Al-Thurayyā Gazetteer of Arabic Toponyms of Maxim Romanov

This is our first usable demo of al-Thurayyā Gazetteer, see here http://maximromanov.github.io/2014/11-20.html . Currently it includes over 2,000 toponyms and almost as many route sections georeferenced from Georgette Cornu’s Atlas du monde arabo-islamique à l'époque classique: IXe-Xe siècles (Leiden: Brill, 1983). The gazetteer is searchable (upper left corner), although English equivalents are not yet included; in other words, look for Dimashq/دمشق, not Damascus.

al-Raqmiyyātالرقميات : Digital Islamic History of Maxim Romanov

Digital Islamic History, see here http://maximromanov.github.io/  is the website of Maxim Romanov, an expert in digital Arabic, who will be joining the Leipzig team of Digital Humanities this September. 

Maxim Romanov says about himself that he  is a "Postdoctoral Associate (PhD, U of Michigan) at the Department of Classics and the Perseus Project, Tufts University, who studies Islamic historical texts with computational methods, currently focusing on the analysis of multivolume biographical and bibliographical collections".

The Filāḥa Texts Project: The Arabic Books of Husbandry

The purpose of the Filāḥa Texts Project is to publish, translate and elucidate the written works collectively known as the Kutub al-Filāḥa or ‘Books of Husbandry’ compiled by Arab, especially Andalusi, agronomists mainly between the 10th and 14th centuries These systematic and detailed manuals of agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry have been somewhat neglected and remain largely unknown in the Anglophone world - apart from some of the Yemeni works they have never been translated into English. They not only provide primary source material for the understanding of what has been called the ‘Islamic Green Revolution’ but constitute a rich body of knowledge concerning a traditional system of husbandry which is as valid today as it was a thousand years ago and has much relevance to future sustainable agriculture.


More in the website of the project here.

Garth Fowden's Inaugural lecture in in the Faculty of Divinity

On the 4 December 2013 gave his Inaugural lecture in in the Faculty of Divinity  as Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values. Video, Audio and Print versions are online.

Seven reasons why we need an independent Digital Humanities, by Gregory Crane

A very interesting piece of writing by Gregory. Warning: more than 40 pages ! so enjoy !

Seven reasons why we need an independent Digital Humanities

Gregory Crane

gcrane2008@gmail.com

[DRAFT as of April 27, 2015]

Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Digital Humanities

Department of Computer Science

Leipzig University

Professor of Classics

Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship

Tufts University

Summary

This paper describes two issues, the need for an independent Digital Humanities and the opportunity to rethink within a digital space the ways in which Humanists can contribute to society and redefine the social contract upon which they depend.

The paper opens by articulating seven cognitive challenges that the Humanities can, in some cases only, and in other cases much more effectively, combat insofar as we have an independent Digital Humanities: (1) we assume that new research will look like research that we would like to do ourselves; (2) we assume that we should be able to exploit the results of new methods without having to learn much and without rethinking the skills that at least some senior members of our field must have; (3) we focus on the perceived quality of Digital Humanities work rather than the larger forces and processes now in play (which would only demand more and better Digital Humanities work if we do not like what we see); (4) we assume that we have already adapted new digital methods to existing departmental and disciplinary structures and assume that the rate of change over the next thirty years will be similar to, or even slower than, that we experienced in the past thirty years, rather than recognizing that the next step will be for us to adapt ourselves to exploit the digital space of which we are a part; (5) we may support interdisciplinarity but the Digital Humanities provides a dynamic and critically needed space of encounter between not only established humanistic fields but between the humanities and a new range of fields including, but not limited to, the computer and information sciences (and thus I use the Digital Humanities as a plural noun, rather than a collective singular); (6) we lack the cultures of collaboration and of openness that are increasingly essential for the work of the humanities and that the Digital Humanities have proven much better at fostering; (7) we assert all too often that a handful of specialists alone define what is and is not important rather than understanding that our fields depends upon support from society as a whole and that academic communities operate in a Darwinian space.

For the full text, see the Google Doc 

Taha Hussein and the [Ancient] European Civilization

I do know now what is the meaning of my department's name in Ain Shams University : The Ancient European Civilization. It's basically a Greek and Latin (Philology) department, but I've always wondered why it is so called and who coined this name. Taha Hussein, the one who revived Greek and Latin in Egypt, is the one who coined it. Below is p. 386 of the Arabic translation of Albert Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939 (Cambridge University Press 1983), which states that Taha Hussein was one of the Arabic intellectuals of the so-called "liberal age", who saw the European civilization as "the superior civilization of the human history". To name "Greek and Latin" (philology) departments in Egypt as the department of "Ancient European Civilization", would have been, back then, very prestigious both for scholars and students alike.

In 2015, I don't think though that this remains the case. Simply because "πάντα ῥεῖ"  and πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει" καὶ "δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης (Plato, Cratylus ,402a). The middle east now, as we all know and see, in a state of radical change; not only (geo)politically, but also socially and mentally too.

Jones, The cities of the eastern Roman provinces (Amsterdam 1983) into Arabic Ihsan Abbas

Arnold Hugh Martin Jones's Book (Amsterdam 1983) The cities of the eastern Roman provinces, was translated by  the  late Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut Ihsan Abbas.  Its main interest to me is in the fact that in this Arabic translation one finds the modern Arabic names side by side ( usually in square brackets) with the ancient names of the levantine cities. The book was published in 1987 by Dar El-Shorok publishing house in Amman (Jordan).  

Ain Shams' Classics go digital

 Abdel-Monem Zaki, my Friend and colleague in Ain Shams University, has begun blogging in Arabic about digital humanities. His newly started blog is called : Digital Humanities: A New Reading of the Arab Cultural Heritage.

I'm excited to see and fellow what he will be posting in this. I think also that his students will be very much appreciated for this contributions to this field of study which we seek to implement, in cooperation with colleagues from Europe and the USA, in the curricula and study programs of classics department in Ain Shams and else where in Egypt.

This is an excellent start and I wish him all the success and hoping for more to come.

Rethinking Late Antiquity—IAQS' Review of Garth Fowden's BAM by Michael Pregill

Rethinking Late Antiquity—A Review of Garth Fowden, Before and After Muḥammad: The First Millennium Refocused

Posted on March 17, 2014




By Michael Pregill


Beginning in the 1970s, the work of Peter Brown revolutionized the way scholars approach the “fall of Rome,” the decline of Roman and Sasanian power in the Middle East, and the rise of Islam in Late Antiquity. In his classic The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150-750 and other works, Brown argued that the emergence of Islam and the establishment of the caliphal empire was not a radical disruption of the course of history, but rather represented the continuity of older cultural, political, social, and religious patterns. Despite the wide influence of Brown’s work and the general recognition of Islam’s importance in the overall trajectory of Mediterranean and even European history, substantial obstacles to a full integration of ancient, early Christian, Jewish, and Islamic phenomena into a general history of the civilization of Western Asia remain.


To read the whole review go here: https://iqsaweb.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/rla/

Academia.edu News: New Horizons in Graeco-Arabic Studies

D. Gutas and S. Schmidtke, New Horizons in Graeco-Arabic Studies = Intellectual History of Islamicate World 3 (2015) (forthcoming).

See the content here; New Horizons.

Plato's Menexenus into Arabic by Abullah Almosalammy

Menexenus (dialog) of Plato was translated into Arabic by Abullah Almosalammy  of Ain Shams University (Cairo) . The translation was published in Libya by the faculty of Arts of the Libyan University in 1972 while the late professor of Ain Shams University was teaching Greek and Latin there.

Menander's Dyskolos into Arabic by Abdel Moaty Shaarawy

Abdel Moaty Shaarawy of Cairo University has translated the only new comedy preserved for us in almost a complete form i.e. Dyskolos (Δύσκολος) into Arabic. The translation has been published in the first month of this year (January 2015) by the Kuwaiti National Council of Culture, Arts and Literature (KNCCAL).

  

Characters of Theophrastus (Ἠθικοὶ χαρακτῆρες) into Arabic by Adel Elnahas

Adel Elnahas, the head of the Cairo department of Greek and Latin Studies, has just announced the publication of his translation of Character of Theophrastus (Ἠθικοὶ χαρακτῆρες) into Arabic. The translation is published by the NCT Cairo (2015). Congratulations for the translator and looking for more.

About Theophrastus see http://catalog.perseus.org/catalog/urn:cite:perseus:author.1394 and cf. also  Philosophia Antiqua Vol. 54 William Fortenbaugh et alli (eds.) Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence, Brill 1993.

My Review of Garth Fowden's BAM at Al-Araby al-jadeed Newspaper (London) 27.01.2015

My Review of Garth Fowden's Before and After Muhammad:The First Millennium Refocused
Princeton University Press 2014. The review is in Arabic and don't pretend to be exhaustive, but I have tried to highlight the main ideas treated in the book. A special emphasis has been given to his apt critics to the Eurocentricity of European histories in neglecting the role of Islam in history.

The Review is written in Arabic and you will find it in this link : http://www.alaraby.co.uk/culture/7c5266ba-21c6-48ad-85e7-6c6979849c37.

Almaany dictionaries are now in Google Store as a smartphone app

Almaany dictionaries (Arabic-Arabic, Arabic-English, Arabic French etc) could now be downloaded both from the app store and from Google store. Here is the link for the Google store: Almaany.com dictionary. For Iphones , see here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/atef-sharia/id952606462 .

Geology in Arabic

This is a snapshot of some bibliography ( in Arabic) about geology and geological terms in Arabic;

Ancient Greek Features in Arabic Literature, Ihsan Abbas (Lebanon 1993 2nd edition)

Ihsan Abbas, a Palestinian professor at AUB, traced Greek traces of Arabic literature in his book "Ancient Greek Features in Arabic Literature, Ihsan Abbas (Lebanon 1993 2nd edition). In the Preface he states that this book is an attempt to " answer two main questions: what did Arabs translate from Greek literature and how did the Arabic literature make use of the translated Greek culture, whether it was science, literary works, or philosophy." Below you can see the table of contents of this book (in Arabic).

(Thanks to my colleague and brother Mohammed Lafi for correcting my English)

Kalb (Arabic قلب) a programming language written in Arabic codes

Kalb or Arabic قلب is a programming language developed by Ramsey Nasser to explore the role of human culture in coding. Code is written entirely in Arabic, highlighting cultural biases of computer science and challenging the assumptions we make about programming. It is implemented as a tree-walking language interpreter in JavsScript.


All modern programming tools are based on the ASCII character set, which encodes Latin Characters and was originally based on the English Language. As a result, programming has become tied to a single written culture. It carries with it a cultural bias that favors those who grew up reading and writing in that cultural. قلب explores and challenges that by presenting a language that deviates almost entirely from ASCII.

More from here .

Who is Who in Modern Egypt: Roshdi Rashed

Even though he has left Egypt, but he is still a typical example for an Egyptian in diaspora !

 

Roshdi Rashed (Arabic: رشدي راشد), born in Cairo in 1936, is a mathematician, philosopher and historian of science, whose work focuses largely on mathematics and physics of medieval Arab world. His work explores and illuminates the unrecognized Arab scientific tradition, being one of the first historians to study in detail the ancient and medieval texts, their journey through the Eastern schools and courses, their immense contributions to Western science, particularly in regarding the development of algebra and the first formalization of physics.

Read more about him in English (Wikipedia), French (Arabic Philosopher) and in Arabic (Arabic Philosopher).

Hindawi Google-App for Arabic books

https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Hindawi+Foundation+for+Education+and+Culture

Through the above link one can download "Hindawi" Google App in his tablet and enjoy a world of many  wonderful Arabic books for free.

This is Amazing !