For the fifty poems included in this book I chose to use a phonemic system of transcription. For all the other materials that appear in the text and footnotes, such as names of people and places, expressions and sayings, I chose to use the standard system for the transliteration of Arabic followed by the International Journal of Middle East Studies. The standard system of transliteration used throughout the text and footnotes is directed at a wider audience, while the phonemic system of transcription, which appears in the appendix, is first and foremost meant to serve experts in Bedouin linguistics. In addition, I produced Arabic script versions of the poems to allow readers who are not familiar with the linguistic system of transcription to read the poems in Arabic.
The linguistic system of transcription presented here is the product of three phases of work. In the first phase, which took place mostly during the 1990s, Bar-Zvi – who collected 381 of the 383 stanzas included in this volume – transcribed the poems into Hebrew letters. His familiarity with the Bedouin dialects of the Negev was truly remarkable and his achievements outstanding, but as he was not a trained linguist, I decided to ask Dr. Musa Shawarba, a world authority on the Bedouin dialects of the Negev, to revise Bar-Zvi’s pioneering work and produce a professional phonemic transcription of the poems. In the third phase, I reviewed Dr. Shawarba’s work closely, supplementing his expertise with my own limited linguistic skills and familiarity with Negev Bedouin poetry. The outcome is by no means perfect; perhaps it will never be. The creators of these verses cannot be consulted, as they are no longer alive. The full responsibility for any mistakes in the transcription, transliteration, and the Arabic script is solely mine.
1 The Phonemic Transcription of the Poems
The consonants are transcribed as follows:
* The Arabic consonant
* The Arabic consonant
* The letter
The vowels are transcribed as follows:
2 The Standard System for the Transliteration of Arabic
The consonants are transcribed as follows:
* The Arabic consonant
* Well-known place names, such as Beersheba and Gaza, were not transliterated according to the standard system, in contrast to less well-known place names, such as Deir al-Balaḥ and Khān Yūnis.
* Likewise, well-known people’s names, such as King Hussein, were not transliterated according to the standard system, in contrast to less well-known names, such as Ḥammād al-Ṣūfī.
* The definite article of a word beginning with a sun-letter employs that letter instead of the letter l, as in as-Sabaʿ (The Bedouin name of Beersheba), with the exception of names of tribal groups and people’s names, such as the abovementioned al-Ṣūfī, or al-Ṭurshān.
* The letter
The vowels were transliterated in the same way as the vowels in the phonemic system were. In addition, following Bar-Zvi, I also used the vowel e, particularly in private names such as Salāmeh and Ghānem as well as in names of tribal groups such as ʿAzāzmeh and al-Ṣaneʿ.
3 The Arabic Script
The Arabic script versions of the poems reflect an attempt to create a balance between the wish to remain as consistent as possible with the phonemic transcription of the verses and the decision to allow readers who are unfamiliar with it to easily read the poems in Arabic. Unlike some scholars in the field of Bedouin poetry, I used the letter