81–90 of 105 posts
I don't understand how such a widespread writing system (as asserted in the article) could have been overlooked by the colonial rulers, let alone by anyone until 2004. I'm not saying it's not true, but if it is, the explanation is surely more layered that what can be explained simply by asserting colonialism/Euro-centrism, even if that is the root reason. It would be fascinating, and I'd like to hear it!
This article is bizarre. It reads like they've unearthed some long lost Rosetta Stone artifact from thousands of years ago. In reality, these people have "discovered" that everyone right around them writes using this language and this is just how they write and they all know about it. What is the "discovery" here? Here's what I think: modern Western civilization - to say nothing of historical colonial societies - has…
not discounting your context, just grant seeking explains the article framing
In the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script you can find references from 1971 and 1982. I find it hard to understand how this could be "an enormous discovery" in 2004. Nor do I understand the numerous mentions of European colonialism in the article.
It wasn't any enormous discovery. The particular academic in the article might have learned this thing existed from his father scribbles, but it has been a thing for centuries and has been studied in the past. They could have just learn about it by studing the literature. It's more about getting more publicity for it, and getting the library and digitization program mentioned in the article going. That should have be…
This should be the top comment. That explains everything about this piece's framing.
The story is great, but there are many inconsistencies. I believe it was decorated to the point the facts were bent to follow the story. After reading the article, I thought that reasearchers learned about the existence of Ajami just recently, far after the colonial powers were gone. That's not true. In 1970, a museum was created in Tombouctou for collecting the documents in Arabic and Ajami. https://en.wikipedia.org…
Historic revisionism has become very popular so as to make everyone feel better about their ancestors place in the annals of history. That everyone was at the same level and made the same amount of contributions to the modern world, etc. And of course it was the singularly evil colonizers and their descendants that stole this history and claimed it for themselves, etc. To me it’s weird because it’s so unimportant. Wh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about recognising wrongs as a first step?
Which wrongs do you think we have yet to recognize? Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems to me that we (by which I mean modern American and European society) have taken a pretty thorough inventory in the last few decades, at least of our own failings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To me it’s weird because it’s so unimportant. Who cares which groups of who were advanced or not and what they were doing back then. The people colonizing those lands certainly cared at the time, and they used such beliefs to justify a lot of pretty awful acts. Given that the modern, western world is built on the legacy of colonialism, it's important (at least to me) to understand whether those motivating beliefs w…
I think that’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation of GP’s comment. They said you don’t need to feel better or worse about yourself due to what your ancestors did or didn’t do and when. It doesn’t mean nobody did any bad things or that we can’t learn from it, but that we shouldn’t let it cause more tribalism today. IMO, we’re all the same species, our history is littered with awful and good people, and lots of flawe…
There are some misleading points in the article. First of all, Ajam doesn't mean foreigner. It means "Mute". The story goes back to when Arabs invaded Persian Empire in the 7th century. Iranians (Persians) called the Arabic language "Tazi", which means dog barking (since a simple conversation in the Arabic language sounded like a dog barking to them). Arabs, in retaliation, called Persians Mute since they couldn't pr…
> Islamic evangelists were also actively burning books and scrolls all over their newly invaded territory because all books were apparently useless except one book! Can you share a source for this claim?
Nahl, 89:
And We have sent down to you the Book as clarification for all things and as guidance and mercy and good tidings for the Muslims.
And here they went, they set fire on Big libraries of Egypt and Iran, thousands of years of knowledge went to drain simply becasue the book has knowledge about everything!
The story is great, but there are many inconsistencies. I believe it was decorated to the point the facts were bent to follow the story. After reading the article, I thought that reasearchers learned about the existence of Ajami just recently, far after the colonial powers were gone. That's not true. In 1970, a museum was created in Tombouctou for collecting the documents in Arabic and Ajami. https://en.wikipedia.org…
Yeah, I looked at the article expecting to find out about some writing system I hadn't previously known. Oh, it's Ajami? That's hardly news, it's been widely known (at least among people with an interest in such things) for a long time. E.g. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script page is far from new. It may well be that they're now unearthing (or paying attention to) specific Ajami documents that have been l…
Read the article again.
Ngom, who studied Arabic as a second language (the second of 12 languages that the scholar knows), was stunned. He asked his brother, still living in Senegal, to check with the neighbor to whom their father owed money. Sure enough, his brother reported, the trader had a record of the debt, too, in a similar Arabic-turned-Fula script. What? How do you not know your father can write? How does your brother live somewher…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ottoman authorities banned the production of Arabic/Turkish texts using the printing press in the 16th century. As a result, the first printed publication in the Ottoman Empire was in Hebrew! This enormous act of self-sabotage probably kept the alphabets in the Muslim world from standardizing during the 1500s-1800s as the Europeans had, so variations in writing remained common. Pre-1400s texts from Europe look weird,…
Lebanese were printing in 1610 in both Arabic and Syriac. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_Lebanon#Press The link actually says its the first publication in the middle east.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_the_printing_p...
Even in Lebanon the presses were introduced by Maronites; the Islamic authorities were apparently not fans of the technology. You will also notice the presses in Safed from 1577; it's likely that your 1610 example is referring to the first book, specifically. (EDIT: it seems that this 1610 example was also operated by Christians. Perhaps I should have said "Muslims [the majority] were banned from the press.")
Just for comparison, the first newspaper in Mexico started in 1539 (Mexico City), and the first in India in 1556 (Goa). The first book in the Ottoman Empire was printed in Constantinople in 1493. The Ottomans, then the largest empire in the world (until the Spanish conquest of Mexico), absolutely could have adopted printing a century before your date if they had just... wanted to. The list gives 1706 for the first continuously operated Arabic press in the Ottoman Empire at Aleppo.