Akharja orkharjah (Arabic:خرجة,romanized: kharjah,lit. 'exit'[ˈxardʒa];Spanish:jarcha[ˈxaɾtʃa];Portuguese:carja[ˈkaɾʒɐ]; also known as amarkazمَرْكَز 'center'),[1] is the final couple ofabyāt, orverses, of amuwaššaḥ (مُوَشَّح 'girdle'), apoem orsong of thestrophiclyric genre fromal-Andalus. Thekharja can be in a language that is different from the body; amuwaššaḥ in literary Arabic might have akharja in vernacularAndalusi Arabic or in a mix of Arabic andAndalusi Romance, while amuwaššaḥ in Hebrew might contain akharja in Arabic, Romance, Hebrew, or a mix.
Themuwashshah typically consists of fivestrophes of four to six lines, alternating with five or six refrains (qufl); each refrain has the same rhyme and metre, whereas each stanza has only the same metre. Thekharja appears often to have been composed independently of themuwashshah in which it is found.
About a third of extantkharjas are written in Classical Arabic. Most of the remainder are in Andalusi Arabic, but there are about seventy examples that are written either inIberian Romance languages or with significant Romance elements.
Generally, though not always, thekharja is presented as a quotation from a speaker who is introduced in the preceding stanza.
It is not uncommon to find the samekharja attached to several differentmuwashshahat. The Egyptian writerIbn Sanā' al-Mulk (1155–1211), in hisDar al-Tirāz (a study of themuwashshahat, including an anthology) states that thekharja was the most important part of the poem, that the poets generated themuwashshah from thekharja, and that consequently it was considered better to borrow a goodkharja than compose a bad one.[2]
Kharjas may describe love, praise, the pleasures of drinking, but also ascetism.
Of the approximately 600 known secular Arabicmuwaššaḥāt, there are almost 300kharjas invernacular Andalusi Arabic and over 200 in Standard Arabic (فُصْحَى), though some of the vernacularkharjas are essentially Standard Arabic with a vulgar gloss.[3]: 185 About 50 are inAndalusi Romance or contain some Romance words or elements.[3]: 185
About half of the corpus of the more than 250 knownmuwaššaḥāt inHebrew havekharjas in Arabic.[3]: 185 There about roughly 50 withkharjas in Hebrew, and about 25 with Romance.[3]: 185 There are also a fewkharjas with a combination of Hebrew and Arabic.[3]: 185
In their experimentation of themuwaššaḥ genre, theMashriqi writersIbn Sanā' al-Mulk andas-Safadi madekharjas in different languages usingPersian andTurkish.[4]
Though they comprise only a fraction of the corpus of extantkharjas, it is the Romancekharjas that have attracted the greatest scholarly interest. With examples dating back to the 11th century, this genre of poetry is believed to be among the oldest in any Romance language, and certainly the earliest recorded form of lyric poetry in Andalusi Romance or another Iberian Romance language.
Their rediscovery in the 20th century by Hebrew scholarSamuel Miklos Stern andArabistEmilio García Gómez is generally thought to have cast new light on the evolution ofRomance languages.
The Romancekharjas are thematically comparatively restricted, being almost entirely about love. Approximately three-quarters of them are put into the mouths of women, while the proportion for Arabickharjas is nearer one-fifth.[5]
Since thekharja may be written separately from themuwashshah, many scholars have speculated that the Romance kharjas were originally popular Spanish lyrics that the court poets incorporated into their poems.[6] Some similarities have been claimed with other early Romance lyrics in theme, metre, and idiom.[7][8] Arabic writers from theMiddle East orNorth Africa likeAhmad al-Tifashi (1184–1253) referred to "songs in the Christian style" sung in al-Andalus from ancient times that some have identified as thekharjas.[9]
Other scholars dispute such claims, arguing that thekharjas stand firmly within the Arabic tradition with little or no Romance input at all, and the apparent similarities only arise because thekharjas discuss themes that are universal in human literature anyway.[5][10]
Modern translations of the Romancekharjas are a matter of debate particularly because the Arabic script does not include vowels. Most of them were copied by scribes who probably did not understand the language they were recording, which may have caused transmission errors. A large spectrum of translations is possible given the ambiguity created by the missing vowels and potentially erroneous consonants. Because of this, most translations of these texts will be disputed by some. Severe criticism has been made of García Gómez's editions because of his palaeographical errors.[11] Further debate arises around the mixed vocabulary used by the authors.
Most of the Romancekharjas are not written entirely in Romance, but include Arabic elements to a greater or lesser extent. It has been argued that such blending cannot possibly represent the natural speech patterns of the Romance speakers,[12] and that the Romancekharjas must therefore be regarded asmacaronic literature.[13]
A minority of scholars, such asRichard Hitchcock contend that the Romance Kharjas are, in fact, not predominantly in a Romance language at all, but rather an extremely colloquial Arabic idiom bearing marked influence from the local Romance varieties. Such scholars accuse the academic majority of misreading the ambiguous script in untenable or questionable ways and ignoring contemporary Arab accounts of howMuwashshahat andKharjas were composed.[14]
An example of a Romancekharja (and translation) by the Jewish poetJudah Halevi:
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These verses express the theme of the pain of longing for the absent lover (habib). Many scholars have compared such themes to theGalician-Portuguesecantigas de amigo which date from c. 1220 to c. 1300, but “[t]he early trend […] towards seeing a genetic link betweenkharajat andcantigas d'amigo seems now to have been over-hasty.”[15]
An example of an Arabickharja:
Thekharja is from amuwashshah in theDar al-Tirāz of Ibn Sanā' al-Mulk.[16]
Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk, a 12th century Egyptian poet, wrote an anthology and study of themuwaššaḥ and itskharja entitledDār aṭ-ṭirāz fī ʿamal al-muwaššaḥāt (دار الطراز في عمل الموشحات).[17] The Syrian scholarJawdat Rikabi [ar] published an edition of the work in 1949.[17]
Ibn al-Khatib, a 14th century Andalusi poet, compiled an anthology ofmuwaššaḥāt entitledJaysh at-Tawshīḥ (جيش التوشيح).[18] Alan Jones published a modern edition of this work.
An anthology ofmuwaššaḥāt entitledUddat al-Jalīs (عدة الجليس), attributed to a certain Ali ibn Bishri al-Ighranati, is based on a manuscript taken from Morocco in 1948 by Georges Séraphin Colin (1893-1977). Alan Jones published an Arabic edition in 1992.[19]
Ibn Bassam wrote inDhakhīra fī mahāsin ahl al-Jazīra [ar] (الذخيرة في محاسن أهل الجزيرة) that thekharja was the initial text around which the rest of themuwaššaḥ was composed.[20]
Ibn Khaldun also mentions themuwaššaḥ and itskharja in hisMuqaddimah.[21]
In 1948, the Hungarian linguistSamuel Miklos Stern published "Les Vers finaux en espagnol dans les muwaššaḥs hispano-hebraïques" in the journalal-Andalus, translated into English in 1974 asThe Final Lines of Hebrew Muwashshaḥsfrom Spain.[21][22] Stern's interpretation ofkharjas in Hebrew texts made them accessible to Romanists and had a great impact on the Spanish establishment and scholars of Romance in the West.[21][22]
Emilio García Gómez and Josep M. Solà-Solé compiled collections ofkharjas.[22][23] Gómez's 1965 bookJarchas Romances De La Serie Arabe En Su Marco presented a corpus of all knownkharjas at the time; although it did not include annotation or scholarly apparatus, it became canonical.[22] Solà-Solé'sCorpus de poesía mozárabe (Las Harjas andalusíes) offered a complete scholarly apparatus, variations taken from different manuscripts, thorough discussion, and thoughtful speculation.[22]
LP Harvey, Alan Jones, andJames T. Monroe have also made influential contributions to the study of thekharjas.[22]