markellion's video: Peers and counterparts

(Note that all books that you can read have distortions of history in them including this one) Views from Arab scholars and Merchants by Jay Spaulding and Nehemia Levtzion http://www.amazon.com/Medieval-West-Africa-Scholars-Merchants/dp/155876304X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241409685&sr=8-1 Page 99 from Ibn Khaldun (This deals with the 14th century) Sultan Abul-Hasan was well known for his ostentatious ways and his presumption to vie with the mightiest monarchs and adopt their customs in exchanging gifts with their peers and counterparts and dispatching emissaries to distant kings and far frontiers. In his time the king of Mali was the greatest of the kings of the Sudan and the nearest to his kingdom in the Maghrib. Mali was 100 stages distant from the southern frontiers of his realms "Translation and the Colonial Imaginary: Ibn Khaldun Orientalist", by Abdelmajid Hannoum © 2003 Wesleyan University. http://www.jstor.org/pss/3590803 "The article shows how a portion of the writing of Ibn Khaldûn was translated and transformed in the process in such a way as to become a French narrative with colonial categories specific to the nineteenth century. Using a semiotic approach and analyzing both the French text and its original, the article shows how colonialism introduced what Castoriadis calls an "imaginary" by transforming local knowledge and converting it into colonial knowledge. In showing this the essay reveals that not only is translation not the transmission of a message from one language to another, it is indeed the production of a new text. For translation is itself the product of an imaginary, a creation-in Ricoeur's words, a "restructuring of semantic fields" (All the bellow deals with the 9th century but shows that many came from the south who werent slaves. Remember there are many mistranslations and distortions of history out there) M. A. Shaban on the Zanj revolt: http://books.google.com/books?id=Wkqlp-lHllcC&pg=PA101 =onepage&q=&f=false "All the talk about slaves rising against the wretched conditions of work in the salt marshes of Basra is a figment of the imagination and has no support in the sources.....The vast majority of the rebels were Arabs of the Persian Gulf supported by free East Africans who had made their homes in the region..... http://books.google.com/books?id=Wkqlp-lHllcC&pg=PA102 =onepage&q=&f=false (continued page 102)...If more proof is needed that it was not a slave revolt, it is to be found in the fact that it had a highly organized army and navy which vigorously resisted the whole weight of the central government for almost fifteen years. Moreover, it must have had huge resources that allowed it to build no less than six impregnable towns in which there were arsenals for the manufacture of weapons and battleships. These towns also had in their mammoth markets prodigious wealth which was more than the salt marshes could conceivably produce. Even all the booty from Basra and the whole region could not account for such enormous wealth. Significantly the revolt had the backing of a certain group of merchants who preserved with their support until the very end. Tabari makes it very clear that the strength of the rebels was dependent on the support of these merchants. " Bellow from Bottom page 109 http://books.google.com/books?id=Wkqlp-lHllcC&pg=PA109 =onepage&q=&f=false The sudden and conspicuous appearance of the Sudan amongst the armies of Ibn Tulun in Egypt calls for an explanation. Some sources like us to believe that he bought as many as 40,000 Negro slaves and made soldieries out of them to build up an empire of his own. Buying such a number of slaves, let alone training them to be an effective fighting force in a completely unfamiliar territory, would certainly have required more time than the few years that preceded their appearance in Egypt and subsequently in Syria and on the Byzantine borders in the early years of Ibn Tuluns rule 868/884. Other sources more accurately inform us that he enlisted these Sudan in his army page 111 http://books.google.com/books?id=Wkqlp-lHllcC&pg=PA111 =onepage&q=&f=false "For the Zaghawa the Nubian route was a much safer one that would save them from the hazards of the desert. Once this was established, their increasing presence in Egypt was almost a logical consequence and a clear indication of their interest is widening the scope of their trade. Ibn Tulun would have no objection to such an expansion which could only enhance the wealth of his domains. This common interest created the opportunity for military as well as economic co-operation which explains the enlistment of the Sudan in the army of Egypt