The Biblical Archeology Review has an article on how the alphabet was born from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The article focuses on the Serabit El Khadem site in Sinai, and the inscriptions found in the temple of Hathor there.

My friend Ralph Janke who is from Germany and lives here in Waterloo, pointed me to a very interesting project that he worked on.

The project is funded by the European Union, and therefore uses open source and open data formats.

Alphonse Mingana: Assyrian Orientalist

In a previous article on Arab heritage in Malta, I touched upon how the Maltese language (Ilsan Malti) is definitely derived from Arabic, and more specifically, from the North African dialect of Arabic.

A visitor to the site raised a nice challenge which was very interesting to me: He started on the off note and having his comment titled "Maltest are not arab", and by saying:

Nowadays, it is often taken for granted that Muslims are staunch Anti-Semites. Most people in the West either do not know, or deliberately ignore, historical facts to the contrary.

History of Jews in Muslim Lands

Compared to Europe, Jews faired much better in Muslim lands over 1300+ years.

An oft-repeated cliche is how Neville Chamberlain appeased Adolf Hitler in 1938 in the Munich conference. By doing so, Chamberlain caused Czecksolvakia to be swallowed by the Nazis, and World War II ensued.

Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times writes about how this repeated mantra in today's politics is the wrong lesson learned, and details several cases from recent history of how this is indeed not the case, and that it can cause more harm to "be tough".

A new PBS documentary about Muslim Spain aired on August 22, 2007. The PBS web site does not have much info on the topic.

Islamic Spain was the closest thing to what is today a multicultural society. Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together, and excellent achievements were made in the fields of culture, art, poetry, astronomy, medicine, agriculture, commerce, and much more. This period is known in modern Spanish as La Convivencia (the co-existence).

Over the years, I have seen many people getting "accused" of having Jewish ancestry by their political adversaries. This tactic is used to discredit the person, throw doubts on their loyalty, and attribute undefined ulterior motives for their often controvertial actions.

These rumors are appealing to the masses because it offers a simple (wrong) answer to complex questions (actions of leaders).

People that I have seen in the Arab region and the Middle East accused of this include:

When studying history, we often look for literature, archeology, events, and the like. Seldom do we consider food and recipes to be a topic of history.

However, there are several sites that have recipes from olden days. Some of them have a nice collection of recipes from Islamic countries, most notably Iraq and Andalusia.

These recipes go back all the way to the 10th century, when Baghdad was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate, in the Golden Age of Islam in the East. The Andalusian recipes go further into the 15th century, just before the fall of Granada.

Two characters from history, from different places, but a similar deed that earned them an everlasting legacy: each sacrificed his son when asked to compromise his principles.

Al Samaw'al ibn Adiya السموأل بن عاديا

Shmuel was a Jew who lived in northern Arabia in the first half of the 6th century C.E. His mother was of royal descent, being from Ghassan. He had considerable wealth, enabling him to live in a private fort, Al-Ablaq الأبلق founded by his predecessor, Adiya. As with most of his contemporaries, he was also a poet.

Having gotten lost on the web the other day, I ran into an American Argentine actor called Carlos Alazraqui. Googling the last name revealed some people in the USA, such as Ed Alazraqui and others in Argentina, such as Marcio Alazraqui.