No subject

[virgil strohmeyer]

To those criticising 'The Gladiator:'

I believe that most of the criticism of the dress and customs portrayed as
North African is quite justified because they probably have more to do with
Beau Geste than 2nd century Rome.  I do not think that I will see the movie
any time soon in Armenia. However, the list from the Berber organization
contained not a little anti-Arab and anti-black sentiment that may have been
misplaced.

1. 180 AD is only a few years before the reign of the North African Emperor
Septimus Severus and that of his son, Caracalla, whose mother was a Syrian.
Caracalla was cruel and capricious and mad about the arena.  He also granted
all freemen in the Empire citizenship in 212.

North Africa had had a Syrian/Lebanese connection from the 4th cen BC when
the Carthaginians colonised the area. Over that long period, it would be
hard to determine the forces of fashion--most local art depicts
'Hellenistic' and 'Roman' dress within mosaics or extant paintings, and that
dress carved in stone is for the immediate fashion of the time: what
Caracalla wore might not be something Marcus Aurelius would even consider
only a generation before.

Within two centuries the Vandals (originally from Scandanavia) would rule
all of North Africa and southern Spain (Andalucia is 'Vandalucia') and then
the area would fall back into Byzantine-Roman hegemony until the coming of
the Muslims (not Arabs) in the 7th century.

Thus, what the local fashions might be in 180 AD could be provisionally
determined by the locale (city, village, desert, etc.) and by the
nationality--Canaanite (what the Phonecian Carthaginians called themselves),
Numidian, Moor, Roman, Greek, Armenian, etc.  Many of the newer cities were
Roman colonies settled by legionary pensioners, who could have come from any
portion of the Empire.

2. Although the Mediterranean shared a common racial heritage and
culture--much mixed, it is not impossible that a black man could rise within
the cultures or that dynastic connections in the gold trade could have
brought a black royal wife to a Moor or Numidian noble.

3. The dress typified as Arab was not common to the Bedouin.  It is the
dress of the Aramaic and Greek speaking lands divided between the Persians
and the Romans for centuries previous to the Muslim invasions.  During that
period, Arabs were a part of the Roman Empire at Palmyra and Petra, and
Herod the Idumanean, was an Arab and a Jewish convert.  Thus, the dress worn
in a Numidian city might be similar to that worn in Antioch or Alexandria
with a few local flourishes in decoration, etc.

4. The present Arab speech of Tunisia, Algeria, Lybia or Morocco is a slow
development that probably had its greatest success among various classes of
the people at different times.  Its generalization was probably quite
late--perhaps as late as the 15th century.  Certainly 'Lingua Franca' was
spoken at sea and at ports deep into the Renaissance and the so called
Berber dialects were and are spoken outside of the cities.  There were many
languages of use throughout the period, and that remains true today.  The
written Numidian of King Juba has had as little formal affect on modern
Berber languages than has had written Sudanese on modern Sudanese non-Arabic
languages.  What is important is that modern descendants know that their
languages' ancestors were written and ruling tongues jostling for cultural
and political power with other languages--Latin, Greek and Phonecian.  The
present situation is not that far from the ancient one.

5. The languages of the Numidians, Moors, etc. are cousins to the Arabic and
the Ancient Egyptian--part of the Afro-Asiatic Family.  They had been
heavily influenced by the Canaanite (closely related to Hebrew and also
closely related to Arabic) and then by Greek and Latin.  Arabic took hold
where other Semitic languages had held sway--largely Aramaic-Syriac, and the
transformation was a slow process that has not even now been completed as
Mandaean and Assyrian Aramaic speakers still exist.

6. The attempt to Arabise the population of the so-called Arab countries is
as pernicious as the attempt to Anglify the minorities of so called
English-speaking nations.  Both the English and the Arabs are late comers to
the scene as rulers, yet it is equally wrong to think that Arabs imposed
their dress upon the conquered or that Arabs and English (sailors and
slaves) were not present in their so-called contemporary lands before their
overt conquests.

The dress, whatever it might have been in 180 AD may not have looked
substantially different in the previous or subsquent centuries.  Certainly
fashion is constrained by the environment, but the environment of North
Africa has changed.  The area was then probably more like Southern France
than today's Algeria or Tunisia; verisimilitude might lead the historically
savvy set designer to move his North African shoots to Andalucia or Avignon
with further bemoaning criticisms from local people who would then miss the
financial opportunities.

There is a lack of historical thoughtfulness in the criticisms made.  The
cultural arena has always been quite complex in the Mediterranean World and
it behooves the Welshman or Berber to recognize that complexity and use it
against the simplifiers, who would impose some 'Arab' or 'English'
monochrome, ahistorical nonsense as 'history.'  Fighting nonsense with
nonsense is too often the road taken and it can lead to nothing but more
nonsense.

The issue is the maintenance of complexity and diversity in culture, biology
and politics.  Linguistic diversity is a key component to the realization of
this, so greater linguistic freedom must be 'sold' as a good for the
majority and minority language speaker.  We too often adopt the ways of the
evil we are fighting so that Kurmanji speakers try to impose their dialect
on Sorani Kurds and vice versa or Kurmanji and Sorani try to Kurdify the
Assyrians or Dimli living among them.  Language diversity is not a zero sum
game and the languages of today are the result of fair-minded people of the
past--Arab-Muslim rulers of North African states among them.

State language policy is a post-French revolutionary ideology and we should
not think that the schooling simpliciities of the Napoleonic era necessarily
held sway in ancient or Medieval worlds.

Yours, Virgil Strohmeyer, Fulbrighter in Armenia