The Linguistic Codification of Subjectivity in Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb’s Nufāḍat al-ǧirāb: Verbs, Emotions, and Evaluative Adjectives

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/alqantara.2022.015

Keywords:

Classical Arabic, al-Andalus, Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, Stance, Emotions, Adjectives

Abstract


This work examines the subjective language used by the Andalusian intellectual and politician Lisān al-Dīn Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb (d. 1375) in his exile work Nufāḍat al-ǧirāb. The aim is to explore the value of a linguistic approach in understanding the place of this text within the Islamic West’s cultural transition toward the modern European paradigm. The study has three parts. The first provides a brief introduction to the author, his sociopolitical context, and the work’s content. The second part proposes a quantitative-qualitative methodology to structure the digitized text according to its genres and to extract instances of the most salient linguistic phenomena according to an annotation scheme. The third part proceeds to the analysis of the extracted data regarding action, emotion, and evaluation. The analysis shows a complex encoding of subjectivity in the Nufāḍa where, unlike Ibn Ḫaldūn’s Taʿrīf, the marks of the first-person, although significant, are scarce. However, there is extensive use of evaluative adjectives throughout the work, with a lexical richness that explicitly reveals the author’s stance. This finding demonstrates the benefits of adopting a hybrid methodology in approaching pre-modern literary-historical texts, along with the need to incorporate linguistic, empirical, and comparative analysis to study the aforementioned epistemological transition.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Abu-Chakra, Faruk, Arabic. An Essential Grammar, Londres, Routledge, 2018. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315620091

Athanasiadou, Angeliki, "Adjectives and subjectivity", en A. Athanasiadou, C. Canakis y B. Cornillie (eds.), Subjectification. Various Paths to Subjectivity, Berlín-Nueva York, Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, pp. 209-239. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110892970

Aurell, Jaume, Authoring the Past. History, Autobiography, and Politics in Medieval Catalonia, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2012. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226032344.001.0001 PMCid:PMC3481575

Baker, Paul, Hardie, Andrew y McEnery, Tony, A Glossary of Corpus Linguistics, Edimburgo, Edinburgh University Press, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748626908

Belinkov, Yonatan et al., "Shamela: A Large-Scale Historical Arabic Corpus", en E. Hinrichs, M. Hinrichs y T. Trippel (eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Technology Resources and Tools for Digital Humanities (LT4DH), Osaka, The COLING 2016 Organizing Committee, 2016, pp. 45-53.

Bencheneb, Saâdeddine, "Mémoires, Tableau historiques et Portraits dans l'oeuvre de Lisan ad-Din Ibn al-Khatib", Revue d'Histoire et de Civilization du Maghreb, 2 (1967), pp. 54-85.

Bosch Vilá, Jacinto, Ben al-Jaṭīb y Granada, Madrid, Asociación Cultural Hispano-Alemana, 1980.

Brown, Gillian y Yule, George, Discourse Analysis, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511805226

Calero, M.ª Isabel, "El proceso de Ibn al-Jaṭīb", Al-Qanṭara, 22, 2 (2001), pp. 421-461. https://doi.org/10.3989/alqantara.2001.v22.i2.220

Damaj, Ahmad Chafic, "El último viaje de Ibn al-Jaṭīb. Circunstancias, causas y consecuencias", en Juan P. Monferrer y M.ª Dolores Rodríguez (ed.), Entre Oriente y Occidente. Ciudades y viajeros en la Edad Media, Granada, Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2005, pp. 103-132.

Ḍayf, Šawqī, Min al-Mašriq wa-l-Maġrib. Buḥūṯ fī l-adab, El Cairo, Al-Dār al-Miṣriyya al-Lubnāniyya, 1998.

De Looze, Laurence, Pseudo-autobiography in the Fourteenth Century. Juan Ruiz, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, and Geoffrey Chaucer, Florida, University Press of Florida, 1997.

Ditters, Everhard, "Maṣdar", en Kees Versteegh et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics: Volume III Lat-Pu, Leiden, Brill, 2008, pp. 164-169.

Dols, Michael W., The Black Death in the Middle East, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1979.

Eekhof, Lynn S., van Krieken, Kobie y Sanders, José, "VPIP: A Lexical Identification Procedure for Perceptual, Cognitive, and Emotional Viewpoint in Narrative Discourse", Open Library of Humanities, 6, 1 (2020), p. 18. https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.483

Fromherz, Allen J., Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times, Edimburgo, Edinburgh University Press, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748642267 PMCid:PMC2991224

Fuoli, Matteo y Hommerberg, Charlotte, "Optimising transparency, reliability and replicability: annotation principles and inter-coder agreement in the quantification of evaluative expressions", Corpora, 10, 3 (2015), pp. 315-349. https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2015.0080

García Gómez, Emilio, Foco de antigua luz sobre la Alhambra. Desde un texto de Ibn al-Jaṭīb en 1362, Madrid, Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 1988.

Geeraerts, Dirk (ed.), Cognitive Linguistics. Basic Readings, Berlín, Mouton de Gruyter, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199901

Goody, Jack, Renaissances. The one or the many?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Habash, Nizar, Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing, San Rafael, California, Morgan & Claypool, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02139-8

Hoenerbach, Wilhelm, "El historiador Ibn al-Jaṭīb: Pueblo - Gobierno - Estado", Andalucía Islámica. Textos y Estudios, 1 (1980), pp. 43-63.

Hunston, Susan, "Using a corpus to investigate stance quantitatively and qualitatively", en Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse. Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2007, pp. 27-48. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.164.03hun

Ibn ʿAṣfūr, ʿAlī, Al-Muqarrib, ed. Abū ʿAbd al-Sattār al-Ǧawārī y ʿAbd Allāh l-Ǧabūrī, Bagdad, Riʾāsat Dīwān al-Awqāf, 1971.

Ibn Ḫafāǧa, Abū Isḥāq, Dīwān Ibn Ḫafāǧa, ed. Muṣṭafà Ġāzī, Alejandría, Manšaʾat al-Maʿārif, 1960.

Ibn Ḫaldūn, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Riḥlat Ibn Ḫaldūn, ed. Muḥammad b. Tāwīt al-Ṭanǧī, Beirut, Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2004.

Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, Lisān al-Dīn, Al-Iḥāṭa fī aḫbār Ġarnāṭa, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ʿInān, Cairo, Maktabat al-Ḫānǧī, 1977, 4 vols.

Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, Lisān al-Dīn, K. al-Wuṣūl li-ḥifẓ al-ṣiḥḥa fī-l-fuṣūl. "Libro de Higiene", ed. y trad. M.ª de la Concepción Vázquez de Benito, Salamanca, Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1984.

Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, Lisān al-Dīn, Nufāḍat al-ǧirāb fī ʿulālat al-iġtirāb, ed. Aḥmad Muḫtār al-ʿAbbādī, Cairo, 1967.

Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, Lisān al-Dīn, Nufāḍat al-ǧirāb fī ʿulālat al-iġtirāb (al-Ǧuzʾ al-Ṯāliṯ), ed. al-Saʿdiyya Fāġiya, Casablanca, Maṭbaʿat al-Naǧāḥ al-Ǧadīda, 1989.

Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, Lisān al-Dīn, Rawḍat al-taʿrīf bi-l-ḥubb al-šarīf, ed. Muḥammad al-Kattānī, Beirut, Dār al-Ṯaqāfa, 1970.

Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, Lisān al-Dīn, Rayḥānat al-kuttāb wa naǧʿat al-muntāb, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ʿInān, Cairo, Maktabat al-Ḫānǧī, 1981, 2 vols.

Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, Lisān al-Dīn, Tārīḫ Isbāniyā al-islāmiyya wa-Kitāb Aʿmāl al-aʿlām, ed. E. Lévi Provençal, Beirut: Dār al-Makšūf, 1956.

Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, Lisān al-Dīn, Tārīḫ al-Maġrib al-ʿarabī fī al-ʿaṣr al-wasīṭ. Al-qism al-ṯāliṯ min Kitāb Aʿmāl al-aʿlām, eds. Aḥmad Muḫtār al ʿAbbādī y Muḥammad Ibrāhīm al-Kattānī, Casablanca, Dār al-Kitāb, 1964.

Ibn Luyūn, Abū ʿUthmān, Ibn Luyūn: Tratado de Agricultura, ed. y trad. Joaquina Eguaras Ibáñez, 2ª ed., Almería, Universidad de Almería, 2014.

Ibrahim, Wesam y Hardie, Andrew, "Accessible Corpus Annotation for Arabic", en T. McEnery, A. Hardie y N. Younis (eds.), Arabic Corpus Linguistics, Edimburgo, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp. 56-75. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748677382-005

ʿInān, Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh, Lisān al-Dīn Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb. Ḥayātuh wa-turāṯuh al-fikrī, Cairo, Maktabat al-Ḫānǧī, 1968.

Jreis Navarro, Laila M., "Contextos de autoexpresión: voces andalusíes en el exilio de la convención", Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 9, 1 (2017), pp. 130-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/17546559.2015.1133922

Jreis Navarro, Laila M., Entre dos orillas. El viaje de exilio de Ibn al-Jaṭīb a través de su obra Nufāḍat al-ŷirāb, Córdoba, UCOPress - IAS/Princeton, 2021.

Jreis Navarro, Laila M., "Ibn Khaldūn in his subjective lexicon. The emotional constellation of an intellectual in transition", Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos (Sección Árabe-Islam), 72 (2023).

Jreis Navarro, Laila M., "Inhabiting the Strait. Towards a Euro-African subjectivity in premodern Arabic texts", Intus-Legere Historia, 14, 1 (2020), pp. 217-239.

Kagay, Donald J. y Villalon, L.J. Andrew, Conflict in Fourteenth-Century Iberia. Aragon vs. Castile and the War of the Two Pedros, Leiden, Brill, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004425057

Kannūn, ʿAbd Allāh, "Lisān al-Dīn Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb: al-Kātib al-Sāḫir", Maǧallat al-Baḥṯ al-ʿIlmī, 2 (1964), pp.123-133.

Lejeune, Philippe, Le Pacte autobiographique, París, Seuil, 1975.

Lévi-Provençal, Evariste y García Gómez, Emilio, El siglo XI en 1a persona. Las «Memorias» de ʿAbd Allāh, último rey Zirí de Granada, destronado por los Almorávides (1090), Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 2010.

Lirola, Jorge et al., "Ibn al-Jaṭīb al-Salmānī, Lisān al-Dīn", en J. Lirola y J. M. Puerta Vílchez (eds.), Biblioteca de al-Andalus: De Ibn al-Dabbāg a Ibn Kurz, Almería, Fundación Ibn Tufayl, 2004, pp. 643-698.

al-Maqqarī, Šihāb al-Dīn, Nafḥ al-ṭīb min ġuṣn al-Andalus al-raṭīb, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Beirut, Dār Ṣādir, 1968, 8 vols.

Molina López, Emilio, Ibn al-Jatib, Granada, Editorial Comares, 2001.

Obeid, Ossama et al., "CAMeL Tools: An Open Source Python Toolkit for Arabic Natural Language Processing", en Proceedings of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, Marsella, European Language Resources Association, 2020, pp. 7022-7032.

Paradis, Carita, "Adjectives and Boundedness", Cognitive Linguistics, 12, 1 (2001), pp. 47-65. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.12.1.47

Partington, Alan, Duguid, Alison y Taylor, Charlotte, Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and Practice in Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS), Amsterdam y Filadelfia, John Benjamins, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.55

Reddy, William M., "The Eurasian origins of empty time and space. Modernity as temporality reconsidered", History and Theory, 55 (October, 2016), pp. 325-356. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.10815

Reynolds, Dwight F. (ed.), Interpreting the Self. Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520926110 PMid:11287750

Romanov, Maxim, "Algorithmic Analysis of Medieval Arabic Biographical Collections", Speculum, 92, 1 (2017), pp. 226-246. https://doi.org/10.1086/693970

Rosenwein, Barbara, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Nueva York, Cornell University Press, 2006.

Rosenwein, Barbara, Generations of Feeling. A History of Emotions, 600-1700, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316156780

Shakir, Khalid, "Authorship Verification in Arabic Using Function Words: A Controversial Case Study of Imam Ali's Book Peak of Eloquence", International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, 13, 1-2 (2019), pp. 223-248. https://doi.org/10.3366/ijhac.2017.0187

Shatzmiller, Maya, L'historiographie Mérinide. Ibn Khaldūn et ses contemporains, Leiden, Brill, 1982.

Spearing, A. Colin, Textual Subjectivity. The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187240.001.0001

Spiegel, Gabrielle, The Past as Text. The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

al-Suyūṭī, Ǧalāl al-Dīn, Buġyat al-wuʿāt fī ṭabaqāt al-luġawiyyīn wa-l-nuḥāt, ed. Muḥammad Abū l-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, El Cairo, Dār al-Fikr, 1979, 2 vols.

Ṭaḥṭaḥ, Fāṭima, Al-Ġurba wa-l-ḥanīn fī l-šiʿr al-andalusī, Rabat, Manšūrāt Kulliyyat al-Ādāb, Ǧāmiʿat Muḥammad al-Ḫāmis, 1993.

al-Tiṭwānī, Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr, Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb min ḫilāl kutubihi, Tetuán, Dār al-Ṭibāʿa al-Maġribiyya, 1954, 2 vols.

Velázquez Basanta, Fernando Nicolás, "La autobiografía de Ibn al-Jaṭīb", Revista del Centro de Estudios Históricos de Granada y su Reino, 33 (2021), pp. 189-221.

Viguera, M.ª Jesús, "Ibn Marzūq según Ibn al-Jaṭīb: Análisis de una biografía", Revue de la Faculté des Lettres Tetouan / Maǧallat Kulliyat al-Ādāb bi-Tiṭwān (Numéro Spécial sur le colloque d'IBN AL KHATIB), 2 (1987), pp. 33-41.

Viguera, M.ª Jesús, "Ibn al-Jaṭīb visita el monte de los Hintāta", en Concepción Castillo, Inmaculada Cortes et al. (eds.), Homenaje al profesor José María Fórneas Besteiro, Granada, Editorial de la Universidad de Granada, 1995, pp. 645-659.

Viguera, M.ª Jesús (ed.), Ibn Jaldún. El Mediterráneo en el siglo XIV. Auge y declive de los Imperios. Exposición en el Real Alcázar de Sevilla. Mayo-Septiembre 2006, Granada-Sevilla, Fundación El Legado Andalusí y Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2006.

Wiebe, Janyce et al., "Learning Subjective Language", Computational Linguistics, 30, 3 (2004), pp. 277-308. https://doi.org/10.1162/0891201041850885

al-Zahrani, Saleh, "La queja y la elegía, dos elementos fundamentales de la melancolía en el Dīwān de Ibn al-Jaṭīb", Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos (Sección Árabe-Islam), 57 (2008), pp. 399-423.

al-Zahrani, Saleh, "Lo cómico y lo burlesco en el Dīwān de Ibn al-Jaṭīb", en C. del Moral y F. Velázquez (eds.) Ibn al-Jaṭīb y su tiempo, Granada, Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2012, pp. 287-306.

Znībar, Muḥammad, "Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb wa-l-taǧdīd fī l-minhāǧ al-tārīḫī", Maǧallat Kulliyyat al-Ādāb wa-l-ʿUlūm al-Insāniyya. Ǧāmiʿat Muḥammad al-Ḫāmis, 2 (1977), pp. 79-126.

Published

2022-07-28

How to Cite

Jreis-Navarro, L. M. . (2022). The Linguistic Codification of Subjectivity in Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb’s Nufāḍat al-ǧirāb: Verbs, Emotions, and Evaluative Adjectives. Al-Qanṭara, 43(1), e15. https://doi.org/10.3989/alqantara.2022.015

Issue

Section

Articles