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Arabic document from 17th-cent. rubbish heap confirms semi-legendary Nubian king
- wglb 7mo agoPaper at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0067270X.2026.2615518 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0067270X.2026.2... from Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa
- nephihaha 7mo agoThat was interesting, notwithstanding the editorialising comments by Tomasz Barański.
- draw_down 7mo ago[dead]
- Tade0 7mo agoI would expect no less from a graduate of the University of Warsaw. This writing (and speaking) style permeates this institution.
- fsckboy 7mo ago>That was interesting, notwithstanding the editorialising comments by Tomasz Barański. you are upset by these comments which this article's author chose to quote?: As lead author Tomasz Barański explains, however, this transformation was far from sudden. "Nubia was not a marginal or isolated region of the Nile Valley, but a pivotal corridor connecting the Mediterranean world to sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than a civilizational dead end, Nubia functioned for millennia as a dynamic zone of movement for people, goods, and ideas. Through Nubia passed commodities such as gold, ivory, and enslaved people, but it also enabled the exchange of less tangible elements: technologies, religious beliefs, and political models. "Moreover, Nubian communities were not passive recipients of outside influence; they actively shaped and adapted the flows passing through this corridor. This long history of exchange helps us understand later cultural transformations in the region, including Arabization and Islamization. These were not sudden ruptures, but part of a much older pattern of interaction, negotiation, and adaptation that has characterized Sudan throughout history." Barański notes that further discoveries may yet follow: "Preliminary analysis of the letters from Building A.1 suggests distinct patterns in the circulation of correspondence, hinting at a coherent communication network. This network encompassed not only the city's religious and administrative elites, but possibly also the leaders of nomadic groups herding flocks in the surrounding regions." Additionally, he adds, "the discovery of this seemingly inconspicuous scrap of paper, when situated within the larger context of gift-giving culture and traditional royal patronage navigating local micropolitics, provides a vivid example of how archaeological fieldwork continues to produce material that bridges the gap between material culture and written history."
- Oras 7mo agoThe writing style (in Arabic) feels like a message in a chat. It's a mix between dialect and official Arabic.
- interstice 7mo agoLike, modern and understandable? I ask because English from more than a few hundred years ago is basically gibberish so I’m curious about languages where that didn’t happen.
- wongarsu 7mo agoDepending on the author 17th century English can also be very close to modern English. A couple phrases will be off and the spelling is different, but most of the difficulty is more the author using constructions that have fallen out of use or "showing off" with overly complicated sentences. For example here's an excerpt from 1688's "Oroonoko" I have often seen and convers'd with this great Man, and been a Witness to many of his mighty Actions; and do assure my Reader, the most Illustrious Courts cou'd not have produc'd a braver Man, both for Greatness of Courage and Mind, a Judgment more solid, a Wit more quick, and a Conversation more sweet and diverting. He knew almost as much as if he had read much: He had heard of, and admir'd the Romans; he had heard of the late Civil Wars in England, and the deplorable Death of our great Monarch; and wou'd discourse of it with all the Sense, and Abhorrence of the Injustice imaginable. He had an extream good and graceful Mien, and all the Civility of a well-bred great Man.
- dghf 7mo agoIs six hundred years ago more than a few? Chaucer is still more or less comprehensible. (Though Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from roughly the same time, not so much.)
- biofox 7mo agoThe Middle English spelling and phonetic shifts are what make it so painful to read. The words themselves though are mostly comprehensible with a bit of effort. Go back another four hundred years to Old English and Beowulf and it becomes complete gobbledygook (to me at least).
- xrd 7mo agoI just love the sounds in sentence "...Arabization of Dongola in the Funj period." Dongola in the Funj period sounds like the place to be!
- ameminator 7mo agoUh, probably it would have been a place to be avoided for a non-Arab
- nwhnwh 7mo agoWhy?
- sach1 7mo agobecause then your dongola would be all Arabized!
- canadiantim 7mo agoSounds Funj!
- blargthorwars 7mo ago[flagged]
- philomath_mn 7mo agoReminds me of this quote from Tonya Riley's _The Staff Engineer's Path_: > In The Art of Travel (Vintage), Alain de Botton talks about the frustration of learning new information that doesn’t connect to anything you already know—like the sorts of facts you might pick up while visiting a historic building in a foreign land. He writes about visiting Madrid’s Iglesia de San Francisco el Grande and learning that “the sixteenth-century stalls in the sacristy and chapter house come from the Cartuja de El Paular, the Carthusian monastery near Segovia.” Without a connection back to something he was already familiar with, the description couldn’t spark his excitement or curiosity. The new facts, he wrote, were “as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.”
- romanhn 7mo agoI did not expect the recovered order that confirmed the existence of a (semi-)legendary Nubian king to basically be "Dear X, when you get here, please take some sheep from Y in exchange for some cotton cloths. Kthxbye! -King Qashqash".
- nwhnwh 7mo agoDots?
- coin 7mo agoPlease don’t edit the title
- syncsys87 7mo ago[flagged]
- geenkeuse 7mo ago[dead]