Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Nöldeke, Aḍdād, 86: ṭarab is among the words that can express emotions of contrasting quality. The basic meaning is *‘(intense) emotion’, irrespective whether joy or grief.
▪ A definition worth quoting at some length is given by J. Lambert: »a term denoting poetic and musical emotion, evoking a broad spectrum of sentiments, from the most private to the most violent: pleasure, enjoyment, emotional trauma, exaltation […] and even a trance capable of resulting in death. Located in the centre of a conceptual net with multiple connections, ṭarab makes it possible to sketch the contours of an aesthetic. / The etymology of the word could derive from the agitation of camels, quickening their pace when returning to the encampment (ṭirāb). At a very early stage, ṭarab is associated with natural audible phenomena such as the song of birds (Imruʔ al-Qays, quoted in LA) or the effect of the singing of camel-riders, singing which would itself originally have been a cry of anguish […]. / In the classical period, the word ṭarab implies the notion of a more or less regular agitation: the ʕIqd al-farīd describes the caliph Muʕāwiya dancing ecstatically on hearing fine verses chanted (Ibn ʕAbd Rabbih, 18); the prophet Dāwūd is shown to be feverish and emotionally aroused when singing the Psalms (al-Ibšīhī, 176); Ibn al-Ǧawzī denounces ṭarab because “it excites the human being and induces him to lean to right and left” (quoted by Molé, 148). These phenomena of trance (described by numerous accounts in the K. al-ʔAġānī) suggest a connection with the root ↗ḌRB, as when al-Ġazālī describes an uncontrolled trance as ĭḍṭirāb (343). / These connotations extend to the aesthetic sphere, with the more precise sense of “vibration”: “Her words are moving (yuṭrib) […] /She makes me vibrate (tuhizzu-nī) as javelins vibrate” (Muḥ. Šaraf al-Dīn, Yemeni poet of the 10th/16th century). Furthermore, bees are reputed to be the creatures most responsive to song […]. This association with the buzzing of the insect (as well as with the song of birds) suggests that, in its most extreme manifestations, ṭarab is a living metaphor—dramatised and ritualised—for the vibratory processes so characteristic of Ar vocal art […], such as trills, leaps in vocal register and vibrations of other kinds. This applies equally to instrumental techniques: “When the plectra (of the lute) are beating, persons susceptible to ṭarab feel light [at heart]” (ʔiḏā ḫafaqat al-maḍārib, ḫaffat al-maṭārib, see TA, s.v.). More generally, it seems that ṭarab responds to a voluntarily unified and total aesthetic of poetic and musical expression. / Ṭarab was the object of numerous denunciations on the part of the religious authorities. […] Following controversies over musical emotion, ṭarab came ultimately to denote music, in particular the music of entertainment, with a negative nuance which has gradually diminished (ʕAbd al-Karīm ʕAllāf, al-Ṭarab ʕind al-qarab, Baġdād 1963), but has never disappeared completely. […] / A polysemantic concept, ṭarab is a symbol of cultural kinship (“He who is not moved, is not numbered among the Arabs”, allaḏī lā yaṭrab laysa min al-ʕarab) […]. / Although generally secular, ṭarab can be taken as related to its mystical equivalent, ↗waǧd, the emotion codified by Ṣūfī practice, of which the psychological mechanisms are similar. Like waǧd, ṭarab emanates from a conception of experience and existence (wuǧūd) which relates to transcendence (al-Ġazālī, 371-2). It is sudden awareness of an existential rending (Rouget, 409), provoked by a fortuitous encounter or an unexpected discovery (waǧd) of a personal sense, in the intensity of the present moment; for Ḥuǧwīrī, “ṭarab does not come on demand (ṭalab)” (Nicholson, 413). […]. / Thus ṭarab constitutes a sensual rather than an intellectual aesthetic. By so doing, it seems to draw a separating line between on the one hand music, poetry and dance, and on the other, the plastic and decorative arts, often governed by more hieratical conceptions [see ↗fann ]. In offering mediation between symbolically fundamental opposites such as emotion and reason, profane and sacred, nature and culture, the concept of ṭarab offers an essential clue to the understanding of Arabo-Islamic civilisation« – J. Lambert, art. “Ṭarab”, in EI².
▪ The word seems to have a genuine cognate only in Jib; etymology thus rather obscure; any relation to ↗ḌRB?
▪ …

hist

▪ lC6 ʕAntarah b. Šaddād 137,1: yā ṭāʔira ’l-bāni qad hayyaǧta ʔašǧān-ī wa-zidta-nī ṭaraban ‘▪ … you stirred my grief and increased the level of my sadness’ (Polosin1995).
▪ 1874 ‘emotion, lively emotion, excitement, agitation, unsteadiness (of the heart or mind) by reason of (intense) joy or grief, or (intense) fear or joy’ (Lane v)
▪ 1899: ‘1 emotion of joy or sadness; 2 delight’ (Hava).
▪ …

cogn

▪ DRS 10 (2012)#ṬRB-1: Ar ṭarraba ‘exciter qn à la joie ou à la tristesse; chanter ou faire de la musique’, Jib ṭorob ‘être ému par la musique’; Mand ṭrb ‘jouer d’un instrument de musique’.
▪ …

disc

▪ Only very scarcely attested in Sem (Ar and Jib; the Mand ‘cognate’ is probably an Arabism). Reconstruction difficult, etymology obscure. Any relation to ↗ḌRB ?
▪ For the semantic development from ‘(intense) emotion’ to the modern use predominantly as ‘music, entertainment’, cf. J. Lambert’s account, quoted in section CONCISE above.
▪ …

west

▪ Lokotsch1927 #2127 held that in the same way as the Ar lute, al-↗ʕūd, has reached us from the Islamic East, as the main instrument accompanying love songs, so probably also medieval Minnesang itself may be of Oriental provenance.¹ In a similar vein, historians, experts on medieval literature as well as musicologists have considered a possible Ar origin of the art of the troubadours. In 1928, the Span Arabist J. Ribera y Tarragó suggested to derive Span trobar, esp. in the sense of ‘to compose verses, sing, etc.’, from Ar ṭarab (‘to arouse emotions, excite; to make music, to distract by singing’), via Andalusia, then Catalan and Occitan (perh. influenced by ↗ḍaraba ‘to beat; hence also to make a sound, hit a key’ and ‘to play a musical instrument’). Indeed, there are many similarities between Ar love poetry and medieval European troubadour songs and Minnesang. However, given that the Romance words have a pre-history where they simply indicate the ‘discovering, meeting by chance, encountering’ of s.th. or s.o. [C10] or the ‘finding s.o./s.th. one was looking for’ [C11], and given also that the sense of ‘composing poetry, finding suitable rhymes’ appears only later, from C12 onwards, it is prob. that an existing Rom word was influenced by Ar “invader”, and a word like ṭarab prob. triggered the semantic extension. – Cf. Richard Lemay, « À propos de l’origine arabe de l’art des troubadour », Annales : Economies, sociétés, civilisations, 21.5 (1966): 990-1011.
▪ …

1. Lokotsch here refers to Konrad Burdach, in Sitzungsberichte d. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. 1918, no. XLV: 994-1029, and no. XLVIII: 1072-98.

deriv

► ʔālat al-ṭarab, n., musical instrument.

► ṭariba a (ṭarab), vb. I, 1 to be moved (with joy or grief): probably denom., preserving the original ambivalence (joy or grief) inherent in pre-modern usage of the n. ṭarab; 2 to be delighted, be overjoyed, be transported with joy: one-sided specialisation of [v1].
► ṭarraba, vb. II, 1 to delight, fill with delight, enrapture, phase, gratify: denom., caus.; 2 to sing, vocalize, chant: specialization of v1
► ʔaṭraba, vb. IV, 1 to delight, fill with delight, enrapture, please, gratify: denom., caus.; 2 to make music; to sing, vocalize, chant; to play music (DO for s.o.), sing (DO to s.o.): specialisations of v1
► ṭarib, pl. ṭirāb, adj., 1 moved (with joy or grief), touched, affected: has preserved the original ambivalence; 2 delighted, enraptured, transported, pleased, charmed: specialized use.
► ṭarūb, adj., gay, merry, lively: ints. adj.
► ʔaṭrabᵘ, adj., 1 more delightful; 2 making better music, being a better musician; 3 more melodious: elat.
► ʔiṭrāb, n., delight, delectation, diversion: vn. IV.
► ^BP#3484muṭrib, adj., delightful, ravishing, charming, amusing, entertaining; melodious: PA IV; n., musician; singer, vocalist, chansonnier: nominalized PA IV.
► muṭribaẗ, n.f., singer, songstress, vocalist, chanteuse: nominalized PA IV, f.

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