Agricultural Life as reflected in the Arabic Terminology of the Transjordanian Area of as-Salṭ at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, Based on an Arab Christian Informant of Gustaf Dalman

Abstract

This article is based on the discovery of a letter exchange between the Christian teacher Faraḥ Ḥabīb Tābrĭ (فرح حبيب تابري) and theologian and orientalist Gustaf Dalman (1855–1941), which was made by the writer of this article while rummaging in some dusty cardboards left in Dalman’s institute in Greifswald/Germany during my visit there in February 2014.Although totally unknown to modern researchers, Tābri was Dalman’s most fluent and prominent informant. In the introduction to his book Palästinischer Diwan, he thanks him, calling him “my friend from the Gilead Mountains”. He remarks that Tābri helped him considerably in correcting this book and by approaching farmers and Bedouin of the region in order to proof the data of his Dīwān, a collection of folk Palestinian songs.