Talk:Day of Empire

Untitled

This article only links from Amy Chua's biography page (which is also pending discussions for deletion). The book is not notable, and is not a commercial/academic success. It warrants deletion based on a lack of notability.

The New York Times reviews roughly 1200-1300 books per year out of roughly 200,000-300,000 books published. They chose to review this book. That seems to make it adequately notable. Agarcialw (talk) 15:08, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Muslim advisor to Trajan?

The claim that Chia "mentions a Muslim advisor at the service of Roman Emperor Trajan (AD 98-117)." cites a book review from the Los Angeles Times; the quote from that review is presumably "The emperor Trajan, she points out, was a Spaniard whose top advisors included a Greek, a Muslim and a Jew...".

An online copy of her book I found on the Intertubes, has, instead, the quote "The emperor Trajan, who ruled from AD 98 to 117, was born in Spain. His top advi­sory included a Greek, a Moor, and Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of the Israelite king Herod the Great." That appears to mostly match the review's quote; however, it speaks of a "Moor" rather than a "Muslim". The page Moors says that "The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb, al-Andalus (Iberian Peninsula), Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages." However, it also says that

The etymology of the word "Moor" is uncertain, although it can be traced back to the Phoenician term Mahurin, meaning "Westerners". From Mahurin, the ancient Greeks derive Mauro, from which Latin derives Mauri. The word "Moor" is presumably of Phoenician origin. Some sources attribute a Hebrew origin to the word.

During the classical period, the Romans interacted with, and later conquered, parts of Mauretania, a state that covered modern northern Morocco, western Algeria, and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla. The Berber tribes of the region were noted in the Classics as Mauri, which was subsequently rendered as "Moors" in English and in related variations in other European languages. Mauri (Μαῦροι) is recorded as the native name by Strabo in the early 1st century. This appellation was also adopted into Latin, whereas the Greek name for the tribe was Maurusii (Ancient Greek: Μαυρούσιοι). The Moors were also mentioned by Tacitus as having revolted against the Roman Empire in 24 AD.

suggesting that the Romans had a term similar to "Moor" that may have been a predecessor to "Moor". Chia may have meant "Moor" in the sense of "from Mauretania".

I don't know who turned "Moor" into "Muslim" in that review. It's possible that the author of the review did, although I'd expect a senior editor at Foreign Affairs not to blithely assume that Chua meant Muslim there, given the extent to which both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars of Islam would be shocked by solid evidence of the existence of Islam between 98 and 117 AD, several hundred years before the generally-accepted date of Muhammad's birth in approximately 570 AD. My guess is that some LA Times editor "fixed" the use of the word "Moor", replacing it with "Muslim" because either 1) they were concerned that "Moor" would be considered an ethnic slur or 2) they didn't think the readers would understand the term, and were sufficiently clueless as to think that, in that context, "Muslim", rather than some geographical or other ethnic term, was the correct fix.

In any case, absent any solid evidence, independent of a possibly-misedited statement in a book review, that Amy Chua has found evidence of the existence of Islam in the early Roman empire, that paragraph should be removed. Guy Harris (talk) 06:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Removed it TablemannDanny231 (talk) 05:30, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

References