nicked on 18/1/2009 at 13:36
The idea of a Trickster temple always fascinated me - but it seemed to get abandoned after TDP. Hmm, fan mission idea...
Beleg Cúthalion on 18/1/2009 at 19:40
According to Google the "d" in Fellahdeen seems to be an LGS thing. Anyway, AFAIK farmers were usually the first to fall victim to religious missionaries or propaganda – da'wa, to throw in another Arabic term. Turning around a quote about Islam and Hinduism and possible parallels to the environment of their homelands, I'd say that farmers are more used to the powers of nature and thus accessible to Pagan thought, while cityheads are shown the might of the Builder and the work of his followers every day with urban achievements, high cathedrals and – although I don't like emphasizing it too much – technology.
Sorry for being off topic, but it just caught my interest although I'm usually not into Pagans. :p
jtr7 on 18/1/2009 at 20:45
A couple of years ago, I sent this to Spix:
[INDENT]First, I typed my best guesses into my digital Webster's dictionary (before I could get online). And found this:
fellah
n.
pl. fellahs or fellaheen
[Ar. fallah (pl. fallahin), peasant, farmer < falaha, to plow]
a peasant or farm laborer in an Arab country
Later, when I could get online, I typed it in with a "d" in place of the "h" and found this, amongst other typos:
"-Anything major in advancing civilization, doing great physical works, is sometimes predicated on acceptance of deaths in the process. Apollo cost us 3 astronauts and almost 100 unsung others that died making it happen. Building the Golden Gate Bridge killed 18. Empire State Building? 7-9 depending on what version you read. Panama Canal? - 13,000 died.
-The Egyptian monuments were worth it. Just like Apollo. The poorest > FELLAHDEEN < onion farmer 8 kilomoters from the Nile knows that HIS people created wonders that the whole world respects, and the people that made them - HIS people - for the last 5,000 years. Enjoy what you see."
Plus I found a scanned page from a book.[/INDENT]
I Alt+PrintScreened the passage from (
http://books.google.com/books?id=gv0CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA241&lpg=PA241&dq=fellahdeen&source=bl&ots=9AtasPg5z6&sig=TH9bJMlbsOdXWK1RRUHKoGrzjEg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA242,M1) the book and sent it as an attachment. Note the phrase "wretched fellahdeen".:)
One "felladeen" is found on this page:
(
http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/starring-amitav-ghosh)
Beleg Cúthalion on 18/1/2009 at 21:39
At least the Arabic version doesn't have a "d". It's written فلاح (fallāh, imagine a small dot under the h), just for those interested. I don't know what it could be else... :erg: Speaking of it, the correct plural should end with -ūn (for the English: -oon), -īn is just for genititv and accusative which occurs often in colloquial language and is thus considered the standard version in the dialects.
Enough school for today. :)
jtr7 on 18/1/2009 at 21:58
Well, you know how it is when one culture adopts a word and bastardizes it. The fact that the word wasn't completely butchered is remarkable. As you know, I not only speak English, but American English, so I fully appreciate the melding and metamorphosing and adoption of words between cultures and phonemes. The variations derived from "Fellah" still resemble their root while, say, "Cajun" hardly resembles "Arcadian", except in sound.
We now return this thread back to its original topic:
Right! So yeah, the point I was making before was, The City has more pagans in it than before, because they are trying to get to the bottom of all the dying plant life, and before long, they find themselves being slaughtered. So now they really are trying to get to the heart of the matter, sending agents in to gather intelligence, and others are trying to replace the dead plants with healthy ones, and it's an uphill battle. With all the pagans in The City, fighting for their cause, under the leadership of Viktoria, it's no stretch to see that Blackrat & Weythran are less-likely to be pagans. They would have to be double-agents, but I think that's stretching it. They fall under the sheriff's general and aggressive street-cleaning project, which soon became the cover for Karras's pagan genocide program. For a pagan to have no planty interests, no pagan interests, and to be an informant for the pagan-killing City Watch, to make money to turn others like himself in, makes him a traitor to his people or a non-pagan, and would've made for a stronger story, yet it's kept very vague, with only an emphasis on City Watch politics. Again, there's no story connection between these guys and the pagans, beyond Truart's general "new age", wherein he's gathering up and eliminating ALL undesirables, especially the pagans Karras is paying him to round up, with the exception of a few nobles, and he's blackmailing them, or keeping them around as leverage.
