Alexander Jabbari

@ajab.bsky.social

2114 Followers 427 Following

Professor of sundry Persianate things. I write about language, literature, history, philology, politics.

More than a Village Youssef Ben Ismail describes Rayy as ‘a village outside of Tehran’ (LRB, 21 May). Rayy is among the oldest extant cities in the world, with archaeological records showing occupation as early as 5500 bce. It was mentioned in Zoroastrian religious literature and biblical apocrypha and was the seat of several Iranian empires. Alexander the Great knew it as ‘Rhagai’ and raced through the city in pursuit of Darius III. Rayy became one of the great medieval Islamic cities and was home to the polymath scholars Abu Bakr al-Razi (known in the West as Rhazes) and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. It is Tehran that was little more than a village outside Rayy before it became Iran’s capital in 1786. Alexander Jabbari University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
These include efforts to shore up public pensions by raising the national retirement age, and a modest tax cut for middle-income families, offset by marginally higher taxes on high earners. The package also cuts regulations, loosens some labor laws and generally tries to goad Germans into working more.
dar kūza fuqāʻ ast, There is (only) beer in the jug, i.e. circumstances are straitened (on the principle of the German saying "If the miller has plenty of water, he leaves the beer alone, and drinks wine").
From Fatima- No one knows the extent of the suffering we endure here every day, nor the sheer difficulty of a life that has become almost unbearable. We have lost our homes, and many have lost their jobs and livelihoods; even the most basic necessities of life have become out of reach. Prices are constantly rising, to the point where securing food has become a distant dream for many families. Obtaining water is a daily ordeal in itself, demanding indescribable time and effort. We also lack many basic essentials—such as clean, usable sanitation facilities—things that may seem simple but are vital for a dignified life. We live in harsh conditions, devoid of the simplest comforts and stability, yet we cling to hope. Thanks to your humanitarian support, we find the strength to carry on, believing that we will one day overcome this ordeal and these hardships, no matter how severe they may be.
The earliest and most influential work on naḥw, Sībawayhi’s (d. 180/796) al-Kitāb, abounds with gharīb words, in particular those that are cited to exemplify certain patterns. One thus finds words that are very rarely used, such as qahbalis (huge woman), jaḥmarish (old woman), ṣahṣaliq (vehement voice), qudhaʿmil (short, stout camel), khubaʿthin (strong, huge), qirṭaʿb (rag, piece of cloth), ḥinbatr (strength), jirdaḥl (huge camel), and ḥinzaqr (short and ugly). These are cited to illustrate the patterns faʿlalil, fuʿallil and fiʿlall respectively.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, at the beginning of the war with Iran, really rode high on the idea that Israel is partnering with the US, waging a major war against a regional powerhouse in Iran. But now the debate really is focused on the fact that all the decisions come from Washington. In Lebanon, the ceasefire wasn’t decided by Netanyahu. It’s not something he wanted, but Trump decided on it and Israel had to oblige. The discussions focus on the reality it may be turning into an extremely costly war of attrition. While all this waiting is happening and losses keep piling up, the Israeli prime minister is feeling the cost in the poll numbers, and he really has no choice but to wait for a signal from Washington.
Horkheimer: I couldn't care less about sending spacecraft to the moon. Adorno: There is nothing sacred about technology.
When Israel launched its attack on Iran, on February 28th, it called the campaign Operation Roaring Lion, seemingly a nod to the Iranian monarchy. But a U.S. intelligence report, assembled prior to the events of early January, which was shown to Trump a week before the start of the war, concluded that Pahlavi lacked a sufficient network inside the country to lead an overthrow of the regime. “They never took him that seriously,” Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins, said of the Administration. “There’s a difference between having an organization on the ground versus just having people who like you. If you’re going to help change a regime, you have to have a ground game.” Trump and his aides began referring to Pahlavi as the “loser prince.”
Over the past two decades, successive governments have steadily reduced social provision and dismantled welfare protections, while presenting market discipline, fiscal restraint, price liberalisation, and labour flexibility as the only viable response to Iran’s systemic crises. This commitment to free market orthodoxy has increasingly been treated as “common sense” within elite policy circles, even as living standards have deteriorated and inequality has deepened. Sanctions have accelerated this trajectory by constraining state revenues and providing both justification and cover for regressive economic restructuring. The result has been a sustained transfer of risk and precarity from the state and predatory oligarchs onto workers, pensioners, and the urban and provincial poor.
In 1996 it was sealed off from the rest of Brazil, at least in theory; but illegal gold miners continued to trespass, and as late as 2017 gold prospectors could still go into a bar and boast of having just murdered ten tribespeople.
Marx's Capital and Rumi's Masnavi
Books
Haifa Alfaisal, "From Balāgha to Intiqād: Politicising the Science of Literature in Modern Arabic Literary Thought," 276-277.
Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language