Hors Hooves or...

I wanted to share something odd with you, dear readers, after a considerable hiatus in writing. But first, courtesy of somewhere in the West Village (above),...would you like a pup pie?

Somewhere in the bleary smear of fast-changing years and events between 2001 and 2006, I coined the name of my blog -- Dungannistan -- by taking my home town name, Dungannon, and radicalizing it with a dash of the leading bogeyman state of the day, Afghanistan (or indeed, Pakistan), into Dungannistan.

If you knew (as some do) Dungannon, you'd understand that today, few places in the world are more placid and dismal (perhaps Aughnacloy or Fintona). It was not always so.

Recently, a random Google search for something else brought me to this web site, and the following:

Tunganistan, or Dunganistan, a name coined by Western scholars and travellers (W. Heissig, Ella Maillart) for an ephemeral régime, hardly to be called a state, in the southern part of Chinese Turkestan or Sinkiang [q.v.] 1934-7. The name stems from the Dungan or Tungan troops, Hui, i.e. ethnic Chinese, Muslims who formed the military backing of Ma Hu-shan, styled “Commander-in-Chief of the 36th Division of the Kuomintang” and brother-in-law of Ma Chung-ying.

There is truly nothing new under the sun (but did they blog about it?).