The Penal Law Terminology in Siyāsatnāme: Some of Its Etymological, Semantic and Functional Peculiarities
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Abstract
The paper is dedicated to the examination of the legal terms attested in the text of the Siyāsatnāme (سياسة نامه) integrated in the Siyāsatnāme Law (قانون السياسة نامه), the first Organic Law (النظام الاساسي) of Egypt enacted by the decree of Egyptian Viceroy/governor (wālī) Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha (1805–1848) in 1253/1837 as its third part. The adoption of the Siyāsatnāme was one of the early attempts of the codification of Egyptian Penal Law by Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha. The Siyāsatnāme text, as an example of the formal style of Written Arabic which started to develop in the early 19th century, represents its basic linguistic features, particularly, the widespread use of words that acquired terminological meanings in the administrative and legal spheres of Written Arabic of Egypt during the reign of Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha, the era of the formation of the administrative apparatus of the new Egyptian state and the modernization of its legal system. A number of Arabic legal terms of the Siyāsatnāme belong to the Penal law terminology and denote misdemeanors of civil servants (e.g. رشوه “bribe”) and their punishments (e.g. عزل “dismissal from office”). The etymological analysis of the Penal law terms found in the text of the Siyāsatnāme has shown that the vast majority of them are of Arabic origin (with the exception of لومان “the hard labour in Alexandria dockyards”, کرباج “flogging”) and belong to the lexical layer of Classical Arabic (with the exception of Egyptian Spoken Arabic variant اغتلاس “embezzlement” vs. Classical Arabic اختلاس). Based on the structural analysis of the given terminological units, it was concluded that they were presented as single-component terms (e.g. حبس “imprisonment”) and multi-component terminological phrases (e.g. اجرا الجزا “imposition of punishment”). In this regard, the valence of the Penal law terms of the Siyāsatnāme when forming terminological phrases was analyzed. The peculiarities of the functioning of criminal law terms in this legislative text were considered as well.
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Arabic language; Egypt; legal terminology; loanword; Penal law; semantics, semantic change; semantic field; term
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