Iranian Loanwords in Syriac

Iranian Loanwords in Syriac
Author: Claudia A. Ciancaglini
Publisher: Dr Ludwig Reichert
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2008
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:

The book investigates the deep linguistic contact between Iranians and Arameans from the formation of the Achaemenid empire onwards, and focuses especially on the linguistic relationship between Middle Persian and Classical Syriac during the Sasanian empire, a subject on which a modern systematic study was still missing. The first part of the book is a detailed study of the historical and linguistic conditions which favoured the entry of a great number of Iranian words into Syriac and the linguistic consequences of such borrowings. The second part contains, in dictionary form, hundreds of entries in which each single Iranian loanword is considered, together with its etymon, alternative forms, and derivatives. Each entry also includes a list of occurrences and the relevant bibliography. A complete index of words closes the volume. The study of the prolonged contact between such prestigious languages as Syriac and Middle Persian, that are only attested in written records, enriches our knowledge of the typologies of language interference and bilingualism in ancient society. More specifically, it allows to recover a considerable amount of otherwise unattested Middle Persian vocabulary and provides new insights into the linguistic systems of both Syriac and Middle Persian.

The Persian Presence in the Islamic World

The Persian Presence in the Islamic World
Author: Richard G. Hovannisian
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1998-11-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521591850

The thirteenth volume based on the Giorgio Levi Della Vida conference reassesses the role of the Iranian peoples in the development and consolidation of Islamic civilization. In his key essay, Ehsan Yarshater casts fresh light on that role challenging the view that, after reaching a climax in Baghdad in the ninth century, Islamic culture entered a period of decline. In fact, he maintains, a new and remarkably creative phase began in Khurasan and Transoxania, symbolized by the adoption of Persian as a medium of literary expression. By the mid-sixteenth century, Persian literary and intellectual paradigms had spread from Anatolia to India, encompassing the greater part of the Islamic world. Yarshater also challenges traditional assumptions about the 'Islamization of Persia'. In the essays which follow, six distinguished scholars consider the historical, cultural, and religious aspects of the Persian presence in the Islamic world.

Language Diversity in Iran

Language Diversity in Iran
Author: Charles G. Häberl
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2024-09-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110637766

The current companion will offer a survey of the Afroasiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and Turkic languages in contact with Iranian languages. Comparatively few of Iran's minority languages are well-documented or even widely known outside of a small cadre of specialists. A volume that organizes sketches of the non-Iranian languages of Iran offers a unique perspective on the history and structure of the Iranian language.

The Syriac World

The Syriac World
Author: Daniel King
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1064
Release: 2018-12-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317482115

This volume surveys the 'Syriac world', the culture that grew up among the Syriac-speaking communities from the second century CE and which continues to exist and flourish today, both in its original homeland of Syria and Mesopotamia, and in the worldwide diaspora of Syriac-speaking communities. The five sections examine the religion; the material, visual, and literary cultures; the history and social structures of this diverse community; and Syriac interactions with their neighbours ancient and modern. There are also detailed appendices detailing the patriarchs of the different Syriac denominations, and another appendix listing useful online resources for students. The Syriac World offers the first complete survey of Syriac culture and fills a significant gap in modern scholarship. This volume will be an invaluable resource to undergraduate and postgraduate students of Syriac and Middle Eastern culture from antiquity to the modern era. Chapter 26 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud

The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud
Author: Markham J. Geller
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2015-11-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004304894

The Babylonian Talmud remains the richest source of information regarding the material culture and lifestyle of the Babylonian Jewish community, with additional data now supplied by Babylonian incantation bowls. Although archaeology has yet to excavate any Jewish sites from Babylonia, information from Parthian and Sassanian Babylonia provides relevant background information, which differs substantially from archaeological finds from the Land of Israel. One of the key questions addresses the amount of traffic and general communications between Jewish Babylonia and Israel, considering the great distances and hardships of travel involved.

Non-Semitic Loanwords in the Hebrew Bible

Non-Semitic Loanwords in the Hebrew Bible
Author: Benjamin J. Noonan
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2019-10-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1646020391

Ancient Palestine served as a land bridge between the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and as a result, the ancient Israelites frequently interacted with speakers of non-Semitic languages, including Egyptian, Greek, Hittite and Luwian, Hurrian, Old Indic, and Old Iranian. This linguistic contact led the ancient Israelites to adopt non-Semitic words, many of which appear in the Hebrew Bible. Benjamin J. Noonan explores this process in Non-Semitic Loanwords in the Hebrew Bible, which presents a comprehensive, up-to-date, and linguistically informed analysis of the Hebrew Bible’s non-Semitic terminology. In this volume, Noonan identifies all the Hebrew Bible’s foreign loanwords and presents them in the form of an annotated lexicon. An appendix to the book analyzes words commonly proposed to be non-Semitic that are, in fact, Semitic, along with the reason for considering them as such. Noonan’s study enriches our understanding of the lexical semantics of the Hebrew Bible’s non-Semitic terminology, which leads to better translation and exegesis of the biblical text. It also enhances our linguistic understanding of the ancient world, in that the linguistic features it discusses provide significant insight into the phonology, orthography, and morphology of the languages of the ancient Near East. Finally, by tying together linguistic evidence with textual and archaeological data, this work extends our picture of ancient Israel’s interactions with non-Semitic peoples. A valuable resource for biblical scholars, historians, archaeologists, and others interested in linguistic and cultural contact between the ancient Israelites and non-Semitic peoples, this book provides significant insight into foreign contact in ancient Israel.

The Legacy of Iranian Imperialism and the Individual

The Legacy of Iranian Imperialism and the Individual
Author: John Pairman Brown
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2012-10-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110882396

The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) covers all areas of research into the Old Testament, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its early and later forms in Ancient Judaism, as well as its branching into many neighboring cultures of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world.

ReOrienting Histories of Medicine

ReOrienting Histories of Medicine
Author: Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2021-01-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472512499

It is rarely appreciated how much of the history of Eurasian medicine in the premodern period hinges on cross-cultural interactions and knowledge transmissions. Using manuscripts found in key Eurasian nodes of the medieval world – Dunhuang, Kucha, the Cairo Genizah and Tabriz – the book analyses a number of case-studies of Eurasian medical encounters, giving a voice to places, languages, people and narratives which were once prominent but have gone silent. This is an important book for those interested in the history of medicine and the transmissions of knowledge that have taken place over the course of global history.