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137-577: The Necronomicon , also referred to as the Book of the Dead , or under a purported original Arabic title of Kitab al-Azif , is a fictional grimoire (textbook of magic) appearing in stories by the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story " The Hound ", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab " Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted

274-514: A Greek copy.) According to "History of the Necronomicon " the very act of studying the text is inherently dangerous, as those who attempt to master its arcane knowledge generally meet terrible ends. The Necronomicon is mentioned in a number of Lovecraft's short stories and in his novellas At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward . However, despite frequent references to

411-498: A Greek translation of the text, but it vanished along with the artist in early 1926. The Necronomicon is undoubtedly a substantial text, as indicated by its description in " The Dunwich Horror " ( 1929 ). In the story, Wilbur Whateley visits Miskatonic University 's library to consult the "unabridged" version of the Necronomicon for a spell that would have appeared on the 751st page of his own inherited, but defective, Dee edition. The Necronomicon passage in question states: Nor

548-505: A book labelled Qanoon-e-Islam from Joseph Curwen 's bookshelf and discovers to his disquiet that it is actually the Necronomicon . Many commercially available versions of the book fail to include any of the contents that Lovecraft describes. The Simon Necronomicon in particular has been criticized for this. According to Lovecraft's "History of the Necronomicon ", copies of the original Necronomicon were held by only five institutions worldwide: The Miskatonic University also holds

685-458: A broader definition; Douglas Allchin, a historian of science, contends that when the history of scientific discovery is presented in a simplified way, with drama exaggerated and scientists romanticized, this creates wrong stereotypes about how science works, and in fact constitutes pseudohistory, despite being based on real facts. Robert Todd Carroll has developed a list of criteria to identify pseudo-historic works. He states that: Pseudohistory

822-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

959-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

1096-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

1233-482: A false interpretation of records, namely physical ones, often by unqualified or otherwise amateur archeologists. These interpretations are often baseless and seldom align with established consensus. Nazi archaeology is a prominent example of this technique. Frequently, people who engage in pseudoarchaeology have a very strict interpretation of evidence and are unwilling to alter their stance, resulting in interpretations that often appear overly simplistic and fail to capture

1370-490: A form of proto-Turkish. The theory may have been partially devised in order to legitimize Arabic and Semitic loanwords occurring in the Turkish language by instead asserting that the Arabic and Semitic words were derived from the Turkish ones rather than vice versa. A large number of nationalist pseudohistorical theories deal with the legendary Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. British-Israelism , also known as Anglo-Israelism,

1507-508: A historical figure and that his existence was invented by early Christians. This argument currently finds very little support among scholars and historians of all faiths and has been described as pseudohistorical. Likewise, some minority historian views assert that Muhammad either did not exist or was not central to founding Islam . The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) by Michael Baigent , Richard Leigh , and Henry Lincoln

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1644-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

1781-613: A matriarchy preceded the patriarchy. The Goddess Movement and Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade cite Venus figurines as evidence that societies of paleolithic and neolithic Europe were matriarchies that worshipped a goddess. This belief is not supported by mainstream academics. Excluding the Norse colonization of the Americas , most theories of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact have been classified as pseudohistory, including claims that

1918-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

2055-482: A pseudonym he gave himself as a five-year-old, and very likely mistook "Abdul" to be a first name while inventing "Alhazred" as an Arabic-sounding surname. In 1927, Lovecraft wrote a brief pseudo-history of the Necronomicon . It was published in 1938, after his death, as " History of the Necronomicon ". According to this account, the book was originally called Al Azif , an Arabic word that Lovecraft defined as "that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be

2192-469: A real work, with booksellers and librarians receiving many requests for it; pranksters have listed it in rare book catalogues, and a student smuggled a card for it into the card catalog of the Yale University Library . Capitalizing on the notoriety of the fictional volume, real-life publishers have printed many books entitled Necronomicon since Lovecraft's death. How Lovecraft conceived

2329-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

2466-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

2603-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

2740-601: A story, "The Return of the Lloigor", in which the Voynich manuscript turns out to be a copy of the Necronomicon . With the success of the Simon Necronomicon the controversy surrounding the actual existence of the Necronomicon was such that a detailed book, The Necronomicon Files , was published in 1998 attempting to prove once and for all the book was pure fiction. It covered the well-known Necronomicon s in depth, especially

2877-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

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3014-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

3151-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

3288-461: A work of pseudohistory will adopt a position of historical relativism , insisting that there is really no such thing as historical truth and that any hypothesis is just as good as any other. Many works of pseudohistory conflate mere possibility with actuality, assuming that if something could have happened, then it did. Notable examples of pseudohistory include British Israelism , the Lost Cause of

3425-507: A year earlier in Lovecraft's " The Nameless City ". Among other things, the work contains an account of the Old Ones , their history, and the means for summoning them. Other authors such as August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith also cited the Necronomicon in their works. Lovecraft approved of other writers building on his work, believing such common allusions built up "a background of evil verisimilitude ". Many readers have believed it to be

3562-497: Is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of

3699-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

3836-540: Is a book that purports to show that certain historical figures, such as Godfrey of Bouillon , and contemporary aristocrats are the lineal descendants of Jesus . Mainstream historians have widely panned the book, categorizing it as pseudohistory, and pointing out that the genealogical tables used in it are now known to be spurious. Nonetheless, the book was an international best-seller and inspired Dan Brown 's bestselling mystery thriller novel The Da Vinci Code . Although historians and archaeologists consider

3973-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

4110-454: Is a revised sequence of events that deviates from the standard timeline of world history accepted by mainstream scholars. An example of an "alternative chronology" is Anatoly Fomenko 's New Chronology , which claims that recorded history actually began around AD 800 and all events that allegedly occurred prior to that point either never really happened at all or are simply inaccurate retellings of events that happened later. One of its outgrowths

4247-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

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4384-619: Is an academic fringe theory that postulates the belief that the bulk of European Jewry is of Central Asian ( Turkic ) origin. In spite of the mainstream academic consensus which conclusively rejects it, this theory has been promoted in Anti-Semitic and some Anti-Zionist circles, they argue that Jews are an alien element in both Europe and Palestine . Holocaust denial in particular and genocide denial in general are widely categorized as pseudohistory. Major proponents of Holocaust denial include David Irving and others, who argue that

4521-406: Is an underlying premise that scholars have a furtive agenda to suppress the promotor's thesis—a premise commonly corroborated by elaborate conspiracy theories . Works of pseudohistory often point exclusively to unreliable sources—including myths and legends , often treated as literal historical truth—to support the thesis being promoted while ignoring valid sources that contradict it . Sometimes

4658-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

4795-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon

4932-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and

5069-433: Is identified as a quotation from the Necronomicon . This "much-discussed" couplet, as Lovecraft calls it in the latter story, has also been quoted in works by other authors, including Brian Lumley 's The Burrowers Beneath , which adds a long paragraph preceding the couplet. In his story " History of the Necronomicon ", Lovecraft states that it is rumored that artist R. U. Pickman (from his story " Pickman's Model ") owned

5206-503: Is intended to forge a national identity distinct from modern Bulgaria , which regards North Macedonia as an artificial nation. The theory is controversial in Greece and sparked 2018 mass protests there. A particular item of dispute is North Macedonian veneration of Alexander the Great ; mainstream scholarship holds that Alexander had Greek ancestry, he was born in an area of ancient Macedonia that

5343-459: Is it to be thought...that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of

5480-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

5617-571: Is now Greece, and he ruled over North Macedonia but never lived there and did not speak the local language. To placate Greece and thereby facilitate the country's entry into the European Union and NATO , the Macedonian government formally renounced claims of ancient Macedonian heritage with the 2018 Prespa Agreement . Dacianism is a Romanian pseudohistorical current that attempts to attribute far more influence over European and world history to

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5754-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

5891-539: Is purported history which: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke prefers the term "cryptohistory". He identifies two necessary elements as "a complete ignorance of the primary sources" and the repetition of "inaccuracies and wild claims". Other common characteristics of pseudohistory are: The following are some common categories of pseudohistorical theory, with examples. Not all theories in a listed category are necessarily pseudohistorical; they are rather categories that seem to attract pseudohistorians. An alternative chronology

6028-454: Is quite clear that everything this man wrote about Arthur and his successors, or indeed about his predecessors from Vortigern onwards, was made up, partly by himself and partly by others". The Shakespeare authorship question is a fringe theory that claims that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon . Another example of historical revisionism

6165-529: Is still prevalent among Wiccans, but is gradually declining. The belief that Ancient India was technologically advanced to the extent of being a nuclear power is gaining popularity in India. Emerging extreme nationalist trends and ideologies based on Hinduism in the political arena promote these discussions. Vasudev Devnani , the education minister for the western state of Rajasthan , said in January 2017 that it

6302-422: Is supposed to be "Alhazred" (traditional Arabic names do not follow the modern first name-surname format). But "Alhazred", even if considered as a corruption of al-ḥaḍrāt ( حَضْرَات , "the presences") though it seems unlikely, itself is a definite noun (i.e., a noun prefixed by the definite article) and thus "Abdul Alhazred" could not possibly be a real Arabic name. Lovecraft first used the name "Abdul Alhazred" as

6439-533: Is the Tartary conspiracy theory. Other, less extreme examples, are the phantom time hypothesis , which asserts that the years AD 614–911 never took place; and the New Chronology of David Rohl , which claims that the accepted timelines for ancient Egyptian and Israelite history are wrong. In the eighth century, a forged document known as Donation of Constantine , which supposedly transferred authority over Rome and

6576-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

6713-596: Is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again. The Necronomicon ' s appearance and physical dimensions are not clearly stated in Lovecraft's work. Other than the obvious black letter editions, it is commonly portrayed as bound in leather of various types and having metal clasps. Moreover, editions are sometimes disguised. In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward , for example, John Merrit pulls down

6850-545: Is the thesis, found in the writings of David Barton and others, asserting that the United States was founded as an exclusively Christian nation. Mainstream historians instead support the traditional position, which holds that the American founding fathers intended for church and state to be kept separate . Confederate revisionists (a.k.a. Civil War revisionists), " Lost Cause " advocates, and Neo-Confederates argue that

6987-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

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7124-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

7261-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

7398-501: Is used to refer to the Contest of Homer and Hesiod , a purportedly historical narrative describing an entirely fictional contest between the Greek poets Homer and Hesiod . The pejorative sense of the term, labelling a flawed or disingenuous work of historiography, is found in another 1815 attestation. Pseudohistory is akin to pseudoscience in that both forms of falsification are achieved using

7535-505: The Azif "gained considerable, though surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age." In 950, it was translated into Greek and given the title Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas, a fictional scholar from Constantinople . This version "impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts" before being " suppressed and burnt " in 1050 by Patriarch Michael (a historical figure who died in 1059). After this attempted suppression,

7672-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary

7809-520: The Book of Mormon to be an anachronistic invention of Joseph Smith, many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) believe that it describes ancient historical events in the Americas. Searches for Noah's Ark have also been categorized as pseudohistory. In her books, starting with The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), English author Margaret Murray claimed that

7946-785: The Ceaușescu regime portrayed the Dacians as insurgents defying an "imperialist" Rome; the Communist Party had formally attached "protochronism", as Dacianism was known, to Marxist ideology by 1974. The consensus among academics is that no unambiguously and strictly matriarchal society is known to have existed, though many societies are known to have or have had some matriarchal features, in particular matrilineality , matrilocality , and/or matrifocality . Anthropologist Donald Brown 's list of human cultural universals ( viz. , features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being

8083-680: The Confederate States of America 's prime motivation was the maintenance of states' rights and limited government, rather than the preservation and expansion of slavery . Connected to the Lost Cause is the Irish slaves myth , a pseudo-historical narrative which conflates the experiences of Irish indentured servants and enslaved Africans in the Americas . This myth, which was historically promoted by Irish nationalists such as John Mitchel , has in

8220-691: The Dacians than that which they actually enjoyed. Dacianist historiography claims that the Dacians held primacy over all other civilizations, including the Romans ; that the Dacian language was the origin of Latin and all other languages, such as Hindi and Babylonian ; and sometimes that the Zalmoxis cult has structural links to Christianity. Dacianism was most prevalent in National Communist Romania , as

8357-691: The Holocaust , the Holodomor , the Armenian genocide , the Assyrian genocide , the Greek genocide and other genocides did not occur, or accounts of them were greatly exaggerated. Most Afrocentric (i.e. Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories , see Ancient Egyptian race controversy ) ideas have been identified as pseudohistorical, alongside the " Indigenous Aryans " theories published by Hindu nationalists during

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8494-836: The Mufti of Jerusalem , gave Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders the idea for the Holocaust. Historians across the world, along with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the German government, characterized the claim as historically baseless. The PLO and the Zionist Union said the statement was politically motivated because it wrongly places blame for the Holocaust on Palestinian nationalists , whom Netanyahu opposes, while implicitly absolving Hitler. The Christ myth theory claims that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as

8631-557: The Planet Nibiru known as the Anunnaki visited Earth in ancient times in search of gold, and that they genetically engineered humans to serve as their slaves. He claims that memories of these occurrences are recorded in Sumerian mythology , as well as other mythologies all across the globe. These speculations have likewise been categorized as pseudohistory. The ancient astronaut hypothesis

8768-561: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

8905-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

9042-462: The witch trials in the early modern period were actually an attempt by chauvinistic Christians to annihilate a secret, pagan religion , which she claimed worshipped a Horned God . Murray's claims have now been widely rejected by respected historians. Nonetheless, her ideas have become the foundation myth for modern Wicca , a contemporary Neopagan religion. Belief in Murray's alleged witch-cult

9179-508: The "dominant element" in public political affairs, which is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology . Some societies that are matrilineal or matrifocal may in fact have patriarchal power structures, and thus be misidentified as matriarchal. The idea that matriarchal societies existed and they preceded patriarchal societies was first raised in the 19th-century among Western academics, but it has since been discredited. Despite this however, some second-wave feminists assert that

9316-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In

9453-740: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Pseudo-history Another hallmark of pseudohistory

9590-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

9727-554: The 1990s and 2000s. The "crypto-history" developed within Germanic mysticism and Nazi occultism has likewise been placed under this categorization. Among leading Nazis, Heinrich Himmler is believed to have been influenced by occultism and according to one theory, developed the SS base at Wewelsburg in accordance with an esoteric plan. The Sun Language Theory is a pseudohistorical ideology which argues that all languages are descended from

9864-562: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of

10001-812: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ    [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

10138-558: The Americas were actually discovered by Arabs or Muslims. Gavin Menzies ' book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World , which argues for the idea that Chinese sailors discovered America, has also been categorized as a work of pseudohistory. Josiah Priest and other nineteenth-century American writers wrote pseudohistorical narratives that portrayed African Americans and Native Americans in an extremely negative light. Priest's first book

10275-622: The Confederacy , the Irish slaves myth , the witch-cult , Armenian genocide denial , Holocaust denial , the clean Wehrmacht myth , the 16th- and 17th-century Spanish Black Legend , and the claim that the Katyn massacre was not committed by the Soviet NKVD . The term pseudohistory was coined in the early nineteenth century, which makes the word older than the related terms pseudo-scholarship and pseudoscience . In an attestation from 1815, it

10412-582: The Gods , which won popular acclaim, but scholarly disdain. Christopher Knight has published numerous books, including Uriel's Machine (2000), expounding pseudohistorical assertions that ancient civilizations possessed technology far more advanced than the technology of today. The claim that a lost continent known as Lemuria once existed in the Pacific Ocean has likewise been categorized as pseudohistory. Furthermore, similar conspiracy theories promote

10549-526: The Komitopules , which ruled the First Bulgarian Empire in late 10th and early 11th centuries AD, is presented as "Macedonian", ruling a "medieval Macedonian state", because its capitals were located in what was previously the ancient kingdom of Macedonia . North Macedonian historians often replace the ethnonym "Bulgarians" with "Macedonians", or avoid it. North Macedonian scholars say the theory

10686-624: The Latin translation by Olaus Wormius, printed in Spain in the 17th century. Other copies, Lovecraft wrote, were kept by private individuals. Joseph Curwen, as noted, had a copy in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1941). A version is held in Kingsport in " The Festival " ( 1925 ). The provenance of the copy read by the narrator of " The Nameless City " is unknown; a version is read by the protagonist in " The Hound " ( 1924 ). Although Lovecraft insisted that

10823-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

10960-672: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

11097-561: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

11234-503: The Simon one, along with a number of more obscure ones. It was reprinted and expanded in 2003. In 2004, Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred , by Canadian occultist Donald Tyson, was published by Llewellyn Worldwide . The Tyson Necronomicon is generally thought to be closer to Lovecraft's vision than other published versions. Donald Tyson has clearly stated that the Necronomicon is fictional, but that has not prevented his book from being

11371-481: The South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath ! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth

11508-596: The Soviet Union economically, particularly during World War II . Scholars point to overwhelming evidence that Stalin directly helped plan mass killings, that many prisoners were sent to gulags or executed extrajudicially, and that many prisoners did no productive work, often being isolated in remote camps or given pointless and menial tasks. In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that Amin Al-Husseini ,

11645-490: The book in library card catalogues (where it may be checked out to one ' A. Alhazred ', ostensibly the book's author and original owner). The Vatican also receives requests for this book from those who believe the Vatican Library holds a copy. In 1973, Owlswick Press issued an edition of the Necronomicon written in an indecipherable, apparently fictional language known as "Duriac". The line between fact and fiction

11782-420: The book was pure invention (and other writers invented passages from the book for their own works), there are accounts of some people actually believing the Necronomicon to be a real book. Lovecraft himself sometimes received letters from fans inquiring about the Necronomicon ' s authenticity. Pranksters occasionally listed the Necronomicon for sale in book store newsletters or inserted phony entries for

11919-468: The book's fictionalization, the name of the book's supposed author, Abdul Alhazred, is not even a grammatically correct Arabic name . What is transliterated as "Abdul" in English is actually a noun in the nominative form ʿabdu ( عَبْدُ , "servant") and the definite article al- ( الـ ) and amounts to "servant of the" with the article actually being part of the second noun in the construct, which in this case

12056-518: The book, Lovecraft was very sparing of details about its appearance and contents. He once wrote that "if anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon , it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it." In "The Nameless City" ( 1921 ), a rhyming couplet that appears at two points in the story is ascribed to Abdul Alhazred: That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die. The same couplet appears in " The Call of Cthulhu " ( 1928 ), where it

12193-532: The center of some controversy. Tyson has since published Alhazred , a novelization of the life of the Necronomicon ' s author. Kenneth Grant , the British occultist, disciple of Aleister Crowley , and head of the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis , suggested in his 1972 book The Magical Revival that there was an unconscious connection between Crowley and Lovecraft. He thought they both drew on

12330-639: The complexity and nuance of the complete narrative. (These following examples can belong to a variety of the above mentioned categories, or ones not mentioned as well). Immanuel Velikovsky 's books Worlds in Collision (1950), Ages in Chaos (1952), and Earth in Upheaval (1955), which became "instant bestsellers", demonstrated that pseudohistory based on ancient mythology held potential for tremendous financial success and became models of success for future works in

12467-567: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after

12604-577: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of

12741-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around

12878-427: The existence of confirmed events, often including various massacres, genocides, and national histories . Some examples include Holocaust denial , Armenian Genocide denial , as well as Nakba Denial in the 1984 work From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters . Mainstream historians have categorized psychohistory as pseudohistory. Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and

13015-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

13152-501: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

13289-617: The gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They had trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which

13426-418: The genre. In 1968, Erich von Däniken published Chariots of the Gods? , which claims that ancient visitors from outer space constructed the pyramids and other monuments. He has since published other books in which he makes similar claims. These claims have all been categorized as pseudohistory. Similarly, Zechariah Sitchin has published numerous books claiming that a race of extraterrestrial beings from

13563-646: The howling of demons", drawing on a footnote by Rev. Samuel Henley in Henley's translation of Vathek . Henley, commenting upon a passage which he translated as "those nocturnal insects which presage evil", alluded to the diabolic legend of Beelzebub , "Lord of the Flies" and to Psalm 91 :5, which in some 16th century English Bibles (such as Myles Coverdale 's 1535 translation) describes "bugges by night" where later translations render "terror by night". One Arabic/English dictionary translates `Azīf ( عزيف ) as "whistling (of

13700-450: The humanities. Its stated goal is to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. It also states as its goal the combination of the insights of psychology, especially psychoanalysis , with the research methodology of the social sciences and humanities to understand the emotional origin of the behavior of individuals, groups and nations, past and present. Pseudoarchaeology refers to

13837-450: The idea for the book was derived from Nathaniel Hawthorne , though Lovecraft himself noted that "mouldy hidden manuscripts" were one of the stock features of Gothic literature . Lovecraft wrote that the title, as translated from the Greek language , meant "an image of the law of the dead", compounded respectively from νεκρός nekros "dead", νόμος nomos "law", and εἰκών eikon "image". Robert M. Price notes that

13974-502: The idea of Ludvig Prinn and his De Vermis Mysteriis , while the Book of Eibon is an invention of Clark Ashton Smith's. Robert E. Howard is responsible for Friedrich von Junzt and his Unaussprechlichen Kulten .... As for seriously-written books on dark, occult, and supernatural themes—in all truth they don't amount to much. That is why it's more fun to invent mythical works like the Necronomicon and Book of Eibon . Reinforcing

14111-784: The idea of embellished, fabricated accounts of historical civilizations, namely Khazaria and Tartaria . The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a fraudulent work purporting to show a historical conspiracy for world domination by Jews. The work was conclusively proven to be a forgery in August 1921, when The Times revealed that extensive portions of the document were directly plagiarized from Maurice Joly 's 1864 satirical dialogue The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu , as well as Hermann Goedsche 's 1868 anti-Semitic novel Biarritz . The Khazar theory

14248-579: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

14385-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

14522-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

14659-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

14796-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

14933-425: The methodology that purports to, but does not, adhere to the established standards of research for the given field of intellectual enquiry of which the pseudoscience claims to be a part, and which offers little or no supporting evidence for its plausibility. Writers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman define pseudohistory as "the rewriting of the past for present personal or political purposes". Other writers take

15070-449: The modern-day been promoted by white supremacists in the United States to minimize the mistreatment experienced by African Americans (such as racism and segregation ) and oppose demands for slavery reparations . The myth has also been used to obscure and downplay Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade . While closely related to previous categories, historical negationism or denialism specifically aims to outright deny

15207-450: The most famous example of this type, has been conclusively refuted by mainstream historians using evidence from a vast array of different fields of study. Another nationalistic pseudohistorical theory is Antiquization or Ancient Macedonism, which postulates direct demographic, cultural and linguistic continuity between ancient Macedonians and the main ethnic group in present-day North Macedonia . The Bulgarian medieval dynasty of

15344-452: The name Necronomicon is not clear—Lovecraft said that the title came to him in a dream. Although some have suggested that Lovecraft was influenced primarily by Robert W. Chambers ' collection of short stories The King in Yellow , which centers on a mysterious and disturbing play in book form, Lovecraft is not believed to have read that work until 1927. Donald R. Burleson has argued that

15481-768: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

15618-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

15755-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on

15892-523: The paranormal researcher and writer Colin Wilson . David Langford described how the book was prepared from a computer analysis of a discovered "cipher text" by Dr. John Dee . The resulting "translation" was in fact written by occultist Robert Turner, but it was far truer to the Lovecraftian version than the Simon text and even incorporated quotations from Lovecraft's stories in its passages. Wilson also wrote

16029-513: The pseudohistorical thesis that all the major monuments of the ancient world, including Stonehenge , the Egyptian pyramids , and the moai of Easter Island , were built by a single ancient supercivilization, which Hancock claims thrived from 15,000 to 10,000 BC and possessed technological and scientific knowledge equal to or surpassing that of modern civilization. He first advanced the full form of this argument in his 1995 bestseller Fingerprints of

16166-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

16303-494: The ruins of Babylon , the "subterranean secrets" of Memphis and the Empty Quarter of Arabia . In his last years, he lived in Damascus , where he wrote Al Azif before his sudden and mysterious death in 738, which, according to Ibn Khallikan , happened when he was "seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses". In subsequent years, Lovecraft wrote,

16440-817: The same occult forces; Crowley via his magic and Lovecraft through the dreams which inspired his stories and the Necronomicon . Grant claimed that the Necronomicon existed as an astral book as part of the Akashic records and could be accessed through ritual magic or in dreams. Grant's ideas on Lovecraft were featured heavily in the introduction to the Simon Necronomicon and also have been backed by Tyson. Notes Bibliography Arabic Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

16577-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

16714-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

16851-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

16988-708: The superiority of white people (as well as to oppose the Catholic Church ). Such misuse of Viking history and imagery reemerged in the twentieth century among some groups promoting white supremacy . Supporters of Soviet communist pseudohistory claim, among other things, that Joseph Stalin and other top Soviet leaders did not realize the scope of mass killings perpetrated under the Stalin regime , that executions of prisoners were legally justifiable, and that prisoners in Soviet gulags performed important construction work that helped

17125-493: The title as "Book considering (or classifying) the dead". Lovecraft was often asked about the veracity of the Necronomicon , and always answered that it was completely his invention. In a letter to Willis Conover , Lovecraft elaborated upon his typical answer: Now about the "terrible and forbidden books"—I am forced to say that most of them are purely imaginary. There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon , for I invented these names myself. Robert Bloch devised

17262-439: The title has been variously translated by others as "Book of the names of the dead", "Book of the laws of the dead", "Book of dead names" and "Knower of the laws of the dead". S. T. Joshi states that Lovecraft's own etymology is "almost entirely unsound. The last portion of it is particularly erroneous, since -ikon is nothing more than a neuter adjectival suffix and has nothing to do with eikõn (image)." Joshi translates

17399-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

17536-659: The western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope , became widely circulated. In the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth published the History of the Kings of Britain , a pseudohistorical work purporting to describe the ancient history and origins of the British people. The book synthesises earlier Celtic mythical traditions to inflate the deeds of the mythical King Arthur . The contemporary historian William of Newburgh wrote around 1190 that "it

17673-486: The wind); weird sound or noise". Gabriel Oussani defined it as "the eerie sound of the jinn in the wilderness". The tradition of `azif al jinn ( عزيف الجن ) is linked to the phenomenon of " singing sand ". In the "History", Alhazred is said to have been a "half-crazed Arab" who worshipped the Lovecraftian entities Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu in the early 700s CE. He is described as being from Sanaá in Yemen . He visited

17810-447: The work was "only heard of furtively" until it was translated from Greek into Latin by Olaus Wormius . (Lovecraft gives the date of this edition as 1228, though the real-life Danish scholar Olaus Wormius lived from 1588 to 1654.) Both the Latin and Greek text, the "History" relates, were banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, though Latin editions were apparently published in 15th century Germany and 17th century Spain . A Greek edition

17947-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

18084-816: Was The Wonders of Nature and Providence, Displayed (1826). The book is regarded by modern critics as one of the earliest works of modern American pseudohistory. Priest attacked Native Americans in American Antiquities and Discoveries of the West (1833) and African-Americans in Slavery, As It Relates to the Negro (1843). Other nineteenth-century writers, such as Thomas Gold Appleton , in his A Sheaf of Papers (1875), and George Perkins Marsh , in his The Goths in New England , seized upon false notions of Viking history to promote

18221-508: Was banned in 1050, though he cites "a vague account of a secret copy appearing in San Francisco during the current [20th] century" that "later perished in fire". The Greek version, he writes, has not been reported "since the burning of a certain Salem man's library in 1692", an apparent reference to the Salem witch trials . (In the story "The Diary of Alonzo Typer", the character Alonzo Typer finds

18358-432: Was further blurred in the late 1970s when a book purporting to be a translation of "the real" Necronomicon was published. This book, by the pseudonymous "Simon", had little connection to the fictional Lovecraft Mythos but instead was based on Sumerian mythology . It was later dubbed the " Simon Necronomicon ". A hoax version of the Necronomicon , edited by George Hay, appeared in 1978 and included an introduction by

18495-664: Was further popularized in the United States by the History Channel television series Ancient Aliens . History professor Ronald H. Fritze observed that the pseudohistorical claims promoted by von Däniken and the Ancient Aliens program have a periodic popularity in the US: "In a pop culture with a short memory and a voracious appetite, aliens and pyramids and lost civilizations are recycled like fashions." The author Graham Hancock has sold over four million copies of books promoting

18632-511: Was important to "understand the scientific significance" of the cow , as it was the only animal in the world to both inhale and exhale oxygen. In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a gathering of doctors and medical staff at a Mumbai hospital that the story of the Hindu god Ganesha showed genetic science existed in ancient India. Many new age pseudohistorians who focus on converting mythological stories into history are well received among

18769-448: Was printed in Italy in the first half of the 16th century. The Elizabethan magician John Dee (1527 – c.  1609 ) allegedly translated the book—presumably into English—but Lovecraft wrote that this version was never printed and only fragments survive. According to Lovecraft, the Arabic version of Al Azif had already disappeared by the time the Greek version

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