Arsène Roux (February 5, 1893 in Rochegude – July 19, 1971) was a French

Arabist An Arabist is someone, often but not always from outside the Arab world, who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and Arab culture, culture (usually including Arabic literature). Origins Arabists began in Al Andalus, medieval Muslim ...

and Berberologist. He was born in Rochegude and emigrated to

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

(then occupied by France) in his early twenties where he started studying Classical Arabic, Moroccan Arabic and the Moroccan

Berber languages The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berbers, Berber communities, ...

. In the following years, he worked in various schools and universities as a professor and director; he also founded and presided over the Collège Berbère d'Azrou. During his time in Morocco he collected and studied an enormous amount of Shilha and

Central Atlas Tamazight Central Atlas Tamazight or Atlasic (native name: ''Tamazight'' ; ) is a Berber languageCentral Atlas Tamazight may be referred to as either a Berber language or a Berber dialect. As Berber languages have some degree of mutual intelligibility, ...

texts and manuscripts with the help of his Berber assistant Si Ibrahim al-Kunki (b. 1905). Some of these texts were published by himself in

Rabat Rabat (, also , ; ) is the Capital (political), capital city of Morocco and the List of cities in Morocco, country's seventh-largest city with an urban population of approximately 580,000 (2014) and a metropolitan population of over 1.2 million. ...

for use in his Shilha Berber courses (e.g. Roux 1942); the majority however was taken to France upon his return there in the middle of the 1950s, where he continued his studies and he set out to correct, index and translate his collection of texts. Somehow, nothing of his extensive scholarly work actually saw publication except for a two-page summary of a lecture (Roux, 1948). He also worked together with the egyptologist Bruno Stricker on an edition and translation of ''Baḥr ad-dumu'' (Ocean of Tears), by Muḥammad Awzal, which was published in 1960. After his death in 1971 his descendants donated his library to the Institut de Recherches méditerranéennes in

Aix-en-Provence Aix-en-Provence, or simply Aix, is a List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, city and Communes of France, commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. A former capital of Provence, it is the Subprefectures in France, s ...

, where the ''Fonds Arsène Roux'' is still administered today. It contains more than two hundred Sous Berber manuscript texts, some Arabic manuscripts and an extensive collection of riddles, proverbs, tales, and religious legends written down by Roux himself. A catalogue of the Arabic and Berber manuscripts has been prepared by van den Boogert (1995), while the other texts have been indexed in Stroomer & Peyron (2003).

Bibliography and references

* * * * * * * *Arsène Roux and Michael Peyron, ''Poésies berbères de l’époque héroïque, Maroc central (1908–1932)'', Aix-en-Provence: Edisud 2002 *

External links

* (earliest 1990) {{DEFAULTSORT:Roux, Arsene 1893 births 1971 deaths People from Drôme Berberologists French Arabists 20th-century French linguists French emigrants to Morocco