Доклады Международного конгресса ИИСАА. Т. 1

I. African Studies / Африканистика Доклады Международного конгресса по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки. Т. 1. 2020 27 его общего значения для топонимов, находящихся под угрозой исчезновения в различных странах мира. Ключевые слова: топонимы, находящиеся под угрозой исчезновения; языки, находящиеся под угрозой исчезновения; географические названия; Судан; Египет; Нубия; нубийский язык; вариантные формы названий; социальные группы. Many residents of Egyptian and Sudanese Nubia lost their ancient homes beside the River Nile as a result of the flooding from the High Dam in 1964. They lost the historic environment which had been theirs for more than 1600 years. They would also be losing contact with places closely associated with their sense of identity. These losses created the motivation and focus for a Survey of Nubian Place Names by the River Nile in 1962–1964. In Egyptian Nubia some of the more important geographical names were transferred to places in the new homelands. However, in the new homelands of Sudanese Nubia a key group of traditional names in the Nubian language were officially replaced by numbers in Arabic. For example, the ancient name of the historic village of ‘Fáras’ was replaced with an Arabic phrase meaning ‘Village One’ ( Qaryah Wāḥid ). An important toponymic link with the inhabitants’ sense of identity was broken. Adetailed analysis of this situation in Nubia was published by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) for the late Dr. Abdel Halim Sabbar 1 with the title ‘Numbers as Geographical Names in Nubia: Endonyms or Exonyms?’ in his book entitled The Toponymy of an Endangered Nubian Language (2018) both in hard copy and online. The electronic version is freely available to everyone for downloading from the UNGEGNWorking Group on Exonyms website at the following link: http://ungegn.zrc-sazu.si/Publications/TheToponymyofanen- dangerednubianlanguage.aspx (accessed 05.10.2019). Sabbar demonstrated the relationship between the language of the home, the toponymic environment and a sense of personal identity. Although his book focused on the endangered toponymy of Nubia, 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. This Old Nubian alphabet has recently been applied to the modern 1 Sabbar argued that Arabic emphatic consonants were originally alien to Nubian pho- nology and that it was therefore acceptable to pronounce Arabic names and loanwords in Nubian without emphatics. He preferred spelling his name as Sabbar and not as Ṣabbār.