Agriculture, Ṣūfism and the State in Tenth/Sixteenth-Century Morocco

1996 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-471
Author(s):  
Francisco Rodriguez-Manas

The tenth/sixteenth century was undoubtedly one of the most turbulent periods in the history of Morocco. Throughout the century the country was ravaged by civil strife, foreign occupation of some of its coastal regions and widespread social turmoil. Dynastic conflict between the two main contenders for the throne—the Wattasid vizierate and the Saՙdiyans—did not cease until the middle of the century. The prolonged warfare drained the economic resources of the country and crippled commercial activity. The crisis was especially acute in the countryside where the protracted political unrest disrupted agricultural activity. Sizable tracts of farmland were left uncultivated or were ruined by marauding gangs of brigands who plundered the peasants of their crops and cattle. As well as man-made damage, agricultural output was hit by a series of natural calamities (drought, plagues and scarce harvests), while intermittent outbreaks of epidemic decimated the population of certain districts. The results were catastrophic: famine became endemic in certain regions; previously fertile lands were abandoned and their soils became unsuitable for cultivation; trade in agricultural produce gradually ebbed; the price of foodstuffs rose to exorbitant levels and traders resorted to speculative practices, hoarding grain and other agricultural produce to inflate their value. The stagnation of agriculture led to a sharp demographic decline in the rural population and a substantial influx of migrant peasants into urban centres or rural areas less affected by scarcity. Entire rural communities were uprooted. Pauperism and mendicity proliferated in many regions as scores of impoverished peasants and herdsmen abandoned their indigenous lands and roamed the countryside in search of food.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 555-558
Author(s):  
Awopola Ibiebelem Jumbo ◽  
Esther Ijeoma Nonye-Enyidah

Background: Anencephaly is a rare but lethal congenital anomaly of the neural tube. Ideally, the diagnosis is made early in pregnancy and the pregnancy is usually terminated. This is to prevent avoidable complications during pregnancy and childbirth as well as the accompanying psychological trauma from late intrauterine foetal death or death during the neonatal period. Objective: To report a case of anencephaly in an unbooked primipara at 35 weeks gestation. Methods: The case note of the patient and how she was managed were reviewed. A relevant review of the literature on the subject was also done. Case report: Mrs A.N was a 22year old unbooked G3P1+1 who was referred to the Rivers State University Teaching Hospital (RSUTH) on the 4th of September, 2021 with a three-day history of bleeding per vaginam and an ultrasound scan report of an absent cranium and club foot at 35weeks gestation. She resided in a rural area and was on herbal medication in the index pregnancy. She did not receive routine antenatal medications and had no family history of congenital malformations. She had an induction of labour at presentation and delivered a severely asphyxiated male anencephalic baby weighing 2.0kg. The baby died 9minutes after delivery. Conclusion: Anencephaly is a lethal anomaly that is associated with folic acid deficiency. Despite available diagnostic tools, most women in rural areas lack access to antenatal care and will have a late diagnosis and increased morbidity. Thus, there is a need to improve access to antenatal care for women in rural communities, as well as supplement food with folic acid for women in the reproductive age group.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
hana haqiqi

Topeng ireng is a typical art from Magelang that was originally used as a means for spreading the islamic teachings. But, as time goes by, Topeng Ireng used as a form of gratitude for the people after making a celebration such as wedding, circumcision, or another celebration. Topeng Ireng commonly found in rural areas because rural communities still preserving the cultural heritage of their ancestors. In this era of globalization, Topeng Ireng art which had been abandoned began to appear again that looks more modern without leaving its characteristics, that is by adding campursari or dangdut music. The research method is descriptive in which this research explains in more detail about Topeng Ireng. The results of the study explain the history of Topeng Ireng as well as what is the Topeng Ireng and what was used when performing Topeng Ireng. The benefit of this research is to extended the knowledge of the community around Magelang and outside Magelang about Topeng Ireng existence that needs to be preserved and preserved as state-owned cultural assets and as a tribute to ancestors.


Author(s):  
Mohammad Dawood Erfan

Afghanistan, with major rural population is of the countries that face varieties of problems for transformation from tradition to modernity (underdevelopment). Nowadays various social gaps in this geographical area have crystalized in ethnic cleft; has been originated from another background that the most important is the rural-urban gap. This hidden gap has shown itself in different forms in the social history of Afghanistan. Sometimes with a cover of Tribe, sometimes in the form of wealth and poverty and sometimes it rises with a cover over modernity and tradition. Development experts concentrate on other gaps and they didn’t pay enough attention to this important gap. The question is: What has been the role of rural-urban gap in underdevelopment and political changes in Afghanistan? In a country where social relations are generated from rural areas and political changes rise by using violent tools in different forms, necessitate deep socialistic investigations on ruling relations in rural communities that constitute the most population of the country. It seems inattention to rural people needs and problems led to the profound gap which shaped violent changes in the history of Afghanistan. Meaningful rural relations, nomadism and tribal culture, have led to many partitions in the process of development.


Author(s):  
Biljana Petrevska ◽  
Aleksandra Terzić

The study examines the concept of resilient societies that are emerging recently by opening the question of social empowerment and willingness to cope with uncertainties. It presents a comprehensive review on the issue of real contribution of tourism based economies within rural communities. The study evaluates the basic preconditions for tourism related activities in sampled rural areas in North Macedonia and Southern and Eastern Serbia, being particularly vulnerable in terms of social and economic issues (aging, poverty, migration and depopulation). The concept of ‘sustainable rural livelihoods' is further enlightened, and many recommendations are noted. Generally, rural tourism should be focused on providing additional financial input, but also seek a way to attract tourists in periods with low agricultural activity. The vitality and prosperity of the village itself does not rely on tourism activity only, but rather on the natural resources and human capital, thus providing sustainable livelihood for the residents.


Author(s):  
Tutaleni I. Asino ◽  
Hilary Wilder ◽  
Sharmila Pixy Ferris

Namibia was under colonizing and apartheid rule for more than a century. In 1990, the country declared its independence, and since that time, great strides have been made in linking its rural communities into a national communications Grid that was previously inaccessible to them, often leapfrogging traditional landline telephone technologies with universal cell phone service. In addition, one newspaper, The Namibian, has been innovatively using newer communications technologies to maintain its historic role of nation-building. This chapter showcases how SMS via cell phone and a traditional national newspaper has a sense of national identity that transcends geographic distances and a legacy of economic/political barriers. The cell phone messages made it possible for the rural communities who have been left out of discussion relating to issues of development to be included. Although the study unveiled 11% of their participation as opposed to 30% of the rural populace, this is a step forward bearing in mind that the rural areas have a history of being passively involved in everything that is being done. They have been, and continue to some great extent to be content to receive decisions made for them by outsiders including political leaders. Mobile phones have come as empowerment for them. Like the old slogan, “information is power,” this chapter illustrates that the lives of some rural area dwellers have improved a result of a technological gadget, the mobile phone.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1128-1136
Author(s):  
Olga V. Bershadskaya ◽  

The article studies features of socio-economic and socio-political development of the Black Sea village in 1920s. Documents from the fond of the Black Sea District Committee (Obkom) of the RCP (b) -VKP (b) stored in the Center for Documentation of the Modern History of the Krasnodar Krai allow not only to reconstruct the developments in the Black Sea village in the NEP days, but also to understand the nature of its evolution. Uniqueness of the Black Sea village was greatly determined by its geographical environment. There had formed a sectoral makeup of agricultural production: fruit-farming, viticulture, tobacco growing. Rugged relief forced peasants to form holdings or farms; therefore rural communities were rare. Its another distinctive feature was its motley national composition. Over 50 ethnic groups inhabited the district, among most numerous were the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Armenians, and the Greeks. In the first years of the NEP, the main tasks facing district authorities were to develop ‘high-intensity’ industries and to shape local peasant farms into food base for cities and resorts. While tackling these tasks, they had to deal with shortages of land and poor communications and to bring lease relations and work-hands employment up to scratch. The situation was complicated by socio-political inertia of rural population of the district that came from the absence of community tradition. Study of the documents from the fond of the Black Sea party obkom shows that local authorities were well aware of the peculiarity of their region, but in most cases had to follow guidelines set ‘from above’ to introduce all-Russian standards.


Author(s):  
Remus Runcan

According to Romania’s National Rural Development Programme, the socio-economic situation of the rural environment has a large number of weaknesses – among which low access to financial resources for small entrepreneurs and new business initiatives in rural areas and poorly developed entrepreneurial culture, characterized by a lack of basic managerial knowledge – but also a large number of opportunities – among which access of the rural population to lifelong learning and entrepreneurial skills development programmes and entrepreneurs’ access to financial instruments. The population in rural areas depends mainly on agricultural activities which give them subsistence living conditions. The gap between rural and urban areas is due to low income levels and employment rates, hence the need to obtain additional income for the population employed in subsistence and semi-subsistence farming, especially in the context of the depopulation trend. At the same time, the need to stimulate entrepreneurship in rural areas is high and is at a resonance with the need to increase the potential of rural communities from the perspective of landscape, culture, traditional activities and local resources. A solution could be to turn vegetal and / or animal farms into social farms – farms on which people with disabilities (but also adolescents and young people with anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide, and alexithymia issues) might find a “foster” family, bed and meals in a natural, healthy environment, and share the farm’s activities with the farmer and the farmer’s family: “committing to a regular day / days and times for a mutually agreed period involves complying with any required health and safety practices (including use of protective clothing and equipment), engaging socially with the farm family members and other people working on and around the farm, and taking on tasks which would include working on the land, taking care of animals, or helping out with maintenance and other physical work”


Author(s):  
Charles Hefling

This book surveys the contents and the history of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacred text which has been a foundational document of the Church of England and the other churches in the worldwide community of Anglican Christianity. The Prayer Book is primarily a liturgical text—a set of scripts for enacting events of corporate worship. As such it is at once a standard of theological doctrine and an expression of spirituality. The first part of this survey begins with an examination of one Prayer Book liturgy, known as Divine Service, in some detail. Also discussed are the rites for weddings, ordinations, and funerals and for the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. The second part considers the original version of the Book of Common Prayer in the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, then as revised and built into the Elizabethan settlement of religion in England. Later chapters discuss the reception, revision, rejection, and restoration of the Prayer Book during its first hundred years. The establishment of the text in its classical form in 1662 was followed by a “golden age” in the eighteenth century, which included the emergence of a modified version in the United States. The narrative concludes with a chapter on the displacement of the Book of Common Prayer as a norm of Anglican identity. Two specialized chapters concentrate on the Prayer Book as a visible artifact and as a text set to music.


Author(s):  
Chris Fitter

Introducing the relatively recent discovery by the ‘new social history’ of an intelligent and sceptical Tudor popular politics, incorporated into the functioning of the state only precariously and provisionally, often insurgent in the sixteenth century, and wooed by discontented elites inadvertently creating a nascent public sphere, this chapter discusses the varied types and fortunes of plebeian resistance. It also surveys the leading ideas of the new historiography, and suggests the need to rethink the politics of Shakespeare’s plays in the light of their exuberant or embittered penetration by plebeian perspectives. Finally, it examines Measure for Measure in the light of its resistance to the polarizing, anti-populist climate of the late Elizabethan ‘reformation of manners’.


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