An Analysis of Jordanian Bedouin Riddles from the Badia Region

Abstract

This research project analyzes Jordanian Bedouin riddles from the Ras Alnaqb area of the Badia region. First a corpus of Nabati Jordanian riddles were collected and considered from a linguistic, cultural studies, and post-colonial studies perspective. The resulting qualitative study is composed of two parts.The first discusses certain historical, social, and cultural aspects to be considered. The second section outlines earlier studies on Arabic riddles from other areas as well as previous work done on Jordanian riddles. Next it presents the corpus collected, discusses the cultural and structural findings and puts forth new formulae to use in the classification of Jordanian Bedouin riddles.