Talk:Zanj

message: :"According to other sources the heavily-Bantu Swahili peoples already had seafaring vessels with sailors and merchants trading with Arabia and Persia and as far east as India and China."
Checked 2 out of 3 sources that were linked for this statement that were available online and none of them actually say this. If it's true, find a source that actually verifies this... if it's not, delete it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.251.47.104 (talk) 15:05, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad sources 

message: Ok no more of the "negroes" and "primitive" nonsense. This is the end of those kind of weasel wordings. If the Arabs found them to be "primitive" then let them speak themselves of it, and even then they have their opinions as well, which are not to be taken as god given facts. This whole word association of "black" and "negro" and "primitive" is over. It's a self-fulfilling stereotype and I'm not having it. Just put the quote in and describe WHY it's so relevant to do so. --Zaphnathpaaneah 07:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever -- these are two very separate cases.  I didn't add "negro" to this article, and I'm not defending it, and I don't care if it goes.  But I did add "CONSIDERED culturally primitive" to the article, because it's the historical truth.  In the book Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis discusses at length an essay by Jahiz of Basra defending "the dark-skinned peoples, especially the Zanj, the Blacks of East Africa" against the slurs which he found to be very prevalent against them, such as "How is it that we have never seen a Zanjī who had the intelligence even of a woman or of a child?"  Of course, Lewis discusses the possibility that even Jahiz of Basra's motives in writing this essay may have been more of a rhetorical maneuver in the Arab-Persian Shu`ubiyya debates, rather than out of a very deep or sincere concern for Blacks themselves...  "CONSIDERED culturally primitive" is actually a rather charitable way of stating it -- some Arabs and Persians of the time were out-and-out racists (though not in the specific sense of 19th-century pseudo-biological ideology, which wasn't invented until much later). AnonMoos 16:45, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel words 

message: Negroid and all these terms are not academic and citing the dictonary of english to Arabic is not valid. If you quote some racist document written by Europeans and their perception it will always come up shallow. even you definition from a dictonary makes no sense in academic application, who is this black race.(there is no black race; black in color, black eyes, black teeth?) who r the Negros?(negro means black in Spanish) see the other users comments, adding content from a racist dictonary is bad taste, considering it is a Eurocentric translation of the word, to fit European perceptions about race. Again the term Zanj would not have been used to discuss South Africans or people in the congo.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 01:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever, dude -- the Arabic-English dictionary is not a biological treatise or an anthropological essay, but it contains quite a bit more knowledge of the meanings of Arabic words than you seem to possess, and if you're saying that Arabic words do not have meanings which all the standard linguistic scholarly reference works say that they DO in fact have, then you would seem to be the one pushing "POV" vandalism... AnonMoos 01:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: End your vandalism and POV

message: Arabic= East African, then East African means black. this is a superimposition not a translation. See more in linguistics, But East Africa doesnt = black, it is a imposed understanding and simplification of a word to fit in with limited lingusitics and racial generalization by Europeans. so Bantu=black, Somali=black, Konso=black, Wolf=black, Indian=black, Punjabi=black. imagine another language saying television and telephone is the same because they have a narrow appreciation of the difference?--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 01:56, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Dude, would you stop adding things in the middle of things?  Put new comments at the bottom of the page, unless they're a very specific reply to previous comments. AnonMoos 02:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: lost in translation

message: This is a joke, look who wrote it :
Hans Wehr (1909-1981), German arabist who was professor at University of Münster from 1957-1974. Wehr published the Arabisches Wörterbuch (1952), which was later published in an English edition as A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J. Milton Cowan. As part of this dictionary, Wehr created a transliteration scheme to represent the Arabic alphabet. The latest edition of the dictionary was published in 1995 and is Arabic-German only.
Is he an antropologist? No, look clearly at him and ask what is his persassion this is an outdated source full of racial predjudice of the time, why dont we just quote darwin
* "…At some future period, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world." Charles Darwin, Descent of Man   
    
* "Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites." Kant wrote in his book Physical Geography   
by the above discussion this material is valid today because it is old and white and used many many times.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 02:21, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Arab English Dictionary German author

message: I really don't have the patience or motivation to sort through all your different tangled tirades, but these are the highly-relevant facts:
1) Hans Wehr was not a genetic biologist and did not claim to be a genetic biologist, but had an extremely high degree of expertise in the area of Arabic lexicography (an area in which you appear to have no knowledge at all, and so are ill-equiped to try to refute him).  Furthermore, your attempt at "oppositional research" against him is original research, and so does not belong on Wikipedia -- and it's quite pointless anyway, since all the other reasonably comprehensive Arabic dictionaries say basically the same thing as the Wehr dictionary does.  For example, I have right here a separate dictionary by Maan Z. Medina which also defines Zunūj as "Negroes" -- and even if you were to turn up evidence that Maan Z. Medina beat his wife, that would do nothing to change the meaning of the word.
2) The early Arabs didn't know very much or care very much about the inhabitants of Congo, or about Tamils, but they knew about as much as they thought they needed to know about nubah, ħabaš, and zanj.
3) It is indisputable that according to all standard scholarly reference works, the word Zanj and its related forms in Arabic were used to refer to black people (not the general color black in the abstract, but black people).  Your purely personal attempts to refute the standard scholarly reference works do not belong on Wikipedia. AnonMoos 02:06, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: stop your pov, if they were not black in color what was black about them see black people. black is a nonspecific term zanj was spefic African people per ref, not your pov. ur a disruptive editor who fails to follow procedure. 3 ref contradict you, why not just replace East Africa with Negro if your source is accurate, just put black Negro African. --HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 02:18, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Dude, since you know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING whatsoever about the Arabic language, it might behoove you to adopt a little more humility with people who know a lot more about the Arabic language than you do. Otherwise, you have the "POV" of ill-informed ignorance. AnonMoos 02:44, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Arabic speaker what does Halaqah mean? look at my sig what language is that? the script of the so-called zanji, and you cant make these statements, it is a poor reflection on you, one german person doesnt define Arabic-english esp. a German translator--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 02:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The exact form "Halaqah" does not appear in my Arabic dictionary, but somewhat similar forms derived from root ح ل ق refer to "shaving" or to "circles".  If you thought that Halaqah meant "truth" in Arabic, then you're wrong -- it's Ħaqq حق which means "truth".  If you can't use an Arabic dictionary (e.g. can't try to look up "Halaqah" yourself, but are dependent on what other people -- who may or may not be competent -- tell you it means), then your knowledge is strictly third-hand, and not too useful in the context of this discussion. AnonMoos 03:05, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: is this a nice way to speak to someone? Please tell me what Halaqah means, y do you have to look it up. I didnt say Halakah, i said Halaqah. not your dictonary but what does it mean in every day Arabic: lingua franca (dont cheat now). I dont want to say things about you, i dont know you. But i am guessing you are not a native speaker because, people who spk Arabic know immd wht halaqah means. next time you go to class ask the teacher and it isnt a Kah it is a Qaf. and it has an ha : at the end, how do you insert the script. dam. sorry i cant get the fonts inserted.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 03:15, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry if I assume that you don't know Arabic, but in your discussions about the meaning word "Zanj" you haven't displayed any relevant Arabic-language skills so far.  I looked up both triliteral root ح ل ق  and ه ل ق in my dictionary, and there wasn't any root ه ل ق , and the root ح ل ق is related to the concepts "shaving" and "circles", but does not have the exact form Halaqah listed as derived from it.  These are the only Arabic letters which are commonly transcribed into English as "h", "l", and "q", so I'm not sure where else I should look for it. AnonMoos 03:23, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Dude, stripping away the semi-meaningless post-modernist deconstructionist social constructivist jargon term, I actually do fully agree with you that the word "race" as applied to broad groupings such as "Caucasian" or "black" is vague and ill-defined, and not scientifically valid.  However, that has almost no relevance to this article.  Regardless of the biological reality (whatever that may have been), the early Arabs had the concepts of "people of Nubah", "people of Ħabaš", and "people of Zanj" -- and the term "people of Zanj" was later often applied to Africans who were dark-skinned and/or felt by the Arabs to be rather culturally alien to the Arabs.  Whether the Arab use of the word Zanj happened to be scientifically-valid according to the most recent scientific discoveries of 2006 is really pretty much irrelevant -- what's much more important is to honestly report what the Arabs meant by the term Zanj when the Arabs used the term Zanj. AnonMoos 02:54, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok we are talking now, Zanj was used for Ethiopian people, and they were not that Darkskinned. The Zanj were also as some academics say from deep in Africa, they say the term became applied by default to "darker"Africans, either way we cannot use loose social terms when words have specific meanings, we cannot infer we should not infer, it is wrong academically to say what someone meant by a word by our Eurocentric imposed standards of race classification and let me add, you will notice that the world is moving away from these classificiation, these are old 18th century terms, see all the issues on black people the meaning itself changes from Brazil to USA, black people also means too much to too many people. It isnt academic and may confuse the reader.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 03:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, "people of Nubah" was used to refer to those in the general southern Egypt / northern Sudan area, "people of Ħabaš", was used to refer to those in the general Ethiopia / Horn of Africa area, and "people of Zanj" was used to refer to those in the general Kenya/Tanzania area.  Occasionally all three could be lumped together as Zanjis, but when the distinctions were made, people from Ethopia were not in fact called Zanjis.  When the Arabs later became aware of further areas of Sub-Saharan Africa (beyond Kenya/Tanzania), the inhabitants of those areas could often be called Zanjis.  AnonMoos 03:15, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: My semi-final reply Zanj means black

message: User AnonMoos has given no refernce inline refernces as per wiki policy. We are suppose to trust the contraversial content. I ask Where is the source in the article ZANJ, show me the source in the article Zanj, how manytimes until you understand this statement, you have zero source. And you have changed my sources,   my sources r three and clear, including a book, where are yours. i even gave page numbers, where r yours? What page, where who said? you have mistranslated the Arabic of Zanj and mixed it up with Bilad ul Sudan. you have altered my 3 sources statements, none use the word black, they say East African--HalaTruth(ሐላቃህ) 21:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Stop saying that when you know very well it isn't true. My primary source (as I've said repeatedly over and over and over again many many times) is the Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic and other comprehensive scholarly Arabic dictionaries -- which all say basically the same thing, which you haven't presented the slightest relevant information to call into question.  I have no idea what your "three sources" are, but so far you haven't presented any concrete factual evidence to do anything to cast any doubt on the accepted linguistic facts of the Arabic language.  And as I just explained on your user talk page (and I could have told you at any time if you had asked), the definitions for forms derived from triconsonantal root ز ن ج are found on pages 444-445 of the 1,301 pages which comprise the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (4th edition of 1994). AnonMoos 22:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: No sources violates Wiki policy

message: * Not a dictonary
* Not a Battleground
* Undue weight to technical grammatical explanations —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Halaqah (talk • contribs) 09:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are missing the point.  This is English language version of wikipedia so only Arab-English translations are relevant here. In a lexicographic analysis of the English language, philosophy professor Lansana Keita noted that the word "black", "negro", and "African race" are all defined in terms of one another and can be regarded as logically equivalent  The fact that the Arabs used the term zanj for all black Africans they were aware of, with the occasional exception of the heavily Arabized Ethiopians and Nubians (who are arguably multiracial instead of black), makes it very useful to the English speaking reader to define zanj as black Christmasgirl
black is not an enclyopedic definition of a people, so lets not bring a controversial term into another controversial article. U r then imposing the subjectivity of a term Black people into this article. These terms like white people are unencyclopedic in historical context. Take a look at any African section. Black African is a offensive term. They are called Ethiopians, Malians, Fulani, Hausa. not one lumped race. Again, terms which are unclear, shouldnt be used as Indians are black and Arabs def didnt mean them. English speakers pollute history when they impose westernize terms on other peoples words. See Semantic drift.& u can agrue the other point with yourself as i have advised editors not to engage it as it is called trolling.--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ 14:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Dude, all of that biological stuff is totally irrelevant to this article.  I actually agree with you that broad vague terms like "black race"[sic], "Caucasian race"[sic], and "oriental race"[sic] have very little scientific validity according to modern research.  Unfortunately, this hasno real bearing on article Zanj, which is about what Arabs thought about Africans, not what the scientific biological genetic reality may have been.  If every Arabic-English dictionary says that the word Zanj زنج in some of its uses corresponds adequately closely to the English word "Black" (or in the case of Arabic-English dictionaries compiled during the first two-thirds of the 20th-century, to the English word Negro", the most commonly used English word at that time), then that's what we go by -- not your personal theories about biological genetics and social constructivism. AnonMoos 01:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: P.s. I have websites that show Africans are genetically inferior to White people. what does it mean? i have tons of research showing the genetic relationship between Apes and Negroes. some half baked racist opinion isnt worthy of a reply. A pls not Blackness is a very US driven experience, see Black people so if all that debate is true then leave the term out of here.--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ 14:11, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is an utter red herring. An encyclopedia should rightly note what usage is, and be clearly expressed. Black as a generic descriptor of dark-skinned generally (recently w/in 1000 yrs or so) sub-Saharan descended people is not "controversial" as such. Extending the mere phenotypic descriptor to assert conclusions about the nature of the people in question is controversial (and rightly so). Black in ordinary, common English usage is neither controversial nor particularly full of import, as such. (collounsbury 17:46, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

text:  I have to say observing this increasingly bizarre dialogue, I can only agree that Halaqa's argument is frankly incoherent. Historical and contemporary usage of Zanj seems to be fairly clearly along the lines of the modern English usage of black. One need not go as for as Xmasgirl's argument (as frankly it is not clear to me that one should say Arabs did X in a blanket sense, Arabic usage in the Gulf, Mesopotamia, etc. was and is not the same as in the Maghreb, to take the starkest contrast). That Halaqa is on some odd jihad against the word black as a "racial" descriptor is clear. That this little effort makes any sense in this context is not. Of course a coherent argument logically ordered would be nice, if only for the sheer novelty value.(collounsbury 17:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: WHat Wiki is not

message: I'd like to fill in some of the "citation needed" gaps with references to such works as "Race and Slavery in the Middle East" by Bernard Lewis () and "The Negative Images of Blacks in some Medieval Iranian Writings" by Minoo Southgate (Journal of of the Society for Iranian Studies, Vol XVII, Winter 1984 issue, pp. 3-36), but there's little point in even starting this effort as long as User:Halaqah continues to insist on garabling this article in order to pretend that the Arabic word Zanj زنج (and related forms deived from the same triliteral root) don't mean what every Arabic dictionary says that they mean! AnonMoos 22:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Black is not a universially agreed term, this is not an American site, avoid these broad confusing terms to describe a ENTIRE African continent. Africa is diverse, I study African ethnic groups. My contributions to African history and ethnic groups is enourmous. I am a major content adder, i know this subject. Zanj is heavily debated in academic circles. It is a place, but one thing everyone agrees on it is not a general term for Black people. Black is a nice concept but not for defining a people. YOu dont say "the Masai are a black poeple that live in Africa" because that is not what Most Africans would say it is a American view of a people. Black African is an offesnive term if you didnt know, people say Sub-Saharan African, do not add out dated terms, when slightly better terms exist. Again this is an area i know very well i have the qualification to know the difference. As i have told you, the Amharic-Arabic Dic doesnt say this, the Hausa-Arabic Dict doesnt say this, The Spanish-Arabic dic doesnt say this. Do not represent a western mono-worldview. Unless u are saying the German Dic has supremacy over my sources and the Amharic-Arabic dic, and the Hausa-Arabic dictonary, not to mention the Wolof-Arabic dic.--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ 12:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

text: & please dont pretend i am halting the development of this article, i have to date created and developed most ethnic African group article on wiki, from Masai, Fulani to Nuer. And not to mention other zanj related issues.--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ 12:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You're blocking the development of this article because for some bizarre personal reason of your own, you insist that the Arabic word Zanj زنج doesn't mean what every Arabic dictionary says that it does in fact mean.  Unless you stop this pointless behavior, it's hard to see how things will improve greatly. AnonMoos 13:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

text: No term is universally agreed upon, but Black when used in a racial or ethnic context is about as close to what the Arabs meant by Zanj as one can get.  Your arguments are very incoherent and you've demonstrated no ability at all to look up words in Arab-English dictionaries, and yet you expect us to believe you know more about these languages than the people who actually wrote these dictionaries.  Please stop blocking progress in this article as I am eager to see the additions AnonMoos would like to make Cognitiveelite 13:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

text: We might reply to your arguments if we could understand them. Can someone please translate the above paragraph into something coherent? Cognitiveelite 18:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Let me add that I think I see something of a hint of an argument in Halaqah's incoherent ranting, even an argument I might be sympathetic to, but without coherence and clarity (and this endless incoherent edits, running off in various directions), I see no value-added. (collounsbury 23:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: What's the point of trying to fix this page when User:Halaqah insists on continually garbling it?

message: How much of this content was added by me and Yom? So intresting observation. All of the nonsense about Land of the Blacks that the above user added has been deleted by another user as inaccurate. Funny isnt it. The same content that i disputed is now down to 2 words. Why dont you insert land of the blacks again? thats what u were fighting for last time? Where are the sources. Ohh, Guess what the only references in this article are the ones i have added. So how is developing this topic? Note i also developed Black people--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ 18:01, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: FUnny isnt it

message: ^ "The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam". "John Hunwick". Retrieved on 2004-10-01. 
^ "Zanj Rebellion". "Owen 'Alik Shahadah". 
^ a b "Hidden Iraq". "William Cobb". 
now opinions and lay thinking is or, my added content is from three sources. wiki works on sources not feelings, or single sources. germanic tribes = white people is not a very encycolpedic way to discuss germanic people. yes they r white people, but germanic makes it a specific kind of white person.
please read jstor zanj it shows the complexity of the term, this article doesnt say black people. the issue is not all black people would be classified as zanj.
going deeper, rushton refers to the "habesha and zanj", now everyone knows ethiopian r black people so y do rushton and Arabs use two terms for one race? (if rushton is correct) a free ethiopian in Arabia would have been called Habaesha not Zanj according to rushton. i am not a lay person on this topic, and i am sick of African history being treated as some "any old thing they all black", see the above plethora of terms used to describe African people, most actually mean Slave. unless Slave = black people i fail to c the translation. this is the racism. zanj = slave = black people.--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ 03:28, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Mate, you incoherent additions, and constant adding of new subject lines at best subtracts from your credibility. Specific objections to dubious authors and citations, e.g. Rushton are fine - although that has fuck all to do with the issue of glossing Zanj as Black. That gloss is as good as any translation gets. Yeah, it is not 100% exact in usage, but any rendition of meaning over time and over several languages is going to be inexact, such that only specialists will grasp the nuance. Now if there is specific language that is prejudicial as such to Africans / black Africans, and presented as essential (and I would say that perhaps the article overdraws, esp. in using Arab when usage may only really have been regional) then you might have a coherent objection. But your incoherent little jihad (and poor grasp of English usage and style) are hardly convincing in their present form. At best. (collounsbury 23:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: here r three sources, without sources do not add content

message: Now that`s what I call falsification of history. Over some period of time I have read first: The Zanj uprising against their arab/ muslim slave masters. Then second: The Zanj-uprising was supported by the Shia-muslims. And now third: The vast majority of the rebels were Arabs of the Persian Gulf supported by free East Africans.
:Surely the next official muslim-version will be that the Zanj and Arabs fought against Western and Jewish slave-masters. 62.178.137.216 (talk) 19:02, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This article just looks and sounds shoddy - it likely needs some cleaning up. I have looked up two of the sources and they are fake - will look up the others and then perhaps rewrite it entirely. Wanyonyi (talk) 11:11, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lets make history 

message: I read kiswahali with difficulty (:sw:Etimolojia ya Neno Zanzibar), but Zanguebar seem to be old european (via portuguese) word for zanj, it is not ? Vincnet (talk) 14:47, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You ar relating to the city/island Zanzibar I presume, Zanzibar comes from the Persian word "Zangi-bar" (Zangi=Black and Bar=the Place of); later in the history the "g" sound was replaced by "z" sound due to the lack of the sound "g" in Arabic language of the invading Arabs. at least thats what Wikipedia and other sources say, I`ve also found an older etymology relating it to Portuguese ("stoned walled"), but when comparing it with the history of the place, and the little impact that the Portugues had, it doesnt seem that likely. Maybe they just used a somewhat similar sounding name for it. Besides it doesnt change on the subject of the Term Zanj beeing of Persian/Arabic origin.--77.117.250.236 (talk) 11:46, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Zanj Or zanguebar

message: The proper IPA for this is Zunj OR Zinj --Prince jasim ali (talk) 15:04, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Rename

message: A source is quoted in the article: It was not a slave revolt. It was a zanj, i.e. a Negro, revolt. To equate Negro with slave is a reflection of nineteenth-century racial theories; it could only apply to the American South before the Civil War."
"All the talk about slaves rising against the wretched conditions of work in the salt marshes of Basra is a figment of the imagination and has no support in the sources. On the contrary, some of the people who were working in the salt marshes were among the first to fight against the revolt. Of course there were a few runaway slaves who joined the rebels... Ah yes.-- 178.115.212.185 (talk) 20:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Funny interpretation of the Zanj Rebellion 

message: Per early historian and geographer like Yaqut al-Hamawi on his book made a distinction between Berber people of Maghreb and those of east Africa, he wrote in his book Mu'jam Al-Buldan , 173 quoted "Mogadishu is a city located on the outskirts of the land of Zinj, on the land of Berbirah south of Yemen, and these Berber are different from those of Maghreb, these people are black similar to Zanj and look like an intermediate race between Habesha and Zanj".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.96.44.160 (talk) 10:29, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to Bereber people

message: I have removed the over-quotation template from contemporary descriptions, because that section had three quotes, of which at least two were necessary to give a full sense of the variety in use of the term.  The template mainly appears to be a legacy of the debates over the identification of "Zanj" with "black" above; as these debates appear to have been resolved, the template no longer seems necessary nor consensual.  Bernanke's Crossbow (talk) 05:19, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Over-quotation 

message: What is written here about the etymology is kind of weird. These seem to be superficial sources written by Europeans with little knowledge. There is no doubt that Zanj is derived from the Persian word Zang, which literally means "rust", also in modern day Persian. I speak Persian. When you add an -i suffix, it becomes an adjective. So "Zangi" literally means "rusty". The Arabic language does not know the G sound which is why Arabs pronounce it Zanj instead of Zang. References to that etymology can be found in wiktionary, see: زنجي - Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%B2%D9%86%D8%AC%D9%8A), زنگی - Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%B2%D9%86%DA%AF%DB%8C#Persian), زنگ - Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%B2%D9%86%DA%AF#Persian)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.233.35.210 (talk) 01:32, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: According to Dr. Felix Chami, archaeologist and professor at Dar es Salaam University in his co-edited book - Southern Africa and Swahili World, Zanj does not mean black. He says " Following my detailed discussion of the word Zanj in my co-edited book called Southern Africa and Swahili World  (you can find it with African Books Collective)...it seems now the word Zanj or Azania or Zangion had nothing to do with the colour of people or even slavery the way the first one has been conceptualised. What is in those words is the word 'Za' or 'Zi' and ancient Bantu word for water-oceans or lakes, and another word 'nchi' or 'nji' another Bantu word meaning country or settlement respectively. The people of the coast of East Africa identified themselves with the 'Indian Ocean' which was then known as 'Za' and hence the people of the country or settlement of 'Za' and hence 'Zanchi' or 'Zanj'"...I am a Xhosa South African with ancestry going up East Africa to the nothern regions and I concur that Zanj refered to the coast and it's people because in the Xhosa and Zulu languages ZANSI/ZANTSI means coast and/or people of the coast.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by PhaloParihu (talk • contribs) 15:50, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zanj is not Arabic