{{Short description|Final refrain of a muwashshah}} {{About||the Egyptian oasis with same name|Kharga Oasis|the Moroccan footballer|Houssine Kharja|other uses|Kharjah (disambiguation){{!}}Kharjah}}
{{Arab culture}} {{Italic title}}
A '''''kharja''''' or '''''kharjah''''' ({{langx|ar|خرجة|kharjah|exit}} {{IPA|ar|ˈxardʒa|}}; {{langx|es|jarcha}} {{IPA|es|ˈxaɾtʃa|}}; {{langx|pt|carja}} {{IPA|pt|ˈkaɾʒɐ|}}; also known as a '''''markaz''''' {{Lang|ar|مَرْكَز}} 'center'),<ref>[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/316410/kharjah kharjah]. ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.</ref> is the final couple of ''abyāt'', or verses, of a ''muwaššaḥ'' ({{Lang|ar|مُوَشَّح}} 'girdle'), a poem or song of the strophic lyric genre from al-Andalus. The ''kharja'' can be in a language that is different from the body; a ''muwaššaḥ'' in literary Arabic might have a ''kharja'' in vernacular Andalusi Arabic or in a mix of Arabic and Andalusi Romance, while a ''muwaššaḥ'' in Hebrew might contain a ''kharja'' in Arabic, Romance, Hebrew, or a mix.
The ''muwashshah'' typically consists of five strophes 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. The ''kharja'' appears often to have been composed independently of the ''muwashshah'' in which it is found.
==Characteristics of the kharja== About a third of extant ''kharjas'' are written in Classical Arabic. Most of the remainder are in Andalusi Arabic, but there are about seventy examples that are written either in Iberian Romance languages or with significant Romance elements.
Generally, though not always, the ''kharja'' is presented as a quotation from a speaker who is introduced in the preceding stanza.
It is not uncommon to find the same ''kharja'' attached to several different ''muwashshahat''. The Egyptian writer Ibn Sanā' al-Mulk (1155–1211), in his ''Dar al-Tirāz'' (a study of the ''muwashshahat'', including an anthology) states that the ''kharja'' was the most important part of the poem, that the poets generated the ''muwashshah'' from the ''kharja'', and that consequently it was considered better to borrow a good ''kharja'' than compose a bad one.<ref>Fish Compton, Linda, 1976, Andalusian Lyrical Poetry and Old Spanish Love Songs: The Muwashshaḥ and its Kharja (New York: University Press), p.6</ref>
''Kharjas'' may describe love, praise, the pleasures of drinking, but also ascetism.
== Corpora ==
=== Corpus of Arabic ''muwaššaḥāt'' === Of the approximately 600 known secular Arabic ''muwaššaḥāt'', there are almost 300 ''kharjas'' in vernacular Andalusi Arabic and over 200 in Standard Arabic ({{Lang|ar|فُصْحَى}}), though some of the vernacular ''kharjas'' are essentially Standard Arabic with a vulgar gloss.<ref name=":10">{{Cite book |last1=Menocal |first1=María Rosa |title=The literature of al-Andalus |last2=Scheindlin |first2=Raymond P. |last3=Sells |first3=Micheal |date=2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-17787-0 |oclc=819159086}}</ref>{{Rp|page=185}} About 50 are in Andalusi Romance or contain some Romance words or elements.<ref name=":10" />{{Rp|page=185}}
=== Corpus of Hebrew ''muwaššaḥāt'' === About half of the corpus of the more than 250 known ''muwaššaḥāt'' in Hebrew have ''kharjas'' in Arabic.<ref name=":10" />{{Rp|page=185}} There about roughly 50 with ''kharjas'' in Hebrew, and about 25 with Romance.<ref name=":10" />{{Rp|page=185}} There are also a few ''kharjas'' with a combination of Hebrew and Arabic.<ref name=":10" />{{Rp|page=185}}
=== Others === In their experimentation of the ''muwaššaḥ'' genre, the Mashriqi writers Ibn Sanā' al-Mulk and as-Safadi made ''kharjas'' in different languages using Persian and Turkish.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=ساعي |first=بسام |date=1993 |title=الوجه الآخر للموشحات من خلال الكشف الجديد لكتاب (عدة الجليس) |url=https://koha.birzeit.edu/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=290185 |journal=آفاق الثقافة و التراث |pages=17–25}}</ref>
==Romance kharjas==
Though they comprise only a fraction of the corpus of extant ''kharjas'', it is the Romance ''kharjas'' 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 scholar Samuel Miklos Stern and Arabist Emilio García Gómez is generally thought to have cast new light on the evolution of Romance languages.
The Romance ''kharjas'' 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 Arabic ''kharjas'' is nearer one-fifth.<ref name="autogenerated1">Jones, Alan, 1981-82, ‘Sunbeams from Cucumbers? An Arabist’s Assessment of the State of Kharja Studies’, La corónica, 10: 38-53</ref>
===Debate over origins===
Since the ''kharja'' may be written separately from the ''muwashshah'', many scholars have speculated that the Romance kharjas were originally popular Spanish lyrics that the court poets incorporated into their poems.<ref>Dronke, Peter, 1978, The Medieval Lyric, 2nd edition (London: Hutchinson), p.86</ref> Some similarities have been claimed with other early Romance lyrics in theme, metre, and idiom.<ref>Monroe, James, 1975, ‘Formulaic Diction and the Common Origins of Romance Lyric Traditions’, Hispanic Review 43: 341-350.</ref><ref>[http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/jal/2003/00000034/F0020001/art00002;jsessionid=jtccr14a95ed.alice KHARJAS AND VILLANCICOS] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606014524/http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/jal/2003/00000034/F0020001/art00002;jsessionid=jtccr14a95ed.alice |date=2011-06-06 }}, by Armistead S.G., Journal of Arabic Literature, Volume 34, Numbers 1-2, 2003, pp. 3-19(17)</ref> Arabic writers from the Middle East or North Africa like Ahmad al-Tifashi (1184–1253) referred to "songs in the Christian style" sung in al-Andalus from ancient times that some have identified as the ''kharjas''.<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.jubilatores.com/poetry.pdf | title=Medieval Hispano-Arabic Songs | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303185436/http://www.jubilatores.com/poetry.pdf | archive-date=2016-03-03 }}</ref>
Other scholars dispute such claims, arguing that the ''kharjas'' stand firmly within the Arabic tradition with little or no Romance input at all, and the apparent similarities only arise because the ''kharjas'' discuss themes that are universal in human literature anyway.<ref name="autogenerated1" /><ref>Zwartjes, 1997, ''Love Songs from al-Andalus: History, Structure and Meaning of the Kharja'' (Leiden: Brill), p.294</ref>
===Debate over language and reading===
Modern translations of the Romance ''kharjas'' 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.<ref>Jones, 1988, ''Romance Kharjas in Andalusian Arabic Muwaššaḥ Poetry'' (London: Ithaca Press)</ref> Further debate arises around the mixed vocabulary used by the authors.
Most of the Romance ''kharjas'' 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,<ref>Whinnom, Keith, 1981-82, ‘The Mamma of the Kharjas or some Doubts Concerning Arabists and Romanists’, La corónica, 11: 11-17.</ref> and that the Romance ''kharjas'' must therefore be regarded as macaronic literature.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Zwartjes | first1 = Otto | year = 1994 | title = La alternancia de código como recurso estilístico en las xarja-s andalusíes | journal = La Corónica | volume = 22 | issue = 2| pages = 1–51 }}</ref>
A minority of scholars, such as Richard 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 how ''Muwashshahat'' and ''Kharjas'' were composed.<ref>{{cite journal|jstor=3727967 | volume=75 | issue=3 | pages=481–491| title=The "Kharjas" as Early Romance Lyrics: A Review | journal=The Modern Language Review | last1=Hitchcock | first1=Richard | year=1980 | doi=10.2307/3727967 }}</ref>
==Examples==
===Romance=== An example of a Romance ''kharja'' (and translation) by the Jewish poet Judah Halevi:
{| border=0 |- | valign=top | :''Vayse meu corachón de mib:'' :''ya Rab, si me tornarád?'' :''Tan mal meu doler li-l-habib!'' :''Enfermo yed, cuánd sanarád?'' | valign=top | :: :: :My heart has left me, :Oh sir, will it return to me? (Alternate translation: Oh Lord, will you transform me?) :So great is my pain for my beloved! :I am sick, when will I be cured?, :: |}
These verses express the theme of the pain of longing for the absent lover (''habib''). Many scholars have compared such themes to the Galician-Portuguese cantigas de amigo which date from c. 1220 to c. 1300, but “[t]he early trend […] towards seeing a genetic link between ''kharajat'' and ''cantigas d'amigo'' seems now to have been over-hasty.” <ref>R. Cohen & S. Parkinson, "The Galician-Portuguese Lyric" in ''Companion to Portuguese Literature'', ed. Stephen Parkinson, Cláudia Pazos Alonso and T. F. Earle. Warminster: Boydell & Brewer, 2009.</ref>
===Arabic=== An example of an Arabic ''kharja'':
:How beautiful is the army with its orderly ranks :When the champions call out, ‘Oh, Wāthiq, oh, handsome one!’
The ''kharja'' is from a ''muwashshah'' in the ''Dar al-Tirāz'' of Ibn Sanā' al-Mulk.<ref>Fish Compton, Linda, 1976, Andalusian Lyrical Poetry and Old Spanish Love Songs: The Muwashshaḥ and its Kharja (New York: University Press), pp.10-14</ref>
==History of ''kharja'' scholarship==
=== Manuscript sources === Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk, a 12th century Egyptian poet, wrote an anthology and study of the ''muwaššaḥ'' and its ''kharja'' entitled ''Dār aṭ-ṭirāz fī ʿamal al-muwaššaḥāt'' ({{Lang|ar|دار الطراز في عمل الموشحات}}).''<ref name=":0">{{Citation |last=Ed |title=Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk |date=2012-04-24 |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition |url=https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/*-SIM_3358 |access-date=2024-02-24 |publisher=Brill |language=en |doi=10.1163/1573-3912_islam_sim_3358|url-access=subscription }}</ref>'' The Syrian scholar {{Ill|Jawdat Rikabi|ar|جودة الركابي}} published an edition of the work in 1949.''<ref name=":0" />''
Ibn al-Khatib, a 14th century Andalusi poet, compiled an anthology of ''muwaššaḥāt'' entitled ''Jaysh at-Tawshīḥ'' ({{Lang|ar|جيش التوشيح}}).<ref>Knysh, Alexander. “Ibn Al-Khaṭīb.” Chapter. In ''The Literature of Al-Andalus'', edited by María Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells, 358–72. The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.</ref> Alan Jones published a modern edition of this work.
An anthology of ''muwaššaḥāt'' entitled ''Uddat al-Jalīs'' ({{Lang|ar|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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=كتاب عدة الجليس : ومؤانسة الوزير والرئيس {{!}} WorldCat.org |url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/28300311 |access-date=2024-02-24 |website=search.worldcat.org |language=en}}</ref>
Ibn Bassam wrote in {{Ill|Dhakhīra fī mahāsin ahl al-Jazīra|lt=|ar|الذخيرة في محاسن أهل الجزيرة|WD=|italic=y}} ({{Lang|ar|الذخيرة في محاسن أهل الجزيرة}}) that the ''kharja'' was the initial text around which the rest of the ''muwaššaḥ'' was composed.<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4182991 | jstor=4182991 | title=The Kharja of the Muwashshaḥ in a New Light | last1=Abu-Haidar | first1=Jareer | journal=Journal of Arabic Literature | date=1978 | volume=9 | pages=1–13 | doi=10.1163/157006478X00011 | url-access=subscription }}</ref>
Ibn Khaldun also mentions the ''muwaššaḥ'' and its ''kharja'' in his ''Muqaddimah''.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Jones |first=Alan |date=2021-10-02 |title=Samuel Miklos Stern and Andalusian poetry |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14725886.2021.1984837 |journal=Journal of Modern Jewish Studies |language=en |volume=20 |issue=4 |pages=454–461 |doi=10.1080/14725886.2021.1984837 |issn=1472-5886|doi-access=free }}</ref>
=== Modern study === In 1948, the Hungarian linguist Samuel Miklos Stern published "{{Lang|fr|Les Vers finaux en espagnol dans les muwaššaḥs hispano-hebraïques}}" in the journal ''al-Andalus'', translated into English in 1974 as ''The Final Lines of Hebrew'' Muwashshaḥs ''from Spain''.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Armistead |first=Samuel G. |date=1987 |title=A Brief History of Kharja Studies |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/343643 |journal=Hispania |volume=70 |issue=1 |pages=8–15 |doi=10.2307/343643 |jstor=343643 |issn=0018-2133|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Stern's interpretation of ''kharjas'' in Hebrew texts made them accessible to Romanists and had a great impact on the Spanish establishment and scholars of Romance in the West.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" />
Emilio García Gómez and Josep M. Solà-Solé compiled collections of ''kharjas.''<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harvey |first=L.P. |date=1992 |title=ALAN JONES, Romance Kharjas in Andalusian Arabic Muwaššah Poetry: a Paleographical Analysis, Ithaca Press, London, for the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University, 1988. Pp. x + 306; EMILIO GARCÍA GÓMEZ, El escándalo de las jarchas en Oxford, Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, 1991 ( = Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia, CLXXXVIII, 1991). Pp. 104 |url=https://brill.com/view/journals/jal/23/1/article-p71_6.xml |journal=Journal of Arabic Literature |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=71–74 |doi=10.1163/157006492X00132 |issn=0085-2376|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Gómez's 1965 book {{Lang|es|Jarchas Romances De La Serie Arabe En Su Marco}} presented a corpus of all known ''kharjas'' at the time; although it did not include annotation or scholarly apparatus, it became canonical.<ref name=":2" /> Solà-Solé's {{Lang|es|Corpus de poesía mozárabe (Las Harjas andalusíes)}} offered a complete scholarly apparatus, variations taken from different manuscripts, thorough discussion, and thoughtful speculation.<ref name=":2" />
LP Harvey, Alan Jones, and James T. Monroe have also made influential contributions to the study of the ''kharjas''.<ref name=":2" />
==See also==
*Aljamiado, the practice of writing a Romance language with the Arabic script. *Arabic poetry *Spanish poetry
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *[https://web.archive.org/web/20060820072236/http://www.jarchas.net/index-2.html Texts of fifty-five kharjas, with different transcriptions and translation to English French and German] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20130311005524/http://faculty.washington.edu/petersen/462/jarchas.htm Ten kharjas translated to English]
==Editions of the Kharjas and Bibliography==
* Corriente, Federico, ''Poesía dialectal árabe y romance en Alandalús'', Madrid, Gredos, 1997 (contains all extant ''kharjas'' in Romance and Arabic) * Stern, Samuel Miklos, ''Les Chansons mozarabes'', Palermo, Manfredi, 1953. * García Gómez, Emilio, ''Las jarchas romances de la serie árabe en su marco : edición en caracteres latinos, versión española en calco rítmico y estudio de 43 moaxajas andaluzas'', Madrid, Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1965, {{ISBN|84-206-2652-X}} * Solà-Solé, Josep Maria, ''Corpus de poesía mozárabe'', Barcelona, Hispam, 1973. * Monroe, James & David Swiatlo, ‘Ninety-Three Arabic Harğas in Hebrew Muwaššaḥs: Their Hispano-Romance Prosody and Thematic Features’, ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', 97, 1977, pp. 141–163. * Galmés de Fuentes, Álvaro, ''Las Jarchas Mozárabes, forma y Significado'', Barcelona, Crítica, 1994, {{ISBN|84-7423-667-3}} * Nimer, Miguel, ''Influências Orientais na Língua Portuguesa'', São Paulo, 2005, {{ISBN|85-314-0707-9}} * Armistead S.G., [https://web.archive.org/web/20110606014524/http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/jal/2003/00000034/F0020001/art00002;jsessionid=jtccr14a95ed.alice ''Kharjas and villancicos''], in «Journal of Arabic Literature», Volume 34, Numbers 1-2, 2003, pp. 3–19(17) * Hitchcock, Richard, ''The "Kharjas" as early Romance Lyrics: a Review'', in «The Modern Language Review», Vol. 75, No. 3 (Jul., 1980), pp. 481–491 * Zwartjes, Otto & Heijkoop, Henk, ''Muwaššaḥ, zajal, kharja : bibliography of eleven centuries of strophic poetry and music from al-Andalus and their influence on East and West'', 2004, {{ISBN|90-04-13822-6}}
Category:Arabic and Central Asian poetics Category:Portuguese literature Category:Spanish literature Category:Culture of al-Andalus