[The Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) brings you the nineteenth in a series of “Peer-Reviewed Article Reviews” in which we present a collection of journals and their articles concerned with the Middle East and Arab world. This series will be published seasonally. Each issue will comprise three-to-four parts, depending on the number of articles included.]
Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics (Volume 41)
The Antiquarian Imagination in Multilingual Daghestan
By: Rebecca Ruth Gould
Abstract: Drawing on Arnaldo Momigliano’s views to explore Islamic history writing traditions, this article compares three key texts in Daghestani Islamicate literature by Persian Azeri writer Bākīkhānūf (d. 1847), Lezgi polymath al-Alqadārī (d. 1910), and Qumyq (Turkic) biographer al-Durgilī (d. 1935), with a view to understanding how their authors conceptualized their roles as chroniclers of times past. The article examines the authors’ epistemologies in order to better understand how their cosmopolitan visions were shaped by Daghestani multilingualism. It demonstrates how Daghestani cosmopolitanism is linked to the antiquarian imagination, as theorized by Momigliano and other scholars.
Chronicles of the Eternal Present: Literary Montage in Dhāt and Kāna ghadan
By: Ziad Dallal
Abstract: [This article offers a formalist reading of two novels, Sonallah Ibrahim’s Dhāt (1992) and Hilal Chouman’s Kāna ghadan (2017), focusing on their usage of literary montage. This literary form produces a novel that speaks to, and of, subjectivities stuck in an eternal present without a semblance of futurity. The article demonstrates how the montage of news media amplifies the eternal presentness and uneventfulness of contemporary life in the Arab world. The montage of news media and narrative plots thus emerges as a formal representation of this stillborn future.
Counterfactual Israels: Zionism, Nation-Building, and Indigeneity in Contemporary Jewish Writing
By: Isabelle Hesse
Abstract: [This article examines three works by Jewish writers that offer a counterfactual narrative of the establishment of Israel: Nava Semel’s IsraIsle (2006), Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), and Lavie Tidhar’s Unholy Land (2018). Focusing on indigenous experiences of settler-colonialism, these novels use alternate histories to examine a Jewish identity not exclusively defined by Zionism. This, in turn, creates a sense of empathy, or at least sympathy, with Palestinians and Palestinian history, and opens up a space for critiquing Israel’s actions in the contemporary period, while exploring the implications of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians on Jewish, and Israeli-Jewish, identities today.
Anatolian Studies (Volume 71)
Breaking continuity? Site formation and temporal depth at Çatalhöyük and Tell Sabi Abyad
By: Jo-Hannah Plug, Ian Hodder, Peter M.M.G. Akkermans
Abstract: Spatial continuity of the house is often seen as crucial in providing temporal depth for the Neolithic societies of southwest Asia. While an emphasis on the creation of such continuities is evinced at densely agglomerated sites, other sites are characterised by dispersal and frequent relocation of habitation. Çatalhöyük (Turkey) and Tell Sabi Abyad (Syria) appear to be at either end of this spectrum. However, recently found evidence and reinterpretation of older evidence call into question the apparently stark distinction between the two sites. The purpose of this paper is to compare aspects of the archaeological evidence from Tell Sabi Abyad and Çatalhöyük, and in doing so to understand the different ways in which site formation and social continuity were achieved. In particular, the presence of breaks in spatial continuities – an often overlooked aspect of site formation – and its implications are discussed. It appears that at these two sites both continuity and breaks gave form and meaning to the settlements and to the societies that inhabited them. We argue that social continuities and anchors to the past can be constructed in many variable ways, and that direct spatial continuity of the house is but one.
The closing formula of the Old Phrygian epitaph B-07 in the light of the Aramaic KAI 318: a case of textual convergence in Daskyleion
By: Bartomeu Obrador-Cursach
Abstract: After an overview of the multilingual epigraphy of Daskyleion during the Achaemenid period, this paper focuses on the closing formula shared by the Aramaic KAI 318 and the Old Phrygian B-07 epitaphs, which consists of a warning not to harm the funerary monument. Comparison of the two inscriptions sheds light on the cryptic Old Phrygian B-07, the sole Old Phrygian epitaph known. As a result, the paper provides new Phrygian forms, like the possible first-person singular umno=tan, ‘I adjure you’, and a new occurrence of the Phrygian god Ti-, ‘Zeus’, together with a second possible occurrence of Devos, ‘God’, equated to Bel and Nabu of the Aramaic inscription.
Anatolian-Persian grave stelae from Bozüyük in Phrygia: a contribution to understanding Persian presence and organisation in the region
By: Hüseyin Erpehlivan
Abstract: This paper provides an assessment of four grave stelae that were found recently in the area surrounding Bozüyük, on the Anatolian plateau in the south of the Bilecik province. The plateau was part of the core of the kingdom of Phrygia during the Early and Middle Iron Ages, and part of the satrapy of Phrygia during the Achaemenid period of the Late Iron Age in Anatolia. The main focus is to examine the place of such stelae among Anatolian-Persian examples and to explore elements of Persian presence and organisation in the region. The precise archaeological contexts of these stelae are unknown, but are likely to have been tumuli. They are examples of an Anatolian-Persian style from the Achaemenid period, but can also be considered to be part of a somewhat rustic 'rural' sub-style, compared with more elaborate stelae that have been found around Dascylium, the satrapal capital of Hellespontine Phrygia. The Bozüyük stelae feature banquet, hunting and ritual scenes, and also battle scenes that distinguish them from other Anatolian-Persian stelae. Despite similarities, particularly with the Vezirhan stele, there are also discrepancies that make precise analogies with reliefs on other stelae difficult, though not impossible. It is likely that they were created by a connected group of sculptors, and might therefore be evidence of a workshop that sculpted local materials in a unique rural style.
The Martyrdom of Konon (BHG 2077): the construction of a realm of memory
By: Philipp Pilhofer
Abstract: This article focuses on a local martyr from a village close to Isaura in the Taurus mountains: Konon of Bidana. The Martyrdom of Konon is a late antique Greek hagiographical text centred on this rural saint, and, in particular, its inter-connection of space and time is analysed. Through the employment of this literary strategy, the region around Bidana is used as a backdrop to a realm of memory. The epigraphical and archaeological remains show that the regional population respected Konon as their local patron.
The rock inscriptions, graffiti and crosses from Quarry GO3C at Göktepe, Muğla district (Turkey)
By: Paweł Nowakowski, Dagmara Wielgosz-Rondolino
Abstract: This paper discusses some of the results of a geo-archaeological survey conducted in 2014 in the marble quarries at Göktepe near Muğla (the ancient region of Caria). During the survey we examined a dossier of both already known and newly recorded rock inscriptions and textual and pictorial graffiti (prominently including crosses) from District 3, Quarry C (= Quarry GO3C). Here, we aim to explore the contents and spatial contexts of these texts and images, and consider them in relation to the pottery finds and literary sources, in order to throw new light on the history of the quarry. The texts and images suggest that at some point the site was abandoned as a quarry and, probably already in late antiquity, resettled by hermits.
A coin hoard from Ayasuluk and the arrival of silver gigliati from Mediterranean Europe in early 14th-century western Anatolia
By: Julian Baker, Lale Pancar
Abstract: In 1972 a hoard of eight fine silver coins was discovered in or near the baptistery of the basilica of St John in Ayasuluk. It is now conserved at the Ephesus Archaeological Museum in Selçuk. The coins were minted in southern France, southern Italy and on the island of Rhodes, between ca AD 1303 and 1319 or perhaps a little later. Accordingly, a concealment date of ca 1320 or a bit later is proposed. While the currency which they represent (the gigliato) is well known from other finds of the area, the present hoard is relatively early and from a particularly significant location. This currency found great success in commercial contexts in the eastern Aegean and western Anatolia during the period ca 1325 to ca 1370. By contrast, this study reveals two initial phases in the establishment and further dissemination of the gigliato in a concentrated part of western Anatolia, one in 1304 and another before and after ca 1317. On both occasions the Catalans were instrumental in shaping these processes: initially as conquerors on behalf of the Byzantine emperors and then, from their new base in Greece, as allies of the Aydinogullari rulers of Ayasuluk. Additionally, it is proposed that this new gigliato currency might have been minted at Rhodes from the summer of 1319, after which it rapidly reached the Ephesus area in a military context.
Four Frankish gravestones from medieval Ephesus
By: Ergün Laflı, Maurizio Buora, Denys Pringle
Abstract: This paper presents and discusses four Latin tombstones relating to Italian residents of medieval Ephesus that have been recovered from properties on the terrace of Ayasuluk (Selçuk), near the Byzantine Church of St John the Evangelist. Two of them, dating from the late 14th century, were originally published in 1937, while the other two, from the mid- 15th century, came to light more recently in January 2017.
Factoids of Assyrian presence in Anatolia: towards a historiography of archaeological interpretation at Kültepe-Kaneš
By: Yağmur Heffron
Abstract: This article offers a historiographical examination of how 20th-century ideas of assimilation and cultural purity have shaped our understanding of Bronze Age Anatolia, focusing on the canonical narrative of Assyrian presence at the site of Kültepe-Kaneš. According to this narrative, Old Assyrian merchants who lived and conducted business at Kaneš from the early 20th to the late 18th century BC left no trace in the archaeological record except for cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals, assimilating to local culture to such a degree that Kültepe’s archaeological record is entirely of Anatolian character. The accuracy of this view has met increasing circumspection in recent years. What remains to be articulated is why it remained unchallenged for so long, from its initial formulation in 1948 until the late 2000s, during which time it was widely repeated and reiterated. It is proposed here that the persistence and longevity of what is essentially a misconstrued notion of foreign (in)visibility in Kültepe’s material record can be explained by treating it as a ‘factoid’. The article first historicises the factoid’s formulation and subsequent development. This is followed by a critical evaluation of the evidentiary bases of the factoid to show how disciplinary tendencies to privilege certain categories of evidence over others have created artificial gaps in the data. Ultimately, the article seeks to highlight the epistemological implications of how one of the key sites of Bronze Age Anatolia came to represent a perceived rather than an observed case of indigenous cultural purity.
The Great Mosque of Diyarbakir: a contribution to understanding the monumental development of a site from antiquity to the Arab conquest
By: Fatma Meral Halifeoğlu, Martine Assénat
Abstract: Located in a central position of both the ancient and the contemporary city, the site of the Great Mosque of Diyarbakir has been a unique stage for the expression of power over the centuries. As a result of restoration work carried out in the complex between 2012 and 2017, a number of elements have emerged that may shed new light on what has so far been suggested about this site by literary sources and field observations alone. This article offers a new study of the monumental development of this space and seeks to identify the main stages of its history from antiquity to the Arab conquest and the conversion of the area into a mosque complex.
Arabica (Volume 69, Issue 1-2)
Periodisation and the futūḥ: Making Sense of Muḥammad’s Leadership of the Conquests in Non-Muslim Sources
By: Mehdy Shaddel
Abstract: The past few decades have witnessed a proliferation of theories on the origins of Islam which have called into question long-held scholarly axioms. One such axiom is the traditional date of 632 CE for the death of the prophet Muḥammad, which some scholars have now sought to redate to after the beginning of the Muslim conquests on the basis of the evidence of non-Muslim sources. The present contribution aims to demonstrate that the prima facie disharmony between these sources and Muslim accounts of Muḥammad’s life and the conquests is a product of the reading imposed on both sets of data, which primarily has to do with the fact that, more often than not, modern scholarship unsuspectingly operates within the rigid framework of the classical periodisation of early Islamic history. Therefore, a revision of either the traditional date of Muḥammad’s death or the starting date of the conquests based on this evidence is uncalled for.
Reconceptualizing the Global Transformation of Islam in the Colonial Period: Early Islamic Reform in British-Ruled India and Egypt
By: Aria Nakissa
Abstract: Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European empires extended their rule over most of the Muslim world. The present article argues that these empires promoted three interrelated political discourses; namely, a discourse on utilitarianism, a discourse on civilizational progress, and a discourse on liberal imperialism. The empires also encouraged Islamic reform movements, which entailed cooperation between Muslim thinkers, European officials, liberal intellectuals, and Orientalists. Reform movements legitimated the three aforementioned discourses in terms of premodern Islamic religious concepts (e.g. ʿaql, maṣlaḥa, maqāṣid al-šarīʿa, iǧtihād, taqlīd). These concepts were reinterpreted and tacitly linked to imperial policies concerning race, technology, industrial capitalism, and authoritarian violence. The article examines this process by considering the British Empire, and its relationship to Islamic reform projects in India and Egypt. The article discusses nineteenth century British political discourses as developed in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer. The article then discusses Islamic reform in India, focusing on the Muslim thinkers Sayyid Aḥmad Ḫān and Amīr ʿAlī, as well as their relationships with British figures like William Muir and John Strachey. Next the article discusses Islamic reform in Egypt, focusing on the Muslim thinkers Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rašīd Riḍā as well as their relationships with British figures like Lord Cromer and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.
Ars Orientalis (Volume 51)
Mapping Cosmopolitanism: An Eighteenth-Century Printed Ottoman Atlas and the Turn to Baroque
By: Ünver Rüstem
Abstract: Among the most remarkable works of eighteenth-century Ottoman art, and one of the earliest examples of Ottoman-Turkish printing, is İbrahim Müteferrika’s edition of the Cihānnümā, a world atlas published in Istanbul in 1732. Illustrated with forty copperplate engravings by Ahmedü’l-Kırımi (Ahmed the Crimean) and the Armenian Istanbulite Mıgırdıç Galatavi, the book synthesizes a wide range of Islamic and Western sources for both its written and visual elements, which include a series of cartouches creatively adapted from European Baroque models. Not only do these designs emblematize the Cihānnümā’s claims to being a cutting-edge worldly product, but those signed by Mıgırdıç—whose Ottoman-Armenian identity situated him at the center of a vast transregional network—anticipate by almost a decade the wider embrace of the Baroque in Istanbul’s architecture. The cartouches thus shed vital light on the role of printmaking and of non-Muslim Ottoman artists in bringing about the cosmopolitan turn that would transform eighteenth-century Ottoman visual culture.
Dead Sea Discoveries (Volume 29, Issue 1)
Getting a Handle on 1QIsaiahb: A New Proposal for the So-Called Handle Sheet of 1QHodayota
By: Michael B. Johnson
Abstract: This article examines Hartmut Stegemann’s preliminary proposal that the remains of the beginning handle sheet of 1QHa have survived and provide useful data for reconstructing the scroll. According to Stegemann, this handle sheet supplies critical material evidence that three columns existed before 1QHa 4, the first substantially extant column in the manuscript. The handle sheet was recovered from one of three scrolls, 1QM, 1QIsab, and 1QHa. Each of these possibilities is considered, and a new proposal that the handle sheet belongs to the end of 1QIsab is advanced. The article offers a tentative reconstruction of the handle sheet as part of 1QIsab to demonstrate its material continuity with col. 28 of 1QIsab.
Two Types of Four-Compartment Tefillin Cases from the Judean Desert Caves
By: Yonatan Adler
Abstract: Approximately thirty tefillin cases were discovered in the Judean Desert. The publishers of these finds distinguished between single-compartment cases, which they identified as “arm-tefillin,” and four-compartment cases, which they identified as “head-tefillin.” Here I present a further typological distinction between two subtypes among the four-compartment tefillin cases: (1) the “simple-type,” in which a single line of stitching separates the compartments from one another, and (2) the “split-type,” in which the compartments are separated by incisions in the leather and each compartment is stitched closed individually. It seems likely that some kind of ritual issue is at stake, and an allusion to these two types as competing halakhic practices may be found in the tannaitic literature—with the rabbis ultimately rejecting the “split-type.” The Judean Desert finds may represent a synchronic debate between competing groups, a diachronic development, or perhaps practices followed contemporaneously by members of one and the same group.
The Liturgical Communion of the Yaḥad with the Angels: The Origin of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice Reconsidered
By: Michael R. Jost
Abstract: Since the discoveries of the first Dead Sea Scrolls, the motif of a communion with the angels has been repeatedly emphasized and discussed as a characteristic of the self-understanding of the community behind these writings. Of particular interest in this discussion are the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (4Q400–407; 11Q17; and Mas1k ShirShabb). However, the origin of the so-called Angelic Liturgy is still an unresolved question in scholarship. In this article we will try to figure out the relationship of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice to the sectarian literature by analyzing the communion with the angels described therein. I will demonstrate that this composition has the most explicit connections to the liturgical communion with the angels that is uniquely found in undisputed sectarian texts. The Angelic Liturgy is then not so much the source, but much more an example of the liturgical development inside the yaḥad.
The Social Context of 4QInstruction Reconsidered: Wisdom, Inheritance and Priesthood in 4Q418 frg. 81
By: Anna Shirav
Abstract: The nature and the social context of Instruction were often discussed in the scholarship. Its relatively high number of copies that have been found in Qumran, and a series of shared literary, linguistic and ideological similarities to compositions often closely associated with the Qumran movement led scholars to debate the attribution of Instruction to this group of texts. This paper argues that the pericope in 4Q418 frg. 81, which uses extensively priestly language and metaphors, reflects similar social context and structure as the Community Rule, and therefore Instruction should be placed among the writings of the community. I will use two-stage analysis of the pericope, which will offer insight on the identity of the addressee, and try to bring some fresh insights on the literary unity of the composition.
Iran (Volume 60, Issue 1)
Who Holds the Keys? Identifying Female Administrators at Shahr-i Sokhta
By: Marta Ameri
Abstract: In recent years scholars who study ancient economies have sharpened their focus on the role of women within these networks and on use of seals in their administration. Yet, until recently, little attention has been paid to the relationship between sex and seal ownership and/or use. This paper uses the remarkable evidence from the site of Shahr-i Sokhta in Iran to address this question. While seals from the habitation areas of the site demonstrate significant changes in shape, material and iconography over time, those found in the necropolis establish who owned seals and how they were worn. On the practical side, excavated sealings document the administration of the site. This paper compares the physical and iconographic aspects of seals found in the cemetery with those of seals used for administrative sealing to identify different groups of people responsible for controlling goods and resources. I use the observed similarity between seals used for sealing and those found buried in women's graves to suggest that women were responsible for most of the administrative sealing at Shahr-i Sokhta in the mid-third millennium BC, and to call into question the often-unchallenged assumption that men were by default responsible for administration in ancient societies.
New Insights into Sogdiana during the Classical Period (from the end of the 4th c. BCE to the 3rd c. CE)
By: Bertille Lyonnet
Abstract: The article intends to give a synoptic view of Sogdiana, from the Macedonian conquest to the beginning of the 3rd c. AD. It considers written sources and material culture from the most recent excavations, but it also relies upon previous works. It shows the importance of the nomadic component of its population since the very beginning. Most is of Scythian background and there is no evidence of any Yuezhi intrusion. Their mobility led to their participation into the large trade system of the Silk Road and explains the presence in Sogdiana of material from Rome to China. Sogdiana never stood long within the Empires of that time and quickly recovered its independency.
Where Did the Battle Between Wištāsp and Arǰāsp Take Place?
By: Ruben S. Nikoghosyan
Abstract: The Middle Persian epic work of Ayādgār ī Zarērān is one of the most interesting specimens of the Pahlavi secular literature providing a link between the old Iranian epic tradition and Ferdowsi's Šāhnāma. Its language is simple, although sometimes obscure words or sentences occasionally make some passages difficult for interpretation. In the current paper it is tried to give a new interpretation for the word <hwtws> in §19, which previously has been discussed by a number of scholars who worked on the text of Ayādgār ī Zarērān. Besides this, the location of the mythical Spēd razūr (“White Forest”), the place where the battle between Wištāsp and Arǰāsp took place, is discussed. The correct interpretation of the word <hwtws> may provide an answer to the question where did the battle between the mythological rulers Wištāsp and Arǰāsp take place, according to the Middle Persian tradition.
The Sasanian Cemetery of Gird-i Bazar in the Peshdar Plain (Iraqi Kurdistan)
By: Andrea Squitieri
Abstract: This paper presents the results of the 2015-2017 excavations at the site of Gird-i Bazar in the Sulaymaniyah province of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq, where the Peshdar Plain Project excavated a Sasanian cemetery installed on the older Iron Age structures of the Dinka Settlement Complex. The characteristics of this cemetery are discussed in the framework of other Sasanian period cemeteries excavated in both Iraq and Iran. The objects from Gird-i Bazar cemetery are presented and compared to other similar items coming from graves and other contexts of the Sasanian period. Particular focus is given to a stamp seal showing a woman figure found in Grave 47, and the results of the radiocarbon analysis on a sample from the same grave, which has provided a good chronological anchor for the cemetery and the stamp seal as well. Finally, a discussion is offered as to the type of community who might have used the cemetery and its possible religious affiliation in relation to the attested presence of Christian communities in northern Mesopotamia during the Sasanian period.
The Ilkhanid City of Sultaniyya: Some Remarks on the Citadel and the Outer City
By: Atri Hatef Naiemi
Abstract: Mongol campaigns in Iran in the thirteenth century caused extensive destruction in different aspects of the social life and built environment of Iran. Following the foundation of the Ilkhanid dynasty in 1256, along with the reconstruction of the cities that had been extensively destroyed during the Mongol attack on Iran, the Ilkhans (Mongol rulers) founded a number of new settlements. Sultaniyya in one of the major urban centres that was planned and constructed from the outset by the Ilkhans. In view of the available architectural remains, archaeological findings, and written records, this article seeks to describe the spatial structure of the citadel and the outer city of Ilkhanid Sultaniyya.
“‘Abbas Mirza's Invitation to Europeans to Settle in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Azerbaijan: Reasons, Causes and Motives”
By: Soli Shahvar
Abstract: On July 11, 1823, The Times of London published an open letter by ‘Abbas Mirza Qajar, the crown prince of Iran and prince regent of Iranian Azerbaijan, inviting Europeans to come and settle in his province, promising them a range of attractive privileges. The aim of this article is to shed an additional light, through this letter, on the efforts of ‘Abbas Mirza in dealing with two key issues, which concerned Iran, in general, and him, in particular. One key issue was domestic, concerning his position as regent, and his desire to strengthen that position, especially vis-a-vis his rivals. The other key issue was external, concerning his efforts to check further Russian advances into southern Caucasus and towards Iran. The article aims to analyze the reasons, motives and timing for the letter, claiming that beyond the declared reason of modernizing his country, ‘Abbas Mirza had some undeclared personal and strategic motives behind the writing and the publication of this letter. As the letter was specifically addressed to the British, the analysis will also discuss the reasons behind ‘Abbas Mirza's special relations with the British.
Naser al-Din Shah’s 1873 Visit to the World’s Fair in Vienna
By: Ladislav Charouz
Abstract: Naser al-Din Shah's 1873 visit to the World's Fair in Vienna was devised by his advisors to encourage the Shah to adopt European-inspired policies for modernisation, and to put Persia on the map. The latter priority entailed several related goals: first, to pursue diplomacy with Persia's main adversaries in order to balance their influence; second, to forge alliances with other European nations; and third, to communicate Persian sovereignty in order to deter aggression. The Shah's visit to Vienna constituted a mixed success. The Austrian press alternately lampooned and fawned over the Persian ruler, using numerous orientalist tropes. However, the Shah managed to persuade Austria to help Iran's efforts at administrative reform and forged good enough relations to secure Austria's military aid several years later. At the same time, he did little to conscript Austrian know-how for Persia's industrialisation and preferred to spend his time with old acquaintances and interesting personages. Persia's exhibition at the World's Fair also met with both successes and failures. While it effectively communicated Persia's wealth and culture to the Europeans, it could not shake off the impression of Persia's backwardness, and did little to break Persia from the mould of a Euro-centric colonialist narrative.
Iran and the Caucasus (Volume 25, Issue 4)
On the Border between Urartu and Mannea: Goyje Qalʽeh, an Iron Age Site in Northern Iran
By: Hossein Naseri Someeh, Mohammad Mirzaei, Roberto Dan, Priscilla Vitolo
Abstract: Goyje Qalʽeh is located in the city of Maragheh, Iran. This article gives a new presentation of a site that is already known in the literature. The site was occupied in various periods, a circumstance, which demonstrates its importance and strategic location. Of particular significance are its outstanding rock-cut features, such as terraces, stairs, rock-cut chambers, and cisterns, and its geographical position—on the border between Urartu and Mannea—was clearly important. Goyje Qalʽeh is compared with other sites known in the area.
The City of Brass and Alexander’s Narrow Grave: Translation and Commentary of Kafas added to Manuscript M7709 (Part 1)
By: Alex MacFarlane
Abstract: The 17th-century manuscript M7709 (held in the Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia) includes an Armenian copy of the History of the City of Brass, to which an unknown scribe has added short poems about Alexander the Great. The first of three articles that together present the Alexander poems of M7709 in full, with English translation, for the first time, this article introduces the manuscript and considers the first six poems: the seduction of Olympias, and Alexander’s encounter with plant-men at the edge of the world. It adds commentary on the poems’ relationship to the corresponding part of the History of the City of Brass on each page, proposing textual reasons why the scribe added the poems where he did. Across the three articles, this commentary delves into textual relationships beyond the pages of M7709, linking the Armenian History of the City of Brass, Alexander Romance and other texts and traditions, to show how this manuscript is situated amid wider networks of circulating literature. As a microhistorical study, it seeks to provide illumination into the macrohistory of medieval and early modern literature in and beyond the Caucasus.
Jihad as an Individual Duty (farḍ al-ʻayn) in the Ideology of Circassian Sultans (1382–1517)
By: Evgeny I. Zelenev, Milana Iliushina
Abstract: This article is devoted to the study of the development of the theory and practice of jihad during the rule of the Circassian sultans in Egypt and Syria (1382–1517). The purpose of the study is to trace the development of key aspects of jihad, to identify features of its perception in the Mamluk state. An essential feature of the theory of jihad in the Mamluk period is the interpretation of jihad as farḍ al-ʿayn (the individual duty of every Muslim).
Whose Past and Whose Future: Free Love and Love Marriage among “Kafirs” of the Hindukush in an Early Nineteenth-Century Persian Ethnography
By: Alberto Cacopardo, Stefano Pellò
Abstract: This paper deals with some practices and conceptions relating to love and marriage in a now-extinct pre-Islamic culture of the Hindukush, as described in an extremely precious, yet very little-known, Persian ethnographical source (ca. 1840). Written by a munshī from Peshawar under instructions from the French general Claude-Auguste Court, who was then in the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, this is probably the single most important pre-Robertson source about the “Kafir” cultures of Nuristan. While a complete translation and thorough study of the unpublished document, by Stefano Pellò and Alberto Cacopardo, is now forthcoming, in these brief notes we show how free love and love marriage, often perceived as “modern” concepts in many parts of Asia, were envisioned by Tak and Shamlar, two elders from pre-Islamic Kamdesh.
Again on the Demoness Šaša
By: Victoria Arakelova
Abstract: The paper discusses the genesis of the demoness Šaša, an antagonist of procreation of the human race, attested in folk beliefs of Iranian peoples.
Judaism in the Kitchen: Ritual Space of the Mountain Jewish Women of Dagestan
By: Varvara Redmond
Abstract: The article investigates the gender and ritual roles of the Mountain Jewish women of Dagestan. The research is based on fieldwork conducted by the "Sefer" Center in 2018. The author suggests that in the Mountain Jewish communities the central component of ritual life is a collective feast, but not the synagogue as it is in many other Jewish communities. Since traditionally women are responsible for preparing food, they shape and pass on the traditions of the Mountain Jews. They organize community celebrations and rites of passage. During Soviet times, the power over the ritual process transferred from the centralized male system, the synagogue, to the female sphere.
On the History of a Mysterious Word: Kurdish ēš‘ache, pain; disease’
By: Garnik Asatrian
Abstract: This essay depicts the details of the history of a well-known Kurdish lexeme on the background of the related forms in Iranian.
Proto-Indo-European Initial *r Revisited
By: Petr Kocharov, Andrey Shatskov
Abstract: The ante-rhotic vocalic prothesis has been postulated for the history of Hittite, Greek, Armenian, and Albanian—languages, which are often believed to have no inherited PIE words beginning with a rhotic. With the advance of the laryngeal theory, the existence of the ante-rhotic prothesis has been critically revised for Hittite, Greek, and Albanian. However, a closer look at the available evidence leaves one with a wide scale of possibilities of analysis not limited to postulating laryngeals before any PIE initial rhotic. Given that all of the aforementioned branches are primarily localized in Asia Minor or adjacent territories and that they most likely had split from the proto-language at different periods, the hypothesis of the ante-rhotic vocalic prothesis as an aerial feature may prove to be the most economic explanation of facts.
The Talibs or the Taliban in Afghanistan
By: Georgi Asatryan
Abstract: The rapid military and political victory of the Taliban movement during the summer offensive in 2021 shocked the system of international relations and the regional security architecture. The Taliban’s military successes in rural areas were expected and predicted, but the capture of Kabul and the instant capitulation of the official Afghan authorities became the “black swan” of regional geopolitics. This study hypothesis states that the reincarnation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was the logical result of an unsuccessful twenty-year military campaign by the United States and NATO. The attempt to integrate the Afghan society into an accelerated modernization process was carried out under immature socio-political practices and a complete lack of institutions. Another hypothesis of the study suggests that the victory of the radical terrorist movement can cause a domino effect and lead to the strengthening of international transcontinental terrorist groups. From the systems theory perspective, the victory of a radical group and establishing control over a UN member state cannot but cause a negative reaction for the global and regional security construction. The study puts forward a third hypothesis and thesis: the Taliban victory was the victory of radical political Islam (jihadism) at the global level, which significantly strengthened its position in the system of international relations.
Iraq (Volume 83)
Hatra: Three Notes, Historical, Iconographical, and Religious
By: Wathiq al-Salihi
Abstract: Historical NoteThe chronological table of rulers of Hatra includes an ambiguous person named Wrwd mrya, who supposedly succeeded Nshryhb mrya. Is he the latter's younger brother or older son? The epigraphical and sculptural evidence suggest that Nşru mrya, who followed Wrwd, is the son of Nshryhb mrya and was in fact Wrwd himself, who acquired the epithet or appellative Nşru, meaning the winner, protector, and defender. This epithet reflects that he led the Hatrenes and Arab tribes in their defence against the Roman army of Trajan in 116/117 A.D. Wrwd/Nsru commemorated his victory in a relief lintel in Shrine V at Hatra.Iconographical NoteThe excavators of Shrine I discovered the famous sculptured slab known as the Cerberus relief, depicting a god of the underworld with snakes and scorpions, thought to be an image of Nergal. However, the excavation of Shrine II revealed an altar, one side of which is carved in relief with a similar underworld deity with snakes. The other side of the altar is incised with an inscription mentioning a god Zqyqa. Thus, Zqyqa at Hatra is the god of the underworld, rather than Nergal.Religious NoteAn enigmatic statue was discovered in Shrine I, depicting a standing horned male. On the base is an Aramaic inscription mentioning the name Kenzw; he was identified as an ‘unknown god’. The excavation of Building A by an Italian team discovered a horned male statue with an inscription that referred to him as Hpyzw. It was originally placed on a podium set against the façade of the house courtyard. In front of the podium was an altar and evidence of ashes and burnt offerings. This context indicates that the horned statue of Hpyzw was worshipped and offerings were presented to him as a founder of the household. The similarity of the two statues suggests that a type of ancestor worship was practised at Hatra.
Medical Tablets from the Archive of the Egibi Family? An Edition of BM 30918 and BM 31071
By: Krisztián Simkó, András Bácskayv
Abstract: Building on recent advances in the field of Neo- and Late Babylonian medicine, this paper presents the edition and thorough analysis of two unpublished medical tablets from the collections of the British Museum (BM 30918 and BM 31071). In the first part, the archival and social context of these tablets will be explored, while also reporting on findings about how they might fit into the larger corpus of Late Babylonian medical texts. The two tablets are published in the second part of the paper. The aim of this paper is to illustrate that the discussed tablets contribute a lot to our understanding of how medicine as a scientific field worked in the latter half of the first millennium B.C.E. It advances further and draws up more comprehensively the thesis about the “personalisation” of medical knowledge, put forward only recently in the scholarly literature. In addition, it also collects evidence that ties Itti-Marduk-balāṭu, an important member of the Egibi family, to the craft of incantation priests (āšipūtu); this person has so far been known mostly for his activity as a businessman.
The Battle of Gaugamela and the Question of Visibility on the Battlefield
By: Michał Marciak, Bartłomiej Szypuła, Marcin Sobiech, Tomasz Pirowski
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to contribute to the long-standing topographical enigma of the identification of Gaugamela. In this study, a GIS method known as viewshed analysis is employed to solve a certain historical problem. According to ancient sources, on the eve of the battle the approaching Macedonian army and the Persian troops that were waiting on the battlefield could not see each other because of intervening hills at a distance of c. 12 km. However, the two armies gained a full view of their respective positions once the Macedonians reached the hills c. six km away from the Persian positions. Our analysis shows that the identification of the battlefield near Tell Gomel, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, is consistent with the visibility requirements of the ancient sources, while the previous identifications of the battlefield in the vicinity of Karamleis and Qaraqosh (Stein 1942; Sushko 1936; Zouboulakis 2015, 2016) feature poor results in terms of expected visibility.
Fragments of the Third Millennium BC ffrom Nigin
By: Davide Nadali, Lorenzo Verderame
Abstract: The ancient city of Nigin in the State of Lagash is largely attested in the epigraphic sources of the rulers of the First Dynasty of Lagash. Conversely, the archaeological evidence of the Early Dynastic Period is so far very scanty and limited. This paper presents a small group of documents to be dated to the Early Dynastic Period IIIb that were found out of context, but that nevertheless point to a phase of occupation of Nigin in the third millennium BC and are coherent with the information we already know about history of the city and the State of Lagash.
An Unpublished Letter of Samsu-iluna King of Babylon
By: Ardalan Khwshnaw, Khana Mohammed
Abstract: This short letter of Samsu-iluna (1749–1712 B.C), king of Babylon, is preserved in the Slemani Museum, along with a number of other Old Babylonian documents. The article gives a brief overview of the letters of Samsu-iluna. The short letter appears to be addressed to one Ipqu-Gula, who may be a šassukkum-official (the head of the cadastre-office) from Isin. The article presents a copy, transliteration, translation of and commentary on this cuneiform document, which adds to the small number of letters sent directly by Samsu-iluna that are currently available.
A Cylinder Seal from Tell Abu Al-Dhahab Dated to the First Sealand Dynasty (1740–1374 BC)
By: Ahmed K. Taher Al-Zubaidi, Mohammed S. Attia
Abstract: This article presents a unique cylinder seal found at the site of Tell Abu al-Dhahab, in the Iraqi marshes. The cylinder seal, made of alabaster, is dated to the First Sealand Dynasty period and contains a scene with an introduction to a seated deity. It is accompanied by an inscription identifying the father of its owner as the overseer of the incantation priests. The aim of the article is both to discuss the cylinder seal, but also contextualize it within the temple where it was found and the period to which it is dated.
Abu Salabikh – Absolute Radiocarbon Chronology
By: Maciej M. Wencel
Abstract: This article presents a new absolute chronology for the archaeological site of Abu Salabikh, Southern Iraq, during the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. The main goals of this study were to synchronise the sequences of the West and Main Mounds, corroborating the dating schemes based on archaeological and textual finds, and assigning an absolute date to the transition between Uruk and Early Dynastic (ED) periods. Previously published dates and newly produced 14C measurements were used in tandem with Bayesian statistical models to arrive at more precise time estimates. Some inconsistencies in the results point to possible disturbance of the archaeological sequence in the context of tannur kilns and highlight the need for careful sample collection and selection methodology. The results suggest a hiatus in settlement between the Uruk and ED periods c. 3000 BC, and confirm the date of c. 2650-2500 BC for the Early Dynastic ED IIIa Fara-style texts.
The Assyrian Distanzangaben in Relation to the Regnal Years Recorded in the Assyrian King List
By: Bieke Mahieu
Abstract: Several so-called Distanzangaben (lit. “designations of distance”), found in Assyrian inscriptions, record time spans between events (mainly building activities) of Assyrian rulers. Such chronological data have mostly been studied as entities (for purposes of absolute chronology), and only rarely with regard to their composition. While some of the Distanzangaben can be explained as mere summations of the regnal years recorded in the Assyrian King List, others remain enigmatic. The present article attempts to trace the composition of every Distanzangabe. For those compiled by Tiglath-pileser I and Esarhaddon, ideological purposes seem to be implied. The one compiled by Sennacherib sheds light on the chronology of Tiglath-pileser I's campaigns.
Qizqapan: A Rock-Cut Tomb from the Median, Achaemenid, Seleucid or Parthian Period?
By: Iraj Rezaei
Abstract: More than eight decades have passed since Edmonds's introduction to the rock-cut Tomb of Qizqapan, yet there are still ambiguities and questions regarding a number of aspects, specifically its dating. Different dates from the Median, Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian periods have been proposed for this monument. However, out of all the proposed eras, none has been fully accepted by the majority of archaeologists, and disagreements regarding the date still continue. This article reviews and analyses previous proposals and discusses and evaluates other elements which affect the dating of this monument. The results show that by taking into account several factors, the most probable date for this tomb is the fourth century B.C., contemporaneous with the late Achaemenid and the early Seleucid period. The conclusion is that Qizqapan does have a Median identity but not a Median period date.
A Conspiracy To Murder Sennacherib? A Revision of Saa 18 100 in the Light of a Recent Join
By: Stephanie M. Dalley, Luis R. Siddal
Abstract: SAA 18 100 (ABL 1091) is a cuneiform text that has been at the heart of historical reconstructions of the assassination of the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, since it was first properly studied by S. Parpola in 1979. In 2005, J. C. Fincke discovered a new fragment of the document (28-3-23 [K.21923]) and joined it to the then known fragment (80-7-19, 28). Fincke's join offers the opportunity to study the tablet anew. We present the first full scholarly edition of the fragments and a new historical interpretation of the text that challenges the accepted understanding of its date, nature, content, and the information it provides on the assassination of Sennacherib. SAA 18 100 appears to be an archival copy of a letter originally sent to Nineveh that reported on matters concerning the Assyrian court heard in Babylonia. The best-preserved report concerns a supposed plot looking to frame the king's son, Urdu-Mullissu, in a conspiracy, and might be a product of the pro-Esarhaddon machinations of the royal court during the final years of Sennacherib's reign.
A Neo-assyrian Provincial Palace at Tell Billa
By: Petra M. Creamer
Abstract: The Neo-Assyrian site Šibaniba (modern Tell Billa) served as a provincial center at the very edge of what is traditionally known as the “Assyrian Heartland”. Excavations in the early 1900s under Dr. Speiser of the University of Pennsylvania uncovered architecture in the southwestern portion of the mound, but a loss of records and lack of publication have prevented any comprehensive publications or analysis of the archaeological material. The architecture from Level I in the southwest corner is the remains of a palace from the latter half of the Neo-Assyrian period – comprised of an inner, paved courtyard and surrounding rooms. The analysis of this palace complex is carried out herein, with a discussion of its positioning and importance, especially during Nineveh's tenure as imperial capital. Overall, Šibaniba, despite being located so close to the Heartland, was an important administrative center in its own right – illustrated by a restructuring of the citadel's organization in the later Neo-Assyrian period and its inclusion in Sennacherib's irrigation program.
Late Chalcolithic Ceramic Development in Southern Iraqi Kurdistan: The Stratigraphic Sounding at Kani Shaie
By: Steve Renette, Khaled Abu Jayyab, Elizabeth Gibbon, Michael P. Lewis, Zana Abdullkarim Qadir, Ricardo Cabral, André G. Tomé
Abstract: Kani Shaie is a small archaeological site in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, centrally located in the Bazian Basin, a narrow valley at the western edge of the Zagros Mountains along the major route between Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah. Its main mound was inhabited almost continuously from the fifth to the middle of the third millennium, c. 5000–2500 B.C.E. This period of Mesopotamian prehistory, corresponding to the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, witnessed major transformations such as initial urbanism and intensification of interregional interaction networks. The recent resurgence of fieldwork in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is beginning to reveal local trajectories that do not always match the established chronological framework, which is largely based on changes in ceramic technology and styles observed in northern Mesopotamia. Here, we discuss the ceramic sequence retrieved from a step trench at Kani Shaie spanning the entire Late Chalcolithic (c. 4600–3100 B.C.E.). A bottom-up approach to potting traditions at the site allows an initial assessment of the relationship between local communities in the Zagros foothills and large-scale developments in the Mesopotamian world. We argue that the evidence from Kani Shaie reflects a long process in which different communities of practice made active choices of adopting, adapting, or rejecting non-local cultural practices.
The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey: Preliminary Results, 2012–2020
By: Jason Ur, Nader Babakr, Rocco Palermo, Petra Creamer, Mehrnoush Soroush, Shilan Ramand, Karel Nováček
Abstract: The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) investigates settlement and land use from the Neolithic to the present in the Erbil Governorate of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which includes a large portion of the core of the Assyrian Empire. In seven field seasons, it has documented a broad settlement landscape in a region of great social and political importance, especially in the Bronze and Iron Ages, including 728 archaeological sites. Its field methodology combines traditional surface collection with the use of historical aerial and satellite photographs, mobile GIS, and UAV (drone) photogrammetry. Preliminary results show some unexpected patterns: a high density of culturally Uruk settlements in the fourth millennium B.C., variable urban morphologies in the Early Bronze Age; and large but low-density settlements at the end of the Sasanian period or the early Islamic period. The project is explicitly testing several hypotheses about centralized Neo-Assyrian landscape planning in the imperial core. These hypotheses appear to be confirmed, although the situation was more complex than in surrounding provinces, probably due to the longer history of continuous settlement.
Journal of Social History (Volume 55, Issue 2)
Yawn: Boredom and Powerlessness in the Late Ottoman Empire
By: Avner Wishnitzer
Abstract: Over the last decade or so, boredom has attracted tremendous media and scholarly attention. Historians, however, remained largely uninterested, which is all the more surprising considering the wide consensus among scholars about the historicity of modern boredom, and its distinctiveness from earlier forms of tedium. This article joins a handful of works that discussed boredom in concrete historical contexts, focusing on the late Ottoman Empire. The article places boredom in two different discourses, developed by different generations of writers. The first was promoted by the Hamidian regime (1876–1908) and some of the most prominent writers of the time. In this discourse, the boredom of subalterns, including soldiers, women, and youngsters was considered a social problem. Hegemonic writers blamed boredom on the bored, warned that it could breed “harmful” ideas and behaviors, and spurred their addressees to become productive subjects promoting their own personal, and imperial, progress. But for young and educated urbanites, probably the foremost target group of this discourse, the motivational talk was itself dull. Pinned down by their elders, by their social superiors, by an oppressive political system that offered little true prospect of “advancement,” all these youngsters could do was to disengage and wait. Their own discourse therefore associated boredom not with indolence but with estrangement, melancholy, and frustration. So while hegemonic writers interpreted these emotions in terms of lethargy and decadence, they in fact held potential political energy, which later fed the uprising against the Hamidian order in the summer 1908.
MELA Notes (Volume 94)
Thoughts and Observations on the Turkish Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
By: Özgen Felek
Abstract: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University is one of the world’s largest libraries for rare books and manuscripts. It also includes the third largest Islamic manuscripts collection in the United States. Among the 4597 Islamic manuscripts preserved in the Beinecke Library, there exist over 500 Turkish manuscripts scattered throughout different collections. This essay offers some thoughts and observations on the features and contents of 567 Turkish items in the three collections, titled “Turkish Manuscripts,” “Turkish Manuscript Supplementa,” and “Hartford Seminary Miscellaneous Manuscripts.”
Building Middle Eastern Collections Without a Subject Specialist, Maintaining Momentum Through a Pandemic: The University of Virginia Experience
By: Keith Weimer
Abstract: Not available
The Story of the Abushâdy Archive
By: Joy Amina Garnett
Abstract: Not available
Arabic Printed Books in the Library of the Romanian Academy of Bucharest
By: Ioana Feodorov
Abstract: Printing in Arabic type, in the Arabic language, began in Western European presses at the end of the 16th century, with books intended for sale on the Eastern markets and for missionary work. However, in the Near East, where the public of such Arabic books lived, the first Arabic press was opened in 1705, in the Ottoman era. The Library of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest holds eight Arabic texts that were printed in the Romanian Principalities and Greater Syria in the first half of the 18th century, for the benefit of the Arabic-speaking Christians. These books form a small but quite important collection, considering that larger libraries around the world only hold two or three of the Arabic books printed before 1800. I have addressed the history, contents, and book-art features of these books in several articles, most of them accessible online.82 In this contribution, I am focusing on the early printed Arabic books that are preserved in Bucharest and their history as library items. While doing this, I shall demonstrate their value and significance for Middle Eastern printing, and particularly for the history of the first Arabic presses.
Middle Eastern Literatures (Volume 24, Issue 3)
Modern nihilism and Naguib Mahfouz’s faith in liberalism
By: Ken Seigneurie
Abstract: By mid-twentieth century, liberal thought was in crisis. Its victory over fascism ill concealed the empty promise at the heart of liberalism, that freedom defined as an absence of compulsion could substitute for a sense of human purpose. Non-western writers saw this as clearly as Camus, Arendt, Niebuhr, and Marcuse did. This essay regards Naguib Mahfouz’s 1965 novel, The Beggar, as a bid to critically intervene in debates around the crisis of liberal thought. It departs from approaches that see The Beggar as a thematization of political, Existentialist or Sufi discourses. Employing a close-reading method, it shows how the text ironizes its high-profile protagonist’s mid-life crisis and quest for spiritual awakening. Analysis reveals that ostensibly secondary female characters, especially the protagonist’s fourteen-year-old daughter, are part of a palimpsestic subtext that thematizes Christian–Muslim-Christian conversion and the potential role of faith as a corrective to the nihilistic void at the heart of liberal thought.
Is the Arab nahḍah really Arabic? Literary translingualisms in the nahḍah's contact zones
By: Alaaeldin Mahmoud
Abstract: Against the perception of the nahḍah’s literati in Egypt and the Arab mashriq as being narrowly monolingual, due to their literary use of fuṣḥā Arabic and the various ʿāmmiyyahs, this article highlights literary translingual practices in the nahḍah’s contact zones in Egypt, Syro-Lebanon, and Iraq. Literary translingualisms took various forms such as bi-or-translingual azjāl (“vernacular verse”) and mulammaʿāt (macaronic verse), as well as self-translations. This article focuses on literary translingual practice manifest in the zajal of Muḥammad ʿUthmān Jalāl, Badīʿ Khayrī, Bayram al-Tūnisī, and ʿAlī Diyāb, as well as the mulammaʿāt of ʿAbbūd al-Karkhī. The intricate relations of power among the languages of the nahḍah (i.e. Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and fuṣḥā Arabic in addition to a host of European languages, especially French and English) are also featured in the literary works of authors such as ʿĀʾishah Ismāʿīl Taymūr and Hijri Dede.
Kamāl al-Dīn Banāʾī’s Bahrām va Bihrūz: A Persian romance qua mirror for princes in light of Aq Qoyunlu history
By: Chad G. Lingwood
Abstract: This article proposes that Bāgh-i iram, a Persian masnavī by Kamāl al-Dīn Shīr-ʿAlī Banāʾī, the narrative of which presents a love triangle involving brother-dynasts—hence its alternative title, Bahrām va Bihrūz—is a work of moral and ethical advice. The study posits that Banāʾī composed Bahrām va Bihrūz, which survives only in manuscript form, to honor his deceased patron, Yaʿqūb b. Ūzūn Ḥasan, leader of the Aq Qoyunlu, whose reputation as a debauchee-turned-penitent ruler Banā’ī employs to impart advice on avoiding sin and comporting oneself with rectitude. The article sheds light on Banāʾī, but also the statesmen-advisers, Qāżī Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿĪsāʾ and Shaikh Najm al-Dīn Masʿūd, and their involvement in Sulṭān Yaʿqūb's abandonment of venality. The study concludes that Bahrām va Bihrūz is unique within the literary tradition, in that its character-types, twin-brothers, and its focus on the faults of the poet's former patron are subjects not typically encountered in Persian masnavīs.
Experimentation and the absurd in two plays by Syrian playwright Walīd Ikhlāṣī
By: Basilius Bawardi, Reem Ghanayem
Abstract: Walīd Ikhlāṣī (1935–2022) is a modernist Syrian playwright who was part of a broader Arab movement experimenting with the theatre of the absurd. His experimental writings are based on a fundamental refusal to accept ready-made values – literary, cultural, or philosophical. In this experimentation he developed a truly unique style, set apart from his contemporaries. Examining two one-act plays: Ṭubūl al-iʿdām al-ʿasharah (The Ten Drums of Execution) and al-Mutʿah 21 (Pleasure 21), both published in 1965, this paper looks at his use of juxtaposition to create a productive ambiguity, and how this ambiguity is underscored in the works using author comments/stage direction, and varied techniques of dialogue. In both works, we find the tensions created by his experimentation bring forth a powerful sense of despair and injustice.
Muqarnas (Volume 38)
From Stone to Dust: The Life of the Kufic-Inscribed Frieze of Wuqro Cherqos in Tigray, Ethiopia
By: Mikael Muehlbauer
Abstract: Until 2010 (when it was broken by a tourist), a curious Kufic-inscribed sandstone block greeted those who entered the narthex of the eleventh-century church of Wuqro Cherqos in East Tigray, Ethiopia. My paper identifies the origin of this misunderstood fragment and presents it in the longue durée, from its architectural placement as part of an inscribed arch in the great mosque of a Fatimid trading colony to its medieval spoliation and use as a chancel arch in the church of Wuqro Cherqos, after northern Ethiopia emerged as a centralized power under the Zagwe dynasty. As the chancel in Wuqro Cherqos, the stone took on new meaning as a luxurious liturgical threshold, complementing the Egyptian and Indian silks that hung alongside it. After the arch came apart in the late 1990s, I show how modern Ethiopian scholars promoted the remaining Arabic-inscribed fragment as an ancient Ethiopian inscription. The life story of this stone fragment reveals a larger picture of Islam’s changing reception in Ethiopia from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century.
A History of the Ottoman Fez before Mahmud II (ca. 1600–1800)
By: Youssef Ben Ismail
Abstract: The history of the Ottoman fez is usually told with the nineteenth century as a point of departure. In the 1820s and 1830s, the reforms initiated by Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–39) elevated the red felt cap to the rank of official headgear of the Ottoman empire. But little is known about its history prior to its adoption by the state: where did the fez come from and how did it become so prevalent in the Ottoman empire? This essay examines the global history of the fez in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Taking Mahmud II’s reforms as an endpoint, it examines the process by which the headgear first came to be both culturally visible and commercially available in the Ottoman realm. Three aspects of this history are considered: the trans-imperial history of the fez as a commercial commodity, its cultural reception in the Ottoman world, and the establishment of a community of Tunisian fez merchants in early modern Istanbul.
Colonial Zaytuna: The Making of a Minaret in French-Occupied Tunisia
By: Sihem Lamine
Abstract: In March 1892, eleven years after the establishment of the French protectorate in Tunisia, a congregation of ulemas, religious scholars, and students, as well as representatives of the waqf administration (Jamʿiyyat al-Awqāf) gathered in the ṣaḥn of the Zaytuna Mosque to lay the cornerstone of a new minaret. The pre-exiting tower, whose latest major renovations dated from the seventeenth-century Ottoman Muradid times, was deemed hazardous; it was therefore entirely demolished and replaced by a large-scale replica of the nearby Hafsid Kasbah Mosque of Tunis. The new minaret of the Zaytuna Mosque rose in tandem with the Saint Vincent de Paul Cathedral of Tunis, and simultaneously with the nascent French neighborhoods of Tunis outside and along the medina walls. This article explores the intricate and fascinating context of the construction of a monumental minaret in a city that was gradually severing ties with its Ottoman past and surrendering to a newly established colonial rule. It questions the role and aspirations of the French administration in the minaret project, the reasons that led to the revival of the Almohad architectural style in the late nineteenth-century Maghrib, and the legacy left by the re-appropriation of this style in North Africa.
Archaeology and Cultural Policy in Ottoman Tunisia: Part II: Muhammad Khaznadar (1871–99)
By: Ridha Moumni
Abstract: This article is the second part of a study focusing on Muhammad Khaznadar’s role in the history of archaeology in nineteenth-century Tunisia. Whereas part I traced the meteoric rise of Muhammad Khaznadar as a Tunisian cultural figure, the second part of this inquiry examines Khaznadar’s fall from power and the end of his monopoly over the country’s antiquities. Following the dismissal of his father, Mustafa Khaznadar, as grand vizier in 1873, Muhammad’s artifacts were seized by the bey. The Khaznadar collection then attracted the attention of the new grand vizier, Khayr al-Din (1873–78). Influenced by the activities of Muhammad Khaznadar, Khayr al-Din sought to create a national museum of antiquities. However, this project came to an end with Khayr al-Din’s dismissal and the subsequent arrival of French colonizers, who established the Bardo Museum (then called the Alaoui Museum) in 1888. The historical narrative written by the French colonial authority erased the memory of prominent Tunisian archaeologists and collectors who had been active in the preceding decades. This article seeks to highlight the important contributions of local Tunisians to the development of archaeological research and policies surrounding Tunisian cultural heritage in the nineteenth century.
Camera, Canvas, and Qibla: Late Ottoman Mobilities and the Fatih Mosque Painting
By: Sabiha Göloğlu
Abstract: This article discusses the multiple mobilities of images, photographs, photographers, viewers, and places by focusing on Miʿmarzade Muhammed ʿAli’s (d. 1938) oil-on-canvas painting, now located in the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul. It explores the limits, lives, possibilities, and uses of photographic views and the exchanges between photography, painting, and print media by investigating the geopolitics and geopiety of the Hamidian era (i.e., Sultan ʿAbdülhamid II, r. 1876–1909), the production and circulation of early photographs of Mecca and Medina, and the spatial tradition of qibla decorum. It examines the photographic oeuvres of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (d. 1936), al-Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ghaffar, and the committee of the Erkān-ı Ḥarbiyye (General Military Staff), including Muhammad Sadiq Bey (d. 1902), as well as the reproductions and changing contexts of these photographs. Furthermore, this article highlights the role of print media in the dissemination and mobilization of the photographic image and the malleable politics of representation, especially as it pertains to the two sacred cities of Mecca and Medina.
Prospective and Retrospective: Le Corbusier’s Twofold Voyage d’Orient
By: Jacobé Huet
Abstract: In 1911, a twenty-three-year-old Le Corbusier embarked on a six-month journey from Dresden to Istanbul, and back to his native Switzerland through Greece and Italy. Upon his return, the young architect unsuccessfully attempted to publish his travel notes as a book in 1912 and again in 1914. Only in 1965, forty days before his death, did Le Corbusier conduct the final revision of his 1914 typescript for publication. The next year, Le Voyage d’Orient was published posthumously. Previous scholarship on this book has overlooked the importance of Le Corbusier’s 1965 edits, consequently approaching the work as an authentic testament of the author’s youthful spirit. Based on a new and contextualized reading of the 1914 typescript hand-annotated by Le Corbusier in 1965, this article demonstrates how the late edits constitute a re-writing of a segment of Le Corbusier’s own history, especially in relation to his ideas of modernity, tradition, inspiration, and attachment to Mediterranean architecture.
Near Eastern Archaeology (Volume 84, Issue 4)
New Evidence of Two Transitions in the Neolithic Sequence of Northeastern Iran
By: Kourosh Roustaei, Hasan Rezvani
Abstract: During preliminary fieldwork at an endangered site in the Shahroud area in northeast Iran, evidence of two transitional periods in the Neolithic sequence of the region were observed and partially documented. The first transition, around 6700–6200 BCE, corresponds with the temporal gap between the West Mound and the East Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq sequences, as the type sites of the Aceramic/Proto-Ceramic Neolithic and the Ceramic Neolithic of northeastern Iran, respectively. The second transition demonstrates the contextual relationship between the ceramic of the final phase of Chakhmaq culture and the first manifestation of the distinct ceramic of the succeeding culture of Cheshmeh Ali in the second half of the sixth millennium BCE. This is the first time that evidence of these two transitions, augmented by new 14C dates, has been documented.
Umm an-Nar Ritual Building in Dahwa 1 (DH1), Northern Al-Batinah, Oman
By: Nasser S. Al-Jahwari, Khaled A. Douglas
Abstract: This article presents one of the earliest ritual buildings in the Oman Peninsula. This building was excavated at the settlement of Dahwa 1 (DH1) in 2017 and identified as S.20. The site of Dahwa 1 is located in the Batinah plain in the northeastern part of the Sultanate of Oman. It is one of the few relatively well-preserved domestic settlements in southeast Arabia and includes around seventeen differently sized buildings, dating to the Umm an–Nar period (ca. 2700–2000 BCE). Excavations revealed that S.20 differs from the other four excavated buildings at the settlement. Although building S.20 is the smallest one in the settlement, several factors such as the building location, its isolated setting, plan, size, construction, chronology, and finds led us to connect its function more to ritual than any other regular type of building.
Gender, Deities, and the Public Image of Sobekneferu
By: Kelly-Anne Diamond
Abstract: Sobekneferu ascended the Egyptian throne near the end of the Twelfth Dynasty. She was not only the first female king but also the first royal woman for whom we have evidence of cross-dressing. From the record she has left us it is clear that the gender-incongruent imagery associated with Egyptian warrior goddesses established a foundation for her composite imagery. Sobekne-feru embraced masculine poses in her statues, masculine titles and grammatical endings in her inscriptions, and on her Louvre statue she adopted masculine dress. This paper illustrates how her multiple-gendered works were inspired by well-entrenched ideas organic to Egypt, how her self-styled image was based on historic prototypes, and how her transgression of social gender boundaries was sanctioned by religion.
Discovering Early Syrian Magic: New Aramaic Sources for a Long-Lost Art
By: Jessie DeGrado, Madadh Richey
Abstract: Scholars of magic in the Iron Age Levant have had to grapple with a dearth of sources between the fall of Late Bronze Age cities (ca. 1200 BCE) and the proliferation of magic bowls over a millennium later (ca. 400 CE). Three recently published early Aramaic inscriptions help fill this lacuna: a recently excavated inscribed cosmetic container from Zincirli, a Lamaštu amulet from the same site held by the Vorderasiatisches Museum (S.3604), and an Aramaic-inscribed statuette of Lamaštu’s nemesis, Pazuzu, currently in the holdings of the Ashmolean Museum (AN1892.43). These texts, dated paleographically to the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, afford a window into local magical traditions in the Levant. They also show how communities on the imperial periphery adopted and adapted elements of Mesopotamian magic. Finally, the inscriptions provide an impetus for a new analysis of the infamous Arslan Tash amulets, offering further context for their texts and iconography.
The Temple of the Winged Lions, Petra: Reassessing a Nabataean Ritual Complex
By: Pauline Piraud-Fournet, John D. M. Green, Noreen Doyle, Pearce Paul Creasman
Abstract: The Temple of the Winged Lions (TWL) in Petra is a Nabataean ritual complex, with workshops and domestic spaces, founded in the early first century CE and active until the earthquake of 363 CE. This paper begins to fill lacunae in the published record about the TWL, offering a summary of its less-reported aspects and suggesting that conclusions drawn from earlier excavations (1974–2005) must be reassessed through a full study that draws from recent work in Petra and the wider region. The TWL is a contextually rich site for the study of ancient ritual, economy, and society in the Nabataean and Greco-Roman world, providing opportunities to test ideas on social identity, cultural hybridity, and indigeneity through a combined study of architecture, objects, and spatial organization. In parallel to this research, the TWL Cultural Resource Management Initiative of ACOR (2009–present) has also undertaken major public archaeology, conservation, and site presentation activities.