Arabic-L:LING:franji and Saliibi chronologies

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Tue 03 Apr 2007
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1) Subject:franji and Saliibi chronologies

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1)
Date: 03 Apr 2007
From:"Dr. M. Deeb" <muhammaddeeb at gmail.com>
Subject:franji and Saliibi chronologies


Chronology of Terms

(1)  Firinjah /فرنجة /:

Variants of /firinj/, /firinjah/; /ifrinj/, /ifrinjah/ (sing. / 
firinjiyy/, /ifrinjiyy/)  are arabizations of Old  
French /“Franc”/ “Frank,” used especially during the 11th  –  
13th  centuries, and thereafter for the Crusaders.  Although  
“Francs” stood originally for the French, it developed to mean all  
Europeans.  Classical Arabic dictionaries: القاموس & by  
extension, Lane’s مد القاموس, acknowledge that the term is  
Arabic for / إفرنك /.   Before the appearance of this term, other  
words like /روم = Ruum/ & / عجم = ’ajam/ were used for non- 
Arabs.

Although gaining wider currency during the crusading wars, it may be  
argued that /firinjah/ may have been used as early as pre-Islamic  
times, as can be gleaned from folk works like the Arabian Nights  
(spanning over ten centuries, from pre-Islam to the 16th century),  
and the Romance of ‘Antar, (spanning over four centuries, from pre- 
Islam to the 10th century,  or more specifically to the reign of the  
Fatimid Al-‘Aziz bil-Laah (975 – 996), when the romance was  
written and circulated in 72 consecutive parts).  In the latter  
work, ‘Antar derides his rival ‘Ammara as /ابن  
الافرنجيًة / (= son of a Frankish woman).  A pre-Islamic  
chronology of the term strikes me as untenable, for whereas the  
personae are pre-Islamic, the cultural language is that of much later  
times.  A more plausible and less anachronistic derogatory epithet,  
if that be necessary,  would have been /ابن الروميًة / (=  
son of a Ruumi mother).

(2)  Crusade:

The term “cross” was first introduced to English in the 10th  
century as an instrument of torture of Christ, gradually replacing  
the Anglo-Saxon “rood,” via Old Irish “cros.”  On the other  
hand, “Crusade,” that dates back to (1706) is a respelling of M.  
Fr. “croisade (1577).  Romance languages variations: Fr. croisade;  
Sp. cruzada; Port.  cruzada; Ital. crociata, &ct. ; and Ger.   
Kreuzzug can be ultimately traced back to Latin, “crux.”   What  
this essentially means is that the technical term in the sense of a  
holy military campaign was not in used before the 16th century.   
Later, the figurative idiom: “engage in a crusade” or “go on a  
crusade” came into use.  Due to willful selectivity or self-imposed  
amnesia, irresponsible academia, and sensationalizing media have been  
spewing ever-mounting tabloids on the Islamic concept of  
“jihad” / جهاد /, with a view to stereotype and demonize  
Muslims and Arabs.  Very few pause to acknowledge that it was the  
West who set the gory example of “holy war” in the middle ages.

(3)    Saliibiyy, Saliibiyyah  & Saliibiyyuun:

To account for the late appearance of the / صليب / and its  
derivatives in Arabic common usage, it is safe to suggest two factors.

(A) Due to creedal injunction, Muslims have developed repugnance for  
the concept of crucifixion.

(B) The European military campaigns in the Muslim East were not  
identified as Crusades, nor were participants in them referred to as  
Crusaders.  The term as explained above is a more recent coinage; its  
etymology deriving from the French Croisade (1577).

The technical derivatives of the word / صليب /, such as /  
صليبيً   /, /صليبيًة / (de-nominal noun), / 
صليبيًون / & /الحروب الصليبية /, did not make  
their debut in Arabic writings until the 19th century.  This applies  
to history, literature, travel literature and lexicons.  Ibn al- 
Qalaanisiyy (c. 1070 – 1160), the author of the early chronicles of  
the Crusades, Mudhayyal Taariikh Dimashq, (extracted and trans. by R.  
A. B. Gibb in 1932, as The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusade), refers  
to the Crusaders throughout as the Franks.  So do Ibn al-Athiir, Ibn  
BaTTuuTah, Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Khalduun, to mention only a few.  Arabic  
classical dictionaries make no reference to the Crusading wars either  
under /Saliib/ or /firinjah/.  Even the Christian Orientalist, Edward  
W. Lane, who undoubtedly was aware of the English debates of the  
Crusades, does not enter the technical term under either /Saliib/ or / 
ifrinj/, in his Arabic English Lexicon (1893).  In the line of Arab  
lexicographers, BuTrus al-Bustaaniyy (1819 – 1883) is probably the  
first to include the term / الصليبيًة / in his /محيط  
المحيط /.  Here is his definition:

.الصليبيًة قوم من الإفرنج قاموا في  
الأجيال المتوسطة لاستنقاذ الأراضي  
المقدسًة))

The Bustaaniyy initiative could have provided the impetus for  
subsequent twentieth-century dictionaries like / المنجد /, / 
المعجم الوسيط / & / المعجم الوجيز / to include  
the term.

  (4)   History and Historians:
Ibn Khalduun uses / الفرنجة / over 21 times in the three  
volumes of his Prolegomena,  and  refers to non-Arabs variously as:
/ الإفرنج ، والترك ، والبربر ، وغير  
هؤلاء من العجم /,
/العلوج من الجلالقة من الإفرنج في  
الأندلس    /,
/   أهل الأندلس من عجم الجلالقة  
والإلرنجة/,
/ القوط بالأندلس /,
/ ممالك الروم والإفرنج /.
Further, he identifies Christians specifically as: /  
النًصارى /, / أمم الًنصرانيًة/, / الأمم  
النًصرانيًة/, even when reference is made to the Crusades  
in Palestine and Jerusalem:
             ولما قام صلاح الدين بن يوسف بن  
أيوب ملك مصر والشام لعهده
  باسترجاع ثغور الشام من أمم النصرانيًة
وتطهير بيت المقدس
من رجس الكفر وبنائه
وتتابعت أساطيلهم الكفريًة. . . .

  (5)  Crusades in Contemporary Arabic poetry:
In celebrating Muslim triumphs over the Crusades, poetry of the time  
propitiates audiences inside and outside the court and understandably  
reflects anti-Christian sentiments: /أجناس الكفر = species  
of infidelity/, / كسر الفرنجة = vanquishing the  
Franks /, /مًلة الكفر = people of infidelity /, / 
الكافرين = the infidels/, /أهل النار = the people of  
Fire /.  Albeit in a much milder fashion, the vocabulary as well  as  
the metaphors Muslim poets use brings to mind the anti-Muslim  
language used in the Gesta Francorum, Chanson de gestes and Chanson  
de Roland.   For textual illustrations, I’ll quote below the opening  
verses of eulogies by Ayubid poets like (i) al-‘Imaad al- 
ASbihaaniyy, (ii) Muhammad ibn As’ad, (iii) al-Bahaa’ Zuhayr (iv)  
al-BuuSiiriyy, renowned for his “Mantle Ode,” and (v) Ahmad ibn  
‘Abd ad-Daa’im ash-SharimsaaHiyy:

(i)
حططت على حطًين قدر ملوكهم       ولم تبق  
من أجناس كفرهم جنسا


(ii)

أترى مناما ما بعيني أبصر                 
القدس يفتح والفرنجة تكسر

(iii)

بك اهتز عطف الدين في حلل النصر                
وردت على أعقابها ملة  الكفر

(iv)

قد أخذ المسلمون عكًا            أشبعوا  
الكافرين صكًا

(v)

لا تعجبوا للمجانيق التي رشقت             
عكا بنار وهدتها بأحجار
بل اعجـــبوا للســــان النار  
قائلة          هذي منازل أهل النار للنار

(6)    19th & 20th Centuries:
Modern Muslim perceptions of the Crusades have been shaped by Western  
history books.  Translation of these books by the 19th century  
intellectuals have given currency to the Arabic terms / الحروب  
الصليبيًة / for Crusading wars, and /الصليبيًون/  
for Crusaders.
When an abbreviated version of Josef Francois Michaud’s Histoire des  
croisades (published in six volumes between 1817 – 1822) was  
translated into Turkish c. 1870, the Crusades became a hot polemic in  
Turkish intellectual circles.  Correspondingly, in the Arab East, the  
Maronite Archbishop, Yuusuf ad-Dibs published in 1901 a history of  
Syria, devoting half of it to /الإفرنج الصليبيًون /  
“The Frankish Crusaders.”  Earlier in 1899, the Indian Muslim  
scholar, Syed Ameer Ali published an important work, A Short History  
of the Saracens, in which he addressed the critical views of the  
Crusades made by the Enlightenment scholars, such as Gibbon, Mills  
and Michaud, on the Crusaders’ savageries, concluding that the  
Crusades were waged for no identifiable cause by greedy and fanatic  
Christians.  This book later became very influential among Arab  
historians.
Works on the Crusades by scholars of Arabic descent, like Phillip K.  
Hitti (Lebanese) and Atiya S. Aziz (an Egyptian historian who wrote  
copiously on the Crusades), to instance only a few, were translated  
into Arabic in the first half of the 20th century, all of which  
helped to make / صليبيً / & /الحروب الصليبيًة /  
integral to bone fide Arabic vocabulary and Arabic Crusade  
historiography.

(7)     /ما أشبه الًليلة بالبارحة /:
The side rubric is an Arabic proverb meaning: “How much like  
yesternight is tonight,” which brings us to the present scene.  In  
the wake of the bombing of the Trade Towers, it was stated by the  
highest authority that military campaigns in the Muslim and Arab  
worlds were crusading wars.  The White House spokesperson was quick  
with a correction!  ٌIn retrospect, however, one wonders if that was  
a Freudian slip.  Whatever the case, the Israeli settler-state in  
Palestine since 1948 and US military forays since 9/11 in Afghanistan  
and Iraq (Somalia and Darfour are not far behind) would lend credence  
to the argument that the medieval Crusades are the precursors of the  
neo-crusades of colonialism and Postcolonialism.
*M. Deeb

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End of Arabic-L:  03 Apr 2007