Did Spoken Punic Survive Until the Advent of Arabic? Part Two: Punic After Carthage.

I'm on vacation. As I've done in recent years, I've prepared a number of posts on topics of historical and cultural interest ahead of time, posts unlikely to be overtaken by events. There will be one or more of these per day, and I may drop in to comment on current developments as required.

Delenda est Carthago. (Also given as Carthago delenda est, and both are shortened versions; Cato used to end all his speeches, regardless of the subject he was speaking about, with something like Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam: roughly, "Oh, and did I mention yet: Carthage must be destroyed.") In 146 BC, Rome delendaed the bloody hell out of the place, razing all the buildings and sowing the ground with salt. Every schoolboy knows (or allegedly once knew) that. The end.

But as I noted yesterday, the Punic language survived the fall of Carthage for an indeterminate period, and certain French and North African historians have suggested it lasted until the Arab conquest of North Africa in the seventh century AD, at which point the presence of a previous Semitic linguistic substrate, namely Punic, helped speed the adoption of Arabic.

The evidence is slim and, as our Amazigh ("Berber") friends persist in reminding the rest of us, Arabic's triumph is still far from complete in the Maghreb. And the Arab conquest of the region around ancient Carthage,though it began in the 640s AD, was only complete in the 660s; Kairouan was founded in 670. From 146 BC to 670 AD is more than eight centuries, a long survival for a language that was a foreign transplant to begin with (from Phoenicia), competing with the local languages (so-called "Libyco-Berber," a presumed ancestor of modern Tamazight languages) and the official tongue, Latin, and with no surviving sponsoring polity to keep it alive.

Don't expect to be utterly persuaded by what we'll be discussing over the next few days. I'm not 100% convinced myself, but since I first heard of the idea (originally associated as far as I know with the writings of William and Georges Marçais, though I think Ernest Renan may have raised the idea earlier; it's embraced by some modern Maghrebi scholars as well) I've thought it an intriguing but definitely unproven possibility. Don't expect me to prove it: hey, remember, I'm on vacation.

Punic is not a well-attested language. Most of what survives are brief inscriptions, often tombstones.  Early Punic is virtually identical with Phoenician; there are some variants in later Punic.

For a useful listing of literary evidence of late Punic, as well as a discussion of other sources, see Fergus Millar's "Local Cultures in the Roman Empire: Libyan, Punic and Latin in Roman Africa," The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 58, Parts 1 and 2 (1968), pp. 126-134 (available online but only via paid download through JSTOR, from which I take an extended quote (pp. 130-131)(but do nor here include his footnotes):

The literary evidence other than that of Augustine stretches from the late first to the sixth century, and deserves to be set out in full, in chronological order by the writers:

(1) Statius, Silvae IV, 5, 45-6 (to Septimius Severus):
non sermo Poenus, non habitus tibi, / externa non mens, Italus, Italus.

(2) Apuleius, Apologia 98, 8-9 (on his step-son and opponent Sicinius Pudens):
loquitur numquam nisi Punice et si quid adhuc a matre graecissat; enim Latine
loqui neque vult neque potest. Audisti, Maxime, paulo ante, pro nefas, privignum
meum, fratrem Pontiani, diserti iuvenis, vix singulas syllabas fringultientem.

(3) Ulpian, Lib. 2. fideicommissorum (Dig. xxxii. i i. pr.) :
fideicommissa quocumque sermone relinqui possunt, non solum Latina vel
Graeca, sed etiam Punica vel Gallicana vel alterius cuiusque gentis.

(4) Ulpian, Lib. 48 ad Sabinum (Dig. XLV. i. i. 6):
proinde si quis Latine interrogaverit, respondeatur ei Graece, dummodo congruenter
respondeatur, obligatio constituta est: idem per contrarium. sed utrum
hoc usque ad Graecum sermonem tantum protrahimus an vero et ad alium,
Poenum forte vel Assyrium vel cuius alterius linguae, dubitari potest.

(5) Epit. de Caes.20,8:
(Septimius Severus) Latinis litteris sufficienter instructus, Graecis sermonibus
eruditus, Punica eloquentia promptior, quippe genitus apud Leptim provinciae
Africae.

(6) Historia Augusta, vita Sept. Sev. I5, 7:
cum soror sua Leptitana ad eum venisset vix Latine loquens, ac de illa multum
imperator erubesceret ... redire mulierem in patriam praecepit.

(7) Jerome, Com. ep. Gal. II (Migne, PL XXVI, 357):
Antiquae stultitiae usque hodie manent vestigia. Unum est quod inferimus, et
promissum in exordio reddimus, Galatas excepto sermone Graeco, quo omnis Oriens
loquitur, propriam linguam eandem habere quam Treviros, nec referre, si aliqua
exinde corruperint, cum et Afri Phoenicam linguam nonnulla ex parte mutaverint.

(8) Procopius, de bello Vandalico ii, IO, 20:
[Greek text: I'll be giving a translation of this Procopius passage in a later part of this series—MCD

These texts are of course of very uneven value. Apuleius is trying to discredit his stepson, and the proof that he spoke only Punic is supposed to be his speaking Latin haltingly; and the late biographical passages on Severus have little or no weight in themselves. But the two passages of Ulpian are quite another matter. He is speaking about what is legally permissible in the first passage, and envisaging an exchange of a dubiously binding nature in the second. He is, in other words, talking about the real contemporary world, and it is not an accident that the three languages used as examples are Punic (in both cases), Celtic, and Aramaic or Syriac. It ought to follow, unless Ulpian is making a wild error, that Punic was still used by persons of something more than the lowest social standing and, from the first passage, that it was written-though not necessarily (see below) in Semitic script. Jerome compares with those in Punic changes that have occurred in another living language, Galatian. The passage of Procopius is set in the very dubious context of a legend about the settlement of N. Africa, supposedly referred to in an inscription of Phoenician language and lettering at Tigisis; Courtois has argued that the inscription could not have had its supposed contents, and consequently that the people did not understand it (and therefore that in this sentence Procopius refers to Berber). But the argument makes Procopius use φοινικικός in two different senses in the same passage, and proceeds too strictly from what we might presume but cannot know. The sentence is an addition by Procopius himself, who had been in Africa with Belisarius, and (especially when combined with Augustine's evidence) should be taken to mean what it says.

Millar also spells out the epigraphic evidence:

The literary evidence may thus provide a framework against which to set the documentary evidence, from coins and inscriptions. The coin evidence is very limited: Punic lettering appears on the coins of a few civitates liberae of the early Empire, but disappears in the first half of the first century.The very numerous Punic (or rather neo-Punic) inscriptions of Roman Africa, many with parallel Latin texts, are effectively impossible to survey with confidence, for they have never been assembled in any modern collection. Furthermore, not only in CIL viii but also in the otherwise excellent Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania (I952) the Punic parallel texts of Latin inscriptions are mentioned but not given. It may be sufficient therefore to start from the conclusion of G. Charles-Picard in his illuminating discussion of the civilization of Roman Africa: extended Punic inscriptions appear roughly up to the beginning of the second century, and brief formulae up to the beginning of the third. This view is based to a large extent on Charles-Picard's own invaluable work at Mactar, where nearly 130 Punic inscriptions have been found, though far from all published. Among them the latest extended texts have until recently been thought to be the three inscriptions,probably of the first century A.D., on the temple of Hathor Miskar (or Hoter Miscar); thev dedicatory inscription on the frieze of the temple runs to forty-seven lines in ten columns.A subsequent discovery, however, has produced two further inscriptions from the temple, one of a mere two lines, but another of eleven columns of three, five or six lines each. It records the repair of the temple, with the names of thirty-six contributors ; eighteen of them appear to have transliterated Latin names. It is suggested by the editors that the occasion cannot have been earlier than the early second century, and may well have been considerably later.

On Latino-Punic, the blog Bubulistan in 2007 summarized a thesis in Dutch on the subject and translated a few quotes. (It's the second of the two subjects quoted in the blogpost.) Not knowing  Dutch, I've omitted the Dutch text. The thesis author is convinced that Punic survived until the seventh century.

A thesis on the subject was recently defended by Robert Kerr of Universiteit Leiden (summary in pdf). Punic written in Latin script is of course nothing new: act V, scene 1 of Plautus' Poenulus, for example, contains an entire monologue in Punic (look here for an analysis taken from Rosenberg's Phönikische Sprachlehre und Epigraphik). Yet I had no idea that the Latino-Punic corpus was so extensive (Dr. Kerr mentions 69 inscriptions, "mostly epitaphs"), nor that Punic apparently remained a living "functioning North-West Semitic language" for much longer than previously thought. Dr. Kerr believes Punic was spoken as late as the 7th century AD and offers the following insight (NL) into the Punic-Roman relations after the Third Punic War (again, please excuse the poor translation):

It was long believed that the Punic culture was done for once Carthage was destroyed and "Africa" became a province of the Roman Empire. But the culture in Tripolitania actually only came to bloom. The region went its own way. Rome didn't really bother itself with it and the Carthagian influence was already diminished after the Second Punic War when the region broke away from the Carthagian sphere of influence. We are inclined to think of that period in terms of Roman-Carthagian dichotomy. But not every Punic speaker in North Africa had posters on their wall celebrating Hannibal as a liberator.

The earliest inscriptions in the Latino-Punic corpus are from 1st and 2nd centuries AD and were found in Leptis Magna. Later specimens were found deeper inland at the edge of the desert and date back to the 3rd and 4th and perhaps even 5th century AD. According to Dr. Kerr,

... in the pre-desert part of Tripolitania, Punic inscriptions far outnumbered the Latin ones. In fact, almost no Latin inscriptions were found there.

No surprise there since apparently Punic was spoken by the mixed population which came about when Punic men married Libyan women. Punic men

[Dutch text omitted from quote]

... were settled in the border areas by the Romans. They had been in the army and were now employed to man defendable border outposts for a good pay. They were afforded a lot of freedom. In Roman sources, speakers of Punic were famous for being able to successfully cultivate the land in dry areas.

Unfortunately,

[Dutch text omitted from quote]

The system of defendable outposts and water retrieval was fragile and maintenance intensive and did not survive Berber raids beginning in the 6th century and the Islamic conquest in the 7th century.

As for the actual language of the inscriptions, there is still some controversy as to what it actually is:

[Dutch text omitted from quote]

Some berberologists and africanists still wanted to believe that while poor leaseholders still spoke Punic, the elite did not and switched completely to Latin. But the inscriptions are a first-hand proof that Punic was still spoken by the upper class on the coast as late as the 3rd century AD, as is also evident from the tradition surrounding the Emperor Septimius Severus who was born in Leptis Magna.

I found Dr. Kerr's findings concerning the phonology of the inscriptions utterly fascinating. He compared the writing conventions used in both Latin and Punic inscriptions of North Africa and found that the latter must be derived from the former. This lead him to the conclusion that the pronunciation of North African vulgar Latin must have strongly resembled that of Punic. In both languages, for example, ellision of unstressed vowels is a rule. Dr. Kerr believes that the phonology of both vulgar Latin and Punic in North Africa must have been influenced by a substrate language which he terms Berbero-Libyan. In his own words:

[Dutch text omitted from quote]

Compare that with the similarities in pronunciation of Afrikaans and South African English, or Irish and Irish English. The language is different, but the accent is immediately recognizable.

And finally, even the good old St. Augustine (who was born in Roman North Africa) comes into play here:

[Dutch text omitted from quote]

It is often assumed that Augustine actually meant "Berber" when he spoke of Punic. But he was very well aware of the difference between Punic and Libyco-Berber. Of the latter he only knew that it existed, but he did not speak it. Augustine for example recognized Hebraisms in the Old Latin translation of the Bible because he spoke Punic. He did not speak any Hebrew.

Linguistic blogger Lameen Souag, meanwhile, noted this post in 2007 as well, and adds:

In eastern Libya, as it happens, Punic continued to be written even after the Phoenician alphabet was forgotten; this body of inscriptions, using the Latin alphabet to write Punic, is called (logically enough) Latino-Punic, and a comprehensive database of such inscriptions is available from Leiden.

Unfortunately that link today brings up what appears to be a 404 error in Dutch and I'm not finding it through other searches.  Lameen also mentions Saint Augustine and the 11th century text of al-Bakri, which may hint at a very late survival, but we'll be discussing them and other evidence in later parts of this series.

All these authors have referred to the evidence of Augustine. He is the last certain point in this exploration; later evidence such as that of Procopius and al-Bakri is highly uncertain. We'll discuss Augustine on Monday; enjoy your weekend.

Did Punic Survive Until the Advent of Arabic? Part 3: The Evidence of Augustine

I'm on vacation. As I've done in recent years, I've prepared a number of posts on topics of historical and cultural interest ahead of time, posts unlikely to be overtaken by events. There will be one or more of these per day, and I may drop in to comment on current developments as required.

In Friday's post, we looked at the evidence for the survival of the Punic language from the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC down to the era of Augustine. Today we'll look at what Augustine has to say about the survival of Punic, and tomorrow look at the (much less solid) evidence of its survival until or beyond the arrival of Arabic.

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), Doctor of the Christian Church, is a towering figure in the intellectual world of late antiquity; his Confessions and The City of God are still read today, and his literary output was huge; a great many of his letters, sermons, and other works survive, making him one of the most documented figures of the fourth and fifth centuries. He was also North African, born at Thagaste in Roman Africa (Souk Ahras, Algeria), studied at Madaurus, Numidia (M'Daourouch, Algeria) and at Carthage, the Roman city that arose on the site of Punic Carthage and is today a suburb of Tunis. After time in Rome and Milan he returned to North Africa and eventually became Bishop of Hippo Regius (modern Annaba in Algeria).

Ethnically, Augustine may have been of Berber origin; famously his father was a pagan and his mother, Monica, a Christian; he spent time as a Manichean before converting. Though he wrote in Latin, his writings frequently refer to another language spoken in the countryside, which he calls the lingua Punica. Some early biographers insisted he meant Berber, but it is clear from many of his references that he meant Punic, including citations of several words to be noted below. In fact, he also speaks of a "Libyan" language spoken beyond the Roman frontier, which probably refers to the "Libyco-Berber" language presumed ancestral to modern Tamazight; he did not speak this language, but apparently understood Punic. In fact, though Augustine did not know Hebrew, he explicates some Biblical names by reference to Punic. (Punic/Phoenician and Hebrew are very closely related Canaanite dialects with an almost identical lexicon.)

I have not seen one important work on this subject, W. M. Green, "Augustine's Use of Punic," University of California Studies in Semitic Philology XI (1951), but I think there is enough evidence available to demonstrate Augustine really did mean Punic. (Nor is he the only evidence for his era; his contemporary St. Jerome also refers to Punic, but for Augustine it is an everyday language, in fact, apparently the primary language of the countryside in Roman territory outside the major towns. (Whereas he seems to imply "Libyan," presumably Berber, was mainly spoken outside the Roman limes.) And he often speaks of the lingua Punica, and there are many references indicating that the Church struggled to find Punic-speaking clergy and that often translators were needed. The recent work by Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Violence in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge University Press, 2011) deals with the Punic-Latin divide in some detail. And Fergus Millar, in the work quoted in the previous part of this series,

The two essential points from the evidence of Augustine are firstly that the 'lingua Punica' was a Semitic language related to Biblical Hebrew; and secondly that it was fairly widespread not only in rural bishoprics but among Augustine's own congregation in Hippo. On the other hand it is clear that it did not rival Latin as a language of culture.

Augustine himself argues in one of his epistles with those who dismiss Punic's value (quoted in Wikipedia's "Punic Language" article:

Writing around AD 401, he says:

Quae lingua si improbatur abs te, nega Punicis libris, ut a viris doctissimis proditur, multa sapienter esse mandata memoriae. Poeniteat te certe ibi natum, ubi huius linguae cunabula recalent.

And if the Punic language is rejected by you, you virtually deny what has been admitted by most learned men, that many things have been wisely preserved from oblivion in books written in the Punic tongue. Nay, you ought even to be ashamed of having been born in the country in which the cradle of this language is still warm. (Ep. xvii)

But the critical evidence that leaves little room for argument that when Augustine said lingua Punica he was referring to the language of Ancient Carthage is lexical. I have already noted that Augustine, who apparently knew no Hebrew, explicated some Biblical terms from his knowledge of Punic. But two other interesting pieces of vocabulary occur in Augustine's writings.

"When our rural peasants are asked what they are. they reply, in Punic, "Chanani."

By far the most conclusive statement of all is this one, from Augustine's 
Epistulae ad Romanos inchoata expositio (ed. J. Divjak 197, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesasticorum Latinorum Vol. 84, 162), Ep. 13:

Unde interrogati rustici nostri, quid sint, punice respondentes: "Chanani" -- corrupta scilicet, sicut in talibus solet, una littera, quid aliud respondent quam "Chananaei?"

When our rural peasants are asked what they are, they reply, in Punic, "Chanani," which is only a corruption by one letter, what else should they respond but "Chananaei?"

But Chanani is even better than the Latin Chananaei, Canaanites. "Phoenician" is a Greek name and "Punic" a Latinization of it. The Phoencians called their language Kan‘ani and their homeland Kan‘an, the same word the Bible uses for the land of Canaan and the Canaanites (כנעני). In Isaiah 19:18 Hebrew itself is referred to as "the language of Canaan" (שְׂפַת כְּנַעַן); Hebrew, Phoenician and Canaanite (and Moabite) all form the Canaanite language subgroup of Northwest Semitic, and are extremely close to each other. And as late as five centuries and a half after the destruction of Carthage, Augustine tells us that when asked what they are (unde interrogati quid sint) "our rustics" responded that they were Kan‘ani! And clearly, the language in which they replied was also Kan‘ani.

That particular anecdote, along with many other mentions in Augustine's works of people in the countryside speaking Punic, has convinced most scholars today; those who used to claim he must have meant Berber have no comparable evidence or, actually. any.

But there's another piece of lexical evidence as well.

Salus = Tria

In the same epistle quoted above, Augustine tells a story about his predecessor as Bishop of Hippo, one Valerius. Valerius was Greek and is said to have spoken Latin poorly and Punic not at all. One day he is said to have been listening to the locals speaking in Punic and he heard a word which he thought sounded similar to the Latin salus (safety or, to a churchman like Valerius, salvation). Valerius asked those with him (Augustine may have been present himself as he tells the tale) what this Punic word that sounded like salus meant in Latin, and he was told "tria", three.

So in what sort of language would the word for "three" remind a Latin speaker of salus. "Three" in Phoenician was shalush (compare Hebrew shalosh, שָׁלוֹשׁ, Arabic thalatha). Perhaps to a Latin ear the sh sound was indistinguishable from the s sound, or perhaps the local dialect of Late Punic did not make the distinction; in early Canaanite, early Hebrew and Phoenician the shin and sin were not distinguished in writing (though later Hebrew added a dot to make the distinction); and remember the story in Chapter 12 of Judges, in which the men of Ephraim were distinguished from the men of Gilead by using the word shibboleth as a password, since the Ephraimites couldn't pronounce the shin. (On a related point, our name "Judges" translates the Hebrew Shoftim, which implied more than just a judicial function; and the civil government officials of Ancient Carthage were known in Punic as shofetim, the same word but camouflaged via Latin into the English term suffetes, which you may or may not have encountered depending on how classical your education is.)

So, salus = shalush = tria = three. And Valerius is said to have preached a sermon on how Latin salus, salvation, could be achieved through the Punic meaning of the word, "three": that is, through the Trinity. A bit of a reach, and perhaps why Valerius' successor as Bishop of Hippo is much better remembered.

Augustine's evidence leaves little real doubt that in the provinces of North Africa he knew (Numidia and Africa Proconsularis, roughly Algeria and Tunisia), spoken Punic was a going concern in his era (he died in 430). Latin-Punic tomb inscriptions from Tripoli and Sirte in Libya suggest it still survived there as well.

But 430 is still over 200 years before the Arab conquest, and the argument that Arabic spread quickly because another Semitic language was already spoken there requires Punic to have survived for those centuries. The evidence trail gets much colder after Augustine, but it does not disappear entirely. Tomorrow, Procopius and al-Bakri, two very curious and arguable testimonies.

Did Punic Survive Until the Advent of Arabic? Part 4: The Post-Augustine Evidence

 I'm on vacation. As I've done in recent years, I've prepared a number of posts on topics of historical and cultural interest ahead of time, posts unlikely to be overtaken by events. There will be one or more of these per day, and I may drop in to comment on current developments as required.

In the third part of this survey of the survival of Punic yesterday, we examined the rather extensive evidence provided by St. Augustine of Hippo of the survival of Punic as a spoken language in his day (d. 430). But the argument that Punic was still a living language when Arabic arrived two centuries and more later requires the assumption that Punic did not die out in the interim. Skeptics have gradually yielded ground as evidence has been assembled, and many scholars accept that Punic may indeed have survived in a few places. But the evidence trail thins out considerably after Augustine. Today we will look at the evidence for the fifth to the 11th centuries; tomorrow this series will conclude with a discussion of some of the interpretations scholars have put forward about the legacy of Punic in North Africa in the Arab period.

Roughly contemporary with Augustine we also have epigraphic evidence of the survival of Punic in the trilingual funerary inscriptions in Sirte, Libya from the fourth and perhaps fifth centuries. I have not seen a standard study of these, Jongeling. Karel; & Kerr, Robert M. (2005). Late Punic epigraphy: an introduction to the study of Neo-Punic and Latino-Punic inscriptions. In part two of this series I did quote excerpts from Kerr's doctoral dissertation on Late Punic. And keep Sirte in mind when we come to the evidence of Al-Bakri below.

There is no incontestable literary evidence for Punic after Augustine, but there is a very intriguing, though in a bizarre context, account in the historian Procopius' De Bello Vandalico, "Of the Vandal Wars," from the sixth century. In last month's post about the Nika Riots we talked about Justinian and his efforts to reclaim Italy and North Africa for the Eastern Roman Empire; Procopius is the great historian of the era of Justinian. He actually accompanied Justinian's great General Belisarius on some of his campaigns. In discussing the reconquest of North Africa from the Vandals, Procopius drops an intriguing aside into a story about the legendary settlement of North Africa by the Phoenicians. I take my quote from H. B. Dewing's older translation of Procopius' History of the Wars, because it is available online even on vacation in the Georgia mountains and is free of copyright:

And finding there no place sufficient for them to dwell in, since there has been a great population in Aegypt from ancient times, they proceeded to Libya. And they established numerous cities and took possession of the whole of Libya as far as the Pillars of Heracles, and there they have  lived even up to my time, using the Phoenician tongue. They also built a fortress in Numidia, where now is the city called Tigisis. In that place are two columns made of white stone near by the great spring, having Phoenician letters cut in them which say in the Phoenician tongue: "We are they who fled from before the face of Joshua, the robber, the son of Nun."

Hardly surprising that this passage has often been dismissed; the columns near Tigisis mentioning Joshua of the Bible seem clearly a figment of legend.  But it is not the incredible tale itself but the aside that matters: "and there they have lived even up to my time, using the Phoenician tongue." Again quoting Fergus Millar on this text:

The passage of Procopius is set in the very dubious context of a legend about the settlement of N. Africa, supposedly referred to in an inscription of Phoenician language and lettering at Tigisis; Courtois has argued that the inscription could not have had its supposed contents, and consequently that the people did not understand it (and therefore that in this sentence Procopius refers to Berber). But the argument makes Procopius use 'φοινικικός' in two different senses in the same passage, and proceeds too strictly from what we might presume but cannot know. The sentence is an addition by Procopius himself, who had been in Africa with Belisarius, and (especially when combined with Augustine's evidence) should be taken to mean what it says.

The problem is that the legendary story in which the aside occurs tends to make one dismiss Procopius' possible firsthand testimony that Phoenician (Punic) was still spoken in North Africa "even up to my time, using the Phoenician tongue." Millar is right that in conjunction with Augustine's testimony, this could make a lot of sense.

Procopius, if we accept the testimony, brings us down to just a century before the Arab conquests. There is no mention of Punic, at least as such, in the early Arab histories of the conquest of the Maghreb. In fact there is only one other piece of evidence sometimes adduced to suggest a longer survival of Punic, and this is, intriguingly, quite late: the 11th century AD.

The Arab traveler and geographer Al-Bakri (Abu ʿUbayd Abu ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Bakri (c.1014-1094) was born in Islamic Spain (Al-Andalus) and wrote several works of which the most important is his Kitab al-Masalik wa'l-Mamalik (Book of the Roads and the Kingdoms), a general geography and description of key routes of the Muslim world. As an Andalusian, Bakri knew North Africa well and his work is particularly valuable as a description of it.

There is a passage in Bakri that raises eyebrows: remember, we are talking here about the 11th century AD, some 650 years after Augustine. Let me quote Lameen Souag on Bakri's text:

The twist in this tale is that Phoenician may have survived into the 11th century AD! Al-Bakri (whom I've mentioned before) enigmatically says of the inhabitants of Sirt in Libya that:

لهم كلام يراطنون به ليس بعربي ولا عجمي ولا بربري ولا قبطي ولا يعرفه غيرهم
‍They have a speech in which they jabber which is neither Arabic nor Ajami (by which he probably means Latin but might mean Persian) nor Berber nor Coptic, which no one but them knows.

The location (in eastern Tripolitania) is about right for it to be Punic, and if it were Greek you would expect him to know, considering he cites (more or less correctly) the Greek etymology of طرابلس (Tripoli) in the next page. So was Punic still spoken in the 11th century? Your guess is as good as mine, but it looks plausible.

Now for a couple of points: the latest epigraphic evidence of Punic we have is in triliteral Greek-Latin-Punic Christian catacombs in Sirte (Sirt), so we know Punic was still known there in the 4th century and maybe the 5th. So it's interesting Bakri found an unusual language in Sirt in the 11the century; he specifically says it isn't Berber or Coptic or ʿAjami. One reason Lameen has crossed out "Persian" is that in Spain and North Africa, ʿAjami, which in the East usually means Persian, was commonly used to refer to Latin or local Romance dialects or the Mediterranean lingua franca. As Millar notes, Bakri seems to have been able to recognize Greek as well, so what was this language?

It may have been Punic. It isn't clear if Bakri had any familiarity with Hebrew, from the Jewish communities in Spain and North Africa; if he had, he should have noted the kinship if the language were indeed Punic.  At best, the Bakri quote tantalizes and perhaps teases a bit.

The Procopius and Bakri references both raise questions and I suspect the best we can do here is render a Scots verdict of "not proven."

But if indeed Punic did survive, what are the historical and linguistic implications?

Tune in tomorrow ...

Did Spoken Punic Survive Until the Advent of Arabic? Part One

I'm on vacation. As I've done in recent years, I've prepared a number of posts on topics of historical and cultural interest ahead of time, posts unlikely to be overtaken by events. There will be one or more of these per day, and I may drop in to comment on current developments as required.

Unless you're familiar with some of the French literature on North African history you may never even have heard of the question I want to explore over the next few days: how long did Punic, the language of Ancient Carthage, survive as a spoken language? If that seems rather obscure, consider this aspect: some have argued that Punic was still spoken in some parts of north Africa at the time of the Arab conquest in the seventh century, AD. And, it has been argued, the presence of a closely related Semitic language eased the adoption of the Arabic language. A modern Tunisian linguist has gone so far as to argue that Punic underlies the modern spoken dialects (darija) of North Africa. Most would not go that far. But it's an intriguing, if unproven, assertion.

Carthage, of course, was destroyed by Rome in the wake of the Third Punic War in 146 BC. Rome destroyed the city, and also much of whatever literature and history in Punic existed. But the language did not disappear: Saint Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-450) refers to it on several occasions and apparently understood it. Some skeptics have suggested that when Augustine says "Punic," he means Berber, but he gives examples which support that it was indeed Punic, including noting that its speakers referred to it as "Chenani": clearly kan‘ani, "Canaanite," as Phoenician speakers referred to their own language. So the survival of Punic into the fourth century seems pretty reasonable. Other authors before Augustine also make occasional reference to Punic, as does a contemporary, St. Jerome.

A few inscriptions exist in "Neo-Punic," a late form of Punic, into the Common Era, and there are "Latino-Punic" inscriptions as well; there is more dispute about certain texts in the "Libyan" alphabet (ancestor of the Tifinagh used for today's Berber), buy which may include some in Punic, especially in Tripolitania.

After Augustine the trail becomes a lot more unclear; there's a passage in Procopius' account of the Vandalic War in the sixth century that speaks of Punic, but it is in a confused and rather dubious context; there's a passage in the 11th century Arab geographer al-Bakri about a language that is neither Arabic nor Berber, but it's otherwise not clear what he means.

Over the several parts of this vacation post, I'll be talking about many of these clues in greater detail.

Let me add a couple of caveats up front, though: first, other than Augustine, all the evidence is at best suggestive and not proven; getting from Augustine to the Arab conquest requires spanning three centuries. Second: epigraphical evidence is scant, and proving what languages were spoken in antiquity is difficult; even the assumption that modern Berber languages descend from ancient Libyan or "Libyco-Berber" is mostly inference and common sense, not provable. And third: we really have very little evidence of Punic as distinct from Phoenician: some tombstones and other finds in Carthage and elsewhere in North Africa and Spain, and some inscriptions in Malta that seem more Punic than Phoenician, but the maternal country's language (Phoenician) and the colonial language (Punic) seem to be more closely linked than British and American English.

Punic Survival Part Five: Did Punic Influence Arabization and Maghrebi Darija?

 I'm on vacation. As I've done in recent years, I've prepared a number of posts on topics of historical and cultural interest ahead of time, posts unlikely to be overtaken by events. There will be one or more of these per day, and I may drop in to comment on current developments as required.

For four posts now we have examined the question of whether Punic, the Phoenician language of Ancient Carthage and its colonies, survived as a spoken language (presumably alongside Berber and Latin, throughout the life of Roman North Africa. Some have argued that the presence of a Semitic vernacular in North Africa actually made the adoption of Arabic smoother, and some Punic enthusiasts have even gone so far as to argue that Punic influence can still be found in the spoken dialects (darija) of North Africa, along with Maltese (which, though today considered a separate language, has a grammatical structure comparable to North African Arabic dialects, though its Semitic vocabulary includes many borrowings from Romance and from Greek). Let's look at each of these assertions in turn.

It has often been noted that while the Arab conquests swept as far east as India and Central Asia and as far west as southern France, Arabic did not become the spoken language in all of that vast area; though Iran, India, and Central Asia became permanently Muslim, they retained or soon regained their original Persian, Turkic, or Indic vernaculars, though with a large input of religious and legal terms from Arabic. (Even in areas that did not remain Muslim, Arabic had a lasting influence; consider the huge presence of Arabic-based words in Spanish, and the entire Maltese language.)  But neither did Arabic remain limited to the Arabian Peninsula: it became firmly established from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Persian/Arab Gulf.

As far back as the era of Ernest Renan the idea was floated that Arabic remained established in those areas which already spoke a closely related language. Renan was an early comparative Semiticist; today the Semitic languages are understood not as a separate language family but as a sub-family of closely-related languages within the broader "Afro-Asiatic" language family (comparable to the way the Romance or Germanic or Iranian languages are embraced within the broader Indo-European famiily).

Although non-Semitic languages have always existed in the Levant and Iraq (Sumerian, Hittite, Armenian), it is indisputable that for more than a millennium before Arabic spread outside the Arabian Peninsula, closely related Semitic languages were dominant: first Akkadian/Assyrian/Babylonian, and later Aramaic/Syriac. There is little doubt that the spread of Arabic was greatly aided by the prior presence of a closely related language in Aramaic/Syriac; the Nabatean script, for example, originally was used to write Aramaic but gradually adapted to Old North Arabian, the immediate ancestor of Classical Arabic.  And early Arabic was sometimes written in the Syriac alphabet, the texts known as Karshuni in Arabic (Garshuni in Syriac). Arabic simply supplanted (though to this day not completely, for we have discussed modern Aramaic here frequently) the older, closely related language. In Jewish communities across the Arab world, various forms of Judeo-Arabic supplanted or were established alongside Hebrew and Aramaic.

The establishment of Arabic in Egypt and North Africa raises other questions, though. Last August my vacation postings examined why Coptic, which once was more entrenched than Aramaic, had died out as a spoken language while Aramaic has not. There are multiple reasons, but clearly Egypt is an Arabic-speaking country with only small pockets of Nubian and Siwi Berber speakers. If Arabic only took hold where Semitic languages were spoken, Egypt would seem to be a huge exception. And so would the rest of North Africa, though the survival of the Amazigh or Berber languages in the Maghreb show that Arabic is not as thoroughly entrenched as it is in Egypt. To this Maghrebists such as Georges and William Marçais and others have pointed to the survival of Punic as a factor facilitating the adoption of Arabic. But Punic was never spoken in Egypt, so what about Egypt?

Ancient Egyptian, and its later form Coptic, are not unrelated to Semitic; like the Berber languages and some other Saharan languages they are part of the broader Afro-Asiatic family, so one could say that Arabic took root because the languages were still related; that could also apply to the Berber languages of North Africa, regardless of any Punic survival. The Berber languages, while Afro-Asiatic, are much farther removed from the Semitic group than is Egyptian. Though not itself considered part of the Semitic sub-family, Egyptian has features that seem more Semitic than other Afro-Asiatic languages outside the Semitic group. Some basic vocabulary (including numerals an pronouns) are closely kin, as are some triliteral roots.

This question of whether Arabic put down deeper roots where Semitic languages were already spoken underlies much of the debate about the survival of Punic, and you can find, for example, an online discussion of some of the issues here.

But the question of Punic does not end with whether its survival made the adoption of Arabic easier. There are those who argue that a Punic substratum can still be identified in the colloquial dialects of North Africa (plus Maltese).  At first glance this seems extreme, but there is definitely a detectable Coptic substratum in colloquial Egyptian, and plenty of Berber loan-words in North African Arabic; could there be a Punic substratum as well? This argument today is primarily identified with the Algerian-born linguist Abdou Elimam, who is a strong advocate of treating the darija of the Maghreb as languages independent of if related to Standard Arabic.

At least one of Elimam's articles on Punic influence on Maghrebi can be found online: Du Punique au Maghribi: Trajectoires d’une langue sémito-méditerranéenne, published in Synergies Tunisie No. 1, 2009, pp. 29-38. The article (obviously) is in French, and while I believe he has written more extensively on this subject, I presume this summarizes his arguments.

Now Elimam is a Sorbonne-trained linguist and I certainly am neither, nor do I find anything impossible about the idea of an identifiable substratum of Punic in Maghrebi dialects of Arabic, but I am struck by several things. First, there is the rather tiny corpus of actual Punic texts, most of which tend to be tombstones, funerary inscriptions, and the like; Punic is a form of Phoenician but the total corpus of Phoenician texts is not great either, and the fact that we know as much as we do about either language is based in part on their extremely close resemblance to Hebrew. And all of these language are themselves relatively close to Arabic.

At the end of his article, Elimam presents a table showing vocabulary in common between Punic and Maghribi. These include Ab for father, Um for mother, bny for build, and so on. But wait: those are all good Arabic as well as good Canaanite (though modern Hebrew pronounces the first as Av today). For life he notes the similarity between Punic hayim and "Maghribi" hayat, but the latter is of course perfectly good Arabic as well. (To be fair, not all his examples are this obviously equivalent to Standard Arabic, but most are.) I have to say that this particular article doesn't completely convince me, but perhaps if I read more of his work I'd be persuaded.

UPDATE: By happy coincidence,  Lameen Souag just addressed Elimam's claims as well, as he notes in a comment below, though the blogpost is in darija.

I know this long discussion of Punic and Arabic may not have been everybody's cup of tea; on to other subjects in my remaining vacation posts, and back to normal blogging on Monday.

A Punic Survival in Berber, Even in Siwa?

 I like to think there is some small, eccentric subset of my readers who have been asking themselves, "why is he spending so much time  on history and current events and neglecting posts on obscure linguistics of dead Middle Eastern languages?" I even like to think that a subset of that subset has been mumbling, "You haven't had a single post on Punic since the summer of 2013! " Then, you may recall, we discussed the question of whether spoken Punic (the language of Ancient Carthage) survived until the coming of Arabic.

Actually, maybe none of you are thinking that. But not being a linguistics expert, I have to refer you to someone who is, Lameen Souag over at Jabal al-Lughat, who also deserves congratulations for his 10th anniversary of blogging. I also recently linked to his posts about the officialization of Tamazight in Algeria.

In this particular link. "Raisins from Carthage to Siwa," Souag, citing a Facebook post, notes that the standard word in Tamazight dialects for "raisin" is usually either a Berber phrase meaning "dried grapes" or is a loan word from Arabic, but that in Djerba in Tunisia, Zuwara and other places in western Libya — and, curiously, at Siwa, the only Berber enclave in Egypt —the root in use is found in a late inscription in Neo-Punic. The root is also documented in Hebrew, as is often how Punic and Phoenician inscriptions are deciphered. (Hebrew, Phoenician, Punic and Canaanite are extremely similar languages.)

Souag, who has written a book on Siwi and its relations to other Berber languages, notes that Carthaginian influence, and Neo-Punic, never extended east of central Libya, so what explains the presence in Siwa of all places? He answers:

The answer is simple, as I discuss in the introduction to my book Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt): modern Siwi seems to derive mainly from a Berber variety spoken much further west, which reached Siwa only during the Middle Ages. There very probably was a Berber language spoken in Siwa before that, but if so, it has left very few traces.

 I, at least, find that fascinating.

Time Out for Something Completely Different: Punic and Berber Influences on Etruscan?

Deep in your heart, do you sometimes get tired of the latest bloodshed, the latest rhetoric, or the latest political analysis of the current scene? Not to mention the latest peace plan or human rights atrocity? Do you wish, momentarily, for something older, more cerebral, but still relevant to the Middle East? Do you ever ask yourself, "were there any Punic or Berber loan words in Etruscan"?

No? Really? Never? Not even when contemplating the geopolitics leading to the First Punic War? Well, me neither, at least until now.

But, rest assured, someone cares. Here's a piece called "Ancient African Adstrate in Etruscan." I might quibble with "Ancient African," since Punic is Phoenician to all intents and purposes, and thus Middle Eastern, and yes, I had to look up "adstrate" too. Apparently linguists use it in contradistinction to superstrate and substrate, and it means loans between languages which were of equal influence or prestige. Berber is indeed an indigenous African language, or rather family of languages, on the other hand, so "Ancient African" can stand.

Now, the first thing to keep in mind about Etruscan is that nobody can read Etruscan. Well, that's not strictly true; we can read it, since the alphabet mixes Greek and Latin; we just haven't got a clue what the words mean. When I look at Finnish, I recognize all the letters, but other than "Nokia" and certain vodka labels I can't recognize any of the words. But Finns can read it, and there are dictionaries. Etruscans aren't around to help out. All of us are like that in Etruscan, since the alphabet is readable but the root language is unknown. the numbers have been deciphered and Roman sources give us a few more words, but no one can read Etruscan texts unless there's a Latin bilingual, and that's mostly limited to tombstones.

But before the rise of Rome, Etruria and Carthage were the dominant powers of the Western Mediterranean, so some borrowing would make sense. And the Berber (which is more what is cited in the article than Punic) could have come via Carthage. Though the article doesn't caption the two paintings there, they are reconstructions, I'm pretty sure, of the Naval Harbor at Carthage. Despite the good job the Romans did on Catoizing Carthage. its outline remains visible even today.

This link deserves a hat tip to Abu 'l-Rayhan al-Biruni on Facebook, who is a prolific linker for a guy who died in 1048 AD.  I don't know who his current incarnation is.

Anyway, sometimes I need to remind myself I'm a historian. And it gets the mind off the carnage in Syria, Yemen and Libya.

An Aside on Tifinagh

Yesterday was unusual given the current high level of politics and revolution in that two of the posts — one on Morocco and one on Libya — touched on Tamazight ("Berber") language issues. In the second of these I reproduced the flag used by some Tamazight-speakers as an international flag of the Amazigh (pl., Imazighen) people, and noted simply that "The character is in the ancient Tifinagh script." (It's actually the letter "Z" in Tifinagh.)

Now it says here (actually it says it up there under the masthead) that I'm supposedly "Putting Middle Eastern events in cultural and historical context." I'm reasonably well aware that for many of my readers who aren't specialists in things North African, "the ancient Tifinagh script" may not mean very much. (As a test case I asked my wife, who has an MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and she was unfamiliar with the term.) So let's take a brief break from ongoing revolutions and talk Tifinagh for a bit.

Now I've never studied any of the "Berber" languages (these days a somewhat politically incorrect term, since it comes from the same Greek root as "barbarian"), and therefore everything I say here is derivative of other people's expertise. The Wikipedia article isn't bad as an introduction.

Tifinagh (ⵜⵉⴼⵉⵏⴰⵖ in Tifinagh: don't blame me if the font doesn't display properly on your browser) is the name used in modern North African languages to refer to an ancient script known to classical historians as "Libyco-Berber" script. It is an alphabetic writing system seemingly ultimately derived from Phoenician, and presumably adapted by Berber-speaking peoples from the script of their Carthaginian neighbors. In fact, and this is one of the most intriguing things about it, "Tifinagh" is apparently formed from the Berber feminine prefix with the root "Punic," from the Latin word for Carthaginians, itself of course derived from the Greek name for the Phoenicians. (But it must have come through the Latin: the Carthaginians, like the Phoenicians and the early Hebrews as well, all referred to their own language as kan‘ani, "Canaanite.") So the name may mean "Punic characters" or "Phoenician characters," though the derivations are not always obvious. As with the Greek and Roman alphabets, both derived ultimately from the Phoenician, the shapes have changed noticeably. (There are other theories of origin; there's rarely unanimity on these kinds of issues.)

The original "proto-Tifinagh" or Libyco-Berber script was used in North Africa from roughly the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD. Variants were used as far afield as the Canary islands, where ancient inscriptions have been found and the indigenous language of the pre-colonial people known as Guanches shows affinities to Berber.

A form of Tifinagh survived the ancient world and the disappearance of other writing systems such as Punic. The Tuaregs of the Sahara, who speak a Berber language, retained a form of Tifinagh as their own writing system.

In recent decades, "Neo-Tifinagh" was adapted for the writing of other Tamazight languages besides Tuareg. Most publications in Tamazight, however, appear in Latin script, or sometimes in Arabic. In 2003, however, Morocco began to favor Neo-Tifinagh over either Latin or Arabic character, and the number of publications are increasing. In Algeria, I understand Latin script is most common in the Kabyle areas, Arabic among the Shawi (Chaoui), and Tifinagh in the deep Sahara. Many Imazighen see it as a "native" script (even if Punic was an import from the east a long time ago), an alternative to either copying the colonial powers by using Latin script, or adaptimg to the Arabic-speakers who have long suppressed Tamazight by using Arabic script for Tamazight.

For the truly interested, here's a French introduction to the pan-Berber alphabet in both Tifinagh and Latin from YouTube via a website devoted to the Shawi language (spoken in eastern Algeria), that via a website devoted to all things Shawi, and ultimately via Lameen Souag:

Time for a Post on Phoenician Influence on Etruscan Religion: The Semitic Great Goddess in Etruscan Italy

Once again we've been mired for a while in the stuffy old third millennium AD, so it's time for one of our ventures backwards. We all know the Phoenicians got around a lot and were quite an enterprising folk (ask a Maronite if you don't believe me). Ancient Etruria, the land of the Etruscans, is in Italy and not normally in the purview of this blog, but we have previously raised the burning question of "Punic and Berber Influences on Etruscan?" here a while back. Since the Etruscan language is still largely unknown (though the script is derived from the Greek alphabet and thus pronounceable), there are still many open questions, including the one we blogged about before.

So  I thought I'd note this post on the Paleoglot blog a few months ago: Estara Alphaza and the Phoenician Influence in Etruria. An excerpt:

The sequence estrei alφazei appears throughout an Etruscan document called the Liber Linteus. I take this to be marked in the locative case ending in -i (with a meaning like English 'by', 'with' or 'at'). I see in this an original exonym of a goddess *Estara Alφazai, a transparent byname of the pan-Semitic lady of fertility. We can compare *Estara to Punic Phoenician  *ʕAstoret or earlier Babylonian Ishtar, equatable with either the Great Goddess of the pantheon, Uni, or with the younger goddess Turan (aka Catha), the lady of fertility. The second term of this phrase is declined in the locative case too and appears to be a diminutive in -za. Stripping away the layered morphology of the second term then, we are reduced to a core root, *alφa, another transparent Semitic loan, meaning 'ox'.

Putting this all together, I therefore read Estrei Alφazei as 'before Ashtarte with Calf' in reference to a general religious theme that existed across several Mediterranean cultures whereby a goddess of fertility like Ashtarte or Asherah is portrayed in the form of a mother cow with a bull as consort (representing an equivalent of Canaanite Baal) and she rears a son who's predictably in the form of a calf. One is reminded perhaps of later Egyptian worship revolving around a mother Isis holding the child Horus, or later still a mother Mary cradling the child Jesus in her arms.

Phoenician Asthtart

Though I would suggest the proper Egyptian goddess for comparison would be Hathor, a fertility/maternity goddess often portrayed as a mother cow (something I'm not aware Isis ever was), and the photo with the post even looks a lot like representations of Hathor, whom the Greeks identified with Aphrodite; they also identified Phoenician Ashtara or Ashtart, whom they caled Astarte, with Aphrodite. It's well known that the whole northern Semitic world had a fertility goddess known as Ishtar/Astarte/Ashtart/Athart/Ashtoroth etc., and other forms of the name have apparently previously been found elsewhere in Etruscan. The great goddess was a pervasive figure in the Semitic pantheon, whose name varied less than the high god's did (El, Baal, etc.) and the Canaanite goddess Ashteroth was denounced by the Hebrew prophets. That she spread to Etruria is hardly surprising, and via the Greek Aphrodite she became one source of the Roman Venus.

Babylonian Ishtar

The Phoenicians or their Punic colonies may well have been how she got to Etruria, but she was well enough known throughout the Mediterranean for there to have been other routes.

North African and Middle Eastern Popes, Part II: The Past

In yesterday's discussion of the (remote, at least this year) chances the Catholic College of Cardinals might elect a Middle Eastern Pope, I noted that it has happened in the past, mostly the very distant past. In this Part II of my post, I thought I'd review the Syrian, Palestinian, and North African Popes of the past. (There were also a number of Greek Popes, including Greeks from Anatolia, but I'm leaving them out.)

Catholics hold Saint Peter to have been the first Pope, installed by Jesus himself, and consider every Bishop of Rome after Peter to be a Pope, though of course the modern institution did not emerge until after the end of the Roman persecutions and the legalization of Christianity. Peter himself, of course, was a Middle Easterner himself, a Galilean fisherman; archaeologists in Capharnaum have excavated an ancient church built over what tradition says was his house. So the earliest Middle Eastern Pope., in Catholic tradition, is Saint Peter himself.

We're hearing talk about the possibility of an African Pope. That's happened before.  As the prominence of Saint Augustine and other early North African theologians in Church history remind us, North African Christianity had close ties with Rome and often provided intellectuals, theologians, and on a few occasions, Popes, to the Roman Church. Though some claim these men were black African, it is generally assumed that these early Popes were ethnically Berber/Amazigh, though some may have been Punic, also arguably the case with Saint Augustine, who understood some Punic. (But that's another post.)

In the traditional order, and after Peter, here are the Middle Eastern and North African Popes. (Most data based on The Catholic Encyclopedia online and Wikipedia.)

Pope Saint Evaristus, the fifth Pope, is said to have come from a family of Hellenized Jews and to have been born in Bethlehem.  He reigned about 99-107 AD during the reign of the Emperors Domitian and Trajan.

Pope Saint Anicetus. The 11th Pope; reigned either 150-167 or 153-168. He was born in Emesa (modern Homs) in Syria.

Pope Saint Victor I (189?-199?): The 14th Pope, still in the period of pagan rule. was Victor I. He is described as African and he may have been born at Leptis Magna in what is now Libya. His dates are often given as 189-199 AD, though some start his reign in 186 or extend it to 201.

Pope Saint Miltiades (or Melchiades) (311-314). The 32nd Pope. Though there is even some doubt about this Pope's exact name, he was Pope at the time of the Edict of Milan in 313, when Constantine legalized Christianity. He is said to be from Africa; the Roman province of Africa included Tunisia, parts of eastern Algeria and western Libya.

Pope Saint Gelasius I (492-496). The 49th Pope. A prolific writer and defender of Orthodoxy during the so called Acacian Schism. Also said to be North African, and the last of the African Popes.

The remaining Syrian Popes served in a period known as the "Byzantine Papacy," when, after the reconquest of the Italian Peninsula by the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian, the Eastern Emperors had the power to choose or at least approve the choice of Pope (later delegated to the exarch of Ravenna, the Imperial seat in Italy). Most in this period were Greek,Syrian or Sicilian (Greek-speaking at the time).

Pope John V,  the 82nd Pope, reigned 695-686. Said to have been a Syrian and the son of one Cyriacus.

Pope Sergius I. the 84th Pope, 687-701, was born in Antioch but raised in Sicily; he struggled over doctrine with the Byzantine Emperor.

Pope Sisinnius, the 87th Pope, reigned for only 20 days in January-February 708. His date of birth 8s uncertain; if after the 630s he may have been born in Syria after the Islamic conquest.

Pope Constantine I. the 88th Pope, reigned 708-715; succeeded Sisinnius; like him, he is described as a Syrian with a father named John, and may have been Sisinnius' brother. Fought with several Byzantine Emperors over doctrinal issues.

Pope Saint Gregory III, 90th Pope, reigned 731-741. A Syrian, birth date unknown but perhaps born after the Islamic conquest; chosen by acclamation but approved by the Imperial Exarch at Ravenna, he struggled with the Emperor Leo III over the Iconoclastic controversy. His last years were spent in warrs with the Lombards.

Gregory III was the last of the Syrian Popes; his successor, Pope Saint Zachary, a Greek from Calabria, was the last of the "Byzantine" Popes. Syria and North Africa were now under Islam, and Italy was passing out of Byzantine control with the Lombard conquests.

The Syrian popes were: Evaristus (107), Anicetus (168), John V (687), Serguis I (701), Sisinnius (708), Constantine I (715), and Gregory III (732). I shall give brief biographical sketches of the Eastern popes among these who distinguished themselves in the government of the universal Church.
St. Anicetus (155-166) was an inhabitant of Hims, Syria and most likely was martyred under Marcus Aurelius. He is particularly noted for his efforts against the heresies of Valentine and Marcion. It was during his pontificate that St. Polycarp, the great Bishop of Smyrna, came to Rome in connection with the controversy about the date of Easter. His relics are kept now in the chapel of the Pontifical Spanish Institute and are venerated publicly with great ceremony on his annual feast day, April 17th.
John V (685-686), before his election, was the representative of the pope at Constantinople. He was a peacemaker and obtained tax exemption for the Roman domains of Sicily and Calabria from the Emperor of Constantinople.
Sergius I (687-701) came from a Syrian family, which had settled at Palermo, Sicily. Leo II appointed him the titular priest of the Church of St. Suzanna (he was responsible for its restoration). He championed the prerogatives of St. Peter against the Byzantine emperor Justinian II. As pope, he encouraged missionary work in France, England and Ireland. (He baptized the King of Wessex— Caedwalla.) He introduced into the Latin Liturgy, the prayer "Agnus Dei" at the moment of the breaking of the bread; he also solemnized the celebration of the four principal feasts of the Blessed Virgin: The Nativity, the Purification, the Annunciation, and the Dormition.
John VII (705-707) was a patron of the arts, responsible for the early mosaics of St. Peter's Basilica and the frescoes at St. Mary Antiqua, the finest extant examples of the art of his time.
Constantine I (708-715) was a champion of papal rights against the tyranny of the Byzantine emperors and against the Monothelite heresy, which taught that there was only one will in Christ. He was the first to wear the Tiara of Eastern origin. Most likely the lozenge shaped Greek "Epigonation" was adopted at this time. The pope alone among Western bishops wears it.
Gregory III (731-741) was a Benedictine of Syrian origin. He was noted for his linguistic abilities and his subtle sense of humor. A great missionary pope, he organized the religious structure of Germany under St. Boniface as Metropolitan. In 732, he condemned the Iconoclastic heresy and proclaimed his veneration for the holy images and relics by building a beautiful oratory, dedicated to all the saints, at Rome. It was he who obtained the political sovereignty of Rome (with himself as temporal ruler) from Pepin the Short. This sovereignty existed until 1870.
Zacharias (741-752) was last but not least of the great Eastern popes. He was a mild, meek man of great diplomacy and administration. An accomplished linguist, he translated into Greek the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great. He was also a peacemaker with the emperor and furthered the work of St. Boniface in the final conversion of Germany.
- See more at: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2741#sthash.TzcWDiKh.dpuf

The Syrian popes were: Evaristus (107), Anicetus (168), John V (687), Serguis I (701), Sisinnius (708), Constantine I (715), and Gregory III (732). I shall give brief biographical sketches of the Eastern popes among these who distinguished themselves in the government of the universal Church.
St. Anicetus (155-166) was an inhabitant of Hims, Syria and most likely was martyred under Marcus Aurelius. He is particularly noted for his efforts against the heresies of Valentine and Marcion. It was during his pontificate that St. Polycarp, the great Bishop of Smyrna, came to Rome in connection with the controversy about the date of Easter. His relics are kept now in the chapel of the Pontifical Spanish Institute and are venerated publicly with great ceremony on his annual feast day, April 17th.
John V (685-686), before his election, was the representative of the pope at Constantinople. He was a peacemaker and obtained tax exemption for the Roman domains of Sicily and Calabria from the Emperor of Constantinople.
Sergius I (687-701) came from a Syrian family, which had settled at Palermo, Sicily. Leo II appointed him the titular priest of the Church of St. Suzanna (he was responsible for its restoration). He championed the prerogatives of St. Peter against the Byzantine emperor Justinian II. As pope, he encouraged missionary work in France, England and Ireland. (He baptized the King of Wessex— Caedwalla.) He introduced into the Latin Liturgy, the prayer "Agnus Dei" at the moment of the breaking of the bread; he also solemnized the celebration of the four principal feasts of the Blessed Virgin: The Nativity, the Purification, the Annunciation, and the Dormition.
John VII (705-707) was a patron of the arts, responsible for the early mosaics of St. Peter's Basilica and the frescoes at St. Mary Antiqua, the finest extant examples of the art of his time.
Constantine I (708-715) was a champion of papal rights against the tyranny of the Byzantine emperors and against the Monothelite heresy, which taught that there was only one will in Christ. He was the first to wear the Tiara of Eastern origin. Most likely the lozenge shaped Greek "Epigonation" was adopted at this time. The pope alone among Western bishops wears it.
Gregory III (731-741) was a Benedictine of Syrian origin. He was noted for his linguistic abilities and his subtle sense of humor. A great missionary pope, he organized the religious structure of Germany under St. Boniface as Metropolitan. In 732, he condemned the Iconoclastic heresy and proclaimed his veneration for the holy images and relics by building a beautiful oratory, dedicated to all the saints, at Rome. It was he who obtained the political sovereignty of Rome (with himself as temporal ruler) from Pepin the Short. This sovereignty existed until 1870.
Zacharias (741-752) was last but not least of the great Eastern popes. He was a mild, meek man of great diplomacy and administration. An accomplished linguist, he translated into Greek the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great. He was also a peacemaker with the emperor and furthered the work of St. Boniface in the final conversion of Germany.
- See more at: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2741#sthash.TzcWDiKh.dpuf

The Syrian popes were: Evaristus (107), Anicetus (168), John V (687), Serguis I (701), Sisinnius (708), Constantine I (715), and Gregory III (732). I shall give brief biographical sketches of the Eastern popes among these who distinguished themselves in the government of the universal Church.
St. Anicetus (155-166) was an inhabitant of Hims, Syria and most likely was martyred under Marcus Aurelius. He is particularly noted for his efforts against the heresies of Valentine and Marcion. It was during his pontificate that St. Polycarp, the great Bishop of Smyrna, came to Rome in connection with the controversy about the date of Easter. His relics are kept now in the chapel of the Pontifical Spanish Institute and are venerated publicly with great ceremony on his annual feast day, April 17th.
John V (685-686), before his election, was the representative of the pope at Constantinople. He was a peacemaker and obtained tax exemption for the Roman domains of Sicily and Calabria from the Emperor of Constantinople.
Sergius I (687-701) came from a Syrian family, which had settled at Palermo, Sicily. Leo II appointed him the titular priest of the Church of St. Suzanna (he was responsible for its restoration). He championed the prerogatives of St. Peter against the Byzantine emperor Justinian II. As pope, he encouraged missionary work in France, England and Ireland. (He baptized the King of Wessex— Caedwalla.) He introduced into the Latin Liturgy, the prayer "Agnus Dei" at the moment of the breaking of the bread; he also solemnized the celebration of the four principal feasts of the Blessed Virgin: The Nativity, the Purification, the Annunciation, and the Dormition.
John VII (705-707) was a patron of the arts, responsible for the early mosaics of St. Peter's Basilica and the frescoes at St. Mary Antiqua, the finest extant examples of the art of his time.
Constantine I (708-715) was a champion of papal rights against the tyranny of the Byzantine emperors and against the Monothelite heresy, which taught that there was only one will in Christ. He was the first to wear the Tiara of Eastern origin. Most likely the lozenge shaped Greek "Epigonation" was adopted at this time. The pope alone among Western bishops wears it.
Gregory III (731-741) was a Benedictine of Syrian origin. He was noted for his linguistic abilities and his subtle sense of humor. A great missionary pope, he organized the religious structure of Germany under St. Boniface as Metropolitan. In 732, he condemned the Iconoclastic heresy and proclaimed his veneration for the holy images and relics by building a beautiful oratory, dedicated to all the saints, at Rome. It was he who obtained the political sovereignty of Rome (with himself as temporal ruler) from Pepin the Short. This sovereignty existed until 1870.
Zacharias (741-752) was last but not least of the great Eastern popes. He was a mild, meek man of great diplomacy and administration. An accomplished linguist, he translated into Greek the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great. He was also a peacemaker with the emperor and furthered the work of St. Boniface in the final conversion of Germany.
- See more at: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2741#sthash.TzcWDiKh.dpuf

The Syrian popes were: Evaristus (107), Anicetus (168), John V (687), Serguis I (701), Sisinnius (708), Constantine I (715), and Gregory III (732). I shall give brief biographical sketches of the Eastern popes among these who distinguished themselves in the government of the universal Church.
St. Anicetus (155-166) was an inhabitant of Hims, Syria and most likely was martyred under Marcus Aurelius. He is particularly noted for his efforts against the heresies of Valentine and Marcion. It was during his pontificate that St. Polycarp, the great Bishop of Smyrna, came to Rome in connection with the controversy about the date of Easter. His relics are kept now in the chapel of the Pontifical Spanish Institute and are venerated publicly with great ceremony on his annual feast day, April 17th.
John V (685-686), before his election, was the representative of the pope at Constantinople. He was a peacemaker and obtained tax exemption for the Roman domains of Sicily and Calabria from the Emperor of Constantinople.
Sergius I (687-701) came from a Syrian family, which had settled at Palermo, Sicily. Leo II appointed him the titular priest of the Church of St. Suzanna (he was responsible for its restoration). He championed the prerogatives of St. Peter against the Byzantine emperor Justinian II. As pope, he encouraged missionary work in France, England and Ireland. (He baptized the King of Wessex— Caedwalla.) He introduced into the Latin Liturgy, the prayer "Agnus Dei" at the moment of the breaking of the bread; he also solemnized the celebration of the four principal feasts of the Blessed Virgin: The Nativity, the Purification, the Annunciation, and the Dormition.
John VII (705-707) was a patron of the arts, responsible for the early mosaics of St. Peter's Basilica and the frescoes at St. Mary Antiqua, the finest extant examples of the art of his time.
Constantine I (708-715) was a champion of papal rights against the tyranny of the Byzantine emperors and against the Monothelite heresy, which taught that there was only one will in Christ. He was the first to wear the Tiara of Eastern origin. Most likely the lozenge shaped Greek "Epigonation" was adopted at this time. The pope alone among Western bishops wears it.
Gregory III (731-741) was a Benedictine of Syrian origin. He was noted for his linguistic abilities and his subtle sense of humor. A great missionary pope, he organized the religious structure of Germany under St. Boniface as Metropolitan. In 732, he condemned the Iconoclastic heresy and proclaimed his veneration for the holy images and relics by building a beautiful oratory, dedicated to all the saints, at Rome. It was he who obtained the political sovereignty of Rome (with himself as temporal ruler) from Pepin the Short. This sovereignty existed until 1870.
Zacharias (741-752) was last but not least of the great Eastern popes. He was a mild, meek man of great diplomacy and administration. An accomplished linguist, he translated into Greek the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great. He was also a peacemaker with the emperor and furthered the work of St. Boniface in the final conversion of Germany.
- See more at: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2741#sthash.TzcWDiKh.dpuf

Rome's Severan Emperors: Libyan Founder, Two Emperors from Homs in Syria

We talked about Libya much of last year, and have been horrified by Homs much of this. This post is about both places. But not in this millennium, or even the last one.

Two aspects of the way history is usually taught in the West militate against our understanding the real flavor and fabric of the Classical world. One is the tendency to see some sort of sharp division between the Late Roman Empire and the "Middle Ages"; a division that was real enough in Western Europe but much less sharply demarcated in the Mediterranean. The other is the tendency to equate the Roman Empire with Italy, and assume all the Emperors thought like Italians.

We tend to assume that the "Roman Empire" fell, as far too many schoolchildren have had to learn, in 476 AD, when the Emperor Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor, died. In some legalistic sense that may be true. But there was still a Roman Emperor in Constantinople, and would be until 1453; there had been periods when there was no Emperor in the West, so authority simply devolved on the East, and in 476 nobody knew there wouldn't be another Western Emperor after a few years of vacancy, as had happened before. And Romulus Augustulus didn't have much power, anyway. But we can argue the periodization another time.

I want to address the other point, and emphasize a dynasty of Emperors which was largely Punic/Libyan and Arab/Syrian in its ancestry, the Severans. A dynasty who dominated the imperial title from 193 to 235 AD, the Severans had personal roots in what today we would call the Middle East, and also waged several of their campaigns there. One even brought the worship of his Syrian god to Rome itself.

The founder of the dynasty, Lucius Septimius Severus (145-211; Emperor 193-211), was born at Leptis Magna in the province of Africa Proconsularis, which embraced what is today Tunisia and the Tripoli region of Libya. Leptis Magna remains one of the best preserved Roman ruins anywhere,. in what is now Libya. His mother is said to have been from Italy, his father a local of either Punic (Carthaginian) or local Libyan ("Berber," Amazigh) extraction. Severus' first wife was also from the region, but died without leaving sons. His second wife, Julia Domna, was to be a power in her own right. She was a Syrian from Homs, known as Emesa in Greek and Latin, and said to be of Arab descent. Her ancestors were hereditary priests of Baal in Homs, and she was educated and a devotee of philosophy, and commissioned the biography of Appolonius of Tyana by Philostratus. She seems to have been one of those formidable and politically powerful wives often encountered in Roman (and later, Byzantine) history, and familiar to viewers of I, Claudius or Rome.

Severus campaigned against Parthia and also in his native North Africa, and he and his Syrian Empress left two sons, Caracalla and Geta, who were to share the imperial throne. They fell out (of course) and Geta was killed, leaving Caracalla as sole emperor.

When Caracalla died a non-Severan, Macrinus, took the throne, but while preparing to fight Persia his Syrian troops, the Legio III Gallica, revolted and declared support gor Bassianus, a young relative of the Severans. Though Bassianus would officially reign as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, he is remembered in history as Elagabalus (or in Greek, Helioganbalus), for the Syrian god he imposed on Rome.

He and his successor are listed among the Severan emperors, though their blood link is not to Severus but to Julia Domna. Elagabalus was a grandson of her sister, Julia Maesa. He was raised in Homs as a priest of the god known to the Romans as Elagabalus (Aramaic El Gabal, the El of the Mountain). His grandmother's wealth reportedly won the IIIrd Legion over to him, as well as a story he was a son of Caracalla, and he replaced Macrinus.

He also displaced Jupiter. His god Elagabalus was assimilated with the Roman Sol Invictus (the unconquered Sun) and declared to be above Jupiter in the Pantheon. A black meteoritic stone worshipped in the temple in Homs was brought to Rome and installed in a temple on the Palatine Hill. Nor was that all. Elagabalus rejected many Roman traditions, married several wives (one of them a Vestal Virgin), and soon lost popularity with the Army. He also had himself publicly circumcised. He allegedly conducted homosexual affairs and may have engaged in other public behavior that violated what Rome expected of its Emperors, at least in public.

His grandmother, Julia Maesa, had had two daughters. One, Julia Soaemias, was the mother of Elagabalus. The other, Julia Avita, had a son, Severus Alexander. Julia Maesa persuaded the Emperor to make his young cousin Caesar, the position next in line to the imperial title. He did, and the troops soon killed Elagabalus and his mother and installed Severus Alexander as Emperor. The grandmother, however, remained the imperial grandmother. Elagabalus reigned only four years and Severus Alexander would reign 13, but he's less remembered, being more effective much less miniseries-worthy. Born in what is now Lebanon and raised at least partially in Homs, he was another Syrian emperor, and ruled for 13 years, proving far more popular than his notorious cousin.

With his assassination, the period of the semi-dynastic Roman Principate dissolved into a crisis of civil war, ended only by Diocletian late in the century. The Severan or Syrian emperors, though founded by a Libyan, left a mixed reputation behind, from fairly solid (Severus) to downright scandalous (Elagabalus).

This Wikipedia image (Creative Commons license) may clarify things (with pictures!), though you'll probably need to click on it to enlarge it enough to read.

Fighting Cities: Misrata and Homs

I wrote a bit yesterday about Qena in Egypt, because I assumed most of my readers were unfamiliar with that small Upper Egyptian city. But compared to other cities in the Arab world which are bleeding far more than Qena, we should also note the suffering martyr cities of Misrata in Libya, and Homs in Syria. I could add Manama in Bahrain, Sana‘a and Ta‘izz in Yemen, and other places, but let's do these two little-known (in the West) cities for now. Of the two I've only been in one (Homs, and that nearly 40 years ago), so this is second hand knowledge.

Misrata (Misurata). Libya's third largest city, after Tripoli and Benghazi, has a district population of somewhat over half a million. See the Wikipedia entry. As everyone knows, its the front line at the moment, being hammered by the regime from air and land while the international coalition is trying to get foreign workers out and hold Qadhafi back. Its early history is spotty and it's not clear if it was founded in the Punic (Cathaginian) or Roman eras, but the name suggests the Semitic word for "East" (compare Mizrah in Hebrew, which was extremely close to Punic), so it may have been something as simple as the "eastern town" compared to Carthage. An older name, something like Thubactis or Tubaqt, is suggested in some sources.

Homs. Syria's third largest city has been the hotbed of protest the past few days. It goes back at least to Seleucid times (see the Wikipedia link), but may be older: it not only lies on the ancient route between Damascus, one of the world's oldest cities, and Aleppo to the north, but is also on the Orontes (‘Asi) River, a key artery. In Hellenistic and Roman times it was known as Emesa, and with the Arab conquests this became (what it probably already was, roughly in Syriac), Hims or Homs. The great general who led the Arabic conquest of Syria, the "Sword of God," Khalid ibn al-Walid, is buried in a mosque in Homs.

Time for the Periodic Obscure Linguistics Post

It seems like over the last couple of months we've spent so much time talking about Egyptian elections, Tunisian governments, Naguib Mahfouz' centenary, Bashar with Barbara Walters, banning bikinis (and in counterpoint, the "nude Egyptian blogger" affair and its aftermath and imitators), that I've really neglected to post very much on extremely obscure linguistic points about Middle Eastern languages you've never heard of, for which I apologize. I realize of course that profound historical change, literary genius, and revolution, all interest some of my readers, but for the frustrated pedants among you, relax: I've got links on two languages from two completely distinct language families on different continents: Libyco-Berber (Afro-Asiatic) and Hazaragi (Indo-European). Happy now?

Though these links (which are other people's work of course, not mine) do not quite reach the sublime obscurity of my post on (possible) Punic and Berber influences on Etruscan last June, those of you who need a respite from the contemporary may find them useful.

For Libyco-Berber, the linguist/blogger Lameen Souag, he of the Jabal al-Lughat blog, has posted two pieces on Libyco-Berber at the MNAMON website, one on the writing system, and the other on the language itself. It's obvious not much is known of the latter.(If the second and third links act up, as they're doing for me, you can access them via Jabal al-Lughat.)

Hazaragi lies at the other end of our region, where it is spoken by the Hazaras of Afghanistan. Closely related to Persian, Dari, and Tajik, though it has other influences, including Turkic and Mongolian loanwords, in keeping with the tradition that the Hazara are of Mongol origin. (They're also Shi‘ites in heavily Sunni Afghanistan. This post discusses both their language and their history.

Historical Note: Hannibal and Qadhafi

Mu‘ammar Qadhafi named one of his sons Hannibal, presumably because he identifies with the greatest military leader North Africa ever produced, the man who so shook Rome that for centuries Roman mothers would threaten their children with Hannibal ad portos: Hannibal is at the gates. Qadhafi is probably the only person who has ever seen much resemblance between himself and the man who crossed the Alps and ran rampant in Italy.

As Qadhafi threatens to "burn" Libya and "cleanse it house to house," he might think a moment about the last years of his presumed role model. After the end of the Second Punic War and Hannibal's defeat at Zama by Scipio Africanus, he rose to political leadership in Carthage, but seven years after Zama, Rome., alarmed by his growing popularity, insisted he be exiled. Rather than risk the security of Carthage, Hannibal voluntarily exiled himself. (Qadhafi would have more problems, given his lack of friends. He had to go out of his way to deny he was in Venezuela a couple of days ago, so Chavez might take him; Daniel Ortega called him with words of support; and of course he's been good pals with Berlusconi, but Berlusconi has problems of his own right now.)

Not only did Hannibal voluntarily exile himself, but after providing military advice to the Seleucids and other eastern Mediterranean rulers, Rome's eastward conquest eventually brought him into their purview once again. As Rome sought to capture him, he took poison, reputedly saying, "Let us relieve the Romans from the anxiety they have so long experienced, since they think it tries their patience too much to wait for an old man's death." Perhaps some encrusted legend has attached, but it is a better exit than burning your own country.

A little more Qadhafi-esque ego, however, turns up in a famous ancient anecdote told by Livy and most likely apocryphal, but which I'm going to tell anyway. According to the story, the victor of Zama, Scipio Africanus, was visiting the eastern court where Hannibal was then employed, and encountered his old nemesis. (There's no other historical record of such a visit by Scipio, but why ruin a good story with fact?) I'm paraphrasing from memory here, but the story is that Scipio supposedly asked Hannibal, military man to military man, who he considered to be the greatest general who had ever lived. Hannibal responded, Alexander the Great. Scipio then asked, who did he rank second? Hannibal said, well, I consider myself second to Alexander. Scipio then said, but, I defeated you. And Hannibal responded, "If you had not defeated me, I would have ranked myself even above Alexander."

Though the anecdote is probably not historical, the ego is the only thing Qadhafi shares with Hannibal. The difference is that Hannibal won the battle of Cannae, while all Qadhafi ever took was the radio station in 1969. Having named a son for Hannibal, he might pay more attention to Hannibal's greatest moment, his graceful exit to save his native country. Instead, it appears to be Qadhafi himself, not his country's foreign foes, whose motto is Libya delenda est.