Re: Jews in Ill Bethisad: MS *and* the Judajca-speakers? (was: Judajca)
| From: | Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, August 23, 2002, 10:39 |
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Just to add further pain to an already over-"ouch"-ed head, I was thinking
recently, as a result of getting into Syriac - Late Aramaic/Early Syriac
inscriptions have been found in Britain, the work of the the Mithrans. Now
if the Roman Empire had not had to expend so much energy and resources on
leveling the Judaean state/province in the East, would it have had the
resources to build even deeper into the British Isles?
In that case, we could well have a Syriac-speaking kingdom - Arturus Malkaa,
the scion of a Syrian centurian and a British clan chief's daughter - in
Britain when "seo Angles, ond seo Saxones ond seo Geatas" came to call.
In this timeline Rome has not had to rest so heavily - constitutionally
speaking - on its Praetorian Guard, so the Empire has not grown quite so
corrupt, so it is much stronger, and although they have by then delegated
plenipotentiary powers to Arturus Malkaa, he is still in communication with
significant Roman forces in Gaul, enough to throw the invaders from the Saxon
Shore back to sea.
And with family connections to Syria and the Levant, he is able to call on
them to support him, consequently there grows up a large community of Syriac
speakers, whose language gets altered, first by the Britons, then by a
resurgent invasion from the Saxon Shore ...
Don't worry if your head hurts, mine does too!
Wesley Parish
On Fri, 23 Aug 2002 04:39, Steg Belsky wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Aug 2002 07:01:25 +0100
> =?iso-8859-1?q?Jan=20van=20Steenbergen?= <ijzeren_jan@...>
>
> writes:
> > > The reason that Mueva Sefarad and Judajca are mutually exclusive
> > is that
> > > if there were to be an independent Jewish presence in Judea at the
> > time
> > > of the Expulsion from Spain, the Sefaradim would have gone there,
> > since
> > > it's just at the other end of the Mediterranean, instead of
> > sailing off
> > > into the unknown wilds of the Atlantic Ocean.
> > Well, couldn't it be that the Jews in Judea lived under the same
> > kind of
> > oppression as the Jews in Spain?
> > One could even imagine a scenario that their situation was actually
> > so bad,
> > that they decided to take the same boat as well and settled in Mueva
> > Sefarad as
> > well. It would just mean that the country became bilingual, but
> > *here* the Jews are used to that as well, I think.
> > May I assume that there is no Birobidzhan in Ill Bethisad?
> > Jan
>
> -
>
> Birobidzhan is that area in far-eastern Russia where the soviets set up a
> "Jewish Autonomous Zone" in order to redirect Jewish Nationalism in
> Russia from Zionism to something more Soviet-friendly, right? or
> something like that?
> I have no idea if it exists *there*... here's what's known about Russia
> in Ill Bethisad, from Padraic's "The Cultures of Ill Bethisad" page:
> ~~~~~
> RUSSIA. The modern history of Russia begins with its loss of the 1905 War
> with Japan. After the
> war, Imperialist Russia became increasingly influenced by Japanese
> culture. By 1916, the end of
> the Great War of 1914, the Value Creation Party - the political arm of a
> banned militant Buddhist
> sect - siezed power in a coup that sent the Czar and the Imperial family
> into exile in the West
> (ending up amongst relations in England). The VCP government ruled the
> Russias and several
> Eastern European countries with and iron fist for 72 years, spending vast
> sums on militarisation,
> enforced modernisation, propaganda for Mystic Law and experiments in
> mass- scale
> reconditioning (picture thousands cramming Moscow's Great Square chanting
> "Nam myoho renge
> kyo!" in unison). Eventually, the empire outspent its economic base and
> collapsed of its own rigid
> ideology. Since then, several governments have come to power and have
> been overthrown and
> many of the constituent regions have declared their own independance.
> Several factions in the
> country favour the return of the Czar, though the heir to the Imperial
> throne has yet to entertain
> the suggestion.
> ~~~~~
> Also, according to the site, in North America, Alyeska (=Alaska) is
> refered to as "Russian territory" and "is largely Inuit, though there are
> many Russian towns along the coast and in former gold bearing areas."
> And then there's the People's Ecotopic Republic of Oregon, where they
> speak a dialect of English, but due to Russian-Alyeskan influence (or
> maybe just because they're weird ultra-hippie Ecotopians like in that
> book, and want to be different) they write it in Cyrillic.
>
>
> Hmm... so what could make it so bad in Judea that the Sephardim would
> rather sail off into the Atlantic (without knowing if there's land on the
> other side; the Expulsion happened within a few days of Columbus's
> leaving) rather than go back to their homeland?
> It would have to be REALLY bad; after all, the Judeans *there* never
> really learned that it's not a good idea to throw yourself at huge
> Empires.
> Present conception of Judajca-speaking Judean History:
> c.135CE ~ *here* and *there* diverge as Hadrian decides to swamp Judea
> with imperial colonists instead of directly punishing the Judeans for the
> Bar Kokhba Rebellion. He hopes the colonists will assimilate the native
> populations.
> c.640CE ~ the Islamic conquests sweep across the middle-east, including
> Judea.
>
> Here's something from an old post to Conculture:
> ~~~~~
> Hmm... a little snippet of Judean history that just popped into my mind.
> _Ehud Hussinnistri_ [?e'hu:z hUSSinniStri:], hero of the _Rebelljon
> Grened Tra Jismagel_ [rEBEl'ljo:n g@rEnEz trO: jiSmO:3el], the Great
> Rebellion against Ishmael (=the Islamic Empire) which founded the Third
> Commonwealth, which lasted until the time of the Crusaders. Under the
> pretext of negotiating the final surrender of Judea to the Caliph Manzur
> in Baghdad (who had threatened them with the extermination of the entire
> Babylonian Jewish community), he disemboweled the Caliph in 775 CE and
> miraculously escaped the palace and led a rebellion which threatened to
> break up the empire. Judea declared its independence, but the empire was
> too busy trying to stay alive that order was only restored during the
> reign of the next caliph, Mehedi. However, Mehedi didn't have time to
> retaliate against the Judeans and their coreligionists in the Abbasid
> Empire. He died in 785, and during the short reign of his successor Hadi,
> the Andalusian and Moroccan caliphates broke off from the Empire. From
> then on, the Abbasids generally left Judea alone (except for the frequent
> 'minor border skirmishes'). Fatimid Egypt was happy to have a buffer zone
> against the Abbasids, and the Third Judean Commonwealth survived until it
> was overrun by the Crusaders.
> Ehud Hussinnistri is considered by those who believe in such things to be
> a reincarnation of the Biblical hero Ehud ben Gera who did pretty much
> the same thing to King Geglon [3EGlo:n] of Moab.
> ~~~~~
>
http://www.uca.edu/divisions/academic/history/crusades.htm has some
> interesting maps, btw.
> Hmmm... maybe the crusades were a lot more successful *there* then they
> were *here*, and so Judea was still under Crusader control (or at least
> embroiled in war with them) all the way until 1492? What kind of factor
> could make the Crusaders hold on for so long when they had to deal with
> not only the armies of the Islamic empire but also Judean guerrilla
> warfare?
>
> Hmm. Does it sound likely that the Muslims would have left Judea alone,
> to wait for the Crusaders and Judeans to wipe eachother out, and because
> of the smaller amount of resources on the Judean side, the wars would
> have lasted much longer, since they didn't have the strength to
> completely kick the Crusaders out?
>
> According to a globe i just looked at, the distance from western Iberia
> to Newfoundland is only slightly longer than the distance from eastern
> Iberia to Israel; it would probably be easier for refugees to sail out
> into the open Atlantic towards Mueva Sefarad then to have to try and
> dodge Crusader and Islamic warships in the Mediterranean while trying to
> get to Judea.
>
> Maybe it could work after all? But having the Crusades continue for an
> extra 2 centuries may be too much for the preexisting continuity of Ill
> Bethisad...
> My head hurts from thinking too much about this :-b
>
> -Stephen (Steg)
> "suteikina sutêki ga suki desu."