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Copyright

Miranda J. Morris

Published On

2025-02-05

Page Range

pp. 169–336

Language

  • English

Print Length

168 pages

Harvesting the Sea among the Bəṭāḥira

Chapter of: Harvesting the Sea in Southeastern Arabia: Volume 1: Regional Studies(pp. 169–336)
This chapter discusses how the Bəṭāḥira, a tribe small in number and inhabiting a desolate strip of the southern Arabian seaboard, used to survive by harvesting the sea. How they managed this is described as much as possible in their own words. Their language is Bəṭaḥrēt, the least known of the Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL), while the community itself has long been overlooked by researchers studying traditional cultures and languages. This section is followed by a series of transcribed, translated and annotated Bəṭaḥrēt audio materials collected by the author in the late 1970s and 1980s, and later on, between 2013 and 2016, and with a Baṭḥari field assistant, further material given by the few elderly Bəṭaḥrēt speakers who remained. As the younger generations are now monolingual in Arabic, this was a last chance to gather material in this dying language. The recordings are available in the Endangered Languages Archives (ELAR). The documentation and ethnolinguistic analysis of Modern South Arabian: Bathari are also available at the Endangered Languages Archive (elararchive.org)

Contributors

Miranda J. Morris

(author)
https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8231-9957

Miranda J. Morris is an independent researcher whose interests focus on the Modern South Arabian Languages, Soḳoṭri, Hobyōt, Bǝṭaḥrēt, Śḥerɛ̄t, Mehri and Ḥarsūsi, and the traditional cultures of those who speak them. She has lived and worked with MSAL-speaking communities in Southern Arabia and the Soqotra Archipelago over several decades, and has worked on a variety of projects, with the Darwin Initiative, UK; the Global Environment Facility; the European Union; and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Her publications include Plants of Dhofar, the Southern Region of Oman: Traditional, Economic and Medicinal Uses (with A. G. Miller, 1988); Oman Adorned: A Portrait in Silver (with P. Shelton, 1997); Ethnoflora of the Soqotra Archipelago (with A. G. Miller, 2004); A Comparative Cultural Glossary across the Modern South Arabian Language Family (with J. C. E. Watson, D. Eades et al., 2019); The Oral Art of Soqotra: A Collection of Island Voices (with Ṭ. S. Di-Kišin, 3 volumes, 2021), and Ethnographic Texts in the Baṭḥari Language of Oman (2024). With Fabio Gasparini, she is currently completing A Grammar of the Bəṭaḥrēt Language of Oman for publication by Harrassowitz.