Comments on: Keeping Halal in the Ming dynasty

By: saladin1970

saladin1970 — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:41:05 +0000

I have put together a huge collection of references and accounts of islam in china, from the maritime period, through to the yuan, up until the panthay rebellion and the xinjian sultanate in the 19th century, along with conflict with the communists in the 1950’s etc

http://www.muslimwikipedia.com/mw/index.php/Islam_in_China

as well as the accounts of the muslim development of wushu during the qing period

http://www.muslimwikipedia.com/mw/index.php/Muslim_Chinese_Martial_Arts

By: scribblingwoman

scribblingwoman — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 08:26:00 +0000

Carnivalesque #22…

On the table Natalie Bennett writes about the Cooke sisters, learned women of the Renaissance, and reviews CJ Samson’s……

By: Hypography Science Forums - Quirky History facts!

Hypography Science Forums - Quirky History facts! — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:32:39 +0000

[...] Originally Posted by alexander Disagree all you want, its a fact and is posted as such, even wiki says: I trust Devoto and Oli more than wiki, especially as to Latin and Greek etymus. βάρβαρος (thanks for the unicode) meant a non-Greek because it meant a foreigner. The term ‘barbaria’ doesn’t mean ‘barbarian’ but instead a foreign country or, perhaps, a barbarian (in the sense of uncouth) act, something done by one. I had never heard a term such as barbarinus so I [url=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=barbarinus&btnG=Google+SearchGoogle d it[/url] and apart from a few hits with the exact same sentence as the wiki you quote, it seems to be a name. One hit is this post[which] quotes that wiki and then, in the same post, says:[quote]I do remember from my Latin primer that the Latin word ‘barbarian’ is translated into the (modern) English word ‘foreigner’. To an Englishman, the word ‘foreigner’ means someone not from England. To an Indian it means someone not from India… The velocity of light in vacuo is c, but c isn’t just the velocity of light. Inutil insegn� al mus, si piart timp, in plui si infastid�s la bestie. Everything that ever was is a song that is sung into existence. orbsycli. Hypography Forum Moderator: Physics and Mathematics, Philosophy of Science, Astronomy and Cosmology, Computer Science. [...]

By: J Chan

J Chan — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:18:58 +0000

“The word “Barbarian” comes into English from Medieval Latin barbarinus, from Latin barbaria, from Latin barbarus, from the ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (barbaros) which meant a non-Greek, someone whose (first) language was not Greek. The word is imitative, the bar-bar representing the impression of random hubbub produced by hearing spoken a language that one cannot understand, similar to blah blah, babble or rhubarb in modern English. Related imitative forms are found in other Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit barbara-, “stammering” or “one with curly hair” (This term was mainly used by Romans to refer to the Germanic tribes), and the forms are connected to a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European *baba-, “to stammer”.”

I’ve pasted the above from Wikipedia. I have just check the word ‘barbarian’ in the Oxford English Reference Dictionary which stated the meaning as (2) uncivilized.[orig(inally) of any foreigner with a different language or customs: F(rench) barbaricus.

So yes, the original word was from Greek, but it came into English usage from Latin. I do remember from my Latin primer that the Latin word ‘barbarian’ is translated into the (modern) English word ‘foreigner’.

Like Mosca pointed out it would take many posts (if indeed ever possible) to sort out whether the modern English word ‘barbarian’ is a suitable translation for the Chinese words. My feeling is that the attitude of the Han Chinese towards other non-Han Mongoloid peoples was that these people were/are simply non Han-speaking Chinese and not ‘barbarians’ as in the modern meaning of the ‘English’ word; so the word ‘barbarian’ would not be a suitable word in translation. The Hans did not seem to treat them as a separate race, a separate nationality perhaps, but not a separate race. How the other Mongoloid peoples view the Han is of course another matter.

By: Matthew Mosca

Matthew Mosca — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 02:49:44 +0000

In response to the post of J Chan, I have the authority of the Oxford English Dictionary in stating that the English word barbarian derives originally from the Greek. By contrast, the Chinese term Dada (韃靼) is a comparatively specific term for nomads to the north, emerging in the late Tang. It is equivalent, as J Chan points out, to the word Tatar, but Tatar (to cite again the OED) is the name “by which the people in question either called themselves or were designated by their neighbours,” i.e. it was a proper name rather than a generic term like barbarian (which applied generally to all non-Greek speakers), so there is no real equivalence between the European terms for “barbarian” and the Chinese “Dada/Tatar” in either origin or meaning.
In regard to the larger issue of whether the English “barbarian” is a suitable translation for more general Chinese terms for foreigners, such as Rong, Di, Man, and especially Yi, I think this is a highly complicated issue that would require many posts to sort out. Obviously, given the long history of the use of such terms the precise range of meaning in any given case depends on the context. As I recall from my researches, although I couldn`t give a chapter-and-verse citation, Qianlong himself distinguishes between individual uses of the term “Yi” in the Siku quanshu editorial process, seeing some uses as a harmless neutral term for foreigner, and other uses as carrying insidious pejorative overtones of barbarism, and therefore worthy of elimination.
I think etymology can help us out. To cite again briefly from the OED, in regard to the word barbarous: “The Gr. word had probably a primary reference to speech, and is compared with L. balbus stammering. The sense-development in ancient times was (with the Greeks) ‘foreign, non-Hellenic,’ later ‘outlandish, rude, brutal’; (with the Romans) ‘not Latin nor Greek,’ then ‘pertaining to those outside the Roman empire’; hence ‘uncivilized, uncultured.” What is true in Western languages, it seems to me, may well be true in Chinese. A word of comparatively neutral origins can accumulate associated meanings over time, so that a term harmless in itself can become quite negative. Many English racial slurs originate in this sense.
Whether “barbarian” is a suitable translation for terms like “Yi” is certainly worth debate (and, indeed, has attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention). The problem, ultimately, may be that “Yi” – and here I think of Qing period usage in reference to Westerners – was as close as a Chinese scholar could come to being neutral (because far more pejorative terms existed), yet was not actually a neutral term simply meaning foreign because it still forms one pole of a Chinese-civilized/non Chinese-uncivilized distinction.
Anyhow, I thank Alan for his interesting post, because case studies of how individuals understood the differences between Chinese and non-Chinese are far more interesting than theoretical arguments.

By: J Chan

J Chan — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 16:25:17 +0000

I believe the English word ‘barbarian’ came from the Latin word ‘Barbarian’ which is translated as ‘foreigner’. The reason for the word is that the Romans thought that the sounds ‘foreigners’ made sounded like ‘ba-ba’. The equivalent terminology for ‘Ba-ba’ in Chinese is ‘Ta-ta’- ie ‘Tartar’.

I think the view of the Han Chinese of the other Mongoloid tribes within their vicinity is that they are simply non-Han Chinese rather than the current meaning of the English word ‘barbarian’. Indeed, Mao in his Long March had to abandon his children with the hill tribe (non-Han) people for safety. Hence Han people never really thought that the hill tribe peoples or any other Mongoloid people were not good enough for the Hans to associate with.

By: Alan Baumler

Alan Baumler — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 03:06:33 +0000

I think the families now would clearly identify themselves as non-Muslims. Li Zhi, the famous philosopher, was from the second of these two families and he certainly did not call himself a Muslim. The Hui are sort of a tricky question. There are actually a lot of different Hui groups who are all the same in that they are ethnically Chinese and religiously Muslim, but very different in that they are of very different descent and cultural background. There are some Hui on the southeast cost who are descended from international merchants like the people in these stories. There are supposedly 4 mosques and some 90,000 Hui in Fujian
http://www.ehalal.net/chinamosques/mosques.html

The bulk of the Hui, and most of the other Muslim groups, like the Uighers, live in the Northwest

By: Abdurahman

Abdurahman — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 11:41:16 +0000

Facinating, I couldn’t stop reading. The families mentioned I suppose are now Han chinese families, no longer Muslims. Where do the Huizu, who’re still Muslims, come in? Forgive me if my question sounds silly.