Kharja
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The kharja (in Arabic , meaning "final"), also known as jarcha in Spanish, is the final refrain of a series of a muwashshah, a lyric genre of Al-Andalus (the Islamic Iberian Peninsula) written in Arabic or Hebrew, commonly with five stanzas, each consisting of four to six lines. The final two lines of each stanza act as a refrain which is known as a kharja.
The kharjas are believed by most specialists to have been in a Romance vernacular, blended with some Arabic expressions and words, which has been called Mozarabic. These refrains were not composed by the authors of the muwashshahs: these authors listened to the songs of the Christian population, the Mozarabs, and added them to their own compositions, which were in fact often inspired by the jarchas. With examples dating back to the 11th century, this genre of poetry is believed to be among the oldest in any Romance language, and certainly the earliest recorded form of lyric poetry in Ibero-Romance.
Its rediscovery in the 20th century by Hebrew scholar Samuel Miklos Stern and Arabist Emilio García Gómez is generally thought to have cast new light on the evolution of Romance languages.
The kharja likely has its roots in popular lyric songs and in the expression of love. Although the majority of known authors are men, the poetic voice is often that of a young woman. The addressee of the kharja is always the habib ("lover", in Arabic). Arab writers from Middle East or North Africa as Ahmad Al-Tifasi (1184-1253) referred to "songs in the Christian style" sung in Al-Andalus from ancient times that can be easily identified as the kharjas. [1]
The kharja is often read separately from the longer poem with which it was written down.[citation needed]
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[edit] Debate over Reading
Modern translations of the Kharjas are a matter of debate particularly because Hebrew and Arabic scripts do not include vowels. A large spectrum of translations is possible given the ambiguity created by the missing vowels. Because of this, most translations of these texts will be disputed by some. Further debate arises around the mixed vocabulary used by the authors. The linguistic, political, and social history of the Iberian peninsula is expressed in the linguistic subtleties of these poems, which many scholars find to be both confusing and interesting.[citation needed]
A minority of scholars, such as Richard Hitchcock contend that the Kharjas are, in fact, not predominantly in a Romance language, but rather an extremely colloquial Arabic idiom bearing marked influence from the local Romance varieties. Such scholars accuse the academic majority of misreading the ambiguous script in untenable or questionable ways and ignoring contemporary Arab accounts of how Muwashshahas and Kharjas were composed.[2]
[edit] Example
An example of a typical kharja (and translation):
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This verse expresses the theme of the pain of longing for the absent lover (habib), a theme that was later developed in the Galician-Portuguese Cantigas de Amigo from the 12th to the 14th century. It had some influence on the mystic poetry of Saint John of the Cross in the 16th century[citation needed].
[edit] See also
- Aljamiado, the practice of writing a Romance language with the Arabic or Hebrew scripts.
- Muwashshah
- Iberian Romance languages
- Mozarab
- Mozarabic language
- Spanish poetry
- Arabic poetry
[edit] External links
- Texts of fifty-five kharjas, with different transcriptions and translation to English French and German
- Ten kharjas translated to English
[edit] References
- GARCIA GOMEZ, Emilio, Jarchas Romances, serie árabe, ISBN 84-206-2652-X
- GALMÉS DE FUENTES, Álvaro, Las Jarchas Mozárabes, forma y Significado ISBN 84-7423-667-3
- NIMER, Miguel, Influências Orientais na Língua Portuguesa, ISBN 85-314-0707-9
- KHARJAS AND VILLANCICOS, by Armistead S.G., Journal of Arabic Literature, Volume 34, Numbers 1-2, 2003, pp. 3-19(17)
- HITCHCOCK, RICHARD, The "Kharjas" as early Romance Lyrics: a Review
