Persian writings in Arabic

Submitted by gato branco (Lithuania), Jan 20, 2018 at 06:44

Dear dhimmi no more,

This time I agree with the most that you have written.

Concerning secular literature there was lots of Arab-language secular literature (both original and translated from Middle Persian or from Sanskrit mostly through Middle Persian) written by Persians from about 750 to about 1050. Arabic language was replaced by Persian as the medium of secular writing in the Eastern Iranian lands starting with the Samanid rule(about 860-1000) while in the Western and Central Iran it did not happen before 1050, the Seljuk takeover. Buwayhid rulers of Persian origin (940-1055) in their courts in Hamadan and Isfahan cultivated literature not in Persian but in Arabic.

Certainly Egyptians having lost their uprising against Ummayads, the Persian uprising which brought to power Abbassids was largely successful. This of course is an important fact and makes difference. The existence of secular poetry in Egyptian language would have helped its survival in Muslim milieu since secular literature can be shared and admired by people of different confessions, but definitely Christian literature written by Egyptian monks hardly had any appeal on Muslims.

It is certainly not easy to say whether Ferdowsi was good or bad Muslim but he certainly a genuine and sincere Persian nationalist. It is not easy to tell about Avicenna(who wrote 90 percent in Arabic) either. For Shias, he is certainly a good Muslim, for Sunnis hardly so.

Concerning "Allah" it is definitely a loan word from Syriac "alaahaa" and certainly not a contraction from al-ilah.

Concerning the Egyptian language the mainstream scholarship uses the term "Coptic" for the latest stage of the Egyptian language after the introduction of Christianity, in order to better distinguish it from earlier stages of Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Demotic etc. As for script it is not especially "Coptic" bu rather simply the uncial Greek alphabet with some 6-7 additional letters from Demotic. And of course Christian Egyptians has lots of Greek loan words, I have seen some texts.

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