Abstract
Traditions of singing poems still persist in the southeast Mediterranean and the Middle East. They tell stories of daily life, social changes, and historical events, but also of animals and nature. The poems are continuously renewed in accordance with social, cultural, and political developments as well as environmental changes, addressing current issues such as political protests, loss of mother tongue, gender debates or natural disasters. Modern poet-singers thus continue and reinvent a practice going as far back as Homer. However, these traditions remain understudied to this day. Building on two preliminary studies – Ağbaht (2018) and Ağbaht & Greve (2024) – this study analyses such oral poetry forms in the Antiochian/Hatay Arabic varieties. These varieties are spoken in a declining multicultural environment, which means that both the language and various forms of oral poetry are at risk of vanishing.
This talk presents preliminary findings from an ongoing project, focusing on a specific genre, known as fann, which was recently introduced to the literature. I hypothesize that the defining characteristic of the fann poetry lies in its highly topical and strong up-to-date storytelling content, which tentatively makes it distinct from any other documented poetic forms in Türkiye and the Levant. The fann poems tell authentic stories which are often detailed, sentimental, and personal.
Additionally, the presentation offers a brief comparative overview of the structural, performative, and social aspects of Antiochian Arabic oral poetry against related poetic genres in neighboring Arabic speaking countries (e.g. Lebanese zajal, Palestinian ḥaddāyi) as well as Türkiye (Turkish aşık).
Furthermore, the last two decades, have witnessed an awareness of and interest in the local cultural and linguistic identity within the Alawi community of Antioch. This coincided with a movement toward a partial revitalization of the language and, to a lesser extent, of certain oral poetry forms in the community, marked by changes in both content and language. Some of these poems, for instance, display striking Turkish influence, with multiple lines featuring extensive borrowed phrases. Similar trends of renewed interest – though to a lower degree – were also observed among other religious and linguistic communities in Antioch, raising questions regarding the extent to which these dynamics, if at all, will prompt a broader reinvention of oral poetry across the region.
Biography
Mahmut Agbaht, postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University
