1. Judeo-Arabic

As in many traditional cultures, Arabic-speaking Jews drew upon a rich lexicon of proverbs, maxims, and aphorisms in both oral and written expression. These gnomic expressions, in addition to being original creations, derived from a variety of sources. The specifically Jewish sources included biblical and rabbinic literature, and the principal non-Jewish source was the local Arab milieu. Specifically Muslim dicta from the Qur’an and ḥadīth rarely entered Judeo-Arabic usage. Rather, i…