Autobiography of Usama Ibn Munqiḍ
Abstract
Autobiography (Kitab al-I'tibar) of the Syrian Emir Usama ibn Munqiḍ. (1095-1188) is known as a very important historical source for the first Crusades. It gives a great number of invaluable data on the political and social situation in the 12th century Syria, and especially on the relationship 'between the Crusaders and the local Moslem population.
The work is also valuable, as a work of art of the later Arab literature, for it is well known, that there are not many autobiographical papers to be found in it. Usame's literary work has not so far been evaluated in literature so that his place in the development of the Arabic literature has not been clearly defined.
The Autobiography is also, undoubtedly, important as an exceptional work, as far as the language is concerned. Since, in telling his memories Usame the colloquial language, which was very close to that of contemporary Syria, the Autobiography is one of the rare, reliable sources for the state of the language in the 12th century Arab East.
The linguistic importance of the work has long since been noticed, but it has never obtained more attention, so that from the linguistic point of view, it is still to be carefully examined.
In the present paper, the author has established some characteristic properties of Usame's language: the absence of laryngeal occlusive “hemze”, certain morphological changes in nouns and verbs, the loss of case endings, usage of the dual, the appearance of the new interrogative pronouns, the rules of congruence in gender and number, an inclination towards assyndetic parataxis, shift in the relationship in the conditional sentences, etc. On the basis of the mentioned characteristics the specific properties of the Usame's language, which are most important for the knowledge of speech of the native region of the poet and of his time can be seen better. Only those characteristics of Usame's language which are to be found throughout the text of the Autobiography, which are also of certain boarder interest for the Arabic linguistics, have been chosen. This does not mean at all that all the possibilities that Usame's text offers, have been utilized.
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