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Greek language without Islam

Ricardolindo

Well-known member
Location
Portugal
Had Islam never existed, would the Levant, Egypt and Cyrenaica have eventually become predominantly Greek speaking? The coastal cities already were so but Aramaic, Coptic and Berber respectively still dominated in the hinterland.
 
Had Islam never existed, would the Levant, Egypt and Cyrenaica have eventually become predominantly Greek speaking? The coastal cities already were so but Aramaic, Coptic and Berber respectively still dominated in the hinterland.

Not until print capitalism and nationalism would such a project be deemed desirable or even seen as accomplisable.
 
Not until print capitalism and nationalism would such a project be deemed desirable or even seen as accomplisable.

Sorry for the late reply, but I will expand on each of the three regions:
1. The Levant had a lot of Greek settlement and Hellenization along the coasts. If the Greeks were eventually able to Hellenize all of Anatolia, I don't see why they couldn't have done the same with the Levant.
2. Egypt had little Greek settlement, except in Alexandria, but a lot of people were bilingual. My guess is that it would be an increasingly bilingual society.
3. Cyrenaica was apparently entirely Hellenized, as its coast where the Greeks settled is the only habitable part of Cyrenaica. The rest is the Libyan desert, the most arid part of the Sahara, which was only fully explored in the early 20th century.
 
Sorry for the late reply, but I will expand on each of the three regions:
1. The Levant had a lot of Greek settlement and Hellenization along the coasts. If the Greeks were eventually able to Hellenize all of Anatolia, I don't see why they couldn't have done the same with the Levant.
2. Egypt had little Greek settlement, except in Alexandria, but a lot of people were bilingual. My guess is that it would be an increasingly bilingual society.
3. Cyrenaica was apparently entirely Hellenized, as its coast where the Greeks settled is the only habitable part of Cyrenaica. The rest is the Libyan desert, the most arid part of the Sahara, which was only fully explored in the early 20th century.

The Levant still remained massively linguistically diverse. And Anatolia wasn't fully Hellenised. Heavily Hellenisied sure, but there were still substantial populations of non-Greek speakers running around the place. The Armenians first and foremost amongst them.
Bilingual is not the same a "predominantly Greek" speaking, and the Coptic Orthodox divide is at play too.
As for Cyrenaica, I don't think a rapidly decertifying backwater is the case study you want for the rest of the Empire.
 
The Levant still remained massively linguistically diverse. And Anatolia wasn't fully Hellenised. Heavily Hellenisied sure, but there were still substantial populations of non-Greek speakers running around the place. The Armenians first and foremost amongst them.
Bilingual is not the same a "predominantly Greek" speaking, and the Coptic Orthodox divide is at play too.
As for Cyrenaica, I don't think a rapidly decertifying backwater is the case study you want for the rest of the Empire.

1. By the time of the Arab invasions, the Anatolian languages appear to have become extinct. Also, Western Armenia has only been considered part of Anatolia since the Armenian Genocide. It was traditionally regarded as part of the Armenian Highlands, a different region.
2. That's true. I now think Egypt would have been a bilingual society rather than predominantly Greek speaking.
3. I agree Cyrenaica is a very different beast than the other two. I just wanted to note that the only populated part of it, Jebel Akhdar, appears to have been completely Hellenized.
 
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