Is El Merj the Site of Ancient Barqa?: Current Excavations in Context

1994 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 265-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. Dore

Since 1989, the Society for Libyan Studies has been carrying out, in conjunction with the Libyan Department of Antiquities, excavation and fieldwork in El Merj (Dore 1990, 1991, 1992) which is held to be the site of two earlier towns named Barqa (also spelled Barca and Barka), one of medieval date and the other Greek, as also of a Roman-period village. In this paper I wish to review critically the evidence for the identification of El Merj as medieval Barqa.The broad outline of the case is as follows: a town called Barqa is mentioned by a considerable number of medieval authors writing in Arabic. To judge from them the town flourished between the ninth and eleventh centuries AD but declined thereafter. The association of the names Barqa and El Merj with a single site seems to stem from one author, Ibn Sa 'id, writing in the thirteenth century, though even he is tentative in his identification (see below). After the fourteenth century there is a period which is devoid of information. By the eighteenth century the town(s) of Barqa/El Merj had disappeared (i.e. ceased to be inhabited) but local memory preserved the name and location of El Merj because Pacho visited its ruins and recorded the name in 1825 (see below). About twenty years after this a new town called El Merj began to grow up around a castle newly built by the Ottoman authorities on the remains of an earlier town. This town was called Barce by the Italians but reverted to being called El Merj after the second world war, and was finally destroyed by an earthquake in 1963.

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
José M. Faraldo

Many things allow us to recognize that the Poles have a greater and fuller affinity with the Poznań Land than the Germans, even today. It is interesting, for example, with what confidence Polish architects, in contrast to their German counterparts, incorporate historical and regional characteristics in their designs.Moritz JafféThe Archive of the Town Curator of Monuments in the Polish city Poznań contains material about streets, monuments, Old Town Square, the cathedral, and other valuable constructions there. A folder labeled Nowy Ratusz (New Town Hall) attracted my attention, because I knew nothing about such a building. The folder contained photographs of a large neo-Gothic building. It looked like a typical Prussian public building, similar to hundreds of other postal, school, and government offices throughout the Prussian/German state. But what of this building? Had it been another casualty of the Second World War? The postwar images showed, that although seriously damaged, the building still stood in the ruins of the Old Town Square.


Author(s):  
Marie-Bénédicte Dembour

This chapter reviews six critiques of human rights, deriving from realist, utilitarian, Marxist, particularist (cultural relativist), feminist, and post-colonial theoretical perspectives. The first three critiques emerged in reaction to the (successive) French Declarations of the Rights of Man of the late eighteenth century; the last three were fully developed in reaction to the International Bill of Rights enacted after the Second World War. Each of these critiques reveals a gap between what human rights claim to be or achieve, on the one hand, and what human rights are or do in practice, on the other.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 641-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER M. R. STIRK

AbstractAlthough the Westphalian model takes many forms the association of Westphalian and sovereign equality is a prominent one. This article argues firstly that sovereign equality was not present as a normative principle at Westphalia. It argues further that while arguments for sovereign equality were present in the eighteenth century they did not rely on, or even suggest, a Westphalian provenance. It was, for good reasons, not until the late nineteenth century that the linkages of Westphalia and sovereign equality became commonplace, and even then sovereign equality and its linkage with Westphalia were disputed. It was not until after the Second World War, notably through the influential work of Leo Gross that the linkage of Westphalia and sovereign equality became not only widely accepted, but almost undisputed until quite recently. The article concludes by suggesting that not only did Gross bequeath a dubious historiography but that this historiography is an impediment to contemporary International Relations.


Aschkenas ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-200
Author(s):  
Hans-Harald Müller

Abstract Arnold Zweig and Walter A. Berendsohn, who were in correspondence with each other between 1909 and 1968, continuously sought to convert the other to their beliefs. Around 1910 Zweig wanted to convert Berendsohn to Zionism as coined by Buber, while his views changed after his exile in Palestine, when he tried to win Berendsohn over to communism. Berendsohn, for his part, wanted to convince Zweig of social democracy around 1910, but after traveling Palestine in the 1950s tried to convince Zweig of Zionism. Viewed retrospectively, both appear as idealistic German intellectuals whose eagerness to reform society in 1910 led them in very different directions due to their individual experiences especially in and after the Second World War.


Author(s):  
Anna D. Bertova ◽  

Prominent Japanese economist, specialist in colonial politics, a professor of Im­perial Tokyo University, Yanaihara Tadao (1893‒1961) was one of a few people who dared to oppose the aggressive policy of Japanese government before and during the Second World War. He developed his own view of patriotism and na­tionalism, regarding as a true patriot a person who wished for the moral develop­ment of his or her country and fought the injustice. In the years leading up to the war he stated the necessity of pacifism, calling every war evil in the ultimate, divine sense, developing at the same time the concept of the «just war» (gisen­ron), which can be considered good seen from the point of view of this, imper­fect life. Yanaihara’s theory of pacifism is, on one hand, the continuation of the one proposed by his spiritual teacher, the founder of the Non-Church movement, Uchimura Kanzo (1861‒1930); one the other hand, being a person of different historical period, directly witnessing the boundless spread of Japanese militarism and enormous hardships brought by the war, Yanaihara introduced a number of corrections to the idealistic theory of his teacher and proposed quite a specific explanation of the international situation and the state of affairs in Japan. Yanai­hara’s philosophical concepts influenced greatly both his contemporaries and successors of the pacifist ideas in postwar Japan, and contributed to the dis­cussion about interrelations of pacifism and patriotism, and also patriotism and religion.


Knygotyra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 183-205
Author(s):  
Liucija Citavičiūtė

The personal archive of Martin Ludwig Rhesa (1776–1840), who had gathered and prepared the first known collection of Lithuanian songs, contains the letters of two of Rhesa’s respondents from the country – of Enrikas Budrius (1783–1852), teacher of the Brėdausių estate school, and of Wilhelm Ernst Beerbohm (1786–1865), chief inspector of littoral fishing. The archive itself was taken to Königsberg after the Second World War and is today stored in the Manuscript Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. Budrius wrote his letters during 1818–1827 and contained in them songs that he had heard in the Pilupėnų area. He was one of the contributors who had captured the melodies of the songs, which he would hear performed during Lithuanian feasts or other types of gatherings. Budrius has sent more than 20 songs, yet only one – Žvirblytis – was eventually included in the printed collection; Rhesa himself gave a copy to Budrius. The letters contain discussions on Lithuanian songs and their melodies; we see some talks regarding a project to write the Lithuanian history using the Lithuanian language, and there are some personal motives present in the letter as well. Beerbohm, the other respondent, corresponded with Rhesa during the former’s last years, during 1835–1839; these two men were from the same region and had met several times in Königsberg. Beerbohm’s letters contain ample supplementary content – songs and regional vocabularies, fishermen phraseology, Lithuanian names of littoral plants and sea fish, etc. The drawings and schemes of vytinė trading boats and ice fishing, complemented with Lithuanian terms, are the first Lithuanian visual and explanatory dictionaries. Some of these words are not included in any of the Lithuanian dictionaries – not now, and not even then. Each of the respondents have authored a poem dedicated to Rhesa. Budrius wrote his poem in Lithuanian. Four Beerbohm’s letters and three written by Budrius are extant. Judging by the circumstances referred to in the letters, it is possible to state that Rhesa wrote at least four or five letters to these individuals.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-59
Author(s):  
Éric Alliez ◽  
Maurizio Lazzarato

Abstract In the aftermath of the Second World War, revolutionary movements remained dependent on Leninist theories and practices in their attempts to grasp the new relationship between war and capital. Yet these theories and practices failed to address the global “cold civil war” represented by the events of 1968. This article will show that in the 1970s this task was not undertaken by “professional revolutionaries” or in their Maoist discourse of “protracted war” and its “generalized Clauzewitzian strategy.” Rather, the problem was addressed by Michel Foucault, on the one hand, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, on the other. Each produced a radical break in the conception of war and of its constitutive relationship with capitalism, taking up the confrontation with Clausewitz to reverse the famous formula such that war was not to be understood as the continuation of politics (which determines its ends). Politics was, on the contrary, to be understood as an element and strategic modality of the whole constituted by war. The ambition of la pensée 68, as represented by Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, was not to make this reversal into a simple permutation of the formula's terms, but rather to develop a radical critique of the concepts of “war” and “politics” presupposed by Clausewitz's formula.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-78
Author(s):  
P. Lewińska ◽  
K. Pargieła

Abstract Letychiv (pl. Latyczów) is a town located in central Ukraine in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast. It has a unique and complicated history. Second World War left it in ruin, destroying buildings, infrastructure and decimating its once large population. Perhaps the most prominent part of the town currently is the building Dominican convent with adjoin Letychiv Assumption Church. This object is surrounded by what is left of the previously impressive Letychiv Castle, founded by Jan Potocki in 1598. Past 30 years have been dedicated by this small Catholic parish towards rebuilding monastery-castle-church complex. Since this is an ongoing project, it was decided to perform a photographic inventory of the current state of the construction and to create a 3D digital model of the castle, facade of the church and monastery, and the altar. This task have proven to be difficult due to complicated structure of the object. Facades and inner parts of the church are almost white with limited number of distinctive elements, painted in pail gold. Elements other than white are almost identical to each other. It leads to various errors in the processing of Structure-from-motion. This article describes how various versions of SfM algorithm work thru mention difficulties, compares results in terms of accuracy, level of detail and overall look. It also describes how SfM can help to document various stages of restoration of important historical objects.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Rosoux ◽  
Laurence van Ypersele

This article examines the gradual deconstruction of the Belgian national identity. Is it possible to speak of a de facto differentiation or even ‘federalization’ of the so-called ‘national past’ in Belgium? How do Belgians choose to remember and forget this past? To contribute to an understanding of these issues, the article considers two very different episodes of Belgian history, namely the First World War and the colonization of the Congo. On the one hand, the memory of the First World War appears to provide the template for memory conflicts in Belgium, and thus informs the memories of other tragedies such as the Second World War. On the other hand, the memory of the colonial past remains much more consensual – providing a more nuanced picture of competing views on the past. Beyond the differences between the ways in which these episodes are officially portrayed, the same fundamental trend may be observed: the gradual fragmentation of a supposedly smooth and reliable national version of history.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 84-94
Author(s):  
Maximiliano Emanuel Korstanje

The current paper focused on the spectatularization of disasters as the main commodity thana capitalism exchanges. The discussion around the crimes against mankind perpetrated by Nazis in the clandestine concentration camps opened the doors towards new insights respecting the roots of thana capitalism. Nazis violated human rights secreting their crimes in a moment of the world where millions certainly died. Today´s philosophers are shocked to see how Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the sanctuary of the horrors of the Second World War, sets the pace to a new allegory, intended to entertain thousands of tourists, many of them unfamiliar with these events. As a highly-demanded tourist destination, Auschwitz evinces the change of new postmodern ethics that commoditizes the other´s loss as a criterion of entertainment. The example of terrorism shows one of the paradoxes of thana capitalism simply because media covers and disseminates the cruelties of attacks to gain further subscribers and investors while terrorism finds a fertile ground to penetrate the homes of a wider audience.


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