T HE J EWISH Q UARTERLY R EVIEW, Vol. 104, No. 1 (Winter 2014) 144–166 ibn as ˇs ˇarı ¯fah vs. ibn alja ¯ riyah ‘‘Son of the Noble Wife vs. Son of the Concubine’’: The Hebrew Component as a Polemic Device ORI SHACHMON T HIS ESSAY IS AN ATTEMPT to understand how linguistic components function in an oral text. It analyzes a story recorded from a Yemenite Jew, who describes a scene from his childhood in Yemen as he remem- bers it—or as he wants his listeners to conceive it. The language is Yemenite Arabic, yet Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic components are inter- woven throughout the text and build a linguistic plot which runs parallel to the main plot and modifies the theme. The scene opens with a dispute over the payment of the jizyah, the poll tax imposed on Jews. Events then develop into a polemic discussion of the superiority of Judaism over Islam. In building the case for Jewish superiority, the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son is brought up, raising the question of the identity of the offered child. Through a calm intellectual discussion, the Jewish boy leads a local judge to the conclu- sion that the sacrificed child ought to have been ibn as ˇs ˇarı ¯fah (son of the noble wife; namely, Sarah) rather than ibn alja ¯ riyah—(son of the concu- bine; Hagar). 1 The main ideas of this essay were presented in June 2010 in the fourth Inter- national Jewish Languages conference in Jerusalem. I wish to thank Simon Hopkins, Roni Henkin, and Meir Bar-Asher for reading and commenting on this essay. 1. ja ¯ riyah (pl. jawa ¯yir) is a female slave or maidservant. See Moshe Piamenta, Dictionary of Post-Classical Yemeni Arabic (Leiden, 1990–91), 66. But, following Goitein, I understand ja ¯ riyah as ‘‘a concubine,’’ a meaning which fits here better. See Shlomo D. Goitein, ed. and trans., Masot h . ibs ˇus ˇ: hezyon teyman (Jerusalem, 1983), 165. [Note that Hebrew transliteration of titles throughout the footnotes deviates from standard JQR form; we have decided to keep the linguist’s diacritics in the notes as well in order to keep the transliteration consistent throughout the essay. Editor.] The Jewish Quarterly Review (Winter 2014) Copyright  2014 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved.