“Greater Somalia is a Racist Ideology”

[The alchemist]

Yeah somali poetry's one weakness is that it never developed into a written tradition so we don't have like a thousand years of somali poetry to draw on compared to these other traditions.

Persian has honestly probably been the language that's declined the most in the last hundred years. Before the 20th century basically outside of africa and Malaysia/Indonesia. If you were a culutred Muslim elite you knew persian. Persian not arabic was the main lanaguge for literature in the muslim empires of the last 500 years.

There was a whole persinate world it was called the balkans to bengal complex. Anybody who lived between the balkans and Bangladesh used Persian as their main literary language.

The red is the Arabic speaking world and the blue is the persianate one.

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I don't know if it would reach Ukraine and Russia.

Persian influence was partly owed to Iranian peoples living outside modern Iran. The majority of Afghans are Persian speakers using the Dari dialect. Then you have other Iranics like Pastho, Uzbeks, and Tajiks that live beyond the Afghan region.

Even in Iran, "Persians" are only 50-60% of the population. The rest were other Iranian sub-ethnic groups (and non-Iranics) who had to learn Persian within the last 100 years. You also have 4-6 million Arabs who live in Iran.

Back then, Persian was the cosmopolitan lingua franca. The Persian language and culture were less prominent in Iran at the beginning of the 1900s than today. Nationalization and education have increased their significance to the Iranian people.

These were the groups that lived in Iran in 1900. The demographic statistic is a rough estimate:

The father of the last Shah, Reza Shah, started this process of Persianization. He reduced the Arab influence in the language, then promoted a Persian-centric culture under one common national identity. People today think Persian predominance came through natural means, as if it reflects the authentic singular culture of the region when it was diffused through a top-down governmental activity.

 

[The alchemist]

Although this could change with the discovery of even a single medieval somali language manuscript of poetry.

I mean beowulf is basically only known from a single manuscript. And all of norse mythology is basically knowm from the pross Edda which survives in 7 manuscripts. Imagine what we could learn from a single medieval somali language manuscript?

I don't think we need manuscripts. It would be nice, but not necessary. Somali history is not a total mystery; we have ascertained a lot that gives constraints and parameters.

 

[Midas]

Speaking of somali writings does anybody know remebr some posts on here about secret scripts in harar. Considering what we know about the origin of harar and the Hararis . Isn't likely those scripts were developed by Somalis.

 

[Midas]

I don't think we need manuscripts. It would be nice, but not necessary. Somali history is not a total mystery; we have ascertained a lot that gives constraints and parameters.

True. But there's so much I feel like we could understand from them. I mean hanafism used to be incredibly widespread in somalia but it completely disappeared with the descrutrion of the urban centers in galbeed. Or what kind of kingdoms existed in somalia before the 1200s.