[Sca-cooks] Near and Middle East, was plantain, bananas, herbals

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Cariadoc wrote:
>  Incidentally, I'm not sure how (or if) people in this discussion are
>  distinguishing "near east" from "middle east." I think of them as
>  roughly synonymous.

I use the terms differently to distinguish between Southwest Asia 
(Middle East) and parts of North Africa and Europe under Muslim 
control (Near East).

The history of the use of these terms is actually relatively short, 
being around 150 years. And there is, ultimately, no very exact 
definition for them. Sometimes they are used synonymously. Sometimes 
Near East is used to refer to the Middle East in ancient times (yeah, 
i'm scratching my head, too). Sometimes they refer to somewhat 
different areas that can overlap. Near East is especially slippery.

So,
- after looking into the history and definitions of the terms...
- and since to me it is clear that Muslim Spain is not in the Middle 
East, no matter how hard i push on those tectonic plates...
- and i just can't bring myself to say Morocco, parts of which are 
even farther west than Spain, is the Middle East...

...i decided to differentiate these non-Asian parts of Dar al-Islam 
by referring to them as in the Near East, along with Muslim Sicily, 
European Turkey, Muslim-controlled Balkans and neighboring regions, 
while relegating the term "Middle East" to refer to specific parts of 
Southwest Asia.

I define my usage of these often ambiguous terms in several places on 
my website.

I'm not quite being Humpty Dumpty in "Through the Looking Glass".
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 
"it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so 
many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."