Proverbes Arabes de l'Algérie et du Maghreb - VOL II
Mohammed Ben Cheneb was a professor at the Madrasah of Algiers when he published this collection in 1905. At that time, there was no comprehensive work on this branch of popular Arab literature. It is scarcely necessary, however, to recall the privileged place occupied by proverbs in language. They are, say the Arabs themselves, "torches that illuminate speeches". Proverbs reflect the history of a civilization and the ideas whose transformations they express. There are some that belong to certain provinces, cities, towns and smaller communities. Sometimes they allude to events that were of importance at a certain time, but whose origin it has been impossible to discover. Others, and relatively numerous, are drawn from religious subjects or relating to daily life. Mohammed Ben Cheneb personally collected many of these proverbs, especially in Algiers and Medea. He also drew on a certain number of works (Machuel, Daumas, Medjdoub, Fischer, etc.) But the author has done more, he has not been content to classify the proverbs in alphabetical order in order to facilitate research, to give the translation accompanied by explanations to indicate their use, to search for some of them for the equivalents in French: he notes the localities where he has heard them used and establishes parallels with those that exist in other Arab countries.
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Disclaimer: This post is posted with intention to spread classic Arab literature. I used AI to simplify the book. It will contain few errors, so please do notify me your feedback. Please forgive me for errors (🙏).
