Old civilizations and their languages are not conjured away and Beer-root aka Beirut

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jun 19, 2011 at 07:52

Dr. Pipes wrote

>Wait until you see Franck Salameh's Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon,

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you but thank you Dr. Pipes for recommending this great book which really confirms what Niloofar Haeri has reached in the case of the study of Egyptian Arabic.

For the readers: The islamic historical tradition explains the linguistic shift that took place in the Middle East following the Arab invasion as "historical discontuinity" or the concept of al-jahiliyya as we would have expected that the invading Arabs should have been by now Syriac speakers or Coptic speakers or Persian speakers if they ended in Syria or Egypt or Iran.

In the case of Iran the outcome was: we have a new version of the Persian language that has 25% loan words from Arabic and this indeed make sense as the new religion, islam, brought with it idioms and ideology that required the incorporation of such loan words

In the case of Egypt and Syria which are closer to the epi-center of islam we have been told that what we have is no more than lahja (read this as dialect) of the Arabic language. But it seems that this new research is proving that these are really unique languages and not mere lahjat (plural of lahja) and that the old languages be it Coptic or Syriac have not been conjured away and they are still there in the spoken language that is now regarded as a lahja and this would be following the model of Iran where the outcome was explained above.

In the very much celebrated phrase by the great historian of early Islam Karl Becker "so bizarr es klingt ohne Alexander den Grossen keine islamische zivilisation" he was able to challenge the concept of al-jahiliyya and indeed prove it to be incorrect and what he was saying is that without the Greek civilization there would have been no Arab civilization which really means that the concept of al-jahiliyya cannot explain the linguistic shift that took place and that history is not about discontinuity and that old civilizations (see Patricia Crone) and their languages are not conjured away

Writing of literature is infleunced by the dominant language in the area where such literature was written. I happen to believe that Islam is the product of the civilized Middle East where Syriac in the late antique period was the dominant literary language and this is why the Qur'an has its share of Syriac. And indeed Syriac and not Hebrew is the major source of foreign words in the Qur'an (see Suyuti's ghareeb al-Qur'an)

Christoph Luxenberg in his book Syro-Aramiac reading of the Qur'an says that the Quriac logias and pericopes were written in Garshouni (Arabic wrtitten by using Syriac alphabet) and the Qur'an is no more than a book written in Syriac and indeed he was able to explain many verses and words that did not make any sense to the ulama and they still do not make any sense now as in the case of LBDA in Q72:19 which should be read as 3ABDA

And indeed the Qur'an is full of Syriac words and even some of the very basic terms in islam are loan words from the Syriac layer of the Qur'an and here are a few examples:

1. The word Muhammad is not really an Arabic word as the praised one really means Mahmoud and not Muhammad as Muhammad is the Syriac word for the praised one

2. The word deen does not mean religion but it means a contract or the Syriac word deena

3. The word Qur'an is really Syriac Qeryana (see Noldeke) or lectionary and if the word Qur'an as we are told by the ulama means the reading/reciting then it should have been called al-Qira'a and not al-Qur'an

4. The word Allah is the Arabized Syriac Alaha or Allaha

5. What is most surprising is that even the word islam is really Syriac shalmuta or la khilaf in Arabic or agreement so the Quranic ina al-deen 3inda allah al-islam (see al-Masjid al-aqsa) should be read as truly the contract (which is scripture) with allah is the agreement/concord and as for the claim that the word islam really means surrender to Allah is not true otherwise islam would have been called al-istislam and not islam

6. The Islamic doctrine of al-tawheed or monotheism comes from the word ahad in surat al-ikhlas but the word ahad is a Syriac word for one and in Arabic the word should have been wahid or one and the word ahad in Arabic means one of which means that Muslims utter a Syriac word when ever they pray without knowing that it is Syriac that they are uttering and not 3arabi faseeh (pure/eloquent Arabic).

So what Franck Salameh is saying makes lots of sense that what we have is a new language that is full of Syriac that is there for anyone to see and in the case of the name of the city of Beirut it is really the Syriac word Beerroot or the (place) of the (water) wells and indeed the word beer is the old Semitic word for a water well and the oot is the plural form and it is there and Arabized as Baayroot

On a final note I was having a chat with a very interesting man from Lebanon who was visiting here in the US and he also lived for a long time in Cairo Egypt so he was mixing not just Arabic but Egyptian Arabic, Syriac and Syrian Arabic and he said

nehna rayheen 3a beerroot

or we are going to Beirut

In Egyptian Arabic it would have been

ihna rayheen 3ala baayroot

And in modern classical Arabic it would be

nahnu sanadhhab ila baayroot

I will leave it to the reader to sort out the Arabic and the Syriac (Hint: Beerrooot) and the Egyptian Arabic (Hint: rayheen) and the Syrian/Arabic (Hint: nehna)

It was indeed very humbling as this man was in fact a living proof that languages do not disappear and that old civilizations are not conjured away and neither their languages

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".