Recent Research in Syriac Studies and the Recurring Question of Identity

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 140-161
Author(s):  
Reyhan Durmaz
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
East West ◽  
Academic Study

Abstract Identity Puzzles, Identity and Christian-Muslim Interaction, Redefining Christian Identity … These titles are only three examples of a growing corpus of scholarship that asks the question, “How did Syriac-speaking Christians in the Near East perceive and present their communities?” Some scholars approach this question from the angle of theological distinctions between Syriac Christian groups, while others look into the power structures and discursive negotiations between Christian and other communities in the Near East. As our understanding of Syriac communities in the pre-modern Near East is further nuanced, contemporary religious and national identities shape the scholarship in new ways. This article summarizes the major theories brought to bear on the study of “Syriac identity” in premodern and modern era in the past twenty years. By mapping the field, I aim to demonstrate how the academic study of identity in Syriac communities have been underpinned by the question of the so-called East-West divide.

The Fall of Tripoli in 1289 in the Perception of Christian Communities of the Middle East

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
К.А. Панченко
Keyword(s):  
Educational Level ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Religious Polemics

Abstract The article examines the conquest of the County of Tripoli by the Mamelukes in 1289, and the reaction of various Middle Eastern ethnoreligious groups to this event. Along with the Monophysite perspective (the Syriac chronicle of Bar Hebraeus’ Continuator and the work of the Coptic historian Mufaddal ibn Abi-l-Fadail), and the propagandist texts of Muslim Arabic panegyric poets, we will pay special attention to the historical memory of the Orthodox (Melkite) and Maronite communities of northern Lebanon. The contemporary of these events — the Orthodox author Suleiman al-Ashluhi, a native of one of the villages of the Akkar Plateau — laments the fall of Tripoli in his rhymed eulogy. It is noteworthy that this author belongs to the rural Melkite subculture, which — in spite of its conservative character — was capable of producing original literature. Suleiman al-Ashluhi’s work was forsaken by the following generations of Melkites; his poem was only preserved in Maronite manuscripts. Maronite historical memory is just as fragmented. The father of the Modern Era Maronite historiography — Gabriel ibn al-Qilaʿî († 1516) only had fragmentary information on the history of his people in the 13th century: local chronicles and the heroic epos that glorified the Maronite struggle against the Muslim lords that tried to conquer Mount Lebanon. Gabriel’s depiction of the past is not only biased and subject to aims of religious polemics, but also factually inaccurate. Nevertheless, the texts of Suleiman al-Ashluhi and Gabriel ibn al-Qilaʿî give us the opportunity to draw conclusions on the worldview, educational level, political orientation and peculiar traits of the historical memory of various Christian communities of Mount Lebanon.

scholarly journals Shopping Centres, Cycling Accessibility and Planning—The Case of Nova Lund in Sweden

Urban Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Till Koglin ◽  
Lucas Glasare
Keyword(s):  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Shopping Centre ◽  
The Past ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
The Subject

This paper evaluates the history and cycling accessibility of Nova, a shopping centre established in Lund, Sweden, in 2002. The current situation was also analysed through observation and a literature review. Moreover, the study conducted a closer analysis of the history and role of the municipality based on further literature study and interviews with officials. The conclusion of the analysis indicates poor and unsafe bikeways caused by conflicts of interest between politicians, officials, landowners and the general public. It also depicts a situation in which the municipality’s master plan has been ignored, and, in contrast to the local goals, cycling accessibility at Nova has seen no significant improvement since the shopping centre was first established. The reasons for this, arguably, are a relatively low budget for bikeway improvements in the municipality, as well as a situation in which decision-makers have stopped approaching the subject, as a result of the long and often boisterous conflicts it has created in the past. Lastly, it must be noted that it is easy to regard the whole process of Nova, from its establishment to the current situation, as being symptomatic of the power structures between drivers and cyclists that still affect decision-makers at all levels.

scholarly journals Food and Religion in Sicily—A New Green Tourist Destination by an Ancient Route from the Past

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6686
Author(s):  
Bellia Claudio ◽  
Scavone Valeria ◽  
Ingrassia Marzia
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Marketing Strategies ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Wine Tourism ◽  
Policy Delphi ◽  
The Past ◽  
Support Policy ◽  
Pilgrimage Tourism ◽  
The City

The Francigena Way (Via Francigena) is a long international itinerary that was awarded recognition as a Culture Route of the Council of Europe. It starts in Canterbury (UK), touches 13 European regions and ends in Rome. An ancient track of this route is in Sicily (Southern Italy), and its name is Magna Via Francigena (Great Francigena Way). This track is a pilgrimage route that connects two ancient port cities, Palermo and Agrigento, passing through internal rural territories that now deal with the exodus of population from rural to urban areas. The route passes through the Sicilian territory named “Upper-Belìce corleonese”, a rural area around the city of Corleone (a little village known worldwide for the sad Mafia events) that includes a number of municipalities. In the past, this religious pilgrimage was a fundamental part of the expression of faith for Christians and now still represents for Sicilians a strong symbol of Christian identity. In recent decades, pilgrimage tourism around the world has grown significantly each year. The aim of the study is to know the pilgrims’ motivations for choosing the Magna Via Francigena pilgrimage as a vacation and any possible similarities between pilgrimage tourism and food and wine tourism, in the wider context of sustainable and slow tourism. The Policy Delphi method was applied to collect the opinions of the stakeholders involved. The study highlighted the strong link between religious motivations and local enogastronomy, culture, art and nature. Results will support policy-making in the development of integrated territorial tourist marketing strategies.

scholarly journals A new myth regarding the Great Trek: Reinvention of identity in Die pad na skuilhoek [The path toSkuilhoek] by Hans du Plessis.

Literator ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlies Taljard
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Myth ◽  
The Way

This article aims to illustrate how Hans du Plessis, in his novel Die pad na Skuilhoek [The path to Skuilhoek] (a place of shelter), subverts the way in which history had been presented in historical novels in the past by addressing social issues that contemporary readers find relevant. The first part of the article deals with the social codes that shape the identities of the main characters and how these identities are relevant in terms of the social framework within which the novel is received. In the second place the focus will shift towards Du Plessis’s representation of cultural and national identities. The question: ‘Who were the Afrikaners at the time of the Great Trek?’ will be answered with reference to these identities. In conclusion it will be pointed out how Du Plessis avoids dated practices of historical interpretation by choosing ecocrticism as the ideological framework for his novel and is, in this way, constructing a new social myth about the Great Trek.

May Day Demonstrations in Five European Countries

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abby Peterson ◽  
Mattias Wahlström ◽  
Magnus Wennerhag ◽  
Camilo Christancho ◽  
José-Manuel Sabucedo
Keyword(s):  
Political Orientation ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
May Day ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures ◽  
Political Demonstrations

In this article, we argue that there is an element of rituality in all political demonstrations. This rituality can be either primarily oriented toward the past and designed to consolidate the configuration of political power—hence official—or oriented towards the future and focused on challenging existing power structures—hence oppositional. We apply this conceptual framework in a comparison of May Day demonstrations in Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom in 2010. The demonstrations display significant differences in terms of officiality and oppositionality. Our study provides strong evidence that these differences cannot be explained solely—if at all—by stable elements of the national political opportunity structures. Instead, differences in degrees of oppositionality and officiality among May Day demonstrations should be primarily understood in terms of cultural traditions in combination with volatile factors such as the political orientation of the incumbent government and the level of grievances.

Historical Landmarks in the Hundred Years’ War on Palestine

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rashid I. Khalidi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Hundred Years War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era

This essay argues that what has been going on in Palestine for a century has been mischaracterized. Advancing a different perspective, it illuminates the history of the last hundred years as the Palestinians have experienced it. In doing so, it explores key historical documents, including the Balfour Declaration, Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and UN Security Council Resolution 242, none of which included the Palestinians in key decisions impacting their lives and very survival. What amounts to a hundred years of war against the Palestinians, the essay contends, should be seen in comparative perspective as one of the last major colonial conflicts of the modern era, with the United States and Europe serving as the metropole, and their extension, Israel, operating as a semi-independent settler colony. An important feature of this long war has been the Palestinians' continuing resistance, against heavy odds, to colonial subjugation. Stigmatizing such resistance as “terrorism” has successfully occluded the real history of the past hundred years in Palestine.

scholarly journals The Making of a Canon: Impact of the Old Testament Scriptures in the Christian Canon Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
Kwaku Boamah
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Linear Process ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Christian Formation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Church

The formation of the Christian canon was not a one day venture. Some scholars maintain it spanned from the first up to about the fourth centuries. This paper has three main parts: the first draws a linear process of canon generation, beginning from text to scripture and possibly becoming canonical. The second focuses on the creation of the Christian canon by exploring the stages and the implications of naming the canon as `Testaments`. At the heart of the study is a consideration of the use and inclusion or exclusion of the Jewish scripture by Christians as discussed by a heretic (Marcion) and three Anti-heretics (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian) in the 2nd and/or 3rd centuries of the Roman Empire. The third part takes an example of a modern church (Church of Christ) whose reception to the Old Testament is one of skepticism. Furthermore, the level of usage of the Old Testament by the Church of Christ is key for the thesis of this paper. It is, therefore, important to assess a possible relationship between Marcion and the Church of Christ. Historical, theological and an interview are employed to explore these developments. The paper concludes that by the naming of the Christian canon and inclusion of the Jewish scriptures, the Christian identity can be described as Judeo-Christian. This description has impacted Christian formation and development a great deal from antiquity to the modern era. Marcion and his followers did not take this lightly in the first four centuries of the Christian history. On the other hand, in the nineteenth century the Church of Christ seemingly follows this example in antiquity on including the Old Testament as part of the Christian canon.

scholarly journals Images of Women and Politics of Domination in Helen Fields’ “Perfect Remains”

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunmi Miyane
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Women And Politics ◽  
Women Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gender Education ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Images Of Women

As feminism evolved and reshaped ideas on womanhood and its politics over the past three centuries, postmodernist writers seem to continuously present discriminated images of women in novels, including spy fiction. Unless it is properly addressed, these misrepresented images of women underlying its gender politics brings about questions on the effectiveness of gender education and its equality. This study problematized images of women in Fields’ Perfect Remains in order to understand the politics of domination between genders that suggest a continuous display of power. The analysis of the novel through the use of Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Framework, enabled the identifying images of women and ways in which dominance is exerted in the discourse. Analysis revealed that postmodern societies through the novelist’s lens continue to remain remote towards women. In a period, which celebrates women’s achievement and freedom of speech, where they are thought to be strong and independent, men continue to ironically exert different methods of power in the strive to maintain their status quo, which is revealed in this research. This study contributes to the existing body of literature in the field of women studies and literature where it identified the presence of male dominance even in this modern era. On another hand, it also explores aspects of domination which appear in the form of intellect as a new field of study.

scholarly journals Evidence for the Transfer of Corpuscles to Distant Parts of the Sun Following a Solar Radio Burst

1961 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 540 ◽  
Author(s):  
RF Mullaly
Keyword(s):  
Radio Burst ◽  
Solar Radio ◽  
Brightness Distribution ◽  
Solar Radio Burst ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Time Intervals ◽  
The Past ◽  
Grating Interferometer ◽  
Half Power ◽  
East West

The brightness distribution of 21-cm radiation over the Sun's surface has been studied for the past four years with the Christiansen crossed-grating interferometer (Christiansen et al. 1961) at Fleurs near Sydney. The observations described here were made using one arm of this cross as a simple grating interferometer, providing a transit instrument with a fan beam of about 2' of arc resolution to half-power points in the east-west direction and very low resolution north-south. The Sun was scanned repeatedly from east to west at time intervals of approximately 4 min.

scholarly journals Historical perspective of neurology in Iran

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shri Kant-Mishra ◽  
Hadi Mohammad Khanli ◽  
Golnoush Akhlaghipour ◽  
Ghazaleh Ahmadi Jazi ◽  
Shaweta Khosa1
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Medical Center ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Neurologic Diseases ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era

Iran is an ancient country, known as the cradle of civilization. The history of medicine in Iran goes back to the existence of a human in this country, divided into three periods: pre-Islamic, medieval, and modern period. There are records of different neurologic terms from the early period, while Zoroastrian (religious) prescription was mainly used until the foundation of the first medical center (Gondishapur). In the medieval period, with the conquest of Islam, prominent scientists were taught in Baghdad, like Avicenna, who referred to different neurologic diseases including stroke, paralysis, tremor, and meningitis. Several outstanding scientists developed the medical science of neurology in Iran, the work of whom has been used by other countries in the past and present. In the modern era, the Iranian Neurological Association was established with the efforts of Professor Jalal Barimani in 1991.

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