Al-Majlis Hall, Sheraton Hotel at 18.00,
04.3.2008
A group of experts
gathered in this meeting scheduled during Doha Seventh
Cultural Festival; they lectured about their passion: old
manuscripts of Vernacular Gulf Poetry. Moubarak al-Amari,
Ibrahim al-Khalidi and Ali al-Messaoudi presented an update
of the current situation of manuscripts reporting
traditional vernacular poems.
The Session was directed
by Journalist Aeed al-Khaled.
Wikipedia defines the
term “Vernacular” as follows: “Vernacular refers to the
native language of a country or locality. In general
linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as
opposed to linguae francae, official standards or global
languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard dialects
of a global language.” In fact, nonstandard Arabic dialect
is the language used in Vernacular Arabic Poetry.
Kuwaiti journalist and
poet started his lecture by explaining that oral speech was
originally the rule in vernacular poetry. But some pioneers
started since the end of 19th century to write
manuscripts or asked scribes to write their own poetic
creations or the poems they appreciated and learned. He
added that such manuscripts were very valuable for many
reasons: - They give us a true authentic image of Gulf
societies before the advent of oil; - They constitute the
first sources to archive dialectal, i.e. vernacular poetry;
- These manuscripts were written before the rise of
censorship and all kinds of thought and expression control;
- Since Vernacular Poetry is not available to the large
public, such manuscripts give access to Vernacular Poetry to
all those who may be interested in it.
The other speakers
talked about the different sides of the study of the
manuscripts. They explained that the majority of these works
extend from the last quarter of the 19th century
until the second half of the 20th century.
They also showed that
the various environments had a direct effect on the
manuscripts and the tools used to create them. The example
of the ink used in Qatar for example is quite illustrative
of these differences. In fact, there were in Qatar two
systems and tools to write manuscripts: people living along
the sea-side would use mainly paper imported from India, and
the ink of the Cuttlefish largely available in the Qatari
coasts; those living in the desert used gazelle’s blood as
ordinary ink in their manuscripts.
Some attendees among
which Hamad al-Muhannadi, Chairman of the Heritage Committee
at the National Council for Culture, Arts and Heritage
insisted at the end of the lectures on the need for Gulf
Countries to work in a collective way to study the existing
manuscripts and create a bibliographical database that
researchers and scholars could use for further investigating
this important material of Gulf Heritage.
