Semitic Studies
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Semitic Studies
Semitic studies, or Semitology, is the academic field dedicated to the studies of Semitic languages and literatures and the history of the Semitic-speaking peoples. A person may be called a ''Semiticist'' or a ''Semitist'', both terms being equivalent. It includes Assyriology, Arabic, Hebraist, Syriacist, Mandaean, and Ethiopian studies, as well as comparative studies of Semitic languages aiming at the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic. See also *Asian studies *African studies * Middle Eastern studies *Philology * Study of the Hebrew language Sources * Gotthelf Bergsträsser: ''Einführung in die semitischen Sprachen: Sprachproben und grammatische Skizzen'', Nachdruck, Darmstadt 1993. *Carl Brockelmann Carl Brockelmann (17 September 1868 – 6 May 1956) German Semitic studies, Semiticist, was the foremost Orientalism, orientalist of his generation. He was a professor at the universities in University of Wrocław, Breslau, Berlin and, from 1903, ...: ''Grundriss der vergleic ...
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Semitic Languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian languages and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of Western Asia, West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large Immigration, immigrant and Expatriate, expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three Generations of Noah, sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis. Semitic languages List of languages by first written account, occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia, with East Semitic languages, East Semitic Akkadian language, Akkadian (also known as Ancient Assyrian language, Assyrian ...
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African Studies
African studies is the study of Africa, especially the continent's cultures and societies (as opposed to its geology, geography, zoology, etc.). The field includes the study of Africa's History of Africa, history (pre-colonial, Colonisation of Africa, colonial, Decolonisation of Africa, post-colonial), Demographics of Africa, demography (Ethnic groups in Africa, ethnic groups), Culture of Africa, culture, Politics of Africa, politics, Economy of Africa, economy, Languages of Africa, languages, and Religion in Africa, religion (Islam in Africa, Islam, Christianity in Africa, Christianity, Traditional African religion, traditional religions). A specialist in African studies is often referred to as an "Africanist". Africanists argue that there is a need to "deexoticize" Africa and banalise it, rather than understand Africa as exceptionalized and exoticized.Mamdani, M. (1996), Chapter 1 from Mamdani, M., ''Citizen and Subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism''. ...
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David Cohen (historian)
David Cohen (31 December 1882, Deventer – 3 September 1967, Amsterdam) was a Dutch classicist and papyrologist and one of the two chairs of the (, or , of Amsterdam) during the occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. He was Professor of Ancient History at the University of Amsterdam and a prominent Zionist leader. Education and career until 1940 Cohen was educated at Leiden University. He was a teacher in The Hague and became a private lecturer at the University of Leiden. In 1924 he became a professor by special appointment at the same university. Two years later he was appointed full professor of Ancient History at the Municipal University of Amsterdam. Cohen was one of the founders and editor of ''Hermeneus: Monthly Magazine for Ancient Culture'', the first edition of which appeared in 1928. Second World War and after In 1941 Cohen and Asscher were appointed by the German occupiers as chairs of the Jewish Council for Amsterdam. In September 1943, Cohen and Abraha ...
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Carl Brockelmann
Carl Brockelmann (17 September 1868 – 6 May 1956) German Semitic studies, Semiticist, was the foremost Orientalism, orientalist of his generation. He was a professor at the universities in University of Wrocław, Breslau, Berlin and, from 1903, University of Königsberg, Königsberg. He is best known for his multi-volume ''Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur'' (first published 1898–1902) ('History of Arabic literature') which included all writers in Arabic to 1937, and remains the fundamental reference volume for all Arabic literature, apart from the Christian Arabic texts (covered by Georg Graf). He also published ''Syrische Grammatik mit Litteratur, Chrestomathie und Glossar'' (1899), ''Semitische Sprachwissenschaft'' (1906), ''Lexicon syriacum'' (1928), and ''Arabische Grammatik'' (under his own name 1941, but this was the eleventh edition of the grammar of Albert Socin, previously revised by Brockelmann several times). Career Brockelmann pursued Oriental studies, class ...
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Gotthelf Bergsträsser
Gotthelf Bergsträsser (5 April 1886, in Oberlosa, Plauen – 16 August 1933, near Berchtesgaden) was a German linguist specializing in Semitic studies, generally considered to be one of the greatest of the twentieth century. Bergsträsser was initially a teacher of classical languages before deciding to approach Semitic. He was a professor at Istanbul University during World War I, when he was an officer in the German army stationed in Turkey. While there, he studied the spoken dialects of Arabic and Aramaic in Syria and Palestine. One of his most well-known works is the 29th (and final) edition of Wilhelm Gesenius' ''Hebrew Grammar'' (1918–1929), which remained incomplete, containing only phonology and morphology of the verb. Also widely admired was his ''Introduction to the Semitic Languages'' (1928, English 1983). These brought him international fame as a scholar. His last position was professor of Semitic languages at the University of Munich. Bergsträsser mostly ...
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Study Of The Hebrew Language
As the Old Testament (known as the Tanakh) was written in Hebrew, Hebrew has been central to Judaism and Christianity for more than 2000 years. Jewish scholars of Hebrew The study of Hebrew occurred already in some grammatical notes in the Talmud and Midrash. The Masoretes continued the study as they fixed the text and vocalization of the Hebrew Bible. Under the influence of Arab grammarians, Rabbi Saadia Gaon (tenth century) made the Jewish study of Hebrew grammar almost scientific. Later Jewish grammarians include David Qimhi (known as the Radak), Abraham ibn Ezra and Judah ben David Hayyuj. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is the main revivalist of Hebrew as a modern spoken language, although in his book ''Language in Time of Revolution'', Israeli scholar Benjamin Harshav diminishes Ben-Yehuda's role and attributes the success of the revival to a wider movement in the Jewish society. Non-Jewish scholars of Hebrew The first major non-Jewish grammarian was John Reuchlin (16th century), but i ...
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Philology
Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of literary texts and oral and written records, the establishment of their authentication, authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist. In older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative linguistics, comparative and historical linguistics. Classical philology studies classical languages. Classical philology principally originated from the Library of Pergamum and the Library of Alexandria around the fourth century BC, continued by Greeks and Romans throughout the Roman Empire, Roman and Byzantine Empire. It was eventually resumed by European scholars of the Renaissance humanism, Renaissance, ...
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Middle Eastern Studies
Middle Eastern studies, sometimes referred to as Near Eastern studies, West Asian Studies or South Western Asian studies, is a name given to a number of academic programs associated with the study of the history, culture, politics, economies, and geography of the Middle East, an area that is generally interpreted to cover a range of nations including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. It is considered a form of area studies, taking an overtly interdisciplinary approach to the study of a region. In this sense Middle Eastern studies is a far broader and less traditional field than classical Islamic studies. The subject was historically regarded as part of Oriental studies, which also included East Asian studies and Egyptology and other specialisms in the ancient civilizations of the region; the growth of the field of study in the West is treated at that article. Many academic faculties still cover both areas. Althoug ...
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Asian Studies
Asian studies is the term used usually in North America and Australia for what in Europe is known as Oriental studies. The field is concerned with the Asian people, their cultures, languages, history and politics. Within the Asian sphere, Asian studies combines aspects of sociology, history, cultural anthropology and many other disciplines to study political, cultural and economic phenomena in Asian traditional and contemporary societies. Asian studies form a field of post-graduate study in many universities. It is a branch of area studies, and many Western universities combine Asian and African studies in a single faculty or institute, like SOAS in London. It is often combined with Islamic studies in a similar way. The history of the discipline in the West is covered under Oriental studies. The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) only considers Asia to the east of the Indus River in its scope of "Asian Studies". Branches * Indology, South Asian studies (Indology) ...
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Assyriology
Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logia''), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolithic pre-Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as 8000 BC, to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD, so the topic is significantly wider than that implied by the root "Assyria". The large number of cuneiform clay tablets preserved by these Sumero-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian cultures provide an extremely large resource for the study of the period. Th ...
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Proto-Semitic
Proto-Semitic is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the linguistic homeland for Proto-Semitic: scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant, the Sahara, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, or northern Africa. The Semitic language family is considered part of the broader macro-family of Afroasiatic languages. Dating The earliest attestations of any Semitic language are in Akkadian, dating to around the 24th to 23rd centuries BC (see Sargon of Akkad) and the Eblaite language, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts from the first half of the third millennium BC. One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur, addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur (–2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The earliest text fragments of West Semitic are snake spells in Egyp ...
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