Poetry
Hassaniya Arabic (Mali): Poetic and Ethnographic Texts
لغن الحسانية
Anonymous · 1850
Synopsis
The lghna is poetry composed in Hassaniyya, the spoken Arabic of the Moors. Its poems, often short, are built in stanzas: the gâv, of four hemistichs with alternating rhymes, and the ṭalʿa, which opens with a line of double rhyme, according to metres that each bear a name. One distinguishes the nasîb, nostalgia for places once frequented, the love ghazal, often playful, praise and satire; one also finds jousts, in which two poets answer each other in the same metre and on the same rhyme.
Context
Alongside the learned poetry in classical Arabic, the lghna belongs to everyone, even if usage separates the rhymester from the good poet. It is not only oral: in 1968 Harry Norris studied a manuscript divan of fifty-one poems in Hassaniyya, composed in the Western Sahara in praise of Sheikh Ma al-Aynayn. The griots, the iggawen, have their own metres for the thaydin, their poetry of martial praise. Collections by poets appeared in Nouakchott in the eighties and nineties, and the linguist Catherine Taine-Cheikh has described their rules.
Who it is for
Short poems, in Hassaniya, little translated; their play of rhymes and sounds is better enjoyed when heard aloud.
Prizes and reception
The poem “Mint ez-Zoubeyr”, included in the Guide de littérature mauritanienne in 1992, is regarded by a poet from Nouakchott as one of the finest of its kind.