Talk:Kharja

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kharja is city in jordan irbid

Contents 1 Merge? 2 Categories 3 Unsourced assertions 4 Drastic Revision Needed

[edit] Merge?

The merge seems like a good idea to me. Maybe merge both into Muwashshah leaving redirects? Dlyons493 Talk 01:23, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that merging the article would be a terrible error. The Jarchas are not only the end of arab and jew Muwashshah, but also, and mainly, the first expression of lyric literature in primitive Spanish language. The had autonomous life, and weren't written by the same authors of the Muwashshah. This authors only compiled what they heard to mozarabs. Their charming siplicity and popular spirit have nothing to do with the erudit and rigid Muwashshah although they were written one after the other.--Garcilaso 20:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Merger with Muwashshah, suggested above, is a bad idea, I think. But the merger of Kharjah, Kharja and Jarcha is necessary: they are three spellings of the same word. I believe Kharja is the best form to choose. Jarcha is the Spanish spelling, not usually used in English, so would be my last choice. Andrew Dalby 15:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I find Andrew Dalby's suggestion reasonable. Jarcha could be a disambiguation page (the Kharja and the music group), and in the article a reference to Spanish spelling could be made.--Garcilaso 15:34, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I tried to do it by myself, but as another article with the name Kharja exists it needs to be done by an administrator. I don´t know the proceedings--Garcilaso 14:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Finished the process, I hope everybody agrees--Garcilaso 09:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

It is impossible to talk about the kharajat without citing the work of Federico Corriente.~~sloko —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.163.136.119 (talk) 21:37, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

After talking to the editor The Ogre, I delete the categories for lack of WP:V. When references are given to the Portuguese kharjas, I will be pleased to restore them. --Garcilaso 15:25, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree! The Ogre 15:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

However! The the Portuguese Wikipedia, in the article Literatura da Espanha, states: "Outros autores colocam também as "jarchas" ("carjas" em português) como manifestações literárias anteriores ao romanceiro tradicional espanhol mas dentro da literatura espanhola. Esta visão encontra-se confrontada com outras visões como ser parte da literatura portuguesa por serem dialectos moçarabes mais semelhantes ao português medieval do que ao espanhol. Outros estudosos qualificam os dialectos moçarabes como línguas independentes e analisando portanto que as carjas não deveriam estar incluídas em nenhuma das literaturas." This needs further research and sources. The Ogre 16:01, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unsourced assertions

I have just deleted an edition that said more or less that "many" scholars think that the Kharjas were written by the same authors of the Muwashshahs, and "some" have other "opinion". Who are those scholars? I don´t know them and the edition doesn´t bring sources, only a web article that says just the contrary. The only reliable sources I know (including the more respectable experts, like Emilio García Gómez) have no doubt of the popular origin of the kharjas. It is strange, also, the deletion of the information about the religion of the Mozarabs. --Garcilaso 10:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Drastic Revision Needed

This article seems to take for granted the common assertion that the Kharjas were, in fact, in a Romance vernacular. However, the assumptions needed to back up this assertion are marred by serious logical, philological and historical infelicities. Furthermore, this article seems to assert that Kharjas are ubiquitously or preponderantly romance. This is patently untrue. 95% of the surviving corpus of Kharjas attached to Arabic Muwashshahas are indisputably Arabic of one sort or another be it the classical acrolect or, colloquial andalusi vernacular or some blend of the two. The Arabic Muwashshahas with Kharjas containing Romance vocabulary amount to nothing more than a tiny minority of 45 Kharjas with Romance vocabulary appended to Arabic Muwashshahas. Romance Kharjas appended to Hebrew Muwashshahas are even more scarce, amounting to a mere 26. In fact, some of these are only referred to as romance because of one or two romance phrases inserted in them. To take a typical example, the following "Romance" Kharja is found appended to a Hebrew Muwashshaha by Yehuda Halevi:

יא רב כם בבראיו כן אשת אלחלאק יא מן קבל אן יסלם ירדד בלפראק

y' rb km bbr'yw
kn 'št 'lhl'q
y' mn qbl 'n yslm
yrdd b'lfr'q.

Which is normally read as follows

"Yâ rabb, como viviré yo Con este el hallâq Ya man qabl an yusallim Yuraddid bi-l-farrâq"

"Dear lord, how shall I live With this revolting man, O you who, even before you greet, Repel (me) with departure"

This "Romance" Kharja contains barely 6 words of possible Romance origin, and even those (particularly "Viviré yo") are uncertain.

Another, more laughably damning, example may be found at the end of Ibn Bushra's `Uddât al-Jalîs:

بي يا سححارة الب قشت كر بلفقور كر بنابذي بور

by ya shhâra âlb qsht kr blfqwr kr bnabdhy bwr.

García Gomez (whose writings form this article's main source,) in his infinite disregard for philology, renders this as

Ven, ya sahhara Alba q'esta kon bel fogore Kando vene pidi amore.

The problems with such a rendering are legion. First of all, the assumption that "kr" is to be read as "Kando" (When) seems specious at best. Even if the scribe had forgotten a graphic dot and miswritten an arabic ر where he intended ن this would not justify reading the word as "Kando," particularly since, when scribes of the period did intend to transcribe that particular word, they had no trouble transcribing the final consonant.

There are other numerous infelicities, such as reading bwr as "amor." Even if one admits the rather unlikely possibility that the scribe mistook a nasal for a bilabial stop, this only yeilds "mor". The Arabic alphabet allows for the transcription of initial "a" with the symbol آ or alif, which, as can be verified in this very rant of mine, was in fact used for just such a purpose.

I could go on, but I won't. The above Kharja suggests an Arabic reading more than a Romance one, as is the case for a LARGE number of supposedly "romance" Kharjas.

Suffice it to say, this article needs to take into account the fact calling the language of Kharjas "a romance vernacular" is, at best, an overstatement.

Szfski (talk) 06:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

In the article, the mixture of Romance and Arabic expressions is taken into account clearly. On the other hand, not only the researchs by García Gómez, but all the other references I have read about Kharjas, including Álvaro Galmés, that has a scientifical criticism to "easy" translations, make emphasis in the preponderant Romance nature of the Kharjas. Of course there are diferent transcriptions and translations depending on the author, but discrediting Emilio García Gómez asserting "his infinite disregard for philology" means that there is are eminences that susbstitute his view and that ones are not quotated. Clear and serious references are needed: We should note that Wikipedia is not place for original research.--Garcilaso (talk) 19:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

García Gómez does indeed disregard philology almost completely. For example, one of the Kharjas appended to the Arabic text of one of writings begins thus:

شيشبيش يا سيدي::

which may be transcribed as

shyshbys yâ sidi

and which García Gómez renders as

"ši oš vais ya Sidi"

If García Gómez knew how to go about this, he would take into account the fact that the composer of the muwashshaha containing this Kharja was Ibn Ubada Al Malaqi who lived during the late eleventh century. Neither "os" nor "vais" are possible Iberian forms as early as this. If this expression was at all used at the time in Mozarabic its form would have almost certainly been something more like "Si vos vades.." The phonological innovations he hypothesizes were not used until the late fourteenth century at the earliest, three hundred years AFTER this Kharja was set in writing. Moreover, Gómez gives no account for why the Arabic script is used to transcribe a postalveolar fricative as if it were palato-alveolar, when both the script in question, as well as Gómez' reconstruction contain such a distinction.

This disregard for philology and historical linguistics suggests that Gómez' claim for "resolución, probablemente definitiva" is simply untenable. This article should reflect that, instead of wholesale swallowing Gómez' and other scholars' improbable hypotheses. (other scholars' claims for the meaning of this Kharja, such as Sole-Sole's "si si, ven!" are equally untenable for similar reasons.)

Very often the content of Kharjas makes little sense in either romance or Arabic. The words that are readily intelligible, however, are almost always in Arabic. In order to make the rest make sense, scholars often contort philological history and hypothesize glottochronological impossibilities with no regard for decent scholarship. My example above is a fairly representative demonstration of this.

I've modified the article accordingly with an extra sourced paragraph.

Szfski (talk) 05:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)