Re: VMs: Arabic

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dan,

At 13:07 09/01/2004 -0700, Dan Gibson wrote:
> The problem of culture, art, stylistics, language, calligraphy, and
> palaeography is that you are looking at Islamic Arabic and culture, rather
> than some of the other cultures that either preexisted or coexisted with the
> Muslims. These other people were often considered second-class citizens, and
> thus had motive for keeping their knowledge secret from the overlords that
> they despised. A perfect setting for the creation of a one-off manuscript.

I'd agree that our statistics, traditions, trends, etc may indeed tell us 
nothing about a one-off manuscript if it's an historical outlier. However, 
there's lots of European-centric detail in the VMs, and not a lot of 
Arabic-centric detail.

So... you'd need an Arabic subclass, with a grudge, with secret 
information, hiding content within a European form, and with European 
lettering - maybe there's something there, but it's a bit thin. :-o  All 
the same, show me a Nabataean translation, and I'll be the first in the 
queue to buy you a pizza - perhaps one of those nice Turkish ones with egg? :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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