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=> Re: ChalDEEN nationalism

Re: ChalDEEN nationalism
Posted by beezelbub (Guest) - Monday, July 25 2005, 18:38:08 (CEST)
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Maggie wrote:
>Beezlebub wrote:
>
>
>"...sorry. The word Mesopotamia MEANS between...meso...rivers, potamie...Between The Rivers...BetNahrain...like it says in our name...Hanna also tried once to convince me that Between the Two Rivers could have been ANY two rivers...like, how about the ones that ran through his town in Turkey...
>
>...In the ancient times there was no Arabia..and as T.E. Lawrence points out in his marvelous book, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"...not even by 1917 could the British convince the tribes that they were ARABS and part of a large land mass called Arabia...they had no concept of such a thing...Arabs are from Arabia...those born in Jordan are NOT Arabs...neither are Muslims from Iraq or Egypt"
>
>The first written attestation of the ethnonym "Arab" occurs in an Assyrian inscription of 853 BC, where Shalmaneser III lists a King Gindibu of mâtu arbâi (Arab land) as among the people he defeated at the Battle of Karkar. Some of the names given in these texts are Aramaic, while others are the first attestations of Proto-Arabic dialects Its earliest attested use referring to the southern "Qahtanite" Arabs is much later.

...you conveniently skipped another word...BetNahrain, which means between THOSE two rivers. The British empire covered the globe at one point and had lots of rivers in it...had Arabs too...but no one disputes that the center of the empire was London and that the principle river in the empire was NOT the Ganges but the Thames.

...that's a foreigners concept of what the people in the peninsula are called by HIM...I have all sorts of choice words for the boys too...but they have their own ideas. You know what I mean...quit being cute.
>
>Etymology
>The term "Arab" or "Arabian" (and cognates in other languages) has been used to translate several different but similar sounding words in ancient and classical texts which do not necessarily have the same meaning or origin. The etymology of the term is of course closely linked to that of the place name "Arabia".
>Although the term mâtu arbâi describing Gindibu in Assyrian texts is conventionally translated of Arab land, nothing is known with certainty about the exact location or extent of the land being referred to, nor what literal meaning the name had. In fact several different ethnonyms are found in Assyrian texts that are conventionally translated "Arab": Arabi, Arubu, Aribi and Urbi. The presence of the Proto-Arabic names amongst those qualified by the terms arguably justifies the translation "Arab" although it is not certain if they all in fact represent the same group.

...fine, then there was no "Arab conquest" in 638 AD...thank you.
>
>Another explanation derives the word from an old Semitic stem `.R.B., with a metathetical alternative `.B.R., both meaning travelling around the land, that is, nomad.

...and so?
>
>Most of the Middle East is now formed by conventionally called "Arab countries", recently invented by the British and French rulers after having defeated and dismembered the Ottoman Empire.
.
...we're back where we started at before you dropped a load of unrealted material on my head....the meaning of ancient Assyrian words is not what the world is dealing with today when using the term Arab. My point is that regardless of what Strbo says...modern Arabs, since the 1900s, have not seen THEMSELVES as Arabs, buit rather menmbers of a tribe...the idea of Arab nationalism was something foreign to their modern sense of themselves...as more recent writers than Strabo have pointed out.

...The Muslims of the MidEast came up with pan-Arabism as a unifying principle to confront the unifying principle of European aggression. It was to present a common front that Nasser tried to overcome tribalism and the fierce independence of spirit the various people there are famous for...as you can see, it didn't work.

..They are "Arab" only in the sense that their common langage binds them together...like the people of the disparate countries of England, America, canada, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and New York consider themselves to be a aprt of the English speaking People who therefore share certain common traits...the countries of the MidEast are part of the Arabic Speaking People of that region and use their common language for the same purpose...but they are all well aware of and proud of their unique differences...Arabs come from Arabia...not Egypt.
>
>Strabo: Geography, Book XVI, Chap. iv, 1-4, 18-19, 21-26, c. 22 CE
>Book XVI.iv.1: Arabia commences on the side of Babylonia with Maecene [modern Kuwait]. In front of this district, on one side lies the desert of the Arabians, on the other are the marshes opposite to the Chaldeans, formed by the overflowing of the Euphrates, and in another direction is the Sea of Persia.
>The first people, next after the Assyyrians and Jews, who occupy this country are husbandmen. These people are succeeded by a barren and sandy tract, producing a few palms, the acanthus, and tamarisk; water is obtained by digging [wells] as in Gedrosia. It is inhabited by Arabian Scenitae, who breed camels [in the area just to the west of the Euphrates].

...fine. Good for Strabo...but I hardly think you want to be called an Arab for all of that.



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