Toponomia and anomaly issues in Morocco and North Africa
The Amazigh Language and Literature Division of the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Sais-Fez is organizing, within the framework of its scientific activities for the academic year 2023, an international symposium on the topic: “Utoponomy and Anomaly Issues in Morocco and North Africa” in honor of one of the poles of geographical research in Morocco, the former Dean and Vice-President of the University, Honorary Professor Ibrahim Akdim, And that's on: 25-26 October.
Coordinated by Professor Abdel Wahed Boubria and Professor Mohanad Al-Rakeek, in partnership with the University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah; the Applied Humanities Laboratory; Department of Geography, Polydisciplinary College, Taza; the Laboratory of Domain, History, Dynamism and Sustainable Development, the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture; and the National Center for Scientific and Technical Research, Rabat.
The Scientific Committee will receive the abstracts no later than July 15, and the full interventions on October 20.
This international scientific symposium titled: “Issues of Toponomy and Anatomasticism in North Africa and Morocco: Reality and Prospects” falls within the framework of the urgent desire to contribute to the great utoponomy workshops that a group of researchers and cultural events have been working on for years.
Despite these scientific gains and accumulations, toponymic and anomaly research remains in need of further study, in-depth and continuous research in the great and rich heritage left by the inherited human groups in North Africa in general and Morocco in particular.
If toponomy is concerned with studying and analyzing place names based on a group of auxiliary sciences such as linguistics, history, geography, and anthropology... then anomastique (onomastique) is a complementary science to the first, as it is a science concerned with the study of proper names. Therefore, they are the basic threshold for learning about the field heritage with all its human, natural, historical, anthropological and even productive components. That is because names, whatever their nature and source, do not result from imagination, but are rather the product of knowledge accumulations across time and space.
And through it, we can analyze the various peculiarities of the geographical field, ancient and modern, based on these terms that we derive from several sources, such as historical texts and geographical documents such as topographic maps, oral narration, and others.
No topological study will be correct and will not be of value unless it is subjected to an accurate scientific linguistic analysis based on multiple and complementary approaches: we mention geographical, historical, social, philosophical, linguistic and anthropological…
North Africa in general and Morocco in particular is a vast and fertile field with many indications in this direction, which still attract the attention of many researchers from various fields of knowledge. Therefore, we will try, through the axes of this symposium, to coordinate, as much as possible, between the various disciplines concerned in order to realize, understand and study these issues, relying on the material data and concrete evidence available in the Mediterranean, Moroccan and African fields.
Based on the aforementioned, the Organizing Committee proposes axes that respond to the architecture of this symposium, and they are as follows:
The first axis: the importance of toponomy to confirm the Moroccanness of the Sahara
The second axis: the importance of general linguistics and the external linguistic components (composantes extralinguistiques) or what linguists call sciences connexes such as: sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics or linguistic anthropology, linguistic geography and geographical linguistics - and their role in understanding and analyzing toponomy and anomastique;
The third axis: the role of toponomy (spatial) and anthroponymy in historical and geographical studies;
The fourth axis: the linguistic lesson and its relationship to toponomia and anomastics;
The fifth axis: the overlap of realism and ontology in the humanities and social sciences
The sixth axis: the anthropological and anomastic approach
The seventh axis: the problem of topological and anomaly analysis in Morocco and North Africa
The eighth axis: spatial and geographical distribution of terrain: origins and indications.
The ninth axis: the importance of the languages of the Mediterranean basin in the production of utoponomia and onomastics in North Africa and Morocco.
There is no doubt that the study of toponomy and anonymity has important scientific implications, including:
Preserving linguistic, historical and geographical identity;
– Defending the supreme interests of Morocco by affirming the Moroccanness of the Moroccan Sahara by invoking utoponomy and anomastics;
Providing the conceptual and linguistic tool for the historian and geographer;
Creating bridges of cooperation and interaction between interconnected scientific disciplines;
Urging the historian and geographer to open up to linguistics and related sciences such as ethnolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, and sociological sciences.
Highlighting the importance of the Amazigh language in deciphering the mystery that surrounds many topological and onomastic issues.
– Contribute to the development of research tools curricula in the sciences of history and geography by benefiting from the data of the Amazigh language and theories of Linguistics;
Urging researchers from various disciplines (linguistics, history, geography…) to prepare glossaries and special dictionaries of interest to utoponomy and anomastics.
Source : websites