THE BERBER LITERARY TRADITION OF THE SOUS
with an edition and translation of 'The Ocean of Tears' by Muhammad Awzal
Nico van den Boogert
This book is the first exploration of the Tashelhit Berber manuscript texts produced in the Sous (South Morocco). The first part describes the region and its traditional schooling system and offers a general description of the manuscript texts, their form, contents, orthography (fully vocalised Maghribi-Arabic script) and language. It presents a survey of all manuscript texts known to date, the oldest of which was written around 1580 AD. The second part describes the life and work of Muhammad Awzal (±1680-1749 AD), the most important Berber author of the period, and contains a list of all Awzal manuscripts. Awzal's lexicon and language are explored separately. An edition in transcription of Awzal's versified exhortation Bahr ad-dumu' "Ocean of Tears", with English translation, notes and glossary is also included.
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten (Witte Singel 25, Postbus 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands, fax : 071-5272038), publication of De Goeje Fund (n° XXVII), Leiden, 1997, 456 pages, Hfl 150. ISBN 90-625-8971-5
Dr. N. van den Boogert started his four years post-doctoral period on the first of November 1994. His PhD thesis Muhammad Awzal and the Berber Literary Tradition of the Sous (343 pages) was defended on 1 March 1995. Van den Boogert, educated as an arabist, berberologist and codicologist, specialises in the Sous Berber literary tradition as found in manuscripts.
In the framework of the post-doctoral project Van den Boogert hopes to make an anthology of texts with translations of works fromthis tradition. He continues, in a sense, what was started by a Dutch scholar, B. Stricker who, in 1960, made the first and only scientifically adequate publication of a Sous Berber manusript text, written in Arabic characters. Sous Berber manuscripts can be found in various public and private collections, the most important being the Berber manuscript collection of the Leiden University Library and the one in the Fonds Roux at Aix-en-Provence.