Looting for booty

[charloween]

I was a little regretting taking this Islamic history class up until the point when I realized I could write my final paper on Mediterranean pirates.

At first, it was just the pirates that were cool. But then I actually started the project and there are some pretty interesting things to talk about. Mostly that this Kheir-de-din Pasha guy (aka King Pirate Dude from Algeria) who's the subject of the paper hasn't ever had a definitive biography written about him, barring one hideously romanticized pile of dreck from the 1960s that's written like a novel.

And then I type a sentence like "When Muslim corsairs were sent against Christian ships, there was more than booty at stake: it became a sea-going jihad." I'm enough of a 12-year-old boy at heart that the word "booty" makes me giggle. Throwing the word "jihad" in there just makes it all that much better. ('Cause it was a jihad: the Ottoman-sponsored corsairs wanted to take back the parts of Spain that had been Moorish lands for, like, 500 years before Ferdinand and Isabella kicked them out, plus the so-called ghazi spirit of the holy warrior was the foundation of the Empire... I'm not just being goofy with that word, is the point.)

Oh yeah. Booty. Looting for booty. It's just fun to say.

Today I also downloaded that Star Wars Cantina song as a ringtone. Oh, yeah. I'm a mature adult all right.

The amount of tv I have stocked up to watch is getting a bit nuts. I did finally watch all of Pushing Daisies (Lee Pace ♥!), but not I've got Torchwood and Ashes to Ashes backing up, as well as The Wire, Miracles, a few things starring John Simm... etc. It's hard to keep track of it all.

It's also looking more likely that I'll be in Glasgow next year. The "massive debt load" excuse to not go looks more and more iffy when I look at the other go-now reasons. Staying in Toronto would be cheaper and SO much easier. I'm holding out making a final decision until May.

Speaking of May. Five papers and one exam left, and then it'll be May and then I'll be done! DONE! The worst of is that I still have to try really hard and keep my average up when I'd like to just slack off and pass. Yeah. Whine whine whine.

Comments

[firstgold.livejournal.com]

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And I know what you say about the TV piling up!

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

There should be a day in May where we can watch tv together. Yes.

[firstgold.livejournal.com]

Or a weekend spent in Guelph watching TV and doing other awesome things? *hinthinthint*

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

That is also a possible plan.

It'll have to be in May, though. I've just been informed that my aunt will be in town for my grandmother's 85th birthday at the end of next month, right in the middle of Stuff Being Due and Exams Being Prepared For. I'm totally up for Guelph-TV-awesome things (I always am!). Just... not in April, unfortunately.

[firstgold.livejournal.com]

May it is then! The first Sunday of May is out, as that is when a friend's bridal shower is, and the weekend of Anime North is out due to potential Anime North and another wedding shower on the Sunday.

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

I thumb my nose at AN. I'll get back to you on the best date for me, but I don't think I have that much planned.

[firstgold.livejournal.com]

I thumb my nose at AN too, but I'll probably head out for Saturday night to have dinner with some people, like Elly, who is still coming to the con.

Because booty is awesome in any language.

[alfadir.livejournal.com]

I just wrote a whole... thing... about filibusters in Latin America. Pirates ftw.

Seriously, though, Islamic history is pretty interesting, and the Berber pirate-states are kinda neat. Cause they're pirates.

Bootay, in French

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

And also reading Victorian sources about those states is hilarious. There's one guy named Playfair who wrote a history of Algeria that's just precious.

“It seems incredible at the present day that such a state of things could have been permitted to exist; that so infamous a rabble should have been allowed the undisputed right of interfering with the commerce of the world, and enriching themselves with the ransom of the best blood of Christendom. The only explanation is that one nation found these corsairs a convenient scourge for others with whom it was at war, and hesitated at no means to increase its own influence with them.”

In-deed. How dare they be allowed to interfere in matters not of their concern!? (He does have a small point though, the Turks who showed up to lead these pirate-kingdoms were very far from their homeland. Dude-from-Lesbos Aruj ibn Yakub shows up in Algeria, executes the ruling family and then he and his brother offer "protection" to smaller towns... not nice guys, here.)

Also they keep referring to "Mussulmans", which is archaic racism, and therefore delightfully charming in its distance from today's racism.

Which is to say, yes. Yes I agree. Berber states are very interesting.