On the Dialectal Features of Ibn al-Fayyūmī’s Bustān al-ʽuqūl

This study provides a grammatical analysis of the language of the Bustān al-ʿuqūl which seems to be the oldest surviving Yemeni Jewish literary work. It is a theological-philosophical treatise by Nathanael Ibn al-Fayyūmī, a contemporary of Maimonides and Ibn Rušd. This work is written in Middle Arabic (MA) and is rich in Dialectal Arabic (DA) elements. The purpose of this paper is to review those dialectal phenomena occurring in this book whose description and analysis may contain some new pieces of information about early DA in addition to what has been expounded in studies about MA earlier and to strengthen the basis of those rules formulated in them which are established on a small number of textual evidence only.