Egypt and Iran v Arab invasion and Islamization and Arabization

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jan 15, 2018 at 08:48

Our dear Gato wrote:

>Oh, no, Persian did not reject the "language of God"

Then why are Persians not Arabic speakers? Any guesses?

Oh and who is this "God"? I'm sure you must be aware of the fact that the Arabic word Allah is اسم and not صفة and that al-Mufasereen realized that it is not an Arabic word

Take the case of the Muslim formula la Ilaha ila Allah or لا اله الا الله or There is no God but Allah If the word Allah really means God then this formula should be لا الله الا الله Or there is no Allah except Allah and how do you explain the word Allah going through more contractions in Surat al-Fatiha 1:2 where it says الحمد لله or al-Hamdu lel Lah!

What was the way out of this linguistic disaster? al-Tabari tells us in his Tafsir that the word Allah is a contraction of the word al-Ilah which is absolute linguistic nonsense but again this is not our topic

>throughout all the medieval period it was widely used for the most of the theological and philosophical discourse.

Oh sure and let me repeat and as per Ali Dashti 70% of كتب التراث الاسلامي were written in Arabic by Persians and not Arabs which makes you wonder that this was a case of "If you cannot beat them (the Arabs) then join them (or write their books)" and shape Islam the Persian way and replace the nasty Zoroastrian Mobeds with the equally nasty Mullahs of Islam

It is all about continuity not discontinuity

>However it was not adopted for more secular domains as poetry, nor it was adopted as the colloquial language.

So why did the Persians not write their secular books in the language of their new God Allah? What is wrong with Allah's language after all the Arabs were famous for poetry that was written in Arabic or did you forget? Any guesses?

>Actually the poetry of Rudaki, Ferdowsi and Sa'adi had little to do with God and religion,

But why was such literature not written in Arabic? Was Ferdowsi a bad Muslim?

>Hafiz, Rumi and Jami more, but the latter felt that arabized Persian language is quite adequate to express theological and philosophical truths of Islam.

The Persian language was not Arabized The Persian intellectuals used loan words from Arabic and enriched their own language Not unlike today's Arabs using loan words from let us say English unless you are willing to say that and to paraphrase "Today's Arabs Anglicized the Arabic language" Do you get it?

>e,g, the philosophical Sufi work "Naqsh al-Fusus" quite religious in nature was written half in Persian and half in Arabic.

Such work was not written for the Persian masses almost all of them would have been speaking pristine Persian with no loan words from Arabic

BTW in the case of Egypt you see this when comparing texts written in pristine Egyptian when the Demotic script of the Egyptian language is used then you compare it with a text written in the Coptic script and you will find loan words from Greek! Do you get it?

>Another important thing was the Shu'ubiya movement, namely that Persians felt that they can remain faithful to the religion of Islam without the wholesale adoption of the Arabic culture. Adoption of the Arabic script and certain amount of loanwords was deemed sufficient.

So why did this not happen in Egypt? BTW there was also شعوبية movement in Egypt and it ended in disaster and the country almost became depopulated following the Bashmour uprising (730CE-740CE) against the Arabs and their imperialism We also read about the threats by the Arab rulers of Egypt that they will "cut the tongues" of those that spoke the Egyptian language

>Was there any Shuubiya movement among islamized Egyptians?

شعوبية in Egypt did not emerge until Albert Hourani's "Liberal Age" with the likes of Taha Husein and I suspect that if Egyptians followed the Persian model of "if you cannot beat them then join them" we would have had an Egypt where Egyptians speak their own Egyptian language albeit with loan words from Arabic not unlike Iran!

>Was there any secular poetry? At least myself I am not aware of any.

So are you saying that "secular poetry" would have stopped the process of Arabization in Egypt? If so then prove it

>I can read texts in Arabic(with some efforts), I have some rudiments of Syriac(actually I have read some excerpts of Peshitta in Syriac) and I had only started to learn Coptic(as you call it Egyptian)

Repeat after me: There is no such thing as the Coptic language! There is Egyptian language and there is Coptic script Do you get it?

> some time ago but had not continued but hope to resume one day.

With respect: You need to learn to read the history written not only by the winners but also by those that lost BTW I will be writing a review of a book about Syriac texts that mention the Arab invasions between 633CE and 750CE and indeed a totally different picture emerges about early Islam and Islamic imperialism so stay tuned for this one

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