Turoyo

This article presents a newly discovered manuscript containing a version of the story of the Seven Travels of Sindbād the Sailor (Ms Cleveland, Public Library, Q 385.3A P445H) that bears witness to a crucial phase of its transmission from East to West. The manuscript contains the Arabic text of the oldest version hitherto known (written in Aleppo in 1672), along with an interlinear Latin translation, and it is followed by an Arabic-Latin word list. It includes another version of the French translation attributed to François Pétis de la Croix (1653-1713), titled Histoire Arabe de Sindabad le Marin, also given in Ms Munich, Bavarian State Library, cod.gall. 799. The French translation of the story of Sindbād made by Pétis de la Croix and reproduced in these two manuscripts dates to four years earlier (1701) from when Antoine Galland (1646-1715) published his first alleged translation within the Mille et une Nuits (1705). The present article focuses on Ms Cleveland, Public Library, Q 385.3A P445H and examines it in comparison with Ms Munich, Bavarian State Library, cod.gall. 799 as a crucial witness of the earliest phase of the textual history of the Seven Travels of Sindbād the Sailor.

The present article deals with seven illustrative case studies in order to demonstrate which criteria one has to follow in studying a category of Arabic borrowings in Ṣūrayt/Ṭūrōyo. Arabic borrowings derived from Arabic cognate roots in a Semitic context are of two categories, namely those with phonological correspondences and those without such correspondences. In the former case, the phonological shape of a root is the most important criterion to take into consideration, while in the latter case the emphasis of
analysis is on the form, the meaning, and the bǝġaḏkǝfaṯ-issue. The article deals with the latter group of cognates, showing that non-assimilated borrowings are relatively easy to identify, while the assimilated borrowings of this kind offer difficulties on several levels, especially when an Aramaic/Syriac and Arabic cognate root has the same meaning.

This article examines a Syriac historiographical writing of the late eighth century—the so-called Zuqnin Chronicle, or the Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell Maḥre—and
certain lexical features that are found at the end of the work. It is argued that these lexical items were drawn into the chronicle from a colloquial Aramaic language spoken
in the vicinity of Amid, and that this colloquial variant is linked with the Neo-Aramaic language Turoyo. In addition, the article offers a methodology for identifying colloquial
Aramaic words in the corpus of Classical Syriac literature.

With the return of the Syriac population at Tur Abdin (South Eastern Turkey) the question of the tangible and intangible heritage relating to these communities is being questioned once more : the property ownership, land and houses for instance. The issue of jurisdiction and legal status of village churches and other places of worship remains uncertain as well, as the Syriac people of Turkey do not fall into the jurisdiction of a « minority » according to the Lausanne Treaty (1923). On the other hand, the study of the links of the Syriac diaspora with this motherland brings a new light on the attachment problematic. Apart from the tangible heritage, there is the issue of intangible heritage, which is composed of several patterns of identity as well. Moreover, the transmission of the written and vernacular language belonging to this community remains uncertain.

In the 19th century, E. Sachau travelled to Syria and Mesopotamia where he met speakers of modern dialects of Aramaic. He commissioned them to write and translate several texts into their dialects. One of them, Ešaʿyo, translated several biblical texts for him into Turoyo Neo-Aramaic, including the book of Esther, from the Syriac Peshitta and the Arabic transla-tion of Smith and Van Dyck. The present article presents an editio princeps as well as a rea-soned transcription of this text and numerous notes, in relation to the Vorlage followed by the translator. Although this text provides us with information about Turoyo in the 19th cen-tury, one must be cautious in drawing conclusions from it as it is a translation full of Syri-acisms and Arabisms.

Im 19. Jahrhundert reiste E. Sachau nach Syrien und Mesopotamien, wo er Sprecher moder-ner aramäischer Dialekte traf. Er beauftragte sie, eine Reihe von Texten zu verfassen und in ihre Dialekte zu übersetzen. Einer von ihnen, Ešaʿyo, übersetzte für ihn mehrere biblische Texte ins Turoyo-Neuaramäische, darunter das Buch Esther, aus der syrischen Peschitta und der arabischen protestantischen Übersetzung von Smith und Van Dyck. Der vorliegende Ar-tikel präsentiert eine editio princeps sowie eine lateinische Transkription dieses Textes mit zahlreichen Anmerkungen, die sich auf der vom Übersetzer befolgten Vorlage beziehen. Obwohl dieser Text Aufschluss über das Turoyo des 19. Jahrhunderts gibt, sollte man bei seinen Schlussfolgerungen vorsichtig sein, da es sich eine Übersetzung voller Syrismen und Arabismen handelt.

Au 19ème siècle, E. Sachau se rendit en Syrie et en Mésopotamie où il rencontra des locu-teurs de dialectes modernes de l'araméen. Il chargea ceux-ci d'écrire et de traduire un certain nombre de textes dans leurs dialectes. L'un deux, Ešaʿyo, traduisit pour lui plusieurs textes bibliques en néo-araméen turoyo, dont le livre d'Esther, à partir de la version syriaque Peshitta et de la traduction arabe des missionnaires protestants Smith et Van Dyck. Le pré-sent article présente une editio princeps ainsi qu'une transcription raisonnée de ce texte et de nombreuses notes, au sujet de la Vorlage du traducteur. Bien que ce texte nous fournisse des informations sur le Turoyo du 19ème siècle, il faut rester prudent dans les conclusions qu'on pourrait en tirer car il s'agit d'une traduction pleine de syriacismes et d'arabismes.

“Šlomo Surayt – Ein Einführungskurs ins Surayt-Aramäische (Turoyo)” wurde im Rahmen des Aramaic-Online Projects (2014-17) entwickelt. An diesem Projekt waren vier europäischen Universitäten - Freie Universität Berlin, Universität Bergen, Universität Cambridge und Universität Leipzig – sowie das Syrisch-Orthodoxe St. Ephrem-Kloster in den Niederlanden beteiligt.
Šlomo Surayt umfasst die Stufen A1-A2 GER, was einem Grundkurs entspricht. Der Kurs besteht aus insgesamt 16 Lektionen, die jeweils Einstiegstexte und Dialoge in verschiedenen Alltagssituationen enthalten. Sie werden ergänzt durch strukturierte grammatische Erklärungen sowie durch Übungen, die sich auf die gelernten Vokabeln und die Grammatik beziehen. Eine Vokabelliste schließt jede Lektion ab. Eine Online-Version des Kurses mit allen Video- und Audio-Dateien findet sich unter www.surayt.com

The article reviews a publication of texts by Jastrow and Talay in the Miḏyoyo dialect of Ṭuroyo. Miḏyoyo is an endangered variety of Neo-Aramaic spoken by the Christians of Midyat in Ṭur ʿAbdin, located in the Mardin province of south-eastern Turkey. This volume and the envisioned series which is to follow constitute a landmark in Neo-Aramaic research, thanks to its focus on the urban dialect of Ṭuroyo. The material presented in the book by Jastrow and Talay has a great value also for the
ethnographic and historical research of endangered ethno-religious minorities in Turkey.

Open access link: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/1169 The ultimate source of inspiration for the present study is our ambition to offer a detailed description of the history of the Aramaic verbal system. A key event in this history is what Goldenberg used to call ‘the morphological revolution’, i.e. the shift, within Eastern Aramaic, from the Middle Aramaic verbal systems to those of Modern Aramaic. In the course of this shift, Eastern Aramaic gave up the inherited suffix conjugation (*qatala) and the prefix conjugation (*yaqtulu) and developed a new repertoire of verbal forms, all of whose bases were deverbal adjectives in earlier stages of Aramaic’s history.

This work appeared on the British Library's Asian and African Studies Blog on 24 December 2019. In it, I explore the story of the Nativity through the Library's Syriac collections, from manuscript versions of the Peshitta through to contemporary examples of Syriac, Turoyo and Swadaya materials focusing on Christmas.