Judeo-Arabic

Jewish use of Arabic in Arabia predates Islam. 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. By the 10th century Judeo-Arabic would transition from Early to Classical Judeo-Arabic. 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.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. There are also a few kharjas with a combination of Hebrew and Arabic. Emunoth ve-Deoth (originally ), 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. translation of the Pentateuch. 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. in the same way that "Targum" was sometimes used to mean the Aramaic language. The texts of the sharh are based on and dependent on Hebrew. 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. There remain small populations of speakers in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, the United States, and Israel. == Historiography ==

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. 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. with articles from Chaim Menachem Rabin "" ('What Distinguishes the Jewish Languages') and Yehoshua Blau "" ('Classical Judeo-Arabic'). This project explicitly sought to describe the Arabic of Jews as a distinct, Jewish language, equating it with Yiddish. == Characteristics ==

essay on definitions of Hebrew words found in the Cairo Geniza, 10th-12th c. Judeo-Arabic can be seen as many different mixed forms incorporating different aspects of Classical Arabic, Arabic dialects, Hebrew and Aramaic. 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. Baghdad Jewish Arabic is reminiscent of the dialect of Mosul. For example, "I said" is ' in the speech of Baghdadi Jews and Christians, as well as in Mosul and Syria, as against Muslim Baghdadi '. Judeo-Arabic can be thought of as a variety of vernacular Middle Arabic, and differs from Bedouin dialects and classical Arabic in a shift to subject-verb-object word order and in that it is more an analytical language versus a synthetic language, relying on syntax more than morphology. It also exhibits changes such as the loss of nominal case and verbal modal endings and the introduction of new object markers and particles. Some Judeo-Arabic writers, such as Maimonides, were able to switch between varieties of Judeo-Arabic and the Standard Arabic dialect. == Dialects ==

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

with translations in French and Judeo-Arabic, Tunis, 1920. 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. The movie Farewell Baghdad would be released in 2013 entirely in Judeo-Iraqi Arabic == Orthography ==

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. 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. == Sample text ==