Two projects concerning Tashelhiyt Berber in Leiden

    At the First Conference on Berber languages and linguistics, organised by the Department of African Linguistics in Bayreuth, Germany, I spoke about two projects at Leiden University concerning Tashelhiyt Berber, the language of the High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas and the Sous in South Morocco.

    Project 1:
    Dr. H.J. Stroomer: The Leiden Tashelhiyt Berber Dictionary Project

    This project is registered officially at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Leiden since 1988. I discussed the various types of published and unpublished sources I used over these twelve years. An important source included in this dictionary is the collection of card-files made, over a period of more than 35 years, by Arsène Roux (1893-1971), a well-known berberologist and a specialist in Tashelhiyt and Middle Atlas Berber. I computerized his 42000 cards covering words and expressions from all Tashelhiyt related published and unpublished materials until 1955. Furthermore I scanned and scrutinized all published and unpublished Tashelhiyt related materials from 1955 until 2000 for words and expressions. Finally I collected, with the help of informants in The Netherlands, data from Tashelhiyt speaking regions that are not well-represented in the materials mentionned .

    As a second issue I discussed the types of difficulties I came across while doing this work:
    • Since almost every speaker has free acces to Moroccan Arabic dialects, it is an interesting question how to avoid making a double (Moroccan Arabic and Tashelhiyt Berber) dictionary.
    • Another question is whether neologisms, of which in most cases the demographic spread is unknown, should be included in this dictionary.
    Results:
    A print of all computer files in sept 1999 gave 2500 printed pages (Times Roman 12) of "raw", unedited materials with many items occuring twice or three times. The final presentation of the material will be in alphabetic order, with an appendix that includes roots followed by items presented in the alphabetic part.

    Project 2:
    Dr. Nico van den Boogert: Catalogue of the berber manuscript collection at Leiden

    Project 2 is an NWO (the national organisation for scientific research in the Netherlands) financed project entitled: A catalogue of Tashelhiyt berber manuscripts at Leiden University Library. Dr. Nico van den Boogert, Arabist, codicologist and a specialist in Tachelhiyt Berber manuscript literature works on this project.

    The library of Leiden University in the Netherlands possesses a collection of Berber manuscripts. This collection is kept in the Oriental Manuscript department of the main library. At present it contains ca. 250 numbers. The signatures of the manuscripts are of the type Cod. Or. 23.456 (Codex Orientalis). Each number may consist of one volume, containing one or more texts, or of several smaller volumes or fragments. Many manuscripts are mixed collections of Arabic and Berber texts.

    All Berber texts found in the manuscripts are in Tashelhiyt Berber written in Arabic caracters. The only existing other public collection of Berber manuscripts which is comparable in size and diversity to the Leiden collection is that of the Fonds Roux in the Institut de Recherches et d'Études sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (iremam) at Aix-en-Provence.

    A first survey of the Tashelhiyt literary tradition can be found in: Nico van den Boogert, The Berber Literary Tradition of the Sous (Publication of the The Goeje Fund, 27), Leiden 1997: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten.)

    Some examples of the more noteworthy manuscripts in the Leiden collection are:

    Cod. Or. 22.331: This is the oldest known copy, dated 1126/1715, of the Berber works of Muhammad Awzal (d. 1162/1749). Awzal is the most important author of the Tashelhiyt literary tradition. Almost a third of all known Tashelhiyt manuscripts contain (parts of) his works. These works are: al-Hawd "The Reservoir", a manual in two parts of Maliki law; Bahr al-Dumu' "The Ocean of Tears", an adhortation and treatise on eschatology; al-Nasiha "The Advice", an ode in praise of Sidi Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Nasir, Awzal's spiritual guide and grand master of the Nasiriyya order (founded by his grandfather).

    Cod. Or. 23.401: The only known complete copy written by one and the same copyist of the largest Berber text in existence: the commentary by al-Hasan al-Tamuddizti (d. 1316/1899) on Awzal's Hawd, containing 600 large format pages.

    Cod. Or. 23.114: A collection of ten Arabic and two Berber texts. The first Berber text is a translation and commentary of al-Busiri's Qasidat al-Burda by 'Abd Allah ibn Yahya al-Hamidi (fl. 18th c.). Many copies of this tranlation exist, but this is the oldest dated copy (1200/1786). The second Berber text is a version of the story of Joseph (Lqist n Yusf, Ar. Qissat Yusuf). This text is well-known in the modern Tashelhiyt oral tradition.

    Cod. Or. 23.333: A composite manuscript containing 38 texts in Arabic, in addition to the oldest dated copy (956/1549) of one of the four known redactions of the Arabic-Old Tashelhiyt dictionary compiled by Ibn Tunart (d. 567/1172, not to be confused with the mahdi Ibn Tumart). This first redaction contains 729 bilingual entries; the fourth redaction, found in the undated Cod. Or. 23.348, contains more than 2,300 ilingual entries. This dictionary constitutes the most important source of information on Old Tashelhiyt. A number of smaller bilingual vocabularies were derived from Ibn Tunart's work in the post-medieval period, among them the widely known vocabulary of al-Hilali (fl. 17th c., several copies on the Leiden collection).

    Cod. Or. 23.339: A copy of an anonymous collection of traditions (Hadith) translated into Tashelhiyt prose. Irregularities in the spelling and the use of archaic words and expressions suggest that this translation dated form the medieval period.

    This project will produce:
    • a(n illustrated) catalogue of Berber mss in Leiden
    • a paleographic atlas of Tashelhiyt berber texts: 50 specimina + transcriptions and translations.

    Harry Stroomer