El Cabbage

Excerpt from 'The Illustrated Cairo Genizah', page 33: "This is the end of the biblical book of Nehemiah, written in Hebrew and vocalised with the Babylonian vowel system. In contrast to the Palestinian and Tiberian systems – which mainly used dots to represent vowel sounds – the Babylonian system also used miniature Hebrew letters for vowels and accents. Like the Palestinian system, the Babylonian vowel signs fell out of favour with the rise of the Tiberian system. This fragment includes a colophon (in the middle of the lefthand page) from a scribe named Joseph ben Nimorad, stating that he copied the book in a town in Iran in the year 903/904 CE. This makes it one of the earliest known dated Hebrew manuscripts. While Joseph was a member of the Jewish diaspora community that lived in Iraq and Iran, eventually someone carried his manuscript to Egypt." Image and catalogue description here: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-TS-NS-00246-00026-00002/1

This is a fragment from the oldest Hebrew Bible manuscript with a given date of production. It's the end of the book of Nehemiah, pointed with Babylonian vowel signs. A Jewish scribe named Joseph ben Nimorad completed it in 903/4 CE at Gunbad-i-Mallgan (modern Dogonbadan, Iran).

All right: I’m putting out an open invitation: if you’re a moot living in or visiting Europe and would like to meet, let me know, and we’ll arrange something*

*Time tbd because I still don’t have permanent housing lol

There's so much to be depressed about right now, particularly if you are connected to or focused on the Middle East.

This podcast with @rachelschine.bsky.social, talking about her recent monograph on race in medieval Islam, gave me joy.

music.youtube.com/podcast/M_PM...

‘Not a happy place’: CNN staff fret about the future under David Ellison Network will have same owner as Bari Weiss’ CBS News if Paramount seals Warner takeover

‘Not a happy place’: CNN staff fret about the future under David Ellison

Al Jazeera investigation: Iran girls’ school targeting likely ‘deliberate’ Al Jazeera investigation raises questions over deadliest single attack of war that killed 165 schoolgirls and staff.

Look back on Gaza and you will see a pattern of Israeli strikes designed to kill children in hopes of intimidating and breaking the minds of journalists, doctors and government workers. Many children at this school in Iran had parents working for Iran's government.
www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/...

Benjamin Netanyahu’s long career was built on conflict avoidance—then, October 7 transformed and radicalized him, @Yair_Rosenberg argues:

OMFG they think we are the dumbest people who ever lived.

Deadly bombing of Iran primary school ‘a grave violation of humanitarian law’: UNESCO The UN education agency, UNESCO, says that the bombing of a primary school during the US and Israeli military attacks on Iran on Saturday constitutes a grave violation of humanitarian law.

UN education agency, UNESCO, says bombing of school during US and Israeli military attacks on Iran constitutes a grave violation of humanitarian law.

Missiles reportedly destroyed a girl’s primary school in Minab, Iran, killing around 150 and wounding almost 100. 
news.un.org/en/story/202...

Besides the lack of effort to manufacture consent for this war, another depressing change from the Iraq War is how obsequious European and Arab countries all are. Remember when the Iraq War made the US unpopular in Europe? Remember “freedom fries”? No such opposition now

The number of dead kids in the Israeli bombing of a girl’s school in Minab, southern Iran, has now reached 148.

Don’t let them sell you dead children as “collateral damage of a just war”. The death of Khamenei does not justify 148 dead children.

Despite the popular western narrative that NATO overthrew Gaddafi, there was a major civil war already happening on the ground, and the Libyan people overthrew Gaddafi. There is no comparable civil war happening in Iran right now, though Trump and Netanyahu are hoping they can ignite one

Unless their plan involves nukes and missiles that can seriously hurt Israel, I don’t see how what they’re doing is different from Arab countries who are just looking the other way and hoping Israel and its advocates in the US don’t come for it next bsky.app/profile/kats...

Whether Iranians celebrating Khamenei's death or Bahrainis and Palestinians celebrating Iranian missiles hitting Israeli and American targets, there is nobody in the Middle East who lives in a country where the people have the power.

The people want the fall of the Regime, from Tel Aviv to Tehran.

What plan?

The country that should look at what has happened and get nukes the fastest is actually Egypt, but it won't

Israel, immediately after vaporizing a bunch of little girls:

"I want lasting peace and so I support bombing elementary schools and murdering 60 girls"

US-Israeli strike on girls' school kills at least 85 students, Iran's judiciary says At least 85 students have been killed in US-Israeli strikes that hit an Iranian girls' school in Hormozgan province, Iran's judiciary said on Saturday. Washington has not commented on the reported str...

We killed 85 schoolgirls. We are not the good guys.

If Americans can’t figure out why we’re starting a war with Iran, then frankly they don’t deserve to know.

by Karoline Leavitt

Houthis vow to resume attacks following Iranian strikes - Splash247 With the US and Israel attacking Iran on Saturday, Iranian allies, the Houthis from Yemen, have vowed to resume attacks on commercial shipping in and around the Red Sea, bringing to a close a four-mon...

Haven't seen an official statement, but AP says Houthi officials are resuming attacks on Israel and the Red Sea.

This fulfills their pledge to take part in a response, allows them to redirect discontent toward an issue they're popular on, and I think underlines how seriously they see the situation.

If the US is notorious worldwide for school shootings, Israel has been notorious for half a century for bombing schools everywhere it goes

Do not forget the people of Lebanon either, who have been suffering the "preemptive" bombardment of Israel for well over a year and a half and are suffering it intensified tenfold today

To my Iranian friends: I hope you all stay safe during this war of aggression by the rogue terrorist states of Israel and the United States

I’m an internationalist in the sense that I think DC should be occupied by coalition forces

The French word ‘aujourd’hui’ (today) consists of ‘au’ (on the), ‘jour’ (day), ‘de’ (of) and ‘hui’ (today). It was formed during the late Middle Ages.

However, many Romance words come from even older combinations. Some are hardly identifiable as such anymore.

Click my new graphics to explore them:

I was reminded of a neat English example of stacking: 'about'.

Via Middle English 'abuten', it comes from Old English 'onbūtan', literally "on the outside".

This was a combination of 'on' and 'būtan', a cognate of Dutch 'buiten' ("outside").

'Būtan' and 'buiten', in turn, come from ... 1/

Do what you gotta do to reach people, but I fucking hate shorts and the fact that YouTube’s algorithm (and search) is useless for anything except shorts now

Image of a copy of the book, Astrology and History in Early Islam: Aligning Heaven and Earth, by Antoine Borrut

GUYS GUYS GUYS my incredible colleague, Antoine Borrut, just texted me this pic, the BOOK IS IN HAND, which means you too can have it soon!

Astrology and History in Early Islam, coming out with Edinburgh!

I hope this is true, and that we see some evidence of this position dying before thousands more people do as a result of it

Duolingo challenge to translate the word “twin” into French in the sentence: “Did you know that Thomas has a twin brother?”

Well yeah, the name kind of gave it away