XXX Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 19–21 июня 2019 г. Т. 1

Языки стран Азии и Африки к 150-летию академика В. В. Бартольда (1869–1930). Ч. 1 401 In Egyptian Nubia some of the more important geographical names were trans- ferred to places in the new homelands. However, in the new homelands of Sudanese Nubia traditional names in the Nubian language were officially replaced by numbers in Arabic. For example, the ancient name of ‘Fáras’ was replaced with an Arabic phrase meaning ‘Village One’ ( Qaryah Wā ḥ id ). An important toponymic link with their sense of identity was broken. Adetailed analysis of this situation in Nubia was published for the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) by the late Dr. Abdel Halim Sabbar. A limited number of paperback copies of his book are being made available at the XXXth International Congress on Historiography and Source Studies of Asia and Africa at the University of St Petersburg in June 2019. A free electronic version of the book entitled The Toponymy of an Endangered Nubian Language (2018) is already available to everyone for downloading from the UNGEGN website at the following link: http://ungegn.zrc-sazu.si/Publications/TheToponymyofanEndan- geredNubianLanguage.aspx. Sabbar demonstrated the relationship between the language of the home, the toponymic environment and a sense of personal identity. His book focused on the endangered toponymy of Nubia, but he welcomed comparisons with other parts of the world. These comparisons were particularly relevant wherever the local language of the residents was endangered. Sabbar diagnosed the endangered condition of his own language, Nobíin Nubian, with the benefit of his training as a linguist and a medical doctor. He pointed out that his historic language was ‘unofficial’and unsupported by a national system of education. An older stage of this language was written in the early mediaeval period in its own alphabet. The Old Nubian alphabet has recently been applied and taught by Nubian linguists, such as the late Mukhtār Muḥammad Khalīl Kabbara (1996) and Muhammad Jalal Hashim & Ḥusain Mukhtār Kabbara (2008) with special courses on writing the modern Nubian languages. Like the Cyrillic alpha- bets, the Old Nubian alphabet was designed upon a Greek base. It also uses several char- acters from the Coptic alpha- bet together with additional characters from the ancient Meroitic language 1 . 1 Bell, H. AWorld HeritageAlphabet: The Role of Old Nubian in the Revitalization of the Modern Nubian Languages, inAnderson, J. R. &D.A. Welsby (eds.), The Fourth Cataract and Beyond . Proceedings of the 12 th International Conference for Nubian Studies . British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 1. Peeters, Leuven; Paris; Walpole, MA, 2014. P. 1189.