'exit' [ˈxardʒa]; Spanish: jarcha [ˈxaɾtʃa]; Portuguese: carja [ˈkaɾʒɐ]; also known as a markaz مَـْركَز 'center'),[1] is the final couple of abyāt, or verses, of a muwaššaḥa (مُوَشَّح 'girdle'), a poem or song of the strophic lyric genre from al-Andalus.
Their rediscovery in the 20th century by Hebrew scholar Samuel Miklos Stern and Arabist Emilio García Gómez is generally thought to have cast new light on the evolution of Romance languages.
[7][8] Arabic writers from the Middle East or North Africa like Ahmad al-Tifashi (1184–1253) referred to "songs in the Christian style" sung in al-Andalus from ancient times that some have identified as the kharjas.
Such scholars accuse the academic majority of misreading the ambiguous script in untenable or questionable ways and ignoring contemporary Arab accounts of how Muwashshahat and Kharjas were composed.
[14] An example of a Romance kharja (and translation) by the Jewish poet Judah Halevi: These verses express the theme of the pain of longing for the absent lover (habib).
[16] Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk, a 12th century Egyptian poet, wrote an anthology and study of the muwaššaḥ and its kharja entitled Dār aṭ-ṭirāz fī ʿamal al-muwas̲h̲s̲h̲aḥāt (دار الطراز في عمل الموشحات).
An anthology of muwaššaḥāt entitled Uddat al-Jalīs (عدة الجليس), attributed to a certain Ali ibn Bishri al-Ighranati, is based on a manuscript taken from Morocco in 1948 by Georges Séraphin Colin (1893-1977).
[19] Ibn Bassam wrote in Dhakhīra fī mahāsin ahl al-Jazīra [ar] (الذخيرة في محاسن أهل الجزيرة) that the kharja was the initial text around which the rest of the muwaššaḥ was composed.
[21][22] Stern's interpretation of kharjas in Hebrew texts made them accessible to Romanists and had a great impact on the Spanish establishment and scholars of Romance in the West.
[22][23] Gómez's 1965 book Jarchas Romances De La Serie Arabe En Su Marco presented a corpus of all known kharjas at the time; although it did not include annotation or scholarly apparatus, it became canonical.
[22] Solà-Solé's Corpus de poesía mozárabe (Las Harjas andalusíes) offered a complete scholarly apparatus, variations taken from different manuscripts, thorough discussion, and thoughtful speculation.