On Original and “Originals”: The “Copy” of the Tashkent Qurʾān Codex in the Rare Collection Books at the Butler Library

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 282-307
Author(s):  
Avinoam Shalem

Abstract In 1905, Dr. S. Pissareff from St. Petersburg was involved in the production of 50 copies of an earlier Qurʾān codex. The original, namely the Qurʾān codex first discovered to western gaze around the mid 19th century, held in the Khoja Akhrar mosque in Samarqand, is a large-sized Qurʾānic manuscript written in Kufic on parchment with hardly any use of punctuation or vowel marks. This codex has been traditionally regarded as the muṣḥaf of ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān, the third caliph (murdered in 656), and was said to have been brought from Iraq by Timur. This essay presents the ‘Pissareff copy’ kept at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University, discusses its specific status as residing in the grey zone between reproduction and copy, and aims at setting it in the larger context of ‘copies’ of Qurʾān codices.

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942199790
Author(s):  
Udo Grashoff

This article discusses ambiguous tactics of German Communist resisters in the Third Reich. The official historiography of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) portrayed Communist resisters as unfaltering heroes. By contrast, revisionist studies published after 1990 presented Communists as traitors and renegades. This study transcends these approaches that revolve around legitimation or de-legitimation of the dictatorship, and examines the dubious manoeuvring of three German Communists who strategically collaborated with the Nazis, namely Theodor Bottländer, Friedrich Schlotterbeck and Wilhelm Knöchel. While Knöchel's attempts to outwit the Gestapo failed and could not prevent his execution, Schlotterbeck and Bottländer found ways to survive - largely without betraying their comrades. Even so, the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), as well as its successor in the GDR, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), reprimanded venturesome, inventive and obstinate Communists, excluded them from the party and brought them to court. The harsh reactions are indicative of the inability of Communist historiography to acknowledge ‘Eigen-Sinn’, and highlight a central shortcoming of the antifascist doctrine. Likewise, more recent revisionist approaches have failed to recognise various attempts of Communists to minimise harm and survive in the grey zone between betrayal and loyalty.


2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-489
Author(s):  
Robert M. Cammarota

The modern-day custom of performing the 'omnes generationes' section from J. S. Bach's Magnificat twice as fast as the aria "Quia respexit" has its origins in Robert Franz's vocal and orchestral editions of 1864, the details of which were discussed in his Mittheilungen of 1863. Up until that time, 'omnes generationes' was inextricably connected to "Quia respexit" and formed part of the third movement of Bach's Magnificat. Moreover, when Bach revised the score in 1733, he added adagio to the beginning of "Quia respexit . . . omnes generationes," establishing the tempo for the whole movement. In this study I show that Bach's setting of this verse is in keeping with Leipzig tradition (as evidenced by the settings of Schelle, G. M. Hoffmann, Telemann, Kuhnau, and Graupner) and with early 18thcentury compositional practice; that he interpreted the verse based on Luther's 1532 exegesis on the Magnificat; that the verse must be understood theologically, as a unit; that the change in musical texture at the words 'omnes generationes' is a rhetorical device, not "dramatic effect"; and, finally, that there is no change in tempo at the words 'omnes generationes' either in Bach's setting or in any other from this period. An understanding of the early 18th-century Magnificat tradition out of which Bach's setting derives, with the knowledge of the reception of Bach's Magnificat in the mid 19th century, should help us restore Bach's tempo adagio for the movement.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sher Doruff

Last Year at Betty and Bob’s: An Actual Occasion is the third in a series of three novellas emerging from a writing practice that taps the cusp of consciousness between dreaming and waking. An Actual Occasion revisits the viral transitioning of the becoming rat-woman from Last Year at Betty and Bob's: A Novelty (vol. 1 in the trilogy). The adventure focuses on the Gritta’s, a gang of artists on retreat in the Dolomite Mountains, as they engage with the idiosyncratic, keeper of the keys, Roberta. Her other-worldly Café Arcadia, a magical cathedral of voluminous aphorism, is an archival refuge and durational homage to Benjaminian storytelling. This futurist fairy-tale is tinged with a curious mix of 19th-century feminist idioms and a queer, post-pandemic sanguinity.


Author(s):  
José Ignacio Royo Guillén ◽  
Francisco José Navarro Cabeza ◽  
Serafín Benedí Monge

Los estudios sobre grabados rupestres al aire libre de cronología postpaleolítica, adolecen de importantes carencias que, en el valle medio del Ebro, se han visto superadas con la llegada del tercer milenio. Con la presentación de este trabajo se pretende dar a conocer un nuevo núcleo de grabados rupestres, localizado en el extremo suroeste de la provincia de Zaragoza, en las gargantas calcáreas del río Mesa. Entre los nuevos enclaves rupestres, destacan los abrigos con grabados protohistóricos, pero muy especialmente los de cronología medieval andalusí y los de iconografía cristiana entre los siglos XIV y XVIII, con perduraciones hasta mediados del siglo XIX y algunas escenas relacionadas con la primera Guerra Carlista en Aragón. La distribución de los hallazgos, su tipología e iconografía y los restos arqueológicos asociados, permiten documentar una importante ocupación del territorio desde la Iª Edad del Hierro y la sacralización del paisaje a través del arte rupestre, con pervivencias que se perpetúan a lo largo de la Edad Media y Moderna, destacando como novedad la presencia de un importante conjunto de inscripciones epigráficas islámicas que deben situarse entre los siglos XI y XII. AbstractThe studies on open-air rock engravings in post-Paleolithic chronology suffer from important deficiencies, which in the middle valley of the Ebro, have been overcome with the arrival of the third millennium.With the presentation of this work, the aim is to make known a new nucleus of rock engravings, located in the extreme southwest of the province of Zaragoza, in the limestone gorges of the River Mesa. Among the new rock engravings, the shelters with protohistoric engravings stand out, but especially those with a medieval Andalusian chronology and those with Christian iconography between the 14th and 18th centuries, which lasted until the middle of the 19th century and some scenes related to the first Carlist War in Aragon. The distribution of the findings, their typology and iconography and the associated archaeological remains, allow us to document an important occupation of the territory since the First Iron Age and the sacralization of the landscape through rock art, with survivals that are perpetuated throughout the Middle and Modern Ages, highlighting as a novelty the presence of an important set of Islamic epigraphic inscriptions that must be located between the 11th and 12th centuries.


Author(s):  
Zsolt Kiss ◽  

Two fragments of painted Roman funerary portraits on wooden panels of the Fayum type, discovered in 2001 during a revisiting of the Third Intermediate Period shaft tombs inside the Chapel of Hatshepsut in the Royal Mortuary Cult Complex at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari, come from 19th century excavations, hence are without anything but a general context. The pieces are very small—fragment of a robe, sliver of a face with one eye—but in a brilliant analysis of iconography and style Kiss identifies one as a depiction of a female, possibly a priestess of Isis, from the second half of the 2nd century AD, and the other as a male portrait from the 2nd century. The portraits may belong to what some scholars have called “Theban” painted funerary portraits and they must have come from a Roman necropolis in West Thebes, possibly Deir el-Medineh. On any case, they are proof that mummies with painted portraits of the deceased on wooden panels fitted into the cartonnages were not unknown in ancient Thebes.


Chronos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 85-106
Author(s):  
Michalis N Michael

The 19th century could be described as the bourgeoisie century since it is generally acknowledged that the European bourgeoisie, which reached its apex during the third quarter of the century (Hobsbawm 2000:346), was both financially strong and having a political say, and was successful in leading societies and their political states to radical changes. The rivalry of the bourgeoisie against other social groups, and mainly those attached to power or in many cases in power, led to ideological conflicts resulting in power changing hands or in some cases led the traditional aristocratic power being controlled by elements of the bourgeoisie.


Author(s):  
Gennadiy G. Bril’ ◽  
Leonid N. Zaytsev

The article examines the process of origin and formation of the political police of Kostroma Province in the mid-19th century. Special attention is paid to the issue of its staffi ng and the wide use of army offi cers for service in the political police. The chronological framework covers a little-studied period of activity of the political police in Kostroma Province. The authors of the article note that the Highest orders of military ranks that had a special place in the appointment of the headquarters and chief offi cers of the political police. On the basis of archival materials, the main directions of service activities of the highest ranks of the political police in the region are analysed. The article reveals the contribution of the gendarmes’ Corps chiefs to the protection of public order during the period under review. The author reveals the attitude of the authorities to literacy among the lower ranks of the gendarmerie. On the basis of historical and archival documents, it is concluded that the successful career of offi cers was promoted by conscientious performance of their offi cial duties, their «excellent-diligent and zealous service». It is concluded that special attention was paid to discipline among the gendarmes. The political police were independent of other branches of government, and were subordinate only to the headquarters of the gendarmes’ corps and the third division of His Imperial Majesty’s own offi ce. Gaps in the historical and legal coverage of the work of the state security Agency in the province of the Russian Empire at the fi rst stage of its existence are fi lled.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Kristina Polizzi

The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library recently hosted a photograph exhibit in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the Federal Depository of the University of South Alabama’s Marx Library. Government Documents created a display featuring various types of government documents. To complement their exhibit, Kristina Polizzi and Deborah Blakey co-designed an exhibit around the use of government sponsored photographs of historic buildings in Mobile, Alabama, created by the Historic American Buildings Survey and Mobile Historic Development Commission. The exhibit focused on buildings constructed in the nineteenth century. It was housed on the third floor of the Marx Library in the McCall Library exhibit cases along the main corridor leading to the archives.


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