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Pre-Diasporic Arabic in the Diaspora: A Statistical Approach to Arabic Language History

Jonathan Owens

in A Linguistic History of Arabic

Whereas the previous chapter examined only classical sources, this chapter turns exclusively to the dialects. Forty-nine features, 25 morphological, and 24 phonological in two Arabic dialect areas ... More

Whereas the previous chapter examined only classical sources, this chapter turns exclusively to the dialects. Forty-nine features, 25 morphological, and 24 phonological in two Arabic dialect areas are examined in detail, Mesopotamian Arabic and the western Sudanic (Chad, northern Cameroon, NE Nigeria). The data are compared using the statistical measure of standard deviation (SD). Two key points emerge. First, the Mesopotamian area is considerably more diverse (with a higher SD) than is the western Sudanic, a point explained in terms of longer settlement as well as other factors. Secondly, adding a further comparison with Uzbekistan Arabic — usually considered to be closely related to the Mesopotamian dialects — reveals that it is as close to western Sudanic in the feature comparison as it is to Mesopotamian. The significant similarities between Uzbekistan and western Sudanic are explained in terms of common retention, pointing to a pre-diasporic core dating to the 7th century.Less

Imala

Jonathan Owens

in A Linguistic History of Arabic

This chapter shows that a process of vowel harmony termed imala, which was described in great detail by Sibawaih, is attested in various manifestations in four post-diasporic regions: Spain, Malta, ... More

This chapter shows that a process of vowel harmony termed imala, which was described in great detail by Sibawaih, is attested in various manifestations in four post-diasporic regions: Spain, Malta, Eastern Libya, and the Mesopotamian area. Imala is the change of /aa/ to /ie/ in the context of a conditioning high vowel /i/. After explaining the complex variational features of imala described by Sibawaih, its manifestations in modern regions are explained. It is shown that a reconstruction of imala based solely on its survivals in the modern dialects yields a form and distribution remarkably similar to that described by Sibawaih.Less

Wedding Garments and Holy Yokes: Celibacy and Holiness in Aphrahat, the Persian Sage

Naomi Koltun-Fromm

in Hermeneutics of Holiness: Ancient Jewish and Christian Notions of Sexuality and Religious Community

This chapter focuses on the fourth-century Syriac Christian writer Aphrahat, known as the “Persian Sage” and his construct of holiness and celibacy. Aphrahat, who administered to the small ... More

This chapter focuses on the fourth-century Syriac Christian writer Aphrahat, known as the “Persian Sage” and his construct of holiness and celibacy. Aphrahat, who administered to the small Persian-Mesopotamian Christian community, recorded his theological understandings of holiness in his only extant writings, the Demonstrations. For Aphrahat, holiness is celibacy and celibacy is holiness. And while he depends in many ways on the early Syriac tradition, such as the Acts of Judah Thomas, one can trace other biblical trajectories of holiness in his writings. On the one hand, he suggests that sexual renunciation is obedience to the divine law, and its reward is holiness, and on the other, he proposes that sexual renunciation brings one closer to God in a mystical sense, such that the sexually renunciant mystic participates in God’s holiness through his celibacy. Aphrahat elaborates both concepts with biblical interpretive traditions and texts.Less

Myth as historia divina and historia sacra

Jan Assmann

in Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination: Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane

Taking Fishbane's groundbreaking methodological work in biblical mythology, this chapter explores the possibility of applying these insights to a range of non-Israelite historical and mythological ... More

Taking Fishbane's groundbreaking methodological work in biblical mythology, this chapter explores the possibility of applying these insights to a range of non-Israelite historical and mythological texts. It argues that such a thing as the narrative representation of the past is anything but normal and self-evident. It requires a general cultural option for change over against identity and continuity. The past, in order to become the subject of such a representation, must in itself possess a kind of narrative structure.Less

The Voice of the Land: Lamentations

JILL MIDDLEMAS

in The Troubles of Templeless Judah

This chapter turns to Lamentations as it is most widely regarded as stemming from Templeless Judah. Of the five poems in the book, chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 have the greatest claim to belong to ... More

This chapter turns to Lamentations as it is most widely regarded as stemming from Templeless Judah. Of the five poems in the book, chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 have the greatest claim to belong to Templeless Judah. These chapters of the book of Lamentations are used typologically to isolate prominent concepts. Five themes are found to be distinctive to the religious thought of Templeless Judah: (1) an emphasis on the extent of unalleviated human suffering, (2) the explicit assertion of uncertainty in future possibilities, (3) the downplaying of the association of human sin and judgement, (4) the need to witness to pain through the expression of grief especially within worship, and (5) the forming of grief in such a way as to limit it and evoke a future orientation. The delineation of themes distinctive to Judah provides a measuring rod with which to approach other material thought to stem from the homeland.Less

Diverting the Stream of Tradition:: Reinventing the Flood Myth

J. David Pleins

in When the Great Abyss Opened: Classic and Contemporary Readings of Noah's Flood

Redirecting the stream of tradition when analyzing the version of the flood story told in the Bible could possibly account for the Bible's uniqueness and connectedness if one looks into the influence ... More

Redirecting the stream of tradition when analyzing the version of the flood story told in the Bible could possibly account for the Bible's uniqueness and connectedness if one looks into the influence of Middle Eastern cultures and how this brings about certain modifications in human thought. Examining the major aspects of Mesopotamian literature would point out how focus is given to the Bible as Ziusudra, Atrahasis, and Utnapishtim—Noah's Mesopotamian counterparts—also experience the same fate as Noah. Although the Bible may have been able to preserve the elements that make the myth unique, Mesopotamian and Israelite story tellers may have exaggerated their versions of this narrative. In this chapter, the book looks into the counterparts of the flood story and provides a comparison with Mesopotamian culture.Less

Gertrude Bell and the Ottoman Empire

Peter Sluglett

Paul Collins and Charles Tripp (eds)

in Gertrude Bell and Iraq: A life and legacy

Gertrude Bell was the only senior member of the Mesopotamian Administration to have had any significant experience of the Ottoman Empire before the First World War. Percy Cox had spent most of his ... More

Gertrude Bell was the only senior member of the Mesopotamian Administration to have had any significant experience of the Ottoman Empire before the First World War. Percy Cox had spent most of his career in Persia and the Gulf before coming to Iraq. Arnold Wilson had spent his career in India, south-west Persia and the Gulf. Reader Bullard is probably the only exception, as he had served in Constantinople, Trebizond and Erzurum between 1907 and 1914, after which he was posted to the consulate in Basra and subsequently to Baghdad and Kirkuk. In contrast, Gertrude Bell had made extensive visits to various parts of the region, beginning with a visit to Iran in 1892. She spent 1899–1900 in Palestine and Syria, and also travelled elsewhere in the region, as described in Syria: The Desert and the Sown (1907) and From Amurath to Amurath (1911). The chapter discusses what Bell wrote about the Ottoman Empire, both in these books and in her letters, and the extent to which her views of its politics and administration may have influenced her thoughts on the future administration and structure of Iraq.Less

Gertrude Bell in the Archive of the Iraq Museum

Lamia Al-Gailani Werr

Paul Collins and Charles Tripp (eds)

in Gertrude Bell and Iraq: A life and legacy

It is unfortunate that most of what is written and researched on Gertrude Bell tends to give a scant or short account of her work on the Antiquities Department. Most of the documents on her work in ... More

It is unfortunate that most of what is written and researched on Gertrude Bell tends to give a scant or short account of her work on the Antiquities Department. Most of the documents on her work in the last four years of her life are in the Iraq Museum (1922–1926), and were, until recently, not accessible to the public. This chapter explores the surviving documents to give a picture of the main issues that occupied Bell during this period – from her constant search for a place to store the deluge of artefacts coming from excavations such as Ur and Kish to the legislation of the Antiquities Law. Bell’s legacy for the antiquities of Iraq is as important as the creation of Iraq.Less

The Cradle of Exotica

Karen Polinger Foster

in Strange and Wonderful: Exotic Flora and Fauna in Image and Imagination

This chapter discusses the role of exotica in the Mesopotamian mind. By 1875, The Epic of Gilgamesh had begun to emerge from the thousands of clay tablet fragments freshly unearthed in the remains of ... More

This chapter discusses the role of exotica in the Mesopotamian mind. By 1875, The Epic of Gilgamesh had begun to emerge from the thousands of clay tablet fragments freshly unearthed in the remains of the great royal library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh. Gilgamesh’s drive to possess the exotic is rooted in long-standing Mesopotamian tradition. From the third millennium on, when he supposedly reigned, scholar-scribes organized and classified nearly all aspects of the natural world. Thematic lists of flora and fauna, heavenly bodies, precious and semiprecious materials, and topographical features provided the educated elite with a means of conceptualizing patterns and interrelationships. For Gilgamesh, as for many Mesopotamian rulers, the acquisition and display of exotica were key aspects of kingship. Once secured within the walled, urban cores of Mesopotamian cultural identity, exotica offered tangible signs of wide-ranging military might, commercial enterprise, and political status and control.Less

Outline for a Diplomatics of Mesopotamian Documents

in Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia

This chapter examines the documents from the Mesopotamian archives. It describes the conditions of their transmissions and evaluates the contribution of diplomatics to Assyriological studies. It ... More

This chapter examines the documents from the Mesopotamian archives. It describes the conditions of their transmissions and evaluates the contribution of diplomatics to Assyriological studies. It suggests that Middle Babylonian tablets came to be published as coming from the late Old Babylonian period because purely philological criteria prevailed over a diplomatic approach. This chapter argues that one of the contributions of diplomatics was the detection of forgeries.Less

Iconography of the Encircling Ocean

Karen C. Pinto

in Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration

Chapter Five, “Iconography of the Encircling Ocean” is the first of three chapters that focus on the Encircling Ocean form in the world maps. The goal of the three chapters collectively is to conduct ... More

Chapter Five, “Iconography of the Encircling Ocean” is the first of three chapters that focus on the Encircling Ocean form in the world maps. The goal of the three chapters collectively is to conduct an iconographic exploration of the Encircling Ocean form, establishing the KMMS maps in their place within a tradition of great breadth in both time and space. This chapter begins this task by offering a broad look at encircling meta-form occurrences across prehistoric, Mesopotamian, Iranian, Semitic, Indian, Chinese and East Asian mapping traditions.Less

“One Shekel of Your Private Silver”

Joe Carlen

in A Brief History of Entrepreneurship: The Pioneers, Profiteers, and Racketeers Who Shaped Our World

What role did the entrepreneur play in shaping Ancient Mesopotamia, the “cradle of civilization”? This chapter demonstrates how the entrepreneurial drive transformed this pagan Middle Eastern ... More

What role did the entrepreneur play in shaping Ancient Mesopotamia, the “cradle of civilization”? This chapter demonstrates how the entrepreneurial drive transformed this pagan Middle Eastern society. Most relevantly, it helped spur Mesopotamia’s transition from an agrarian Bronze Age economy to a bustling hub of urban commerce, now a defining characteristic of Western Civilization. It will also highlight how this transformation spurred similar development throughout the then-known world.Less

Origins of the Stoning Punishment

Sarah Eltantawi

in Shari'ah on Trial: Northern Nigeria's Islamic Revolution

This chapter explores the deepest layer of the sunnaic paradigm, the Islamic legal history of the stoning punishment. This chapter contrasts the stoning punishment’s perceived stability and ... More

This chapter explores the deepest layer of the sunnaic paradigm, the Islamic legal history of the stoning punishment. This chapter contrasts the stoning punishment’s perceived stability and incontavertability among contemporary Northern Nigerians against early Islamic intellectual historical accounts which understand the stoning punishment as highly contested and unstable legally and epistemologically. The chapter surveys early pre-Islamic societies’ legalization of the stoning punishment, including Mesopotamia and Judaic sources, and shows how the punishment made its way into the Islamic tradition. This chapter also surveys Qur’an, hadith, linguistic, aphoristic and Islamic legal treatment of the stoning punishment, and explores the analytic tools used by Islamic jurists to make a debatable punishment legal over time.Less

Derivatives and options

Peter Richmond, Jürgen Mimkes, and Stefan Hutzler

in Econophysics and Physical Economics

This chapter traces the origins of the use of derivatives to the era of Mesopotamian farmers and compares it to similar transactions widely used by businesses today. Mesopotamian farmers routinely ... More

This chapter traces the origins of the use of derivatives to the era of Mesopotamian farmers and compares it to similar transactions widely used by businesses today. Mesopotamian farmers routinely sold the following year's grain harvest due for delivery at the time of harvesting at a ‘future’ price, agreed today. The actual future price went up and down according to the market. Today, for a fee, an agreement is made to engage, at some point in the future, in a trade at a fixed price. The fee is the price of the so-called derivative contract that clearly should depend in some way on the price of the underlying asset. All businesses seek to reduce uncertainty in the financial state of their businesses by trying to fix the price of the underlying commodity. As a result, they are all natural buyers and sellers of derivative contracts.Less

Epilogue Early Sumerian Societies: A Research Agenda

in Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization: The Evolution of an Urban Landscape

This epilogue summarizes the major evidentiary problems that hinder our comprehension of the full range of factors at play at the time of the emergence of early Mesopotamian civilization, and that ... More

This epilogue summarizes the major evidentiary problems that hinder our comprehension of the full range of factors at play at the time of the emergence of early Mesopotamian civilization, and that will continue to do so in the future until they are resolved. Toward that goal, it offers suggestions for future research geared to obtaining the missing evidence, when such research becomes possible. This is imperative if a full evaluation is to be made of the main hypothesis advanced in this book, that of the centrality of the ramifications of trade to the evolution of early civilizations in general and to early Mesopotamian urban process in particular.Less