I have never accepted the idea that there is harmful science or knowledge that is useless, and I remained loyal to the idea of knowledge in the absolute, but it happened that I heard passages that came to me by chance by the eminent scholar Bashar Awad Maarouf (may God have mercy on him), as if they were ringing a wake-up call for me from a scientific slumber that had overtaken me all my life, revealing to me my mistaken belief that there is no harmful science.
Here I reconsidered my conviction, to see before me a scientist and researcher who was bold and loyal to his scientific mission, to which he had dedicated himself and who served the Arab heritage through investigation, research and study, but he fell into the temptation of science, which is revealed by those clips that all coincided with being about one issue about statements by Arab researchers and orientalists that say that the number of non-Arab researchers is greater than the Arabs in the service of the Qur’an and the Arabic language. What is meant by the non-Arabs here are the Arabs who served Arabic and Islam. Saying that they are the most does not raise any scientific or nationalistic sensitivity in me, and I was and still am proud of such a statement, and I see it as an advantage and not a flaw that we seek to deny out of misconception that it destroys the pyramid of Arab culture.
Bashar Awad and his uncle Naji were enthusiastic and spent time and effort to deny this claim.
Before delving into this strife, I would like to emphasize my opinion that the two well-known people are both prominent, profound, and sincere scholars, but their embarrassment at the foreignness of those who served our language and heritage would be nothing but scientific strife. I can compare this claim to the claim that Jews and Africans created America. Chomsky is Jewish, Kissinger is Jewish, Martin Luther King is African, and Trump himself is the son of two immigrants, one of whom is from a village in Scotland, and his wife (Trump’s mother) is from a village in Germany, and the American language is also borrowed from the English. This information is correct on the one hand and wrong on the other hand. English was Americanized, and the people mentioned here were Americanized, and race, religion, color, and accent no longer negate their being Americans, and all of America was founded on immigrants who did not belong to it by race, color, or language. But every achievement they achieve is an American achievement by cultural determinism. Culture is a lineage, a meaning, and a moral root that creates and elevates every value. We had a glorious example from the Abbasid era, with all its poetic, linguistic, philosophical, and jurisprudential models, all of which involved races, facial colors, dialects of tongues, and multiple walks of life within a comprehensive, comprehensive structure. All of their achievements are Arab achievements in a glorious Arab era. Among them are the Persians and Romans, and among the ancient races of the peoples of Mesopotamia and North Africa.
Ibn Khaldun has decisive statements here, which are that the Arabs are types, and they are as follows:
1 - Arab Arabs
2 - Mozarab Arabs
3 - Arabs belonging to the Arabs
4 - The Arabs who are indifferent.
Through this classification, those who served our heritage and culture will not fall outside one of these categories. Today, even the term Orientalists has been excluded and replaced by the term Arabist, because the word Orientalist has become stigmatized and associated with colonialism, and is sometimes accused of espionage.
More important than that is the noble hadith: “Arabic is not the father or mother of any of you, but rather it is the tongue. Whoever speaks Arabic is an Arab.” Although some hadith scholars doubted its authenticity, others have proven it, but all agree on its meaning being consistent with the fundamental Islamic values, and hence its validity as a meaning and value.
If the non-Arabs are the majority, then this is the greatest achievement for our culture, our religion, and our mentality. And if some of us try to deny this, they are placing their knowledge and skills in an absurd and meaningless maze, which is a shameful and baseless confusion, and this is the deceptive temptation.
Then suppose we asked a question about the Arabs who cover the map of the Arab League today, and are the peoples of the region all Arabs based on race, or are they diverse ethnic and cultural races united by language and identity of meaning and value? If Arabism was based on race, we would have to prove our Arabism through genetic testing.
The reality is that every researcher, lexicographer, hadith scholar, jurist, and philosopher who writes in our language and works with our thought is an Arab by cultural affiliation and by scientific product. Culture is a mental and practical behavior that is most evident in language, which is a melting pot that melts all racial, color, and religious distinctions. There is no meaning in asking about race here.
There is no doubt that science has its negative aspects, and the temptation of science may occur as a result of a kind of scientific glut when our science takes over our minds. Among this is a funny and indicative story about the eminent scholar Mahmoud Shaker. The story happened in 1980 in the office of Salah Abdel Sabour at the Egyptian General Book Authority. At that time, the first issue of Fusoul magazine, a magazine specializing in modernist critical theory, was published. The magazine fell into the hands of Sheikh Mahmoud Shaker. Browsing through it, he was shocked by its critical terminology and theories, which he saw as a nonsense rather than a scientific case. He came to the office with the magazine in his hand, shook it in front of Salah’s face, and said in his strong, eloquent voice: “I did not understand a single word of what you published here; Do you imagine any young reader who will understand about you...?!! The magazine was issued by the Egyptian Book Authority, and Abdel Sabour was responsible for it. Salah chose to appreciate Shaker’s knowledge and position, so he said to him: “You are right, Lord.” When Professor Shaker came out, Abdel Sabour commented on the event by saying: “This is a man whose knowledge has harmed him.” I heard the story from Salah Fadl, who was present at the time, and he is a member of the magazine’s editorial board, may God have mercy on everyone.
This is a situation that I experienced with many of our predecessors among Arab researchers, and the stubbornness that I saw in them with modern critical theories. When their chests were narrowed by knowledge they were not familiar with, they felt lonely from it.
These are examples that show that the knowledge we acquire takes root in us, even taking over our minds and directing our responses. Anything new that comes that is not consistent with our mental systems, these systems will form a fence against emergencies that challenge our deep convictions. Here we say about the charm of knowledge in the same way as we say about the benefit of knowledge.
The three books written by the British historian Philip Wood about Syria and Iraq raised in me the question that had been absent from my mind for a long time: What happened to Iraq after the fall of Babylon at the hands of the Achaemenid Emperor, Cyrus the Great, in 539 BC. Until the Arab-Islamic conquest in 637?
I ask Professor Philip: Is there a clear picture of the ethnic diversity of Iraq during that period extending for more than a thousand years, other than the fact that the language that prevailed at that time was Aramaic?
He answers: “I am very interested in knowing the ethnic or religious identity at that time, and this is because the Sassanian rulers or the Muslim rulers who followed them were not interested in that aspect.”
In light of this, Wood believes that the modern Iraqi state (especially during the rule of Saddam Hussein) was keen to consider that all Iraqis were Arabs, and this is contrary to reality. “For example, you find the people of Hilla speaking Arabic that is close to the Bedouin groups, but that does not apply to the rest of Iraq. As you know, Iraqi Arabic is itself internally diverse. The Arabic spoken by Christians and Jews in Baghdad during the 1950s was closer to the Arabic prevailing in Mosul than to the Arabic spoken by Muslim Baghdadi... Therefore, Iraq, as I see it, was multi-ethnic and multi-religious in a way that makes it difficult to explore today... There are some of them that have their own voices, while perhaps groups Many local religions have become extinct, making it not easy for us to write about them.”
Perhaps the situation is similar, or slightly more so, with the Aramaic language prevailing in Iraq on the eve of the Arab-Islamic conquest.
Learn local languages
The conversation takes us to his journey of learning the Arabic language. I ask him: What prompted you to learn a complex language like ours? It was as if the question brought up fond memories of his time in Damascus.
During the period of the study fellowship that he obtained for what is known as “post-doctoral”, the conviction crystallized in him that he would need to learn Arabic alongside Syriac (which is one of the dialects of the Aramaic language). Although Philip had learned an important part of the latter during his years of studying for his doctorate, he felt, as he saw the many sources translated from Arabic in the library of the college to which he was enrolled during that period between 2010 and 2012, the necessity of learning this language. He realized that many of the studies involved With the legacy written in Syriac, it neglects broader political and cultural studies. Philip Wood felt that Syriac was more understandable when it was in dialogue with another language: Syriac with Greek or Syriac with Arabic.
Therefore, he had no choice but to find a private teacher with whom he would begin the first steps: “He was a very advanced professor, and he wanted to teach me the rules of Arabic without a dictionary... He smoked excessively, and he was only interested in philosophy, but he was very kind to me.”
In Damascus, Philip registered at an institute located in the Mezzeh area, specializing in teaching Arabic to non-native speakers, but he was lucky to find a Palestinian teacher. “He was a great, amazing, wonderful person,” he repeats, smiling: “He said he would not only teach me classical Arabic; Rather, he asked me to start writing in Arabic. He asked me to write about any topic I wanted, so I wrote something about contemporary politics, or the discovery of America, or a British film... His way was to correct my style, make me read aloud from a book, and then we would start arguing about a topic. I would make a presentation and he would attack my point of view and push me to defend it... He would smoke constantly... and I would always have to remove the ashes from my papers.”
Every Thursday evening, Philip's teacher would organize parties; He is a member of a leftist organization, during which he meets his young comrades. “After work, he was cooking, and I was helping him prepare dinner... It was a very enjoyable time... He taught me Arabic for six months in Damascus, and I was there from time to time.”
Polymath Addai Sher
I ask: “Can you shed some light on what happened in the city of Sa’art, which was mentioned by a number of Muslim historians? Like Yaqut al-Hamawi, al-Maqdisi, and Ibn al-Atheer, with another name, Sa`d?
“It is a city located in eastern Anatolia, and the discoverer of the yearbook (which was the subject of my second book) was a man named Adai Shir, who was the archbishop of Sa’art. He was the one who revised it and translated it into French. Fortunately, it was sent to Mosul before he was killed during the genocide committed in 1915 by irregular groups of Turks and Kurds.”
“It was assumed that the library was hidden in a well inside a towel,” says Philip, “but it was not found... Scheer had compiled a catalog of these manuscripts, before they were destroyed. This index includes many notes about these irreplaceable precious things.”
“Shir was fluent in Arabic, French, Syriac, and Turkish. That's why this was his world. Therefore, I completed - with a friend, Mile Bonner - the translation of the manuscript of the index and the footnotes that he wrote and the commentary on it, and the publishing house (Chromat) will issue it in English.”
It was as if this long conversation with Professor Philip Wood sparked in my imagination the image of Iraq in that Persian-Greek era: small elites dispersed in many places, multiple religious movements, and different dialects of the same language: Aramaic. There is Mandaic Aramaic, Syriac Aramaic, Babylonian Aramaic, which was spoken by the Jews, and Manichaean Aramaic. Among the major religious movements that emerged during that era was Manichaeism in the third century AD, Wood says, and this is consistent with what was stated in Amin Maalouf’s novel “Gardens of Light,” dedicated to the life of Mani.
Mani used the Aramaic language to compose what was known as the “Manichaean hymns,” which Philip said were “captivating.”
My interlocutor commented on the different dialects of Aramaic, citing Suleiman al-Basri, bishop of the city of Basra in the thirteenth century, who said that there are 12 Aramaic dialects extending between Sinai and Basra, but the dialects spoken by people in the Fertile Crescent may be much larger than this number.
Philip Wood pointed out that “the Christian Aramaic language is a suitable and developed language, and it is like classical standard for people who speak another language in daily life, and this process also happened to Mandaean when the Aramaic dialects became (Mandaic Aramaic). The same is true with Manichaean Aramaic, and other languages had a history as local languages, then became identified with a specific religion, and thus became standard forms associated with religious groups.
Place of blogging for the annual Sa'rat
I ask Philippe where the facts included in this particular yearbook were recorded. “Much of what happened and was written about in the annuals took place in Ctesiphon (Mada’in).” Professor Wood answers me: “There are also many activities that took place on the Tigris River. Many descriptions of monasteries located in northern Iraq, and elsewhere. And many of the monasteries mentioned are whose locations we cannot determine... Of course, it would be wonderful if there was a beautiful map with arrows and small, precise points on which I could pinpoint everything accurately.”
Pagan Iraq
This question brings me to mind: How did the Arab conquerors, most of whom were from Bedouin or semi-Bedouin tribes, meet the Iraqis, who were primarily peasants?
“When the Muslim Arabs conquered Iraq, they mocked those they called Nabataeans, who had no tribal origins like them, and who could not get along with anyone outside their village. Much of the population at that time spoke different dialects of the Aramaic language, with local religious groups, each of which may not have ties with others, and then they were brought together by various conquerors, such as the Persians and then the Arabs.
Wood concludes by explaining: “So in a sense we are talking about the Iraqi... These are classifications used by the rulers, and perhaps they were not realized by the population themselves; “There was no common identity recognized by the conquerors.”
However, in the face of the superior view of the new conquerors, most of whom came from the deserts and deserts, the response came through the book “The Nabataean Farming” by Ibn Wahshiyya al-Nabati, “in which he spoke about the beliefs and knowledge of the Chaldeans, and described himself as a Chaldean who converted to Islam.”
His book, which he claimed to have translated from Syriac, included much of ancient heritage dating back to before the fall of Babylon more than a thousand years ago: that is, to pagan Iraq. However, the basic material in it, as recent studies have revealed, dates back to a late period falling between the fifth and sixth centuries AD. It reflects Iraqi traditions that are much later than the defunct Sumerian, Akkadian, or Assyrian eras.
This book highlights important aspects of the innovations of the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia rather than the biography of the kings. It raises questions of this kind: Who discovered agriculture? Who planted the first palm tree? Who taught people irrigation? Who classified the types of soil? It is as if the narratives included in the book, as Professor Philip Wood believes, reveal the interest of Ibn Wahshiyya al-Nabati, the author of the Middle Ages in Iraq, in the origins of ancient Iraqi knowledge, and reveal what distinguishes this wide mixture of ethnicities and races that settled in Mesopotamia for a long time, from the new conquerors. This is exactly what made the Finnish translator of the book, Hamin Anttila, consider it an attempt to revive the memory of ancient Iraq and its agricultural and cultural heritage.
This question seemed to impose itself on me, after this interesting dialogue with Philip Wood, professor of history and comparative religions: How much has the diverse and complex social fabric of Iraqis changed today from what it was in late antiquity?
How much has the diverse and complex social fabric of Iraqis changed today from what it was in late antiquity?
The novel “In the City of Flies” (Dar Al-Shorouk - Cairo) by the Egyptian writer and novelist Ahmed Abdel Moneim Ramadan does not base its world on dystopia alone, as much as it bases it on questioning the logic that gives some narratives their central presence, while pushing others to the margins.
Since the beginning of the novel with a quote from Mahmoud Darwish, “The fly and I are free,” the hero later returns to the poet himself, wondering why the “butterfly effect” is celebrated, when no one has ever paid attention to the “fly effect.”
This effect does not seem easy. The novel, which opens its first scene with the buzzing of a stray fly in its narrator’s ear, does not present this buzzing as a passing disturbance, as much as it makes it a starting point for transformations that will affect the hero and the city together. What begins with a solitary fly ends with a city waking up to an absurd war declared against flies, amid official statements talking about a biological attack, a curfew, and a conspiracy in which external forces participate in cooperation with traitors, while swarms of Flies cover the sky and obscure the city's landmarks.
The writer's choice of the structure of daily, dated reports written by its sole narrator over the course of an entire year seems consistent with the dystopian world that the novel depicts. A world governed by surveillance, information gathering, and constant monitoring of details.
The hero, who belongs to a mysterious security apparatus whose nature the novel does not reveal directly and calls “those,” is tasked with submitting monthly reports on everything that catches his attention. From the spread of a Mexican series, to the decrease in banknotes of a certain denomination, to the increase in the number of flies in the city, until the most marginal observations become material for monitoring and analysis.
Sorting and monitoring
The state of obsession with “monitoring” extends to the character of the narrator, who boasts of his skill in adding, deleting, amending sentences, arranging and trimming facts. He even later admits that he was skilled at fabricating stories and weaving tales: “I do not call that lying and forgery, just reformulating and revising.” The man who reformulates reports before submitting them to the public and the media, deals with reality as material that can be interpreted and rewritten.
It seems that the hero, who underwent a series of physical, neurological, and psychological tests to join the “Those” institution, reproduces the same logic of sorting and monitoring outside the institution. Choosing a wife turns into a careful selection process from among a group of candidates, while his subsequent admiration for “Hind” does not lead him to approach her or get to know her, as much as it leads him to subject her to continuous security surveillance and create a complete file to track the details of her daily life.
However, the novel does not merely highlight this behavior as an extension of his work within the institution, but rather alludes to its deeper psychological roots. Behind the reporting and monitoring man appears a child afraid of insects, fighting his first battles against flies before finding himself, years later, officially assigned to take on the task of war on them, and this is how his obsession appears.
