reviews
book provides a mine of information that will be of benefit to those concerned with
manuscripts and with all aspects of the study of north-eastern Tǝgray for many years
to come. Not infrequently Denis Nosnitsin speaks, in respect of particular locations
(e.g. Koholo) and even of entire districts (e.g. Däg῾a Tämben), of the need for much
further detailed research, and on the evidence presented by him one can only concur
with this judgement.
doi: 10.1093/jss/fgw009
michael a. knibb
emeritus, king’s college london
Hezy Mutzafi, Comparative Lexical Studies in Neo-Mandaic (Studies in Semitic
Languages and Linguistics 73). Brill, Leiden 2014. Pp. xiv + 230. Price: €110.00
hardback. ISBN: 978-90-0425704-7.
The field of Neo-Mandaic lexicography is still very much in its infancy, even though
the earliest glossaries of the language date to the middle of the seventeenth century.1
Rudolf Macuch’s pioneering efforts to document Neo-Mandaic throughout the
twentieth century did yield rudimentary glossaries, but these were little more than
word lists intended to aid comprehension of the texts that he had collected from his
informants.2 As such, they were limited in their scope and at times misleading. They
suffer from the same defect as the two landmark references on Mandaic language
published during the twentieth century, Drower and Macuch’s Dictionary and
Macuch’s Handbook,3 namely that they tend to conflate the classical and the modern
forms of the language without consistently or accurately distinguishing between the
two.
Who better, then, to bring order to this state of affairs than Hezy Mutzafi? Mutzafi has already distinguished himself through his contributions to the documentation of numerous dialects of Neo-Aramaic as well as the study of Neo-Aramaic lexicography more specifically.4 He has subsequently expanded this impressive profile
by conducting original fieldwork in the United States and Australia on the surviving
1 R. Borghero, ‘A 17th Century Glossary of Mandaic’, ARAM Periodical 11:2
(2000), 311–19.
2 R. Macuch, ‘The Bridge of Shushtar (A Legend in Vernacular Mandaic with
Introduction, Translation, and Notes)’, in S. Segert (ed.), Studia Semitica philologica
necnon philosophica Ioanni Bakoš dedicate (Bratislava 1965), 153–72; R. Macuch,
Neumandäische Chrestomathie mit grammatischer Skizze, kommentierter Übersetzung
und Glossar (Wiesbaden 1989), and R. Macuch and G. Dankwarth, Neumandäische
Texte im Dialekt von Ahwāz (Wiesbaden 1993).
3 E.S. Drower and R. Macuch, A Mandaic Dictionary (Oxford 1963) and
R. Macuch, Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic (Berlin 1965).
4 With regard to his recent scholarship on Neo-Aramaic lexicography, see
H. Mutzafi, ‘Etymological Notes on North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic’, Aramaic Studies
3:1 (2005a), 83–107; ‘Reflexes of the Word ʼudnā (Ear) in Eastern Neo-Aramaic:
Etymology, Diversification and Innovation’ [in Hebrew], in M. Bar Asher and
M. Florentin (eds), Samaritan, Hebrew, and Aramaic Studies Presented to Avraham
Tal (Jerusalem 2005b), 229–42; ‘On the Etymology of the Verbal Root tʽl ‘to play’
and its Cognates in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic’, Zeitschrift der Deutchen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 156:1 (2006a), 43–56, and, ‘On the Etymology of Some
Enigmatic Words in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic’, Aramaic Studies 4.1 (2006b),
83–99.
550
98940_JOSS_61-2_2016_14_Reviews.indd 550
23/08/16 12:36
reviews
dialects of Neo-Mandaic, and the present volume represents the first fruits of this
fieldwork.
As I mentioned earlier, Mutzafi’s work engages prior scholarship on Neo-­
Mandaic, and serves as a much needed corrective to some of its shortcomings,
particularly the failure of his predecessors (chief among them Macuch) to properly
distinguish between inherited vocabulary in common use and ‘learned’ words drawn
from the classical literature. In his chapter on ‘Aspects of Previous Research’
(pp. 17–33), he notes the presence of maškna ‘temple’ and several other learned
words in the glossary of the grammar of Khorramshahri Neo-Mandaic that I published in 2009.5 At the time, I failed to indicate that this glossary was intended not
as an authoritative lexicon of Neo-Mandaic, but rather as a comprehensive index of
all the Mandaic words used in the grammar, regardless of origin. Even so, I regret
that I did not sufficiently distinguish between the two distinct stages of the language, as he has (deliberately excluding classicisms from the index at the back of his
book, on pp. 223–9).
After the literature review, the remainder of the volume is filled with original data
and fascinating surprises, divided into three primary areas of interest: Neo-­Mandaic’s
relationship to pre-modern Aramaic dialects, including the ensembles of dialects
conventionally described as Classical and Post-Classical Mandaic; Neo-Mandaic and
other related Neo-Aramaic languages; and finally vocabulary unique to Neo-­
Mandaic not found in these other related languages, modern or pre-modern. Mutzafi’s findings will interest not only philologists involved in the study of Classical
Mandaic and other dialects of Aramaic, but also other linguists investigating the
spoken languages of the Middle East and beyond. The former will undoubtedly be
interested in Mutzafi’s extensive collection of genuine survivals of classical Aramaic
lexemes such as amṯɔ ‘maidservant’ and embərɔ ‘sheep’, both of which are unique to
Neo-Mandaic among the surviving dialects of Aramaic. The latter will undoubtedly
be interested in Neo-Mandaic phenomena such as nominal derivation through compounding and blending, by means of which portmanteau words such as šərɔṣomɔ
‘lunch’ (from šərɔ́ ‘opening, releasing’ and ṣomɔ ‘fast, fasting’) and pasqəmɔšɔ ‘scissors’
(from pɔseq ‘it cuts’ and qəmɔšɔ ‘fabric, textile’) are formed. This naturally calls to
mind the (formal) Arabic process of naḥt, by means of which words like faḥmāʼīyāt
‘carbohydrates’ (from faḥm ‘coal’ and māʼ ‘water’) and qamarṣināʽī ‘satellite’ (from
qamar ‘moon’ and ṣināʽī ‘artificial,’ more frequently replaced by an uncompounded
qamar ṣināʽī or even the English loanword sātil) are formed.
A few further observations follow:
P. 54. In his discussion of the Neo-Mandaic names for the days of the week,
Mutzafi notes that the Literary Mandaic form hamša habšaba ‘Thursday’ has since
been replaced by (yum) hibelziwɔ in the surviving dialects of Neo-Mandaic. Evidence
for the survival of the term hamšɔ howšabbɔ for ‘Thursday’ in the now defunct
dialect of Iraqi Neo-Mandaic is provided by Samuel Zwemer, who collected a short
wordlist of Iraqi Neo-Mandaic words including hamsha hofshaba [sic] during his
time in the Persian Gulf at the end of the nineteenth century.6
P. 176. Mutzafi identifies the Neo-Mandaic verb b-d-q ‘to put, place’ as an exclusively post-classical innovation of uncertain etymology. There is, however, a single
5 C.G.
Häberl, The Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr (Wiesbaden 2009).
Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam (New York, Chicago, and Toronto
1900), 287.
6 S.M.
551
98940_JOSS_61-2_2016_14_Reviews.indd 551
23/08/16 12:36
reviews
reference in the Mandaean Book of John which suggests this innovation may date
back much further, to the classical period of Mandaean literature: uabgan hiia qarin
/uzaina el ahdadia badqin.7
The form badqin is the absolute plural form of the G-stem active participle from
this root. The context clearly indicates that the form is ditransitive, taking two arguments: the core argument zaina ‘weapon(s)’ and the prepositional argument el
ahdadia ‘against one another’. Lidzbarski, the pioneer translator of this text, sensibly
rejects the interpretation ‘they split’, and instead suggests ‘they test’ in this context:
‘Sie rufen: “Anschrei des Lebens!” und erproben ihre Waffen aneinander’.8 Unfortunately for his argument, b-d-q ‘to search, examine; try’ is never attested with this
meaning in the G-stem, and even if we were to assume some semantic extension of
the root, it is likewise never ditransitive in that stem, thus necessitating that we look
further afield.
In a forthcoming edition of this text, I propose the translation, ‘They cry out the
curse of Life/and take arms against one another’, ‘take arms’ being a free rendering
of what might more literally be translated as ‘they set arms against one another,’ on
the basis of Neo-Mandaic. Admittedly this is only one example, and there are
numerous other roots meaning ‘to put, place’ in Classical Mandaic, such as ʼ-t-n- w/y,
r-m-w/y, and š-d-w/y. Of those three, the root r-m-w/y ‘to cast; put (on)’ is most frequently used with hirba ‘sword’ and zaina ‘weapon(s)’, with much the same meaning that can be inferred here, suggesting a proportional analogy:
zaina ramin ‘they bear arms’ : zaina badqin ‘they bear arms’ :: dahba ramin ‘they wear
gold’ : X
Where X is *dahba badqin ‘they wear gold’, from which b-d-q eventually assumed
the other meanings of r-m-w/y as well (e.g. hatma rmu ‘they placed a seal’ or ṭabuta
rmun ldilkun ‘they set out a (ritual) meal for you’), which is precisely the situation
that we find in Neo-Mandaic today. In any case, this is further evidence that NeoMandaic can fruitfully be applied to the study of Classical Mandaic texts such as
the Mandaean Book of John, as Mutzafi contends.
P. 202. In his discussion of the Neo-Mandaic word for rib, litɔ, which certainly
appears to be related to the common Aramaic word for rib, ʽilʽā, Mutzafi argues
forcefully, ‘NM litɔ ‘rib’ could hardly reflect [the diminutive form] *ʕelʕīṯā […]
since such a proto-form would have yielded *lextɔ’. I think the etymology may yet
be salvageable, given the confusion that would have arisen between **lextɔ ‘rib’ and
əlextɔ ‘sheep’s fat-tail’, or for that matter homophones like **lexti ‘his rib’ and lexti
‘he isn’t.’
This homophony provided the opportunity for ‘inhibited sound change’, a recognized but still somewhat debated phenomenon, according to which the desire to
avoid the creation of homophones influences the distribution of a sound change
within a language.9 While such avoidance seemingly violates the Neo-Grammarian
hypothesis, namely that sound changes are regular and admit no exceptions, it is
7 M. Lidzbarski, Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer, vol. I (Giessen 1922), 13, lns
11–12.
8 M. Lidzbarski, Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer, vol. II (Giessen 1915), 21.
9 J. Blevins and A. Wedel, ‘Inhibited sound change’, Diachronica 26:2 (2009),
143–83.
552
98940_JOSS_61-2_2016_14_Reviews.indd 552
23/08/16 12:36
reviews
nonetheless ‘an undeniable empirical reality’ in the words of Lyle Campbell.10 Perhaps this apparent ‘exception’ to the -iṯɔ to -extɔ sound change is actually the result
of interdialectal borrowing from an otherwise unattested dialect of Mandaic or some
other Aramaic dialect in which this sound change had not occurred. Examples of
this phenomenon abound in other languages, such as English. For example, the
inhabitants of London who spoke the precursor of today’s modern standard English
borrowed the word vixen, the feminine form of the word fox, from some rural
southwestern dialect in which initial fricatives are regularly voiced, likely due to the
impoverishment of their own wildlife vocabulary.
In closing, this volume serves as a critical reference for researchers interested in
the Mandaic lexicon and of the vocabulary of all the other related Aramaic languages, living and dead, and an excellent study in many of the pitfalls of lexicography, which are certainly not exclusive to the work of Mandaeologists alone. At
present, I am in the process of developing an open access online lexicon of NeoMandaic from published sources under the auspices of the Endangered Language
Alliance of New York, with the assistance of Eric Gruebel, Jessica Ray and Chana
Zigelboym, and we have found Mutzafi’s work and particularly the index of NeoMandaic words in the back of the volume to be indispensable. It is my sincere hope
that Mutzafi’s work stimulates greater interest in Neo-Mandaic, and further investigation into the treasures of its vocabulary.
doi: 10.1093/jss/fgw005
charles häberl
rutgers university
Eric Vallet, L’Arabie Marchande. Etat et Commerce sous les Sultans Rasūlides du
Yémen (Bibliothèque Historique des Pays d’Islam 1). Publications de la Sorbonne,
Paris 2010. Pp. 872 + 12 maps. Price: €90.00. ISBN: 978-2-85944-637-6.
This is a weighty tome (one kilogram and 400 grams to be precise!) in every sense
of the word. The work is the much extended version, one presumes, of a doctoral
thesis presented to the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2006. Profiting
to the full from the more recent availability of some hugely illuminating sources
for the economic history of the medieval Yemen and exploiting comprehensively
Mamluk, Ḥijāzī and other histories, Vallet has undertaken the immense task
of investigating the relationship between commerce and state in Rasulid Yemen
(626–858/1229–1454).
Of Menjik Turkomen origin, the Rasulids entered the Yemen in the train of the
Ayyubids and assumed power from about 626/1230 in the southern highlands and
Tihāma almost by default, no Ayyubid, it seems, willing or able to continue their
control in the region. The Rasulids thus inherited sovereignty over a part of the
Yemen which had been thoroughly subdued by the huge Ayyubid armies from
Egypt. They were blessed too with a number of strong, gifted and efficient rulers,
certainly the most brilliant of them the second, al-Muẓaffar Yūsuf (reg. 647–
94/1249–95). With such effective rulers came internal security, political stability,
administrative development and an intellectual flowering all but unique in the medieval Islamic world. Trade too flourished: with Egypt to the north, with Africa to
the west and south and with India and beyond to the east. It is this latter topic of
trade and the state in particular that Vallet seeks to investigate.
10 L. Campbell, ‘On sound change and challenges to regularity’, in M. Durie
and M. Ross (eds), The Comparative Method Reviewed (Oxford 1996), 72–89 (77).
553
98940_JOSS_61-2_2016_14_Reviews.indd 553
23/08/16 12:36