The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 10 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (essential reading TXT) 📖

enough, however, Greek itself has preserved for us the key to the real nature of the letter. In � the initial a is preceded by the so called spiritus lends (‘), a sign which must be placed in front or at the top of any vowel beginning a Greek word, and which represents that slight aspiration or soft breathing almost involuntarily uttered, when we try to pronounce a vowel by itself. We need not go far to find how deeply rooted this tendency is and to what exaggerations it will sometimes lead. Witness the gentleman who, after mentioning that he had been visiting his “favourite haunts”

on the scenes of his early life, was sympathetically asked, how the dear old ladies were. This spiritus lends is the silent h of the French “homme” and the English “honour,” corresponding exactly to the Arabic Hamzah, whose mere prop the Alif is, when it stands at the beginning of a word: a native Arabic Dictionary does not begin with B�b al-Alif (Gate or Chapter of the Alif), but with B�b al-Hamzah. What the Greeks call Alpha and have transmitted to us as a name for the vowel a, is in fact nothing else but the Arabic Hamzah-Alif,(~)moved by Fathah, i.e. bearing the sign(~) for a at the top (~), just as it might have the sign Zammah (~) superscribed to express u (~), or the sign Kasrah (~) subjoined to represent i(~). In each case the Hamzah-Alif, although scarcely audible to our ear, is the real letter and might fitly be rendered in transliteration by the above mentioned silent h, wherever we make an Arabic word begin with a vowel not preceded by any other sign. This latter restriction refers to the sign ‘, which in Sir Richard Burton’s translation of The Nights, as frequently in books published in this country, is used to represent the Arabic letter ~ in whose very name ‘Ayn it occurs.

The ‘Ayn is “described as produced by a smart compression of the upper part of the windpipe and forcible emission of breath,”

imparting a guttural tinge to a following or preceding vowel-sound; but it is by no means a mere guttural vowel, as Professor Palmer styles it. For Europeans, who do not belong to the Israelitic dispensation, as well as for Turks and Persians, its exact pronunciation is most difficult, if not impossible to acquire.

 

In reading Arabic from transliteration for the purpose of scanning poetry, we have therefore in the first instance to keep in mind that no Arabic word or syllable can begin with a vowel.

Where our mode of rendering Arabic in the Roman character would make this appear to be the case, either Hamzah (silent h), or ‘Ayn (represented by the sign’) is the real initial, and the only element to be taken in account as a letter. It follows as a self-evident corollary that wherever a single consonant stands between two vowels, it never closes the previous syllable, but always opens the next one. Our word “Ak�mu,” for instance, can only be divided into the syllables: A (properly Ha)-k�-m�, never into Ak-�-m� or Ak-�m-�.

 

It has been stated above that the syllable k� is closed by the letter Alif after Fathah, in the same way as the syllable m� is closed by the letter W�w, and I may add now, as the word f� is closed by the letter Y� (y). To make this perfectly clear, I must repeat that the Arabic Alphabet, as it was originally written, deals only with consonants. The signs for the short vowel-sounds were added later for a special purpose, and are generally not represented even in printed books, e.g. in the various editions of The Nights, where only quotations from the Koran or poetical passages are provided with the vowel-points. But among those consonants there are three, called weak letters (Hur�f al-�illah), which have a particular organic affinity to these vowel sounds: the guttural Hamzah, which is akin to a, the palatal Y�, which is related to i, and the labial W�w, which is homogeneous with u. Where any of the weak letters follows a vowel of its own class, either at the end of a word or being itself followed by another consonant, it draws out or lengthens the preceding vowel and is in this sense called a letter of prolongation (Harf al-Madd). Thus, bearing in mind that the Hamzah is in reality a silent h, the syllable k� might be written kah, similarly to the German word “sah,” where the h is not pronounced either, but imparts a lengthened sound to the a. In like manner m� and f� are written in Arabic muw and fiy respectively, and form long quantities not because they contain a vowel long by nature, but because their initial “Muharrakah” is followed by a “S�kinah,” exactly as in the previously mentioned syllables taf, fun, mus.[FN#449] In the Roman transliteration, Ak�m� forms a word of five letters, two of which are consonants, and three vowels; in Arabic it represents the combination H(a)k(a)hm(u)w, consisting also of five letters but all consonants, the intervening vowels being expressed in writing either merely by superadded external signs, or more frequently not at all. Metrically it represents one short and two long quantities (U - -), forming in Latin a trisyllable foot, called Bacch�us, and in Arabic a quinqueliteral “Rukn” (pillar) or “Juz”

(part, portion), the technical designation for which we shall introduce presently.

 

There is one important remark more to be made with regard to the Hamzah: at the beginning of a word it is either conjunctive, Hamzat al-Wasl, or disjunctive, Hamzat al-Kat’. The difference is best illustrated by reference to the French so-called aspirated h, as compared with the above-mentioned silent h. If the latter, as initial of a noun, is preceded by the article, the article loses its vowel, and, ignoring the silent h altogether, is read with the following noun almost as one word: le homme becomes l’homme (pronounced lomme) as le ami becomes l’ami. This resembles very closely the Arabic Hamzah Wasl. If, on the other hand, a French word begins with an aspirated h, as for instance h�ros, the article does not drop its vowel before the noun, nor is the h sounded as in the English word “hero,” but the effect of the aspirate is simply to keep the two vowel sounds apart, so as to pronounce le �ros with a slight hiatus between, and this is exactly what happens in the case of the Arabic Hamzah Kat’.

 

With regard to the Wasl, however, Arabic goes a step further than French. In the French example, quoted above, we have seen it is the silent h and the preceding vowel which are eliminated; in Arabic both the Hamzah and its own Harakah, i.e. the short vowel following it, are supplanted by their antecedent. Another example will make this clear. The most common instance of the Hamzah Wasl is the article al (for h(a)l=the Hebrew hal), where it is moved by Fathah. But it has this sound only at the beginning of a sentence or speech, as in “Al-Hamdu” at the head of the Fatihah, or in “All�hu” at the beginning of the third Surah. If the two words stand in grammatical connection, as in the sentence “Praise be to God,” we cannot say “Al-Hamdu li-All�hi,” but the junction (Wasl) between the dative particle li and the noun which it governs must take place. According to the French principle, this junction would be effected at the cost of the preceding element and li All�hi would become l’All�h�; in Arabic, on the contrary, the kasrated l of the particle takes the place of the following fathated Hamzah and we read li ‘ll�hi instead. Proceeding in the Fatihah we meet with the verse “Iyy�ka na’budu wa iyy�ka nasta’�nu,” Thee do we worship and of Thee do we ask aid. Here the Hamzah of iyy�ka (properly hiyy�ka with silent h) is disjunctive, and therefore its pronunciation remains the same at the beginning and in the middle of the sentence, or, to put it differently, instead of coalescing with the preceding wa into wa’yy�ka, the two words are kept separate by the Hamzah, reading wa iyy�ka, just as it was the case with the French Le h�ros.

 

If the conjunctive Hamzah is preceded by a quiescent letter, this takes generally Kasrah: “T�lat al-Laylah,” the night was longsome, would become T�lati ‘l-Laylah. If, however, the quiescent letter is one of prolongation, it mostly drops out altogether, and the Harakah of the next preceding letter becomes {he connecting vowel between the two words, which in our parlance would mean that the end vowel of the first word is shortened before the elided initial of the second. Thus “f� al-bayti,” in the house, which in Arabic is written f(i)y h(a)l-b(a)yt(i) and which we transliterate f� ‘l-bayti, is in poetry read fil-bayti, where we must remember that the syllable fil, in spite of its short vowel, represents a long quantity, because it consists of a moved letter followed by a quiescent one. F�l would be overlong and could, according to Arabic prosody, stand only in certain cases at the end of a verse, i.e. in pause, where a natural tendency prevails to prolong a sound.

 

The attentive reader will now be able to fix the prosodical value of the line quoted above with unerring security. For metrical purposes it syllabifies into: A-k�-mul-vaj-da f� kal-b� wa s�-r�, containing three short and eight long quantities. The initial unaccented a is short, for the same reason why the syllables da and wa are so, that is, because it corresponds to an Arabic letter, the Hamzah or silent h, moved by Fathah. The syllables k�, f�, b�, s�, r� are long for the same reason why the syllables mul, waj, kal are so, that is, because the accent in the transliteration corresponds to a quiescent Arabic letter, following a moved one. The same simple criterion applies to the whole list, in which I give in alphabetical order the first lines and the metre of all the poetical pieces contained in the Mac.

edition, and which will be found at the end of this volume. {This appendix is not included in the electronic text}

 

The prosodical unities, then, in Arabic are the moved and the quiescent letter, and we are now going to show how they combine into metrical elements, feet, and metres.

 

i. The metrical elements (Us�l) are:

 

1. The Sabab,[FN#450] which consists of two letters and is either khaf�f (light) or sak�l (heavy). A moved letter followed by a quiescent, i.e. a closed syllable, like the afore-mentioned taf, fun, mus, to which we may now add f�=fah, ‘�=‘iy, ‘�=‘uw, form a Sabab khaf�f, corresponding to the classical long quantity (-). Two moved letters in succession, like mute, ‘ala, constitute a Sabab sak�l, for which the classical name would be Pyrrhic (U

U). As in Latin and Greek, they are equal in weight and can frequently interchange, that is to say, the Sabab khaf�f can be evolved into a sak�l by moving its second Harf, or the latter contracted into the former, by making its second letter quiescent.

 

2. The Watad, consisting of three letters, one of which is quiescent. If the quiescent follows the two moved ones, the Watad is called majm�’ (collected or joined), as fa’� (=fa’uw), maf�

(=mafah), ‘ilun, and it corresponds to the classical Iambus (U -

). If, on the contrary, the quiescent intervenes or separates between the two moved letters, as in f�‘i ( = fah’i), l�tu (=lahtu), taf’i, the Watad is called mafr�k (separated), and has its classical equivalent in the Trochee (- U) 3. The F�silah,[FN#451] containing four letters, i.e.

three moved ones followed by a quiescent, and which, in fact, is only a shorter name for a Sabab sak�l followed by a Sabab khaf�f, as mute +