Poetry for Perplexed 6-Archaeology

The Poet as Archaeologist!

Sira garfield to get

I actually checked up on this with a colleague, from Arabic literature. He confirmed that ashira comes from ishra, or mujawara (neighbourly relations and so allegiance based on locale). So I asked him where the word usra (family) came from in Arabic. He said the usage of the word, asraa, would indicate order, revolving around a central thing like the israa. Then again, it could be asr!

Leader of the clan, the ashira!

Thanks Dr Mustafa Al-

Dabe!

“It is worth noting that the word family originally meant a band of slaves. Even after the word came to apply to people affiliated by blood and marriage, for many centuries the notion of family referred to authority relations rather than love[d] ones. The sentimentalization of family life and female nurturing was historically and functionally linked to the emergence of competitive individualism and formal egalitarianism for men.”

--- Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were, pp. 43-44

Abdelmajid Zendani, who came up with the zawaj friend idea, a sort of legitimized girlfriend. Little did he know such an institution existed prior to Islam in Arabia!

Samson and Delilah (a philistine) were married according to old Arabian ‘sadiqa’ system where he left her at her father’s house and only had sex with her there! Don’t take my word for it, see:

Gerald Larue: Old Testament Life and Literature: Chapter 9, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gerald_larue/otll/chap9.html

Read a very funny play by this Romanian dude, Mihail Sebastian, called Stop News: A Comedy in Three Parts, where the issue of Alexander the Great and oats popped up. Turns out Alexander fed his horses oats and couldn’t have made his conquests without them, and that oats likewise only became known internationally because of him and his conquests. Oats didn’t exist in Europe at the time and were just a weed in Asia Minor. It took ages to track this down in history works. It’s almost been forgotten!

“The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real.”

--- Sigmund Freud

Technology too far? They had to do it first to find out the hard way!

Dark matter, the force

1. an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment. "an adventure story”synonyms: tale, narrative, account, anecdote;2. an account of past events in someone's life or in the evolution of something. "the story of modern farming"

Romulus and Remus, suckling from the lupus, the she-wolf. Ah, but lupus in old Roman means ‘whore’. Could they have had not so noble origins?!

The whole thing about the frog becoming the prince when kissed by a princess, as far as I can tell that comes from Persian storytelling, where a turtle gets outs of its shell and becomes a prince. The idea is the need to ‘shed your skin’, renew yourself and become someone else. As for the princess kissing the frog, I suppose that’s a feudalist society bestowing recognition on someone without noble blood. Princesses could set challenges for their suitors in the olden days, something that pops up in Greek myths too.

(Social mobility!)

So Arabic!

Blue-eyed devil!

The European poetical tradition is tied up with epics and adventures full of mythical beasts, magic and gods and goddesses, basically storytelling, something closer to prose where the beauty lies more in the meaning than the wording, although the poetry of the words was important because this was all done orally, in front of an audience. Arabs didn’t nearly have as much to talk about and weren’t interesting in explaining why things happen (natural or mythical explanations) so there stories were far more realistic (and dull and boring) with a focus on relationships, war, social problems and emotions.

Here’s a little contribution of my own. The earliest Arab story (not poem) is about the historical war of Harb Al-Basus. An evil king started it by killing a women (Basus) that was a guest of his wife’s brother, and she broke his laws by graving her camel on his land. Also, by pure coincidence, he made hunting –except for himself – illegal. Check out these similar myths, old and new!

Ahsan min il-sharaf mafeesh!

His wife stayed loyal to him despite his cruelty to her family and her son was later raised by his ‘maternal’ uncle to go to war against his father and his father’s family. If you know anything about anthropology you’ll know there’s a preference for the maternal uncle (il khaal walid) because society was matri-local. Husbands had to go and live with the family of the bride, with the wife’s brother raising their son. Also, kings were originally chiefs, people who were just military advisors and commanders appointed by a council of elders of a tribe. But power corrupts!

Confederacy!Check out the irony with the macho

American founding ‘fathers’!!!!!

Another blue-eyed

devil!

Machines, never quite as good as the natural thing!