Sylvain Gouguenheim’s ‘“Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel” (Editions du Seuil), while not contending there is an ongoing clash of civilizations, makes the case that Islam was impermeable to much of Greek thought, that the Arab world’s initial translations of it to Latin were not so much the work of “Islam” but of Aramaeans and Christian Arabs, […]

Apparently it’s quite well-known, but I only found it this morning in HG Bohn’s A hand-book of proverbs (1855), in the household reading room:
To build castles in the air. Far castelli in aria.–Ital. The French say, Faire des chateaux en Espagne.
It is tempting although perhaps erroneous to believe that this derives from Frankish experiences with […]

Dido and Hengist are remembered as early heroes of isoperimetry for having solved the challenge of maximising the area of a land grant made to them by stringing together strips of oxhide and using the resulting closed superthong to trace, respectively, a semi-circle at Carthage and a full circle at Kaercorrei.
What was news to […]

They’re photoshopping Jane Austen, so where will it stop? One writer who could do with some help is Al-Jahiz (776-868). Now known as something of a medieval Gollum, he killed and sold fish along the canal in Basra as a small boy, progressed into being a “notably ugle writer with ‘goggle eyes’” (hence جاحظ العينين) […]

‘Sídí Abú Yahya, who had been governor of Cordova, said of its people, “They are like the camel, which fails not to complain whether thou diminishest or increasest its load, so that there is no knowing what they like.”‘ (Gyangos, History of the Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain, quoted in Adolphus, Letters from Spain in 1856 […]

The otherwise excellent Margaret Marks has ruined a peaceful Saturday afternoon by pointing out that St Columba was, apart from the first person to meet the Loch Ness monster, also on the wrong side of the first copyright case–or so says the Catholic Herald.
Columcille copied a Jeromian psalter belonging to Finnian, King Diarmit made […]

Amando de Miguel says that Zapatero is Spain’s worst ever ruler, with the possible exception of Fernando VII, Witiza and someone else. Wittiza was very naughty and nasty indeed–he “taught all Spain to sin“–and, to crown it all, he invited the Moors into Spain to help him fight Wodewic. Maybe there’s a Visigoth somewhere who’d […]

Unlike the hairdressers of Clonycavan and Croghan, Egil ( “an ugly, irritable, brooding individual … deaf, often lost his balance, went blind, suffered from chronically cold feet, endured headaches and experienced bouts of lethargy … unusual disfigurements of his skull and facial features”) was clearly a trombonist

A little more reading (Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, Hispano-Arabic Literature and the Early Provençal Lyrics) suggests (possibly unjustly) that Wallada was famous not so much for her poetry as for being the caliph’s daughter and having poetry written about her by Ibn Zaydun. It’s a shame that in our enthusiasm to find ancient heroines inoffensive […]

Vaguely re this post, there’s a strong current of belief here that sees the Civil War as a rerun of the Reconquista, with (here we head into caricature mode) the left viewing both as the destruction of a new age of peace and love (the latter in all its many varieties) by intolerant savages, while […]

Damn shame that all Tony Blair’s moderate Muslims turned out to be cartoon psychos. Here’s another burst of frivolity, available in several locations, which, like Yasser Arafat, I take to be a spoof:
Many of us celebrate what is known as April fool or, if it is translated literally, the “trick of April”. But how much […]

David de Ugarte writes that “Al-Qaeda is the first distributed armed organisation that is open and based on open-access technology, ideology and gear.” The rest is debatable, but the word “first” is wrong. What about all those networks of early-warning hill-top beacons in Scandinavia 1000 years ago, used to rouse people with home-made weapons and […]

Here’s a note (in Catalan) on the fest in Barceloneta where I took down Sale el sol por la mañana last year. The first fruits function of the Judaic Pentecost explains why the locals dress up in food on their return from their trip out to the country, but I guess this relationship was lost […]

“And as we find in a book of laws called Digesto that city used to be called Guiris because it was created by Garfeus, son of Canaan and grandson of Noah.”

“On Ponent Street lived another woman known as the Queen because she was daughter of one of the Three Kings”

“It is more suited to a warrior to love men than women.”

“If they’re Moors, how come they don’t speak Muslim?”

Drifter massacred locusts

In Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350, Robert I Burns, SJ, writes:
Moneys in testamentary legacies followed the standard medieval pattern of the penny, the sou (or shilling) containing 12 pence, and the pound containing 20 sous or 240 pence. Only the penny and half-penny (òbol) were actually minted and circulated […]

With that grace alate/
which thy stool embalms/Shelter neath thy cloak/our humble homes and farms.

The Moors go ballistic

Frequently racist paranoia vis-à-vis “imperialistic cultures” like the “Anglo-Saxon and Germanic” (with particular reference to the former) has permeated political thought of most varieties here for a long time and has been particularly evident in the last year or so. Sometimes, however, conflicts of interest arise.
José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) was an elitist liberal and […]

A brief take on els pastorets.

I suggested to Mark Liberman the other day that the word Frank turns up in western Arabic in the C8th. A provisional apology is due because the first reference I’ve found in a hitherto brief search is not until the first half of the C9th, when ʻAbd al-Malik b Habīb (display problems?) of Granada uses […]

“Fes-te fotre, moro!”

“Eh?! Duh Moâhse koning gaat onze Jaume in zèn reit nemen?!”

He tried to kill my Dad, says C-in-C, as high-tech shock-and-awe strategy delivers victory in two months.