91–100 of 107 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Muslims people believe in the Christian/Hebrew single God indeed. They just think that the right way to do it is through Mohammed (The muslim prophet) teaching. The argument is that Mohammed is the last prophet that god sent and thus should be the one to follow.
They seem to be wrong about that “last” prophet thing, since everybody knows about Joseph Smith, who came after Monammed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And there are Persians that would take offense to this association. Believe me, it's the same here in North-Africa and Arabs are really loathed. But again, it's a nomination that's often mistaken for an ethnicity.
Much of North Africa is considered part of the Arab world today, as it often refers to places where a dialect of Arabic is spoken and the culture has been affected in parallel. This is a key difference as Persian isn't even considered to be in the same language family as Arabic, unlike the dialects of Arabic that are predominant in the region approximately spanning Morocco to Egypt.
2- Everyone who wrote in Latin is Italian
3- Newton and Descartes wrote in Latin
THEREFORE:
::: Newton and Descartes are Italian.
Impeccable logic !
Another gem of flawless argumentation is to say "who cares about ethnicity?! and let's just move on". Well it's been almost two millennia of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Why don't we just get this very simple fact correct and apply the same intellectual scrutiny that we apply to other areas here as well?
IMHO This is just inexcusable sloppiness and to be honest beneath any human being with a modicum of culture.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If Brin lived in Russia, spoke Russian, and wrote books in Russian we wouldn't call him American just because he wrote a few books in English too. But if he spoke Enlgish, had an English name, lived his professional life in America. and most of his major works were in Enlgish. I'd supposed you'd call him an "Anglophone" academic, which is the sense that Arab is used in.
>the individuals that I named were Persian speakers, who lived in a region that is called the Greater Iran today, and wrote most of their work in Persian And yet they are called Arab mathematicians.
he spoke arabic. Most of his major works were in arabic, in Baghdad. and he has an arabic name.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much of North Africa is considered part of the Arab world today, as it often refers to places where a dialect of Arabic is spoken and the culture has been affected in parallel. This is a key difference as Persian isn't even considered to be in the same language family as Arabic, unlike the dialects of Arabic that are predominant in the region approximately spanning Morocco to Egypt.
Dialects like French? Ha!
I think it's pretty fair to call these dialects of Arabic the predominant languages.
Title is slightly misleading! Most of them are Islamic but not Arabic. Khawrazmi [1], Karaji [2], Khayyam [3], and Tusi [4] were all Persian. Ibn Haytham wrote only in Arabic though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Karaji [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayyam [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharaf_al-D%C4%ABn_al-%E1%B9%A...
The article talks about that: >Nor were all these mathematicians Arabs, but for convenience we will call our topic "Arab mathematics". >The regions from which the "Arab mathematicians" came was centred on Iran/Iraq but varied with military conquest during the period. At its greatest extent it stretched to the west through Turkey and North Africa to include most of Spain, and to the east as far as the borders of China…
"Arabic Mathematicians" has some justification as (I suppose) most of these guys were publishing in the Arabic language. But to then switch to ethnic designator Arab is plain wrong.
Title is slightly misleading! Most of them are Islamic but not Arabic. Khawrazmi [1], Karaji [2], Khayyam [3], and Tusi [4] were all Persian. Ibn Haytham wrote only in Arabic though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Karaji [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayyam [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharaf_al-D%C4%ABn_al-%E1%B9%A...
you mean Iranian right? "Persian" is a colonial term
But "Persian" is not something that foreigners imposed. It was originally the name of a particular Iranian nation that took over the empire thousands and of years ago. Their name then stuck around in some contexts long after that dynasty was gone, which is why the language is called "Farsi" (anglicised to "Persian").
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article talks about that: >Nor were all these mathematicians Arabs, but for convenience we will call our topic "Arab mathematics". >The regions from which the "Arab mathematicians" came was centred on Iran/Iraq but varied with military conquest during the period. At its greatest extent it stretched to the west through Turkey and North Africa to include most of Spain, and to the east as far as the borders of China…
But is it really a convenience, or is it just a way of ratifying our own ignorance after it has been caught out. "Iranian" mathematicians would be just as convenient, and less in inaccurate. " Arabic Mathematicians" has some justification as (I suppose) most of these guys were publishing in the Arabic language. But to then switch to ethnic designator Arab is plain wrong.
Perhaps so, and "Persian math" doesn't take much to say.
But then, the distinction between Arabic and Arab is subtle enough that I wouldn't notice at a glance. (Other ethnicities don't even get a different adjective for language, e.g. Russian, French, etc)
It's hard to change language around things like that. For instance, Igor Sikorsky (of the Pan-Am Clipper, and later helicopter fame) is know as a Russian-American inventor, even though he was born, educated, and flourished as an aviator in Kiev, Ukraine (then a part of Russian Empire). Sikorsky's father was a Russian Nationalist. Should we call him a Ukrainian-American given all that? I would, but's a subject of contention over a hundred years after his Ilya Muromets (first 4-engine bomber in production) took flight.
For better or worse, though, we use language to get a point across. "Russian aviation" and "Russian rocketry" gets a certain notion across very fast, even though many key contributors to that notion, like Sikorsky and Korolev (of Sputnik and first-man-in-space fame, among other things) were born, raised, and educated in Ukraine[2].
Perhaps it's the same with "Arab math".