Arabic
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Review: Arabs. A Three Thousand Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires
A review of Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s Arabs, a three-thousand-year history. The reviewer praises its scope and its insistence that Arab identity, defined above all by the Arabic language, long predates Islam.…
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Browncast episode 37: Arabian Linguistics, pre-Islamic Arabia
On Browncast Episode 37, Ahmed Al Jallad of Ohio State University discusses the origins of Arabic, probably in the north-west of the peninsula, the script’s likely Nabataean roots, and inscriptions…
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What is in a Name? Al Qadir University
The author questions why Imran Khan’s Sufi-inspired university is named ‘Al-Qadir’, the name of God, when it honours Abdul Qadir Jilani, and sees it as the neo-Punjabi habit of adding…
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Homoeroticism, Blasphemy, and Classical Muslim Society
Omar Ali posts a Twitter thread by Irfan Muzammil on homoeroticism and blasphemy in classical Muslim society, starting from the Abbasid poet Abu Nuwas, and adds his own brief comments…
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Race Stereotypes in Medieval Islam (and some lines on cousin marriage)
Irfan Muzammil, via Omar Ali, describes medieval Muslim courts’ debates on the superiority of Arabs, Persians, Greeks and Indians, including the Shuʿūbiyya movement in al-Tawhidi’s Baghdad account, and ends with…
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Every tweet tells a (Arab) story
Citing a study of Arab Twitter users, the author notes that Arabs on both sides of the Egyptian coup disliked the United States, that Iran is hated more than Israel,…
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The al-Bunjabis from al-Bakistan
A comment on Punjabis in Pakistan adopting Arabic-style lettering, such as licence plates, in place of Urdu, arguing that losing part of a native culture matters less if replaced by…
