Two Tunisian Judeo-Arabic Qinot Lamenting the Execution of Shmuel (Bāṭū) Sfez

Abstract This article presents two Judeo-Arabic qinot , or elegies in verse, about Bathou Sfez, the Tunisian Jewish coachman whose execution for blasphemy in 1857 precipitated the intervention of the French Second Empire and the ratification of the 1857 Security Pact in Tunisia. I provide English translations, clarifications of words and phrases particular to the Judeo-Arabic dialect of Tunis, explanations of the texts’ historical and literary allusions, and references to other examples of the idioms used. Though publications in the Judeo-Arabic dialect of Tunis are numerous and well documented, much scholarly work remains to be done in the domain of lexicography, to which this article makes many novel contributions. The article concludes with an analysis of the contents of these qinot , clarifying their relationship to the historical events that they ostensibly describe, pointing at once to the value and limits of such texts as historical sources.