Philip Grant

A US bomber capable of carrying 24 cruise missiles lands at a UK airbase, even though the UK government only permits defensive operations. Imagine using that to try to down a drone. In other news, down is now up & Keir #Starmer is a visionary leader. #IranIsraelUSWar

...seeing infrastructure not just as things humans have built, but simultaneously a moral, political, and economic order, and as itself an actor in the rebellion that helped determine how, and for how long, both Zanj & Abbasid forces fought. 4/4

3/4 If you're interested in rebellions in the first four centuries or so of the Islamic era, have a look. My article in it looks at the "infrastructure" of the Zanj Rebellion from an anthropological perspective,...

1/4 Please follow me on @philipgrant.bsky.social if you're on it, and I'll follow you back. I really don't want to have to glorify & enrich the world's most obnoxious man by continuing to use this medium, but I understand the "stickiness" of a site that has so many folk on it.

Yesterday was Shaaban al-Dalou's 20th birthday. Abed Abubaker spoke to his family about the young man burned alive by the IDF in Gaza. I am struck by his desire to live in Germany, a country whose political classes have closed ranks to suppress any criticism of Israel's actions.

@politypress politybooks.com/bookdetail?boo…

Published by @politypress & translated by me (Philip Grant). Out in November.

#IbnKhaldun + French #epistemology of the sciences + German #Idealism + #MullaSadra? Or why Ibn Khaldun was a cautious innovator, but not the "father" of economics, sociology, or historical science? 20% off Javad Tabatabai's Ibn Khaldun & the Social Sciences:

@OurShallowState She's unafraid to keep shipping US weapons to Israel & give Netanyahu unconditional support for genocide in Gaza & invading Lebanon. Wow, so fearless!

She's unafraid to debate. She's unafraid to be fact-checked. She's unafraid to go on a popular Gen Z podcast. She's unafraid to go on a popular Boomer radio show. There's a lot of fear in the world. Vote for the candidate that is unafraid.

@avzaagzonunaada Is it really a Euro/US difference? French books are usually very cheap compared even to US ones--perhaps because, while there are French academic publishers, major French publishing houses ("trade" in US parlance) also publish numerous books by academics.

Why are products of European (and by that I mean, English, German & Dutch) publishing companies so expensive compared to their American counterparts? Even big university presses, like MIT Press or Princeton Uni Press, don’t come close to the prices set by OUP, Springer & al.

@AbulfazlMoshiri @MilkLions did you see this?

«دوش دیدم که ملائک در میخانه زدند» سخنرانی رودی مته در پژوهشکدۀ ایرانشناسی دانشگاه تورنتو درباره موضوع کتابش تاریخ می و میگساری در دنیای اسلام. همین جمعه ساعت ۱ به صورت حضوری و مجازی.

@lameensouag @ait_kisou Or alternatively that Malik & his interlocutors imagined al-Barbar to be intermediate in skin colour between "the whites" and al-Habash?

@yakabikaj 'Indian corn' is what it was originally called in English, since 'corn' meant 'wheat' (& continued to have that meaning well into the 20th century; even today in the UK the usual term for maize when eaten is 'sweetcorn').

@maregan_le_fay Wonderful, thank you!

@EmbraBurgess Oh sorry Philip, I don't know how to turn it off! 😅 Thank you I will add you to my spreadsheet!

I've just been invited to become a review editor for The Medieval Review -- my job will be suggesting good reviewers for monographs. If you're interested in reviewing books would you please drop me a DM?

@thomas_wier Great thread, thank you. Has jiši ever been used to mean "race" (as in races of human beings)?

The word ჯიში jiši doesn't seem to have been used of grape-wine varietals until the 20th century, and nowadays it is still more common to use this word to refer to breeds of different kinds of animals.

Weekly Georgian Etymology: ჯიში jiši 'breed, varietal, race' from Middle Georgian ჯინში jinši / ჯინსი jinsi, from Arabic جنس jins variety, breed, from Syriac ܓܸܢܣܵܐ gensā kind, type, from Greek γένος race, stock, from Indo-European *ǵénh₁os kind. Often used for grape varietals.

@lawzinaj Yes, folān can be used as an adjective with inanimate objects in Persian. There is also the expression folān folān shodeh (shodeh = has become), which means "that wretched/blasted/bloody person/thing" where folān shodeh substitutes for a ruder insult.

This reminds me of the use of *fulān (which in my dialect can only refer to an unidentified human being) in Iraqi Arabic as a kind of generic determiner; e.g. flān mukān 'such-and-such place'. Checked now & it seems to exist in Persian too, not sure where it emerged originally.

@lawzinaj @Langzaban In Persian the equivalent is folān ō bahmān.

@Langzaban In Arabic too there's the phrase "flān u ʕəllān" (ʕəllān cannot be used independently of flān). It means sth to the effect of "random individual X & random individual Y".