#Modern Arabic

[zef-zef]

Maya Al Khaldi - ترويدة لسامي - Sami's Lullaby From Maya Al Khaldi - ع​ا​ل​م ت​ا​ن​ي (Other World) (Tawleef, 2022)

[captain-price-unofficially]

Banners saying "Genocide Gaza" and "Victory looks like zero people in Gaza" hanging in Tel Aviv

[daweyt]

Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Bayyati, from “Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology; ‘The birth of Aisha and her death’, tr. Sargon Boulus and Christopher Middleton.

[starflungwaddledee]

Do all of the knights have names in your au? And how did you decide on them?

hello there, thank you so much for the message! correct me if I misunderstand, but I think this is about a panel from my galacta knight vs meta knight comic:

where Galacta Knight uses the word Vaýtita. it's not a name, it's a... actually you know what, it's so much more embarrassing! it's a term of endearment/a relationship designator from my unnecessarily complex whole entire sci-fi language i built for them, lmao 💦

here's the note at the beginning of my personal dictionary as a quick crash course:

Ei Vaýtita in particular means "my gravity". it's akin to words like beloved, my heart, or soulmate- an irresistible force in one's own life. it's usually used romantically, but it doesn't have to be. Galacta Knight says it here to be cruel, though i do think he means it quite wholly

when I go in for making languages, especially sci-fi or high-fantasy ones, i like to consider the alien culture that the language is formed in. for these guys, everything was star and space coded; they had no reason to care about "hearts" or "souls". they considered themselves star-like, and so gravity as a term was most important; it's the only thing that can really move them.

praise is about being bright or shiny or having strong gravitational pull; and insults, accordingly, tend to revolve around being dim/lightless or stuck in orbit around someone greater

(translation under the cut because this is already getting long, sorry... i love to talk about this... thank you for asking 😭💝)

phrase // literal translation (from starspeak) // english localisation or meaning

kalimépos // welcome first light // good morning astéskotei // dim star // derogatory but not blindingly so; you could use it pityingly or fondly in a pinch ei épios // me see // wake up ei Vaýtita // my gravity // term of endearment and a relationship designator used within a star-system, usually for equal partners eu desai Ílioz ai ei // you (are not) the Sun of me // this is basically just a rejection from Meta Knight. the Sun serves an important role in star-systems, and he's simply telling Galacta Knight to shove it. he doesn't say it very well, but he refuses to say Ílioz-ei and so turns to a slightly clunky workaround.

[fiery-emblems]

Sketch of the day: Modern AU?

My idea for this is that Soren's father is an extremely corrupt Trump-like business man who had his wife institutionalized to prevent her from talking about abuse. Due to this Soren has been in foster care from a very young age. I know most people go for a goth/punk look for him but this time I went with a kid who tries to dress low-key/ a little nicely but he has a hard time because his clothes are second hand and don't fit right.

Ike and Mist are from a very loving, solidly middle class home with parents whom are well liked and respected in the community. They struggle a bit with the loss of their mother but for the most part they're very well adjusted. Ike in particular is the jock who doesn't tolerate bullying at his school! Its easy to imagine that his life revolves around some kind of contact heavy sport like football or wrestling, which his father no doubt coaches.

[erotetica]

the Booker v Nicky thing is so funny to me for 2 reasons:

a) bc Provence and Liguria are are like this👌 far apart (and that’s on a *contemporary* map), and bc when I’ve looked up anything from food to folk music it’s extremely similar, I’ve interpreted the sniping as Cuba v Puerto Rico 2: Same Hat & Ur Mad Abt It, BUT MOSTLY,

b) Yusuf does not take sides in the sniping bc his ace in the hole is to very very sweetly be like oh nooo why are the Franks fighting?? Which must be spaced out, or Nicky will see it coming and he won’t get maximum PAUL_RUDD_MOMENT_OF_PSYCHIC_DAMAGE_.PNG

[unopenablebox]

i admit that i find it a little bit frustrating how Wildly Astonished other antizionist jews act when i tell them my israeli jewish family have lived in the region since [some unknown length of time before 1800 when there start being records about it]

[readenheim]

Watching Bucchigiri?! and seeing all the genuinely well implemented references to Arabic art folklore: 🥰🥰😍😘💙❤️🩷

Watching American YouTubers react to it all calling it "Indian" and not even doing that respectfully: 💀💀💀💀💀

[vasyandii]

Whenever he looks a lil ugly that's the white in him /j

Same goes for König bc of my lil headcanon

[bijoumikhawal]

hello! i hope it's alright to ask you this but i was wondering if you have any recommendations for books to read or media in general about the history of judaism and jewish communities in egypt, particularly in ottoman and modern egypt?

have a nice day!

it's fine to ask me this! Unfortunately I have to preface this with a disclaimer that a lot of books on Egyptian Jewish history have a Zionist bias. There are antizionist Egyptian Jews, and at the very least ones who have enough national pride that AFAIK they do not publicly hold Zionist beliefs, like those who spoke in the documentary the Jews of Egypt (avaliable on YouTube for free with English subtitles). Others have an anti Egyptian bias- there is a geopolitical tension with Egypt from Antiquity that unfortunately some Jewish people have carried through history even when it was completely irrelevant, so in trying to research interactions between "ancient" Egyptian Jews and Native Egyptians (from the Ptolemaic era into the proto-Coptic and fully Coptic eras) I've unfortunately come across stuff that for me, as an Egyptian, reads like anti miscegenationist ideology, and it is difficult to tell whether this is a view of history being pushed on the past or not. The phrase "Erev Rav" (meaning mixed multitude), which in part refers to Egyptians who left Egypt with Moses and converted to Judaism, is even used as an insult by some.

Since I mentioned that documentary, I'll start by going over more modern sources. Mapping Jewish San Francisco has a playlist of videos of interviews with Egyptian Jews, including both Karaites and Rabbinic Jews iirc (I reblogged some of these awhile ago in my "actually Egyptian tag" tag). This book, the Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, is avaliable for free online, it promises to be a more indepth look at Egyptian Jews in the lead up to modern explusion. I have only read a few sections of it, so I cannot give a full judgment on it. There's this video I watched about preserving Karaite historical sites in Egypt that I remember being interesting. "On the Mediterranian and the Nile edited by Harvey E. Goldman and Matthis Lehmann" is a collection of memiors iirc, as is "the Man in the Sharkskin Suit" (which I've started but not completed), both moreso from a Rabbinic perspective. Karaites also have a few websites discussing themselves in their terms, such as this one.

For the pre-modern but post-Islamic era, the Cairo Geniza is a great resource but in my opinion as a hobby researcher, hard to navigate. It is a large cache of documents from a Cairo synagogue mostly from around the Fatimid era. A significant portion of it is digitized and they occasionally crowd source translation help on their Twitter, and a lot of books and papers use it as a primary source. "The Jews in Medieval Egypt, edited by: Miriam Frenkel" is one in my to read pile. "Benjamin H. Hary - Multiglossia in Judeio-Arabic. With an Edition, Translation, and Grammatical Study of the Cairene Purim Scroll" is a paper I've read discussing the Jewish record of the events commemorated by the Cairo Purim, I got it off either Anna's Archive or libgen. "Mamluks of Jewish Origin in the Mamluk Sultanate by Koby Yosef" is a paper in my to read pile. "Jewish pietism of the Sufi type A particular trend of mysticisme in Medieval Egypt by Mireille Loubet" and "Paul B Fenton- Judaism and Sufism" both discuss the medieval Egyptian Jewish pietist movement.

For "ancient" Egyptian Jews, I find the first chapter of "The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD” by Simon Schama, which covers Elephantine, very interesting (it also flies in the face of claims that Jews did not marry Native Egyptians, though it is from centuries before the era researchers often cover). If you'd like to read don't click this link to a Google doc, that would be VERY naughty. There's very little on the Therapeutae, but for the paper theorizing they may have been influenced by Buddhism (possibly making them an example of Judeo-Buddhist syncretism) look here (their Wikipedia page also has some sources that could be interesting but are not specifically about them). "Taylor, Joan E. - Jewish women philosophers of first-century Alexandria: Philo’s Therapeutae reconsidered" is also a to read.

I haven't found much on the temple of Onias/Tell el Yahudia/Leontopolis in depth, but I have the paper "Meron M. Piotrkowski - Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period" in my to be read pile (which I got off Anna's Archive). I also have some supplemental info from a lecture I attended that I'm willing to privately share.

I also have a document compiling links about the Exodus of Jews from Egypt in the modern era, but I'm cautious about sharing it now because I made it in high school and I've realized it needs better fact checking, because it had some misinfo in it from Zionist publications (specifically about the names of Nazis who fled to Egypt- that did happen, but a bunch of names I saw reported had no evidence of that being the case, and one name was the name of a murdered resistance fighter???)

[leroibobo]

mosque of the companions in massawa, eritrea. it was reportedly built by companions of the prophet muhammad who fled to africa due to persecution they faced in mecca. it possibly dates to 620-630 ce, which would make it the oldest purpose-built mosque in the world. however, some of the current structure was most likely built in the late 7th-9th centuries, as the mihrab and minaret as we know them hadn't been developed at the time.

[zef-zef]

Nadah El Shazly - Afqid Adh​-​Dhakira (I Lose Memory) From Nadah El Shazly - Ahwar (Nawa, 2017)

[captain-price-unofficially]

An Israeli colonist intent on taking down a Palestinian flag walks into an obvious booby trap, 21 April 2024

[daweyt]

Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Bayyati, from “Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology; ‘The impossible’”, tr. Sargon Boulus and Christopher Middleton.

[m0m075]

ARAB, which is the singular of ARABS. In “the only democracy in the Middle East”, this term is used to refer to Palestinians in order to deny their Palestinian identity. This problematic terminology has spread in Western media such as the New York Times and the BBC.

[palipunk]

Idk it always irks me when Palestinians (or Arabs in general) talk about traditional tattooing and follow it up with “we don’t do it anymore because we’re Muslim now alhamdulillah 🫶” like Islam has existed with traditional tattooing for hundreds upon hundreds of years. This isn’t a debate on whether tattooing is prohibited but a fact that Arabs for centuries have been tattooed long before the spread of Islam and long after as well, like my great grandma was tatted - she was born Muslim and died Muslim. you want to tell me she wasn’t Muslim bc she had tattoos? God help me I’ve engaged in arab community discourse