from persian to arabic 1940

From Persian to ArabicAuthor(s): M. SprenglingSource: The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Jul.,1940), pp. 302-305Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/528879 .

Accessed: 18/12/2013 15:08

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheAmerican Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Wed, 18 Dec 2013 15:08:51 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress

http://www.jstor.org/stable/528879?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


CRITICAL NOTES

FROM PERSIAN TO ARABIC

Honor to whom honor is due. In the first part of the series "From Persian to Arabic" (AJSL, LVI [April, 1939], 196; reprint, p. 22) the writer presented a solution, which he had found independently, of the curious Persian fractions recorded in Bilddhuri's tale of the conversion of the tax records in early Is- lamic times from Persian to Arabic. The writer at that time knew, though he did not mention, De Goeje's second unsuccessful attempt at a solution of the

problems published in the notes to Fliigel's edition of the Fihrist. The writer did not then know of De Goeje's third attempt, really Olshausen's solution with small but important additions from Arabic orthography by De Goeje.

Recently in looking over once more Houtum-Schindler's valuable article on the language and customs of the Parsees in Persia in ZDMG, Volume XXXVI (1882), he found in the same volume (pp. 339-41) De Goeje's Die

persischen Bruchzahlen bei Belddhori. The reading, bist, "twenty," instead of

sas, "six," is there clearly recognized, though neither Olshausen nor De Goeje gives evidence of having noted the essential difficulty of expressing fractions smaller than tenths in Arabic.

Olshausen's solution of elements other than bist differs in two particulars from that offered by the writer. He falls back on a very rare fractional form, known in Modern Persian only as a dictionary word, and even so in but one

example, dahy5dah, "tenth" (Burhdn-i Qdticu [ed. 1939], p. 622; correctly presented by Vullers, s.v., misunderstood by Steingass, s.v.). In BPhl forms end-

ing in -?ftak, -ifdhak are found in Pahlavi translations of Avestan texts. Forms for "third, fourth, fifth" occur, classed by Salemann (GIrPhil, Ia, p. 290, ? 68) as "learned" forms (cf. Bthl., AirWb., cols. 812, 579 f., 844; Vendiddd, ed.

Jamasp, VI, 32, p. 223, 11. 8 f.; XVI, 2, p. 537, 11. 2 f.; in the Glossary "fifth"

appears to be omitted, but the others are listed on pp. 217 and 65). Against Olshausen's somewhat complicated attempt to account for the curious Arabic

writing De Goeje then presents the simple solution: transfer the two dots in the ending from beneath the y over the pointed head to make t, thus producing for "tenth" dahatah and for "twentieth" bistitah, or -'ftah.

The second major point in which Olshausen and De Goeje differ from the writer's reading is in the Persian word for "and an indefinite amount, some-

thing, a little more." The writer simply accepted De Goeje's Arabic text, wid or vid, which according to the dictionaries is perfectly feasible in Modern

Persian, though apart from the dictionaries this writer does not know of any occurrence of the word. For Pahlavi, so far as the writer knows, the word has

302



CRITICAL NOTES 303

not been found in any other than the Bilddhuri passage. The proposal of Ols- hausen and De Goeje again involves deletion of the two dots under y and in- sertion of one dot over the symbol, making it n. This would be a somewhat extraordinary, but perfectly possible and intelligible, short writing for the Semitic conjunction w, "and," plus the common Pahlavi and Modern Persian word and, "so many, an indefinite number, a few, some, a little." Nyberg in his Glossar (p. 99) reads the first BPhl symbol h, making the word hand, though the same symbol can stand for Semitic (alif), in Persian words most often simply the vowel a. The writer does not know Nyberg's reasons for this reading, which he himself remarks as odd, but does not otherwise explain. Salemann (op. cit., p. 294, ? 77, f), Horn GdNPEt, No. 116), in Manichaean Middle Persian Andreas-Henning (MirMan, I, 34 [ = 206] and II, 46 [= 337]), and the new Middle Persian inscription of Kartir found under that of Shah- puhr on the Kaaba of Zoroaster, near the end of line 2, all clearly read 'nd, i.e., and. Since Persian does not have a glottal stop of anything like the strength of Arabic Hamzah, a writing wnd for wand is in no wise impossible, though most unusual.

The rendering of the entire passage in translation is in no wise affected by these changes in the Persian words written in Arabic letters. This writer is especially gratified to find that De Goeje's rendering of the text as he finally saw it agrees fully with his own translation against that of Hitti.

While we are on this subject, another bit of Persian in the Arabic and Tur- kish world, which has led Professor Hitti astray, must be noted.

In a review of The Bektashi Order of Dervishes by John Kingsley Birge, in JAOS, LIX (1939), 522 f., Professor Hitti is inclined to take Dr. Birge's "style and presentation" severely to task. He charges that "secondary sources [such as Hasluck, Christianity and Islam .... i are given as reference where only primary sources are of value." "Secondary sources," when used, as well they may be, should as a matter of course be mentioned as well as any which may by others from another point of view be considered "primary." Has- luck's work is a posthumous publication, avowedly incomplete, and defective in other respects, as a book thus published was bound to be. Yet the bibliographical range and knowledge of the lamented author make it at a number of points a first-rate source for all but one exactly like him and with the same extraordinary resources at his command. And why, just because it is in Eng- lish, should Hasluck be classed as secondary, while, let us say, Ibn Khaldfin or Ibn al-TiqtaqS are classed as primary?

The reviewer further finds certain spellings of names or words of Arabic origin "mysterious-looking, curious-looking." The Bektashi were a Turkish order. Dr. Birge is "a resident of Istanbul" (so Hitti), a manner of writing the name of that city which to some might look curious. Dr. Birge naturally and justifiably uses modern Turkish orthography. If that looks curious and mysterious to such as are not well acquainted with it in America, on the other hand



304 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES

some of our "57 varieties" of transliteration may look as curious and be as mysterious to others.

In closing his review Hitti says: "As for 'the Arabic word ayin meaning ceremony or rite' (p. 176, n. 2), the nearest guess that the reviewer could make is that it is the broken plural of dyah." Dr. Birge writes this word in modern Turkish fashion, which is all right as far as it goes. He is wrong when he calls it "the Arabic word." The reviewer did not correct this error, wherefore his "nearest guess" as to derivation is far worse and wider of the mark. This is a widely and well-known Persian word, as the reviewer might have learned from his colleague at Princeton, Ernst Herzfeld, who plays with it in his Altpersische Inschriften, page 213, and elsewhere. For more serious study we can refer to secondary sources only, whose information is nevertheless very instructive, to

wit, Paul Horn, Grundriss der neupersischen Etymologie, page 15, No. 61; H. Hilbschmann, Persische Studien, page 11, No. 61; Josef Markwart, Ungarische Jahrbiicher, VII, 89 ff.; H. S. Nyberg, Hilfsbuch des Pehlevi, Volume II, Glossar, page 3. For those who do not know German well, but do know Latin, the Perso-Arabic alphabet, Arabic, and Turkish, loannis Augusti Vuller's Lexicon Persico-Latinum, I, 64, will furnish somewhat more antiquated, but

up to a certain point fairly adequate, information. Less adequate and unfor-

tunately demanding some knowledge of Modern Persian is the Burhdn-i Qdticu, in the edition recently brought out (I, 48). The same holds true of Asadi's neupersisches Wirterbuch Lughat-i Furs, edited by Paul Horn (1897), text page 110, lines 1 f. For him who knows English and the Arabic alphabet as used by modern Persians, F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary, page 134, will be most instructive. Those who know Arabic his- torical literature very well may, as the reference in Herzfeld (op. cit.) indi-

cates, find the curious word there. As for Dr. Birge's book as a whole, that is a much more significant and im-

portant contribution to our knowledge than the review in JAOS indicates with chary praise. There are, indeed, in a work so original, written for the most part in Constantinople, defects and errors, some rather more serious and farther along in the book than most of those which Professor Hitti points out. Thus in the title of Wittek's chapter on page 31, note 1, line 4, Zeit should be inserted after zur. On the same page in footnote 2 the designation of Yabal- laha III as a "Turkish Bishop" is very questionable. Positively wrong on

page 49 is the caliphal sobriquet "El-Nasireddin Allah," in Zambaur's Man-

uel, page 5, rendered "an-N$air lidinillh"; and the same man's name, "Abu Abbas Ahmet," might at this point have been written somewhat nearer to our

manner, Abfi-l-cAbbas Alhmad. Likewise on the same page the confident iden- tification of Haji Bektash's "Kuluhan" with the Mongol Kuyuk may be

questioned. Why not the Mongol Kuluk a few years later, or even Hulagu, who knew and conferred with the "Christian Priest" Barhebraeus? Some of these defects are due to general human frailty. The errors in ayin and in the



CRITICAL NOTES 305

caliphal name and title are pretty clearly due to defective knowledge of Arabic on the part of Dr. Birge. Both deficiencies may be forgiven a man who handles so wide a range of Ottoman Turkish, Albanian, English, French, and German literature so capably. Dr. Birge's is a book which no one interested in the Bektashi or Dervish orders in general, in the Ottoman Empire, modern

Turkey, or modern Western Asia-indeed, in the real story of humanity which is history-can safely pass by unnoticed. His use of all his sources, including Hasluck, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and the Encyclopaedia Britan- nica, is so judicious and so apt in most places where they are referred to; his matter is so well organized, tabled, and indexed; and his presentation is withal good enough to make his book readable and likable as well as useful.

Since this has become in large part a bibliographical report whose motto is "Honor to Whom Honor Is Due," we take the liberty of adding here notice of an excellent little book, which is not really concerned with Persian to Arabic, but which does deal with affairs in some measure similar and in part in the same territory as the Bektashi story, and with events which did much to clear the ground for the Perso-Arabic adventure. Church and State in the Later Roman Empire: The Religious Policy of Anastasius the First, 1491-518, by Peter Charanis, has just been issued by the University of Wisconsin Press and sent to us for notice. It is a little volume of 102 pages, including bibliography and index, but well worth the $1.50 asked for it. The careful, calculating, conscientious ruler of a far-flung, variegated empire, torn with religious dis- sensions, which did not make other governmental problems easier-"a prag- matist whose eyes were fixed upon the actual conditions of the empire" and who "entertained no grandiose ideas for the restoration of past glories"--is sketched after diligent search with wide and exact knowledge, with a sure hand, and the judgment of a mature wisdom not common in doctoral disserta- tions. Since he has had to deal with Manichaean matters in general and with Procopius' curious statement about them in particular, the touches of Mani- cheism in the life and reign of Anastasius I, of the real and of the "name-call- ing" variety, brought out by Dr. Charanis, were of especial interest to this writer. Could Dr. Charanis and Dr. Birge, whose Bektashis surely have some affinities with Manicheism, be induced to follow up this phase of their studies

further, each beginning at his end to meet in the middle? That should be for both of these promising young historians a highly enter-

taining exercise of their extraordinary faculties and the rare scope of their knowledge. It would produce works of great interest and extremely useful for the advancement of our knowledge of the human story, curious at the best and still very mysterious to many of us in areas which we would like to know especially well. Both, as they met, would fall well within the range of this little series "From Persian to Arabic."

M. SPRENGLING UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO



from persian to arabic 1940

Documents