August 14, 2015

Autopsy of a Revolution

Edward Said once famously took the scholar Bernard Lewis to task over the history of the Arabic word for "revolution"—thawra. In an essay called "Islamic Concepts of Revolution," Lewis had traced the term's usage back to the classical period of the language, and presented evidence showing that it had acquired its current sense only in the 19th century. Before this, Lewis had argued, it would have been more accurately translated by the English terms "excitement," "uprising," or, at the most, "rebellion," having originated in a verb form which literally meant "'rise up' (e.g. of a camel)."

Source: Washington Free Beacon