# والذي عليه الباحثون



## eac

Sorry to be asking so many questions in such a short time span! I'm working through a long article on the Berbers, and the beginning of this sentence is confusing to me.

 والذي عليه الباحثون هو أنه ...​ 
There are four masculine singular pronouns here (including suffixes and the relative pronoun). I can't even beginning to guess how to translate this, except for الباحثون. I would really appreciate some help.

شكراً​


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## elroy

Could you provide the whole sentence, or any other helpful context?

As it is, it seems to me that the sentence is missing a verb.  I could imagine something like *والذي قد اتفق عليه الباحثون هو أنه*, "what the researchers have decided on is...," but otherwise the sentence is perplexing to me as well.

By the way, no worries about posting many questions.  We're always happy to help, so keep them coming!


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## alahay

And what the researchers are up to is that...

Please provide us with full context so that we answer more accurately.


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## eac

elroy said:
			
		

> Could you provide the whole sentence, or any other helpful context?


 
Gladly.  والذي عليه الباحثون هو أنه لما جاء العرب إلى شمال إفريقيا فاتحين كانت المنطقة التي تشمل الساحل والصحراء وما إلى الجنوب من الصحراء يسكنها البربر وأنه كانت هناك ثلاثة أقسام رئيسة للبربر هي زناتة و مصمودة وصنهاجة​
The part after أنه is not a problem for me: as the Arabs came to North Africa, they started in ("the openings were") the region that includes the coast and the desert and that to the south of the desert that the Berbers inhabit, and that the Berbers had three main divisions: Zanata, Masmuda, and Sanhaja (not sure about the voweling of these).

The problem is the part that introduces the clause, where I can't figure out what the pronouns refer to.


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## alahay

In that case, "what researchers have agreed on"...

My previous translation could be manifested by an example as such: "wa ma 3alayh al ba7ithouna houwa an yastamirrou fil ba7th" meaning "what researchers are up to is to continue researching"


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## elroy

Yes, that seems to be indeed what the sentence is saying, but to me it still seems that a verb is missing.  I did a Google search for "الذي عليه الباحثون," and there are 3 results - not very convincing.

Unless this is some collocation that I was not aware of.

By the way, the vowelization is correct.  However, there are other minor mistakes in the translation:



> as the Arabs came to North Africa, they started in ("the openings were")  to open/to begin [something] (I need more context), the region that includeds the coast and the desert and that to the south of the desert that the Berbers inhabit was inhabited by Berbers, and that the Berbers had three main divisions: Zanata, Masmuda, and Sanhaja (not sure about the voweling of these).


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## eac

Thank you alahay.  Can you explain why the أن needs a pronoun suffix?  And does the preposition على therefore have a possible meaning of "in agreement upon"?  Could one say: الباحثون على هذا "the researchers are in agreement upon this"?


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## elroy

eac said:
			
		

> Thank you alahay. Can you explain why the أن needs a pronoun suffix? And does the preposition على therefore have a possible meaning of "in agreement upon"? Could one say: الباحثون على هذا "the researchers are in agreement upon this"?


 
أنه sounds better in this context.  It means the same thing as أن, but I believe the former is used when the following word is not a noun but a particle (as in this case).

على does not have  a meaning of "in agreement upon," and الباحثون على هذا certainly doesn't mean "the researchers are in agreement upon this."  This is part of why I'm having trouble with this construction.


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## eac

Hmmm. The passage is from "Standard Arabic: an advanced course" by Cambridge Press, which has very high quality texts ordinarily. A question about your corrections to my translation: why do you say that تشمل is a perfect verb? The subject is feminine (منطقة) so why could it not be a present tense verb? And doesn't يسكنها have to be present tense as well?  Plus, the sentence is the first in a paragraph, so I don't think there is any more context to clarify فاتحين.


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## elroy

eac said:
			
		

> Hmmm. The passage is from "Standard Arabic: an advanced course" by Cambridge Press, which has very high quality texts ordinarily. A question about your corrections to my translation: why do you say that تشمل is a perfect verb? The subject is feminine (منطقة) so why could it not be a present tense verb? And doesn't يسكنها have to be present tense as well?


 
As I said before, this could just be a collocation I am personally not familiar with.

As for your other questions, تشمل is of course not a perfect verb but the main verb of the clause is كانت, so the reference is to the past.  Because the rest of the sentence is in the past, a present-tense meaning would be illogical here.  It's hard to explain the nuance - maybe someone else will come along who can do so better - but one way to avoid this problem is to say "including" or "comprising" instead of "that included."

As for يسكنها, it is also not a perfect verb but it is part of the construction كانت يسكنها, which means "was inhabited by."  Let me know if that's not clear.


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## elroy

eac said:
			
		

> Plus, the sentence is the first in a paragraph, so I don't think there is any more context to clarify فاتحين.


 
Oops, you hadn't included this part when I was responding to your other questions.

In that case, I would interpret فاتحين as meaning "conquering," "invading." This might pose a translation challenge, because "When the Arabs came to North Africa, conquering,..." sounds strange in English. Perhaps simply "When the Arabs conquered North Africa"? I'll leave it to you to come up with an idiomatic translation.


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## eac

Okay, you may have a point about concordance of tenses.  But you aren't saying that كانت and تشمل form a compound tense, are you?  They are separated by a clause, so I don't see how this could be possible.


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## ayed

eac said:
			
		

> Okay, you may have a point about concordance of tenses. But you aren't saying that كانت and تشمل form a compound tense, are you? They are separated by a clause, so I don't see how this could be possible.


 
What researchers concurred is that when Arab ,conquerors , came to North Africa , the region which includes …, inhabited by Barbers who fall into three main divisions : Zanatah, Masmodah and Sinhajah. 
 
I hope this could help you.
Stop not asking .
 
 
 
Ayed's regards


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## cherine

Hi,
Sorry, I didn't have time to read all the posts, which are very interesting by the way  , so forgive me if I repeat anything that was already said before.
First, an essay of translation of the sentence :
What researchers agree upon is that when the Arabs came to North Africa as conquerors (or : when Arabs conquered North Africa), the region that englobes the coast, the desert and the south of the desert, *was inhabited* by Berbers; and that there were three main Berber divisions: Zanata, Masmuda and Sanhaja.


			
				eac said:
			
		

> والذي عليه الباحثون هو أنه لما جاء العرب إلى شمال إفريقيا فاتحين كانت المنطقة التي تشمل الساحل والصحراء وما إلى الجنوب من الصحراء يسكنها البربر وأنه كانت هناك ثلاثة أقسام رئيسة للبربر هي زناتة و مصمودة وصنهاجة​


I highlighted "was inhabited" to show the meaning of كانت...يسكنها what between the two words are a clause, sort of long adjective (adjectives can come in the form of sentence, but that's another topic)

The word فاتحين means conquering, Arabic texts don't speak of Arabs as invaders غازين but as conquerors, and it may be this, or the ambiguity of the word, that has made it difficult for you to guess this meaning.

As for "Annahu", I think the "h" at the end is necessary, otherwise it would have been very hard (at least to the ear) to say أنّ لما جاء العرب If we are to use "Anna" the sentence would better be أنّ العرب لما جاءوا I wish I could give a valid grammatical explanation, but unfortunately I can only do this with sort of "native intuition" 

And may I repeat what Elroy and Ayed said : keep coming with such interesting questions, that's what we're here for : help each others, and that's what made me love this forum 
Good Luck with your studies


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## elroy

eac said:
			
		

> Okay, you may have a point about concordance of tenses. But you aren't saying that كانت and تشمل form a compound tense, are you? They are separated by a clause, so I don't see how this could be possible.


 
You are right.


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## cherine

No Elroy, I think the compound tense is formed by kanat+taskunuha, the clause "allaty tashmalu...as-sa7ara2i" is the adjective-clause of al-mantiqatu :
كانت المنطقة يسكنها البربر
or, to give the same meaning but with different order :
كان البربر يسكنون المنطقة التى تشمل الساحل.... الصحراء


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## elroy

cherine said:
			
		

> No Elroy, I think the compound tense is formed by kanat+taskunuha, the clause "allaty tashmalu...as-sa7ara2i" is the adjective-clause of al-mantiqatu :
> كانت المنطقة يسكنها البربر
> or, to give the same meaning but with different order :
> كان البربر يسكنون المنطقة التى تشمل الساحل.... الصحراء


 
What did I say that contradicts this?


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## cherine

I though you meant the compound tense is formed by كانت-تشمل and not كانت-يسكنها
Sorry if I misunderstood


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## elroy

cherine said:
			
		

> I though you meant the compound tense is formed by كانت-تشمل and not كانت-يسكنها
> Sorry if I misunderstood


 
Nope, I said that كانت had an influence on the understanding of تشمل, but that the compound construction is indeed كانت-يسكنها (see my post #10).


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## cherine

Oops ! yes you're right. Sorry


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