‘New Method to Read Historic Texts’…New Book by Palestinian Researcher Khaled Hussein Ayoub

Book, Khaled Ayoub
Book, Khaled Ayoub
TT

‘New Method to Read Historic Texts’…New Book by Palestinian Researcher Khaled Hussein Ayoub

Book, Khaled Ayoub
Book, Khaled Ayoub

Dar Kanaan Publishing, Damascus, released ‘New Method to Read Historic Texts’, a new book by Palestinian researcher Khaled Hussein Ayoub.

“The book features historic texts from Italy, Cyprus, Turkey, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, dating back to the first millennium BC. It showcases the wrong grammar methods that researchers used to read these historic texts, based on virtual grammar rules, which are no more than a tool to distort the real meanings of these texts. It also seeks to refute the purposes behind distorting and falsifying facts,” he said in the introduction.

Ayoub explains that “the conventional studying method of the languages dubbed ‘semitic’ is based on five main rules, in addition to the omission and replacement of letters from and in the historic text. These rules are voicing three letters, insertion of four letters, projection of eight letters, and replacement of letters in 66 cases; the total replaceable letters are 81. There is also the place changing rule which allows to change the place of the entire alphabet…setting rules that cause chaos instead of firm, strict ones that regulate the text is just an insult for the mind and logic.”

The researcher says the historic texts he studied are not prose, but mostly poems. In his book, he compared their poetic characteristics, composed poem samples, and found that both the original and the sample poems matched in the digital demonstration. He notes that the poetic style had an important impact on the reading of these texts, as it doesn’t allow any addition or omission of letters, because alterations applied according to the conventional method could disturb the poetic balance.



UN Puts 4th Century Gaza Monastery on Endangered Site List

The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File
The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File
TT

UN Puts 4th Century Gaza Monastery on Endangered Site List

The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File
The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File

The Saint Hilarion complex, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, has been put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites in danger due to the war in Gaza, the body said Friday.
UNESCO said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, had been put on the endangered list at the demand of Palestinian authorities and cited the "imminent threats" it faced.
"It's the only recourse to protect the site from destruction in the current context," Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, told AFP, referring to the war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.
In December, the UNESCO Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict decided to grant "provisional enhanced protection" -- the highest level of immunity established by the 1954 Hague Convention -- to the site.
UNESCO had then said it was "already concerned about the state of conservation of sites, before October 7, due to the lack of adequate policies to protect heritage and culture" in Gaza.
The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.