113 Journal of Semitic Studies LXII/1 Spring 2017 doi: 10.1093/jss/fgw057 © The author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of Manchester. All rights reserved. NEW SOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF NORTH-YEMENITE ARABIC: BEIT HA-ʼEVEN (‘THE HOUSE OF STONE’) AND SEFER HA-MA‛AśIM (‘THE BOOK OF TALES’) BY A. BEN-DAVID 1 ORI SHACHMON THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM Abstract A series of unique books, published in the years 2008–10 by a private publisher in Qiryat ‛Eqron, describe episodes of Jewish life in the northern province of Yemen during the first half of the twentieth century. These books constitute a rare source for the study of the cultural, social, religious and linguistic world of this community, the members of which have meanwhile emigrated from Yemen, predomi- nantly to Israel. The author, Rabbi Dr Aharon Ben-David, uses multi- layered Hebrew, into which he interweaves whole sections in the Ara- bic dialect which was spoken by the Jews while in Yemen, and which in many cases continues to serve as a means of communication among community members after their immigration to Israel as well. The Arabic sections appear in the books in vocalized Hebrew characters, using a unique transcription method developed by the author. These texts form a rich and rare source for the study of a Judaeo-Arabic dialect, which is doomed to disappear within the coming years. This paper describes the main characteristics of the transcription used in these books, as the anomalous use of ḥātēp-paṯaḥ, the qāmeṣ, šûreq and qibbûṣ, dāgēš and other dots inside letters, as well as the marking of vocalic Anlauts. I shall also discuss a few instances of component merger in speech, which become apparent by virtue of the unique transcription. 1 The main ideas of this essay were presented in April 2013 at the fifth Interna- tional Jewish Languages conference in Jerusalem. Warm thanks are due to my dear teacher Professor Simon Hopkins, for carefully commenting on this essay.