Journal of Semitic Studies LXVII/2 Autumn 2022 doi: 10.1093/jss/fgac005 © The author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of Manchester. All rights reserved. 607 THE QƏLTU DIALECT OF AL-DŌR QASIM HASSAN UNIVERSITY OF BASRA, IRAQ Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore, for the first time, the qǝltu dialect spoken in the western part of the town of Al-Dōr. Still to this day, this dialect remains very poorly studied and has generally been men- tioned only in passing in the literature on Iraqi Arabic dialectology. The data used here are from a fieldwork trip to the town in 2018 where I was able to interview locals about their own dialect. Introduction The status of the qǝltu Arabic of Al-Dōr (locally pronounced as ǝd-dēġ), especially with respect to the neighbouring qǝltu dialects of Mosul and Tikrīt, has remained totally obscure and unknown. One exception to this is Jastrow’s notes (1994: 122, 1983: 101), in which he rightly assigns the dialect of Al-Dōr (abbreviated here as DR) 1 to the Tigris group of the qǝltu dialects. However, as pointed out in Hassan (2020a: 178), two sharply divergent dialects coexist side by side in this small town: a gǝlǝt dialect spoken by the ʿaṛaḅ in the eastern part of the town and a qǝltu one in the western part. As for its geographic location, Al-Dōr is situated on the east bank of the Tigris midway between Sāmarrā and Tikrīt (Map 1). The town occupies an area of about 2.836 square kilometres (Al-Dūri 2014: 2), and belongs administratively to Tikrīt, a city located some 150 kilo- metres northwest of Baghdad. The physical features of this area grad- uate from arid, containing a high percentage of gravel and gypsum, locally known ǧǝllāma, into lands suitable for grazing of sheep and into cultivated areas dependent upon irrigation by lift and artesian wells. According to the results of the 2019 population census, the 1 Other abbreviations used throughout this paper are CA (Classical Arabic), MB (Muslim Baghdadi), MM (Muslim Maṣlāwi), JM (Jewish Maṣlāwi), JK (Jewish Kurdistan), SK (qD in south Kurdistan), TK (qD of Tikrīt), KB (the dialect of Kbēse), HT (the dialect of Hīt). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jss/article/67/2/607/6583307 by guest on 25 August 2022