish language, equating it with Yiddish. According to Esther-Miriam Wagner, the case of Judeo-Arabic reified a Zionist 'Arab vs. Jew' dichotomy.{{Cite book |last=Wagner |first=Esther-Miriam |title=Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective |date=2018 |publisher=Brill |editor-last=Kahn |editor-first=Lily |chapter=How Ideology Shapes the Concept of 'Judeo-Arabic': The Ashkenazi–Mizrahi Conflict and Jewish Languages}}

File:Pennsylvania_University_of_Pennsylvania_Libraries_Halper_317_f_1r.jpg essay on definitions of Hebrew words found in the Cairo Geniza, 10th-12th c.{{Cite web |title=OPenn: Halper 317 Philological essay |url=https://openn.library.upenn.edu/Data/0002/html/h317.html |access-date=2024-11-03 |website=openn.library.upenn.edu}}]]

The Arabic spoken by Jewish communities in the Arab world differed from the Arabic of their non-Jewish neighbors. Particularly in its later forms, Judeo-Arabic contains distinctive features and elements of Hebrew and Aramaic, such as grammar, vocabulary, orthography, and style.

For example, most Jews in Egypt lived in Cairo and Alexandria and they shared a common dialect.{{Cite journal |last=Rosenbaum |first=Gabriel |date=2003 |title=THE ARABIC DIALECT OF JEWS IN MODERN EGYPT |url=https://www.academy.ac.il/SystemFiles2015/Bulletin%2025_06_Rosenbaum.pdf|journal=The Israeli Academic Center in Cairo}} Baghdad Jewish Arabic is reminiscent of the dialect of Mosul. For example, "I said" is {{Lang|ayp|qeltu}} in the speech of Baghdadi Jews and Christians, as well as in Mosul and Syria, as against Muslim Baghdadi {{lang|acm|gilit}}.{{Cite book |last1=Blanc |first1=Haim |title=Communal dialects in Baghdad |last2=Blanc |first2=David |last3=Borg |first3=Alexander |date=2024 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-68979-4 |series=Studies in Semitic languages and linguistics |location=Leiden ; Boston}}

Some Judeo-Arabic writers, such as Maimonides, were able to switch between varieties of Judeo-Arabic and the Standard Arabic dialect.{{Rp|pages=64-65|quote=Judeo-Arabic authors at timesattempted to write in the more prestigious variety of Standard Arabic withvarying degrees of success resulting in pseudo-corrections (Hary 1992:62–69). In other words, several Judeo-Arabic authors mastered StandardArabic and wrote in it. When they did, their writings in Standard Arabiccannot be considered Judeo-Arabic. Therefore, these writings are outsidethe scope of Judeo-Arabic. Maimonides (1135–1204) serves as a goodexample in the period of classical Judeo-Arabic. He was certainly capableFigure 2.Continuum in Judeo-Arabic

Judeo-Arabic: a diachronic reexamination65of writing in variety A and indeed did so, but he was able to switch betweenthe different varieties of the language, thus adapting to his readership. As aresult, some of his works, such as his medical writings, which were aimedat non-Jewish readers, are in variety A and cannot be considered part ofclassical Judeo-Arabic. In other works, such as his letters to his coreligion-ists, that is, Jewish readership, he used the varieties of Bn, and thereforethey are in literary written classical Judeo-Arabic.Judeo-Arabic writers and speakers' attitude is important for under-standing the ethnolect.}}

Like other Jewish languages and dialects, Judeo-Arabic languages contain borrowings from Hebrew and Aramaic. This feature is less marked in translations of the Bible, as the authors clearly took the view that the business of a translator is to translate.{{Cite book |last=Avishur |first=Yitsḥaḳ |title=Targume ha-Tanakh be-ʻArvit Yehudit ba-Mizraḥ: seḳirot ṿe-ʻiyunim |date=2001 |publisher=Pirsume Merkaz arkheʼologi |isbn=978-965-7162-05-7 |location=Tel-Aviv-Yafo |language=he, en}}

• Judeo-Algerian
• Judeo-Egyptian
• Judeo-Moroccan
• Judeo-Tripolitanian
• Judeo-Tunisian
• Judeo-Yemeni
• Judeo-Syrian
• Judeo-Lebanese
• Modern Palestinian Judeo-Arabic
• Judeo-Iraqi
• Judeo-Baghdadi

File:Agada pour la Paque- avec traductions Judéo-Arabe et Française 515294 0003.tif with translations in French and Judeo-Arabic, Tunis, 1920.{{Cite web |title=שער הגדה לפסח, תוניסיה, 1920 בערך |url=https://web.nli.org.il/sites/nli/hebrew/digitallibrary/pages/viewer.aspx?docid=NNL03_EDU700276069&presentorid=NLI_EDU |access-date=2024-11-06 |website=web.nli.org.il}}]]

Most literature in Judeo-Arabic is of a Jewish nature and is intended for readership by Jewish audiences. There was also widespread translation of Jewish texts from languages like Yiddish and Ladino into Judeo-Arabic, and translation of liturgical texts from Aramaic and Hebrew into Judeo-Arabic. There is also Judeo-Arabic videos on YouTube.

A collection of over 400,000 of Judeo-Arabic documents from the 6th-19th centuries was found in the Cairo Geniza.{{Cite book |last=Rustow |first=Marina |title=The Lost Archive Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue |publisher=Princeton: Princeton University Press |year=2020 |isbn=978-0-691-18952-9 |page=451}}

The movie Farewell Baghdad would be released in 2013 entirely in Judeo-Iraqi Arabic{{Cite news |title=ראיון: כשבמאי ישראלי עושה סרט עיראקי |url=https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/cinema/2014-04-10/ty-article/0000017f-f863-d887-a7ff-f8e7f47f0000 |access-date=2024-01-25 |work=הארץ |language=he}}

Judeo-Arabic orthography uses a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet called the Judeo-Arabic script. It is written from right to left horizontally like the Hebrew script and also like the Hebrew script some letters contain final versions, used only when that letter is at the end of a word.{{Cite web |title=Judeo-Arabic script |url=https://www.omniglot.com/writing/judeo-arabic.htm |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=www.omniglot.com}} It also uses the letters alef and waw or yodh to mark long or short vowels respectively. The order of the letters varies between alphabets.

{{commonscat|Judeo-Arabic languages}}

• Arabic language in Israel
• Judeo-Berber language
• Judeo-Iraqi Arabic
• Baghdad Jewish Arabic
• Judeo-Moroccan Arabic
• Judeo-Tunisian Arabic
• Judeo-Yemeni Arabic
• Judeo-Syrian Arabic
• Judeo-Algerian Arabic
• Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon
• Arab Jews
• Haketia
• Garshuni

{{reflist}}

{{refbegin|2}}

• Blanc, Haim, Communal Dialects in Baghdad: Harvard 1964
• Blau, Joshua, The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic: OUP, last edition 1999
• Blau, Joshua, A Grammar of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic: Jerusalem 1980 (in Hebrew)
• Blau, Joshua, Studies in Middle Arabic and its Judaeo-Arabic variety: Jerusalem 1988 (in English)
• Blau, Joshua, Dictionary of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic Texts: Jerusalem 2006
• Mansour, Jacob, The Jewish Baghdadi Dialect: Studies and Texts in the Judaeo-Arabic Dialect of Baghdad: Or Yehuda 1991
• Heath, Jeffrey, Jewish and Muslim dialects of Moroccan Arabic (Routledge Curzon Arabic linguistics series): London, New York, 2002.

{{refend}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20160303180236/https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/corre/www/judeo-arabic2.html Alan Corré's Judeo-Arabic Literature site, via the Internet Archive]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070927225931/http://shekel.jct.ac.il/~green/judeo-arabic.html Judeo-Arabic Literature]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070323082115/http://reka.iba.org.il/ Reka] Kol Yisrael, a radio station broadcasting a daily program in Judeo-Moroccan Arabic
• [http://www.jewish-languages.org/judeo-arabic.html Jewish Language Research Website] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170724035400/http://www.jewish-languages.org/judeo-arabic.html |date=2017-07-24 }} (description and bibliography)
• [https://www.sefaria.org/Tafsir_Rasag%2C_Introduction?lang=bi Tafsir Rasag], a translation of the Torah into literary Judeo-Arabic, at Sefaria

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