"
[9] Delphin et Genis. Notes sur la Poesie et la musique Arabes dans le
Maghreb Algerien, pp. 14-16. Paris, 1886.
As to the class of declamatory poems, one in particular is popular in
Algiers, for it celebrates the conquest of the Maghreb in the eleventh
century by the divers branches of the Beni-Hilal, from whom descend almost
the whole of the Arabs who now are living in the northwest of Africa. This
veritable poem is old enough, perhaps under its present form, for the
historian, Ten Khaldoun, who wrote at the end of the fourteenth century and
the beginning of the fifteenth, has preserved the resume of the episode of
Djazza, the heroine who abandoned her children and husband to follow her
brothers to the conquest of Thrgya Hajoute. To him are attributed verses
which do not lack regularity, nor a certain rhythm, and also a facility of
expression, but which abound in interpolations and faults of grammar. The
city people could not bear to hear them nor to read them. In our days, for
their taste has changed--at least in that which touches the masses--the
recital of the deeds of the Helals is much liked in the Arab cafes in
Algeria and also in Tunis.
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