Yusuf Celik

My book is out. brill.com/display/title/…

@timuridtimurid @davidchaffetz @AlirezaNader Interesting, in Kurdish you would say “hespa min” and not “hespam” or anything of the likes.

@davidchaffetz @AlirezaNader Thank you!

Ancient Persian, Van Bladel To explain the transformation of ending-rich Old Persian to ending-absent New Persian, Van Bladel reviews a number of theories about how languages change. It has long been assumed that languages simplify over time, as each generation of children learn their mother tongue a little less well than their parents. This, however, does not explain why a language like Polish remains quite ending-rich, while neighboring Swedish is simple. There are even cases of languages getting more complex over time, which appears to be the case of Yaghnobi, an Iranic language of the Pamir which has developed new verb forms compared to its ancestor, Soghdian. The relatively isolated location of Yaghnobi as compared to Persian provides the main clue for Van Bladel: languages which need to be acquired by adults (as opposed to children), tend to show simplified forms. He surveys the literature of creoles, pidgins, areal influences, and his own experience of teaching languages like ancient Greek to university students, and concludes that Middle Persian emerged because speakers of many other languages, Greeks, Armenians, Aramaens, and others, needed to learn to speak with Iranians, and they only managed to do this in simplified form. He emphasizes the fact that large populations were resettled inside the empire. Enslaved peoples and mercenaries, as well as artisans and common laborers lived in Fars and Khuzestan. These people would never have been able to express themselves in correct Old Persian. Even the upper classes, born of foreign mothers, would struggle with the language since they did not spend time with their fathers until they were five years old. On the other hand, the conquered people, who did not make others learn their language, retained a lot of ancient features: Greek, Armenian and Caucasian languages. The language of the Avesta, the holy scriptures of the Zoroastrians, on the other hand, was preserved intact by a specialised priestly class, the Magi. Since no foreigners had to learn this language, they had no influence on it. Two languages which started out very closely aligned, wound up, at the end of the Persian Empire, completely different. Van Bladel discusses whether the loss of endings is related to the fact that Old Persian words may have been accentuated on the last but one syllable. Thus a phrase like "haca aspanam" "from the horses" becomes in Middle Persian "az aspan", which is understandable to any Persian-speaker today. Both the second "a" in the preposition "from" and the final "am" of the possessive plural, disappear. I cheat here and use the Median loan-word for horse, "asp", just to make the point. But Van Bladel does not suggest that the stress on the penultimate syllable was necessarily the reason for the loss of the final syllable. It might have been the other way around. This reminds me of the following story. A friend from college went to Germany to test her shaky mastery of the language. She was intimidated by the idea of remembering: Ein guter Mann, Der gute Mann, Des guten Mannes (a, the, of the good man). What she realized when she began to listen to native speakers, is that Germans stress the first syllable of a word strongly and swallow the following syllables. So you don't actually hear the endings, except in high registers like broadcasting. Next we'll look at Middle Persian.

@KaraSeyfeddin @HamsanHanan Wow!

Finally, the official version of the handbook cover is ready!

Join us in Amsterdam.

@SubboorAhmad This! It has confused me like crazy. Because there is this interview on YouTube: youtu.be/Ksu5YHK5ZDo

Hi Iranian monarchists How do you feel that Reza Pahlavi was a Muslim and near the end of his life he was quite critical of Zionism. Doesn’t quite fit your anti Islam pro Zionist narrative does it?

Tagging my fellow editors: @AliAghaei_qhs and @tubi_or_not (who, I embarrassingly did not know, also use X).

Forthcoming Series: Digital Humanities in Islamic Studies brill.com/page/forthcomi…

Araştırma Merkezi, Osmanlı hukuk tarihinin temel kaynaklarından fetva mecmualarını dijital ortama taşıyor. 16–20. yüzyıllar arasına ait 42 fetva mecmuası transkripsiyon–mukabele–redaksiyon süreçlerinden geçirilerek yapay zekâ destekli arama sunan platformda erişime açılacak.

@JonathanACBrown That guy is nuts, but do I love Vanilla Sky and Oblivion? I sure do!

@SamQari I agree with your assessment about the headache that you make in the comments. Nevertheless, I - unfortunately - was not so desirable, but I have seen secular atheist women accept being number two rather than not have the person at all in their lives. Some men have an aura…

A man can definitely love more than one woman. Stop womensplaining us.

@Adam_Bursi @CellardEleonore @suufy @a_ezz_eldin @theafrabian @czargar

@KyleW13664232 @JonathanACBrown It is more inventive and exciting than that.

@JonathanACBrown Why is a book from god not in chronological order?

@fitzmorrissey Tragic indeed. FYI, in my recent article I address this issue. My basic point: certain strands of Islamic thinking outgrew the epistemological constraints of the Hellenic legacy. So progress not regress. Url: degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/1…

I find it depressing that, despite several decades of scholarship (including, most recently, the work of Frank Griffel) disproving the thesis that al-Ghazali was responsible for the supposed decline of philosophy & science in the Islamic world, this myth continues to be repeated.

📢| Join us at the XI İSAR Summer School! Islamic Law in Action: Reading Islamic Court Records with Dr. Samy Ayoub (University of Texas at Austin) 🗓️ 21–25 July 2025 🕙 Daily | 10:00–13:00 📍Üsküdar, Istanbul forms.gle/jpmgBtUWzzYyBC…

What to make of a Muslim saint who falls head over heels with a Christian girl and pursues her? I explore this in my latest article. degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/1…

@yunivers_ Very kind of you!

Just finished reading Yusuf Çelik’s article and found it highly important and novel. One of the most striking issues he highlights: “There is even a possibility to argue that the next Khalid’s upon earth is the artificial superintelligence.”

@shahanSean How, when it is about dualities?

Very Trinitarian

My VENI (NWO) funded project is live! Legacy of Q: Empowering Historical Inquiry Into Early Jewish-Islamic Relations Through AI. It is still a work-in-progress. Want to know more, sign up for the newsletter! legacyofq.com

@ncmdsalih Tebrikler Necmettin. Her zorlugun ardindan kolaylik gelir.

Oxford'a geleli bugün tam 2,5 ay oldu. İlk iki hafta (ev bulma, aileyi getirme vs.) felaket derecede stresli ve yorucuydu. Çok kez dönmeye niyetlendim bu süreçte. Fakat şurada henüz 2 ayda yaptığım araştırmayı, yazdığım tezi Türkiye'de bir senede yapamazdım. Tanıştığım hocalardan, kurduğum arkadaşlıklardan, İngilizceme faydasından vs. bahsetmiyorum bile. Hamdolsun. Tecrübelerimi detaylıca yazacağım inşallah ilk fırsatta.

@fatmaaladag @UniLeipzig Tebrikler!

Dijital şehir tarihi kapsamında, Leipzig Üniversitesi Tarih Bölümü'nde, İstanbul'un 19.yy sokak ağlarını Mir'ât-ı İstanbul üzerinden "Space Syntax" analiziyle incelediğim doktora çalışmam tamamlandı. Danışmanlarım Prof Stefan Rohdewald ve Prof Manuel Burghardt'a teşekkür ederim.

Onderzoeker Yusuf Çelik stuitte bij toeval op verhalen van joden die in de islamitische gemeenschap werden opgenomen. Met kunstmatige intelligentie gaat hij hun rol voor de ontwikkeling van de vroege islam na. trouw.nl/religie-filoso…