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6. Ib-mīlādak yā bū l-H}asanīn, čam h}āġī lladī thaddad // ‗Alī yā tamrat
il-‘Islām, šağara t}ayyiba aw warəd.
‗By your birth, oh Father of Íasan and Íusayn, how many an oppressor was
demolished, // ‗Alī, oh fruit of Islam, a pleasant tree or a rose‘.
7. ‗Alī yā h}ād}ir iš-šiddāt il-yidkura ib-kill wakət yištadd // ‗Alī bi-sma
niraddid dōm biyya š-kitīr nitmağğad.
‗Alī, oh who lived through miseries, the mentioning of which becomes
more intense every time, // ‗Alī, we constantly repeat his name, [and] how
often are we praised through him‘.
In the field of phonology the following characteristics based on the poem
can be outlined:
– The affrication of the kāf when preceding a front vowel, e.g. čam (Line
6) stands for Classical Arabic kam ‗how many‘. 17
– The voiced velar plosive /g/ as a reflex of qāf, e.g. gām (Line 3) for Cl.
qāma ‗started doing something‘. 18
– The realization of qāf as the voiceless velar plosive /k/, e.g. wakət (Line
7) for waqt ‗time‘. 19
– The Classical Arabic preposition bi- has two forms depending on its
phonological environment. It either remains bi- when it is followed by a
consonant cluster, e.g. bi s-samā (Line 3) ‗in the sky‘, bi-sma (Line 3, 7) ‗(by) his
name‘, bi l-bašar (twice in Line 3) ‗among mankind‘, bi l-Ka‗ba (Line 4) ‗by the
Ka‗ba‘, bi l-mowlid (Line 5) ‗in [his] birthplace‘, bi l-mowlūd (Line 5) ‗by the
[birth of the] infant‘, or it becomes ib- when it is followed by a sequence of one
consonant and a vowel, e.g. ib-yōm (Line 2) ‗on the day‘, ib-s}ifāta (Line 3) ‗with
his attributes‘, ib-mīlādak (Line 6) ‗by your birth‘, ib-kill (Line 7) ‗every time‘.
Furthermore, the dialectal form of bihi is biyya (Line 7) ‗through him‘.
A certainly more interesting peculiarity is that lexemes or even syntagms
from Classical Arabic quite often occur in the poems, by which they become not
exclusively dialectal. This phenomenon has also been attested on many occasions
in the texts collected by Ingham in H~ūzistān. In his data this usually occurred in
the speech of šuyūh~, to whom much prestige is attached and are on a higher social
17 This sound change is a very common feature not only in the H~ūzistāni dialects but in most
Mesopotamian vernaculars as well, see Blanc 1964, 25., Fischer-Jastrow 1980, 143.
18 See Fischer-Jastrow 1980, 142.
19 This phenomenon is well-known in some Iraqi dialects in the case of certain words, see Blanc
1964, 27.
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