Cultural Lesson: Islamic Burial Practices

I did this lesson on Islamic burial practices with my Latin IV class last year as we were reading my publication Nasreddin Chogia: Fabellae. One of the fables alludes to Islamic burial practices. Here is my Latin adaptation of the fable:

Chōgia ōlim hieme in silvā ligna caedēns, “Algeō!,” inquit, “Ergō, mortuus sum!”

Ergō, Chōgia cum dēcubuisset tamquam mortuus, “Efferendus sum!,” inquit.

Chōgia cum domum rediisset, tum, “Mortuus sum,” inquit uxōrī, “in silvā. Iubē amīcōs mē efferre.”

Deinde Chōgia cum in silvam rediisset, dēcubuit.

Cum uxor Chōgiae in tabernam vēnisset, “Nasreddīn Chōgia,” inquit, “in silvā mortuus est.”

Amīcī Chōgiae, “Quī scīs?,” inquiunt.

Uxor, “Quia,” inquit, “Chōgia domum rediit et haec mihi dīxit.”

(A translation for readers who do not read Latin:)

Once upon a time, Hoca, while chopping firewood in the woods in the wintertime, said, "I am cold! Therefore, I am dead!"

So Hoca, when he had lay down as if he were dead, said, "I must be carried out (i.e. for burial)!"

So Hoca, when he had returned home, then he said to his wife, "I died in the woods. Tell my friends to carry me out (i.e. for burial)."

Then Hoca, when he had returned to the woods, lay down.

When Hoca's wife had arrived at the coffeehouse, she said, "Nasreddin Hoca has died in the woods."

Hoca's friends said, "How do you know?"

The wife said, "Because Hoca came back home and told me this."

After reading this fable with my students, I wanted students to understand Islamic burial practices and why Nasreddin Hoca feels such a strong sense of urgency to be buried when he believes that he is dead. For this lesson, students located QR codes posted around our building at school. These QR codes linked to a sentence in Latin and a clue to the location of the next clue. All of the sentences described steps involved in a traditional Islamic burial. Students not only located the QR codes and copied down the Latin sentences, but also put the sentences in chronological order.

The sentences for each step. I glossed new terms in Latin or in English in parentheses:

1. Muslimus periit. (A Muslim has died.)

2. Cadaver (corpus mortui) inter 24 horas sepeliendum (in terra ponendum) est. [The corpse (the body of a deceased person) must be buried (placed in the ground) within 24 hours.

3. Cadaver necessariis (e.g. sororibus, fratribus, filiis, matri, patri, etc.) lavandum est. [The corpse must be washed by relatives (e.g. sisters, brothers, children, mother, father, etc.).]

4. Cadaver involvendum est. (The corpse must be wrapped up.)

5. Cadaver in arca ponitur. (The corpse is placed in a coffin.)

6. Cadaver ad meschitam effertur. (The corpse is brought to a mosque.)

7. Cadaver in sepulcretum effertur. (The corpse is brought to a cemetery.)

8. Eis qui adsunt orandum est. (Those in attendance must pray.)

9. Cadaver in sepulcro sepeliendum (in terra ponendum) est. [The corpse must be buried (placed in the ground)].

10. Cadaver in Meccam advertendum est. (The corpse must be turned towards Mecca.)

After putting the steps in order, students then wrote in Latin summarizing the fable in their own words in Latin and explaining why Hoca felt such a strong sense of urgency to be buried.

The worksheet:

Self-Publishing in Greek

In the world of self-publishing novellas for language learners, most authors use Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Why? For authors, it is easy to use - you just need to upload your manuscript and cover artwork and you are pretty much ready to publish. With KDP, your novella is published on Amazon and is accessible to Amazon's massive customer base. Many customers already have an Amazon account and are probably familiar with how Amazon works, so customers can buy your novella in a matter of seconds.

Sound too good to be true?

There are some drawbacks to KDP compared to other self-publishing websites, such as:

• If you have ethical concerns about Amazon
• KDP's royalty rate for authors is lower than those of other self-publishing websites
• KDP (almost) only supports publishing in languages that use the Latin alphabet

This last point obviously presents a challenge for those of us who wish to self-publish in Greek (Ancient, Modern - it doesn't matter!). In this post I will share all of the hurdles I had to overcome to publish my novella in Greek.

But there are Greek books on Amazon! How does that work?!

I am pretty certain that those books were published through CreateSpace, which Amazon bought out a couple of years ago. I never used CreateSpace, but I believe that it supported Greek. As far as I know, KDP continues to support all books that were originally published with CreateSpace.

There is also a way to circumvent KDP's language policy, which I will share at the end of this post, but this requires violating KDP's language policy.

I. Choose a self-publishing company.

There are a variety of self-publishing companies out there. Most of them are targeted at authors who wish to self-publish books in English for a wide audience, i.e. not those of us who wish to publish novellas in languages other than English for a very select audience (i.e. language teachers and self-motivated language learners). 

I went with Lulu. Why?

• Writers of Latin novellas use it (such as these)
• Lulu allows free edits (some self-publishing websites charge a fee if you need to fix errors in your book - no thanks!)
• No language restrictions! (Caveat: Books in Greek can only be sold on Lulu and are ineligible for their wider distribution service)

No self-publishing company is perfect, so choose the one that best suits your goals.

II. Convert your PDF files into a press-ready PDF files

Before publishing my novella, I had no idea what layers and flattening were in PDF files. KDP allows authors to submit any old PDF. Other self-publishing companies, on the other hand, require that your PDF be flattened to remove all layers (also described as a "press-ready PDF"). 

The easiest way to do this is with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. 

The downside? Adobe is expensive! As of August 2020, it costs $14.99/month (USD). I am lucky that my work PC has Adobe already installed.

To convert your PDF to a press-ready PDF, click File, then Save as Other, then select Press-Ready PDF (PDF/X). In the save menu, I also clicked Settings... and selected Save as PDF/X-1a. It turns out that there are different types of press-ready PDFs. According to the wisdom of the Internet, PDF/X-1a seems to be the safest option. 

You will also need to convert your cover artwork PDF file too.

III. Publish!

At this point, your Greek novella should be ready to publish.

Fonts: Stick with PDF-friendly fonts that support Polytonic Greek. I used Source Sans Pro and Palatino Linotype. There are plenty of fonts to choose from, but always check your PDFs to ensure that they display correctly. Fonts may look great in your word processing program of choice, but may not be rendered properly or at all in a PDF. I had to change my fonts at least a few times!

Publishing with KDP: Remember how I said earlier that you can try to circumvent KDP's language policy and self-publish in Greek? It is fairly simple, but I have not attempted it, so do so at your own risk. The secret: select English as your book's language. I have heard that KDP will remove your book if they find out that your book is in an unapproved language. That was too big of a risk for me to take, so I decided to play it safe and publish on Lulu. 

I still have a lot to learn about self-publishing, so please share your tips and tricks! 

γράφε δή!

Is It Attested? Online Resources for Greek and Latin

Most writers of Latin and Ancient Greek today strive to appropriately use and imitate vocabulary and expressions found in classical texts. Surprisingly, what is often presented (and taken for granted) in textbooks is contrary to what classical authors actually use. Some examples: 

• The simplification of the differences between the use of the perfect vs. the imperfect. In my observations, this has led to a disproportionate use of the imperfect. For example, classical authors use the perfect of possum more frequently than the imperfect. 
• Many textbooks teach that the perfect stem of certain 3rd and 4th declension verbs like audio and eo ends in either -i- or -iv-. Did you know that the audiv- stem is more common than audi-? Or that the reverse is true for eo!

But how can I search the corpora of Greek and Latin literature to find out what authors actually used? The two resources below allow you to search the works classical authors.

For Latin: The Packard Humanities Institute's Classical Latin Texts (called PHI Latin Texts or simply PHI)
Pros:

• Search by word, phrase, or proximity
• Easy to access, no account required
• Fast search results

 Cons:

• Christian authors and post-classical authors are excluded 😢
• Cannot search by lemma (i.e. see all the usages of all the forms of a word at once)

For Greek and Latin: Perseus Digital Library Scaife Viewer
Pros:

• Search by word, phrase, proximity, and lemma (for Greek only)
• Ancient, medieval, and modern authors are included, even scholia! 😁

Cons:

• Requires a (free) account
• Search results are slower than on PHI
• Inconsistent appearance of search results (i.e. some results appear as one line of text, others as massive chunks of text that require lots of scrolling)

In addition to these, there is (for Greek) the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), but I have limited experience with it. The TLG also requires an account and you have to pay to access all of its features. 

If you know of any others, please share them with me!