58
Dehqan and Mengozzi
Similarly, we find a virtuoso use of lexical choices in Neo-
Aramaic poetry (late 15th century onwards), where multilingual
hendiadys is a stylized reflection of the rich linguistic repertoire of
the poets and their audiences: originally Aramaic words are flanked
by synonyms derived from other languages, such as Classical Syriac,
Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish or Persian.
11
It is a rather common stylis-
tic feature in Kurdish poetry too: see, e.g.,
p’
êxamber… û enbîya
‘prophet (Kurdish word)… and prophet (Arabic-derived word)’ in
l. 11c of the poem by David of Barazne published below. Beyond
Kurdistan, multilingual hendiadys is a common learned stylistic fea-
ture of Islamic literatures, where Arabic loans are flanked by their
equivalents in languages such as Persian or Turkish.
12
The tremendous impact of Kurdish on Neo-Aramaic at all lev-
els – phonology, morphology, verbal system, vocabulary, phraseol-
ogy, idiomatic expressions – has received scholarly attention and
the conclusions of research on it do not need to be repeated here.
13
An article by Chyet is particularly interesting, in that it is not con-
fined to linguistic facts, but deals with literature, folklore and
shared social and cultural institutions.
14
Roving bards and story-
tellers are part of the traditional Kurdistani folklore that is shared
by Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. In 1870, the famous Chalde-
an poet and bard Dawud Kora ‘David the Blind’ dictated Neo-
11
A. Mengozzi, A Story in a Truthful Language. Religious Poetry in Ver-
nacular Syriac from (North Iraq, 17th century), CSCO 590, Scriptores Syri 231
(Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 100-2. On the same phenomenon in Jewish Neo-
Aramaic literature, see Y. Sabar, A Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dictionary, Semitica
Viva 28 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002), 55-6.
12
A.
Bausani, “Le lingue islamiche. Interazioni e acculturazioni,” in Il
mondo islamico tra interazione e acculturazione, ed. A. Bausani and B. Scarcia
Amoretti (Roma: Istituto di studi islamici, 1981), 9.
13
O. Kapeliuk, “Language Contact between Aramaic Dialects and
Iranian,” in
The Semitic Languages. An International Handbook, HSK 36, ed S.
Weninger (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 738-47; Eadem, “A Contrastive Ana-
lysis of Tenses in Urmi Neo-Aramaic and in Kurdish,” in Beiträge zur semi-
tischen Dialektologie. Festschrift für Werner Arnold zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. R.
Kuty, U. Seeger and Sh. Talay (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 161-70.
14
M. L. Chyet, “Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish: An Interdisciplinary
Consideration of their Influence on Each Other,”
Israel Oriental Studies 15
(1995), 219-49.
A Kurdish Garshuni Poem
59
Aramaic songs and Kurdish poems to Albert Socin.
15
He was pre-
sumably able to perform in both languages. The tradition of Jewish
story-tellers, often illiterate, and quite normally capable of perform-
ing on request in two or even three languages – Kurdish, Neo-
Aramaic and Arabic – has continued up to more recent genera-
tions.
16
The traditional openness of the Church of the East towards
multilingualism and the rich sociolinguistic profile of East Syrians
living in Kurdistan are the contexts in which we must place the lin-
guistic choices of the 19th-century poet David of Barazne, who
composed poems in Classical Syriac, Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish.
Given the Aramaic and Kurdish bilingualism of many Christians in
Kurdistan it is perhaps surprising that, as far as I know, he is one
of the very few East-Syrians who committed his Kurdish verses to
written form.
17
Moreover, he is the only late East-Syriac and Neo-
15
E. Prym and A. Socin, Kurdische Sammlungen. Erzählungen und Lieder
in den Dialekten des Ṭûr ʻ
Abdîn und von Bohtan, a.
Die Texte (St. Petersburg:
Commissionaires de l’Académie Impériale des sciences, 1890), xvi.
16
Y. Sabar, The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology, Yale
Judaica Series 23 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), xxxvii-
xxxviii and M. L. Chyet, “Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish,” 228-9.
17
Harrak (Catalogue, 32-3) presents the two Kurdish hymns On Resur-
rection of the Ms. 18078 of the Iraqi Museum (f. 157v and 168v) as texts
translated into Kurdish by the monk Ablaḥad of Alqosh. An anonymous
Kurdish poem in East-Syriac script is preserved in three manuscripts cop-
ied for Eduard Sachau. E. Sachau, Verzeichnis der syrischen Handschriften der
Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, B. 1 (Berlin: Asher, 1899), 434-44. Ms. 133.6
(copied by J. Shamir in Mosul 1883) has the complete poem with interlin-
ear Arabic translation; in ms. 134.1 (copied by the scribe Fransis in
Telkepe 1883) the text is incomplete at the beginning; ms. 135.6 is a copy
of 134 with Arabic translation, made by J. Shamir (Mosul 1883) at Sa-
chau’s request. The poem has romantic and adventurous contents and
tells the story of a Kurd who fell in love with a certain Fatima, kidnapped
her in Syria and took her to the Van region. Once, when he was trying to
kill a mountain animal, possibly a wild goat, he shot but did not kill it. The
wounded beast turned on the hunter and, as they fought, they both
plunged into the abyss. In the same group of manuscripts, Jeremiah Sha-
mir prepared an adaptation and partial translation of Faris El-Chidiac, A
Practical Grammar of the Arabic Language (London 1856) for Sachau, in the
Neo-Aramaic dialect of Aynkawa and in the Kurdish dialect of Hakkari.
English, Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish are arranged in three columns and
both Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish are written in vocalized East-Syriac