Linguistics

Peter Forsskål was a Swedish scientist who did a taxonomical classification of animals of the Red Sea region, and used the Arabic name as the species name.

Before the fall of Granada, the last Muslim emirate in Spain, the Mudejars المدجنين were Muslims living in Christian dominated areas, retaining some degree of religious freedom. In Castille, they had more freedom and autonomy than in Arragon.

They were however losing their language very fast, and hence most of them could not speak Arabic anymore, let alone read it.

There arose the need for the Mudejars to develop religious works in Castillian.

One such person from Segovia شقوبية was Ice de Gebir (الفقيه عيسى بن جابر الشاذلي الشقوبي), a Spanish Andalusian jurist, who wrote his works in Castillian. His name is spelled differently in different sources, for example: 'Isâ b. Jâbir is the closest to the Arabic that can be. Other spellings are Isa, Iça, Içe, Yça, Yza, and Ysa. His father's name can be spelled as Gebir, Jabir, or Yábir. The Gidelli seems to be the corruption of ash-Shadhili.

When reading history, it is interesting to know where exactly the places mentioned are today. If one is reading history in a language that no longer exists in the region studied, then the task is much harder.

One such case is the Arabic names for towns and cities in the Iberian peninsula, in what is now Spain and Portugal. For eight centuries, this area was under Arab rule, and known by the name al-Andalus الأندلس. Many chronicles and history books have been written by the Arab speaking inhabitants of Iberia.

In this article, I try to provide a list of Arabic and Spanish names of the towns and cities, so it is easy to cross reference those for anyone who is studying the region and its history.

Two commonly used names for Arabs in movies or in popular cultures are 'Abu' and 'Abdul'. These terms are incorrectly used. Read below to see why.

Many hoaxes, absurd claims and pseudoscience have been forumlated around Ancient Egypt. From aliens build the pyramids, to alternative chronologies, to claims that all what we known about Egypt is wrong. One good site that debunks many of these claims is Catchpenny. For example, some have claimed that the inscriptions in the temple of Abydos are actually ancient helicopters. Giving rise to all absurd theories about Egyptians being much more advanced technologically, to the claims that aliens visted them!

Here are some links to resources on language and linguistics on the web.For the language enthusiast, the linguist, start with the great web site: Ethnologue.Check the Overview, as well as Languages of special interests which includes Pidgin languages,

For writing systems modern and ancient, check the Omniglot web site, where everything is covered from alphabetic, syllabic, logographic, or undeciphered scripts. Even some invented scripts, for fiction works, or for fun.Do not confuse writing systems, with languages themselves.

In recent times, there has been lots of speculative pseudo-research that has flimsy footing in superficial similarities between similar words or roots in otherwise different languages.One can compare these linguistic theories with the other pseudo science (often by non specialists) such as the revised chronologies of David Rohl and Ahmed Osman.Much of this pseudo-research is politically motivated. Whether it is chauvinistic nationalism, or resentment for some situation (e.g.