As children, we were constantly admonished against laughing. “For shame,” (يا عيب) would be the normative idiom with which we would be reprimanded. It is considered bad manners, ayb (عيب), to laugh out loud with no reason, (الضحك من غير سبب من قلة الادب). Laughing, chuckling, giggling, chortling, snickering, and cackling are impolite emotional expressions. The general word ayb, i.e. shame, is invoked to describe deficient modes of behaviour. Laughing out loud reflects a default in the moral character of the person. Tears, on the other hand, do not detract from the moral fibre of the individual and are not considered ayb.

The superstitious Palestinian nature, coupled with the fear of imminent change of fortune (التطير), surface in the folk fear of laughter. Inshallah kheir, may God make the outcome be good, is the idiomatic expression that interrupts a paroxysm of laughter. In Arab culture, where all elements of nature and culture are portentous, the utterance of a “good word” helps transform an otherwise ambivalent sign into a good omen. Should a pigeon or a crow accidentally fly into the house or land on the windowsill, or should a visitor show up unexpectedly, the same epithet would be used, inshallah kheir. The invocation has a talismanic nature to ward off the evil that lurks everywhere.

Mirthful laughter provides the space wherein Iblis, or Satan, can intervene. Whereas disproportionate expressions of emotions are generally frowned on, tears are favoured over laughter. Grief, it is held, does not stop one from performing one’s prayers, while laughter, like Satan, interrupts one’s prayers. This Arabic aphorism summarizes the cultural temperament:

الدمع ماهو عيب رح علم اللي
يقول عمره مابكى في حياته
الدمع مايقطع صلاة المصلي
والضحك مثل إبليس يقطع صلاته

“Excessive laughter kills the heart,” is a saying attributed to Prophet Mohammad:
وَلاَ تُكثِرِ الضحِكَ، فَإِن كَثرَةَ الضحِكِ تُمِيتُ القَلب

However, humour is not totally prohibited. In another saying, the prophet encourages the faithful to relax through joking and jest:
روحوا القلوب ساعة بعد ساعة، فإن القلوب إذا كلت عميت

Moderation remains the keyword in Arab and Muslim culture. Excessive reserve as well as excessive jesting is not commendable. Arab culture favours a sober, reserved, rational disposition over a lax, slack, casual, and emotional temperament. Individual credibility is achieved through the projection of abstemious self-control, which conditions one’s image. The ideal male achieves alwaqar (الوقار), or a venerable status through al-ittizzan (الاتزان), which is the balance of emotions and logic. A female has the extra virtue of haybeh (هيبة), or aloof distance, which gives her an august aura. The equilibrium between the noble, rational essence, as defined by the Muslim Arab ethos, and the individual emotional response to various impending social situations, reflects the character and social standing of the gentleman or lady. The dexterous play of words, facial expressions, and self-comportment is a semiotic that marks social class. It is used in the diverse social expressions of humour, which are epitomized by the discursive literary art forms known in Arabic as al-naderah (النادره), al-taraef (الطرفه), and al-mulah (الملح), which are explained below. These narratives formalise humour and engender the feelings of wonder and surprise. They aim to trigger a discreet smile. In contradistinction, al-nukteh, the joke, is a plebeian oral narrative that triggers full laughter. Jokes are invariably spoofs critical of various aspects of the socio-political, economic, or religious structure.

Humour, be it written or spoken, pertaining to classical Muslim Arabic literature or folk culture is a discursive cultural expression in which both the narrator and the listener are bound to a well-defined time and place. Even the jester has to have particular skills, not only acting, but also social manners and discretion. In jest, social values, language, politics, economics, and religion are parodied, but only to a certain point.

Double entendre, pun, satire, sarcasm, and irony are stylistic devices through which sacrosanct values are caricatured. Parody and burlesque reveal social contradictions and human folly. Though the tools of humour are homologous across cultures, the content is particular to an individual culture. Through humour, a mirror image of the culture is glimpsed. But it must be noted that it is an image in reverse, turned inside out, a spoof. To savour the humour of a particular culture, the listener has to have full knowledge of diverse innuendos. The significance of the punch line lies between the lines.

Lying betwixt and between social order and chaos, humour is liminal. A special space and time is carved out to form the anti-structure that questions, ridicules, and mocks the conventional rigid social structure. It is a socially condoned, well-defined ritual that reveals the inherent paradoxes and contradictions in the social system and demonstrates human vulnerabilities and folly. It provides a temporary escape from the prison of language and culture. Humour in this sense is particular to a certain culture; the comic effect is lost in the translation.

A humorous Arabic anecdote cannot be translated from the classical Arabic to Arabic dialect, and vice versa, a joke in Arabic dialect cannot be translated into classical Arabic. Translation involves displacement, the loss of the linguistic and social cultural innuendos, and consequently the loss of the comic element.

The Caliph Omar passed by some young archers.

“You ought to have studied arching before shooting your arrows,” he admonished them.

“We are educated (نحن متعلمين),” they retorted.

“You should have studied Arabic before arching,” he mocked them.

The humour in the anecdote assumes familiarity with Arabic grammar. The archers should have said muta’allimoon instead of muta’allimeen. Their insolent answer to the caliph in grammatically incorrect Arabic and the latter’s witty mockery makes the anecdote funny. But it is discrete humour that arouses admiration, surprise, and a smile in keeping with the virtue of wiqar.

Arab wiqar imparts a gentleman or lady with credibility, social status, and prestige. Wiqar may be understood as a Muslim variant of sophrosyne, the classic Greek concept of piety, self-restraint, and moderation. Wiqar is a mask that is an irreducible aspect of one’s social identity. It is out of character to laugh out loud, jest, or joke for a gentleman. Humour and mirthful comportment varies according to class, culture, and social rank. In a local joke narrated by a Christian Bethlehemite friend, both a Muslim sheikh and a Christian priest are playfully mocked to reveal their vulnerability and humanity:

A sheikh saw a youth idling outside the mosque. He asked him whether he performs the five daily prayers. The youth answered in the negative, whereupon the sheikh invited him to come along to his house where he would teach him Muslim prayers. The sheikh lived on the upper floor and the priest on the first. Once in the house, the sheikh inquired whether the youth had performed his ablutions. Then he recommended the boy go to the bathroom and clean up. Alone in the bathroom the youth thought to himself, “This man picked me up from the street and took me to his house. He lives alone and now he wants me to clean up.” He hesitated, “I better escape.” He jumped into the lower courtyard through the bathroom window.

The priest, alarmed by the noise in his yard, shouted, “Thief, thief!”
The boy answered, “No father, I am not a thief, but the sheikh wanted me to wash up.”

“Join us,” the priest said reassuringly. “Here you do not need to wash.”

This plebeian joke triggers laughter. Using ablutions to point out the difference between Muslim and Christian prayers, it mocks men of religion and insinuates the debauchery of men of God. Despite their virtuous appearance, they lust like ordinary people. The joke reveals social hypocrisy but remains vulgar and unworthy of a dignified gentleman.

Bawdy sexual jokes abound, undermining commonly held images of virtue and respectability. These genres of jokes express class jealousies and rivalries in an attempt to level class barriers. In another joke, a medical doctor, the epitome of respectability and economic success, bears the brunt of a derisive joke.

A man suffering from bad congestion becomes extremely ill late at night. Gasping for breath and suffering extreme throat pain, he searches in the telephone directory for the name of a nose and throat specialist. He calls. A lady answers. He tries to speak but his voice fails him because of the sore throat.

He looks up the address and drives up to the doctor’s house. He knocks at the door. It is late at night. The doctor’s wife, blonde, young, beautiful, and dressed in her nightshirt, opens the door. He looks stunned. His voice comes out in a rasping whisper and he inquires, “Is the doctor in?”

“No,” she answers in a brazenly loud voice. “Enter.”

Whereas cackling, guffawing, and laughing out loud may be a common plebeian response to bawdy jokes, it is shunned among scholars, gentlemen, and ladies. Within this context, a distinctive literary and oral discourse containing a wide range of humorous narratives has been deployed, amongst which the nadirah (النادره), or picaresque short tale, and al-turfeh (الطرفه), an amusing story, stand out as mullah (ملح), with which gracious hosts and guests humorously regale visitors to while away the time. This type of humorous exchange has, de rigueur, a moral, ethical, or pedagogical value:

Ahmad, a student of the famous grammarian al-Khalīl ibn Ahmad al-Farāhīdī, paid his teacher a visit at night. Now it was known that Farahidi did not open his door to anyone except his favourite student Sibawe’. He told him,”Insaref, or be gone.”

“The witty student answered, But I cannot go. (لكني ممنوع من الصرف)”

This double entendre is impossible to translate into English, for the word srf has two meanings. The first meaning is literally “to make go,” i.e. to dismiss. The second meaning is idiomatic and is used in Arabic grammar to describe a noun that cannot have vowels at the end and cannot be conjugated.

To appreciate the humour, the listener would have to know that Al-Farahidi was one of the earliest Arab lexicographers and philologists. He wrote the first dictionary of the Arabic language, the current standard for harakat, the vowel marks in Arabic script. He also invented al-‘arud, the study of Arabic prosody. Moreover, his favourite student Sibawe’, the only one allowed into his house after nightfall, was to become the greatest Arab grammarian.

In the company of these highly respected Arab linguists, the student’s witticism through the use of the grammatical pun in the punch line gives the anecdote its humour. The joke must be told or read only in classical Arabic. Moreover, without a highly literate audience the humour would be totally missed. The subtle nuances would trigger a discreet smile commensurate with his or her socio-cultural status.

The use of humorous anecdotes as a branch of literature has deep roots in early Muslim history. It developed into a legitimate literary form in the Abbasside Period and is associated with the names of the great scholars whose literary output defines classical Arabic literature and thought. Renowned orthodox scholars such as Al-Jahiz, iben Quty’bah, Iben Abed Rabboh, Al-Tawhidi, Al-Nuweri, Iben al-Jozi, iben al-Mamati, and Al-Awtabi, and modernist authors such as Zakariyya Ibrahim, Yusef al-Sharoni, Mahmud al-Sa’dani, and Shawqi Deif are some names associated with humour as literature.

The Arabic literary genre of the picaresque anecdote involves a short tale with an unexpected, surprising outcome. It has an educational objective but an engaging humorous plot. It is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. There is no plot. The narrative unfolds in a series of loosely connected adventures or episodes. There is little if any character development in the main character. Once a rascal always a rascal. His or her circumstances may change but rarely result in a change of heart. Carefree rascality positions the picaresque hero as a sympathetic outsider, untouched by the false rules of society in the highly stylised picaresque anecdote known in Arabic as al-nadirah (النوادر مفردها نادرة). Arabic classical literature has bequeathed us with two picaresque heroes. Al-Jahiz gave us Ash’ab, and folk culture gave us Joha.

Joha was on his way to town with his son and donkey. His son rode the donkey and he walked next to him. People passed and whispered loud enough for Joha to hear, “What a rude son. He rides and lets his father walk.” At the next corner Joha exchanged places with his son. Another group of people passed by and exclaimed, “What a heartless father. He rides and lets his son trudge behind him.” Hearing these words, Joha asked his son to join him riding the donkey. Another group of people passed and gasped, ”What a poor donkey! This man is heartless!” So Joha and his son dismounted and walked next to the donkey. Another group passed and said, “Look at these rascals. They walk instead of riding the donkey.” Finally Joha resolved the problem and carried the donkey on his back. People passed and gawked and laughed at the spectacle. The lesson, pleasing people is an impossible objective.

Muslim culture exudes a certain sadness. Reflective yet distant, a general sense of tristesse, gentle despair, nostalgia, and an inconsolable sense of solitude hang in the air.

Islam expresses some of this sadness. In Suret al-najem, verses 43 and 44, God says:

And He who maketh laugh and maketh weep,

And He who giveth death and giveth life

Al-Jahez, writing in the eighth century AD, commented ironically on the juxtaposition of laughter with death and life with sadness. He explained that God has put laughter in the shoes of death and sadness in the shoes of life.

Arabic tristesse finds its epitome in the poetry of Abul al-Ala al-Ma’ari., His fundamental pessimism is expressed in his recommendation that no children should be begotten, so as to spare them the pains of life. In his most quoted poem he combines his grief with observations on the ephemerality of this life:

Soften your tread. Methinks the earth’s surface is but bodies of the dead,

Walk slowly in the air, so you do not trample on the remains of God’s servants.

The Arab discourse of humour provides distraction from the despair of being.

Dr. Ali Qleibo is an anthropologist, author, and artist. A specialist in the social history of Jerusalem and Palestinian peasant culture, he is the author of Before the Mountains Disappear, Jerusalem in the Heart, and Surviving the Wall, an ethnographic chronicle of contemporary Palestinians and their roots in ancient Semitic civilisations. Dr. Qleibo lectures at Al-Quds University. He can be reached at aqleibo@yahoo.com.