A note on Ghomara Berber in a 16th century legal textbook by the moroccan writer Ibn ʽArḍūn

Résumé 0

This is a note regarding some terms in Ghomara Berber (northwestern Morocco) issuing from a Moroccan legal text composed in the 16th century, entitled Muqniʽ al-muḥtāj fī ādāb al-azwāj (literally ‘What suffices for in the etiquette of husband and wife’). The text is placed in its geo-historical context. The author of this legal manual is Abū l-ʽAbbās Aḥmad Ibn ʽArḍūn (d. 1584), a jurist and judge in Chefchaoun and a grandson of Abū l-Qāsim Ibn Khajjū (d. 1549), a prominent figure in scholarly circles in northern Morocco. The paragraph in question is written in a mix of Arabic and Ghomara Berber. In the passage, the author describes how his grandfather, Ibn Khajjū, used to sometimes teach people in the Ghomara language and gives an example of one such sentence. The text refers to the six pillars of Iman. In this note, we provide the passage in question in its original (Arabic) script, transcription, translation, and commentary on the Berber lexicon.