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Ibn Wahshiyya
(), died , was a Nabataean (Aramaic-speaking, rural Iraqi) agriculturalist, toxicologist, and alchemist born in Qussīn, near Kufa in Iraq. He is the author of the '' Nabataean Agriculture'' (), an influential Arabic work on agriculture, astrology, and magic. Already by the end of the tenth century, various works were being falsely attributed to him. One of these spurious writings, the ("The Book of the Desire of the Maddened Lover for the Knowledge of Secret Scripts", perhaps ), is notable as an early proposal that some Egyptian hieroglyphs could be read phonetically, rather than only logographically. Name His full name was . Just like the semi-legendary Jabir ibn Hayyan, he carried the despite the fact that he is not known to have engaged in or to have written anything about Sufism. The is a variant of ( 'Chaldaean'), a term referring to the native inhabitants of Mesopotamia that was also used in Greek, but (given the known -shd-/-ld- variation in Babylonian langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Common Era
Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the original Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC) notations used for the same calendar era. The two notation systems are numerically equivalent: " CE" and "AD " each describe the current year; "400 BCE" and "400 BC" are the same year. The expression can be traced back to 1615, when it first appears in a book by Johannes Kepler as the (), and to 1635 in English as " Vulgar Era". The term "Common Era" can be found in English as early as 1708, and became more widely used in the mid-19th century by Jewish religious scholars. Since the late 20th century, BCE and CE have become popular in academic and scientific publications on the grounds that BCE and CE are religiously neutral terms. They have been promoted as more sensitive to non-Christia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nabataean Agriculture
''The Nabataean Agriculture'' (), also written ''The Nabatean Agriculture'', is a 10th-century text on agronomy by Ibn Wahshiyya (born in Qussīn, present-day Iraq; died ). It contains information on plants and agriculture, as well as on magic and astrology. It was frequently cited by later Arabic writers on these topics. ''The Nabataean Agriculture'' was the first book written in Arabic about agriculture, as well as the most influential. Ibn Wahshiyya claimed that he translated it from a 20,000-year-old Mesopotamian text. Though some doubts remain, modern scholars believe that the work may be translated from a Syriac original of the 5th or 6th century. In any case, the work is ultimately based on Greek and Latin agricultural writings, heavily supplemented with local material. The work consists of some 1500 manuscript pages, principally concerned with agriculture but also containing lengthy digressions on religion, philosophy, magic, astrology, and folklore. Some of the most va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ibn Al-Nadim
Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq an-Nadīm (), also Ibn Abī Yaʿqūb Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Warrāq, and commonly known by the '' nasab'' (patronymic) Ibn an-Nadīm (; died 17 September 995 or 998), was an important Muslim bibliographer and biographer of Baghdad who compiled the encyclopedia '' Kitāb al-Fihrist'' (''The Book Catalogue''). Biography Much known of an-Nadim is deduced from his epithets. 'an-Nadim' (), 'the Court Companion' and 'al-Warrāq () 'the copyist of manuscripts'. Probably born in Baghdad ca. 320/932 he died there on Wednesday, 20th of Shaʿban A.H. 385. He was a Persian or perhaps an Arab. Little is known about Ibn an-Nadīm's life. Some historians say that he was of Persian descent , but this is not certain. However, the choice of the rarely used Persian word pehrest (fehrest/fehres/fahrasat) meaning "The List" as the title for a handbook on Arabic literature is noteworthy in this context. From age six, he may have attended a ''mad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Babylonian Language
Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218–280 was an East Semitic languages, East Semitic language that is attested in ancient Mesopotamia (Akkad (region), Akkad, Assyria, Isin, Larsa, Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun) from the mid-3rd millennium BC, third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic language, Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC. Akkadian, which is the earliest documented Semitic languages, Semitic language, is named after the city of Akkad (city), Akkad, a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire (–2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script, originally used for Sumerian language, Sumerian, but also used to write multiple languages in the region including Eblaite language, Eblaite, Hurrian language, Hurrian, Elamite lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek Dark Ages, Dark Ages (), the Archaic Greece, Archaic or Homeric Greek, Homeric period (), and the Classical Greece, Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athens, fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Homeric Greek, Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chaldea
Chaldea () refers to a region probably located in the marshy land of southern Mesopotamia. It is mentioned, with varying meaning, in Neo-Assyrian cuneiform, the Hebrew Bible, and in classical Greek texts. The Hebrew Bible uses the term (''Kaśdim'') and this is translated as ''Chaldaeans'' in the Greek Old Testament. During a period of weakness in the East Semitic-speaking kingdom of Babylonia, new tribes of West Semitic-speaking migrants arrived in the region from the Levant between the 11th and 9th centuries BC. The earliest waves consisted of Suteans and Arameans, followed a century or so later by the Kaldu, a group who became known later as the Chaldeans or the Chaldees. These migrations did not affect the powerful kingdom and empire of Assyria in Upper Mesopotamia, which repelled these incursions. These nomadic Chaldeans settled in the far southeastern portion of Babylonia, chiefly on the left bank of the Euphrates. Though for a short time the name commonly referred ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sufism
Sufism ( or ) is a mysticism, mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic Tazkiyah, purification, spirituality, ritualism, and Asceticism#Islam, asceticism. Practitioners of Sufism are referred to as "Sufis" (from , ), and historically typically belonged to "orders" known as (pl. ) — congregations formed around a grand (saint) who would be the last in a Silsilah, chain of successive teachers linking back to Muhammad, with the goal of undergoing (self purification) and the hope of reaching the Maqam (Sufism), spiritual station of . The ultimate aim of Sufis is to seek the pleasure of God by endeavoring to return to their original state of purity and natural disposition, known as . Sufism emerged early on in Islamic history, partly as a reaction against the expansion of the early Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) and mainly under the tutelage of Hasan al-Basri. Although Sufis were opposed to dry legalism, they strictly obs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nisba (onomastics)
In Arabic names, a ' ( ', "attribution"), also rendered as ' or ', is an adjective surname indicating the person's place of origin, ancestral tribe, or ancestry, used at the end of the name and occasionally ending in the suffix ''-iyy'' for males and ''-iyyah'' for females. , originally an Arabic word, has been passed to many other languages such as Turkish language, Turkish, Persian language, Persian, Bengali language, Bengali, Hindi language, Hindi and Urdu language, Urdu. In Persian, Turkish, and Urdu usage, it is always pronounced and written as '. In Arabic grammar, Arabic usage, that pronunciation occurs when the word is uttered in its construct state#Arabic, construct state only. The practice has been adopted in South Asian Muslim names. The to a tribe, profession or a town is the most common form of surname in Arabic. Original use A "relation" is a grammatical term referring to the suffixation of masculine -''iyy'', feminine ''-iyyah'' to a word to make it an adjecti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jabir Ibn Hayyan
Abū Mūsā Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (Arabic: , variously called al-Ṣūfī, al-Azdī, al-Kūfī, or al-Ṭūsī), died 806−816, is the purported author of a large number of works in Arabic, often called the Jabirian corpus. The treatises that survive today mainly deal with alchemy and chemistry, magic, and Shi'ite religious philosophy. However, the original scope of the corpus was vast, covering a wide range of topics ranging from cosmology, astronomy and astrology, over medicine, pharmacology, zoology and botany, to metaphysics, logic, and grammar. The works attributed to Jabir, which are tentatively dated to , contain the oldest known systematic classification of chemical substances, and the oldest known instructions for deriving an inorganic compound ( sal ammoniac or ammonium chloride) from organic substances (such as plants, blood, and hair) by chemical means. His works also contain one of the earliest known versions of the sulfur-mercury theory of metals, a mineralo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logograph
In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese characters as used in Chinese as well as other languages are logograms, as are Egyptian hieroglyphs and characters in cuneiform script. A writing system that primarily uses logograms is called a ''logography''. Non-logographic writing systems, such as alphabets and syllabaries, are ''phonemic'': their individual symbols represent sounds directly and lack any inherent meaning. However, all known logographies have some phonetic component, generally based on the rebus principle, and the addition of a phonetic component to pure ideographs is considered to be a key innovation in enabling the writing system to adequately encode human language. Types of logographic systems Some of the earliest recorded writing systems are logographic; the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines on questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech (articulatory phonetics), how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound (acoustic phonetics) or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information (auditory phonetics). Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone (phonetics), phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language. Phonetics deals with two aspects of human speech: production ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined Ideogram, ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.In total, there were about 1,000 graphemes in use during the Old Kingdom period; this number decreased to 750–850 during the Middle Kingdom, but rose instead to around 5,000 signs during the Ptolemaic period. Antonio Loprieno, ''Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction'' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 12. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for Ancient Egyptian literature, religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic (Egyptian), demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet, the first widely adopted phonetic writing system. Moreov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
