Al-Maqrīzī’s History of the Ḥajj (al-Dhahab al-Masbūk) and Khaldūnian Narrative Construction: towards a macro-structural textual analysis of form and meaning

Author(s):  
Jo Van Steenbergen
2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-43
Author(s):  
Abdelaziz Berghout

The paper examines the importance of designing a framework for studying worldviews within the parameters of contemporary Islamic thought. It briefly reviews both selected western and Islamic stances on worldview studies. The literature reveals that research on this topic and its application to different spheres has become a topic of some interest to many intellectual circles, particularly in the western context. Hence, the possibility of forming an Islamic civilizational framework for an inquiry into people’s worldviews needs to be assessed. This article follows a textual analysis and inductive approach to analyze the prospects of formulating an Islamic framework for research on worldviews and its applications. It concludes that western scholars have made considerable efforts in treating people’s worldviews as a field of study, while Muslim scholars have not. In this respect, many western researchers have contributed to developing worldview studies as a separate field of inquiry, including the history of concept, subject matter, objectives, kinds, methods, and applications. Therefore, the need to enhance the Islamic input and research pertaining to this field by introducing an Islamic civilizational framework and approach of inquiry becomes apparent.


Author(s):  
Elza-Bair M. Guchinova ◽  

Introduction. The proposed publication consists of an introduction, texts of two biographical interviews and comments thereon. Both the conversations took place in Elista (2004, 2017) as part of the research project ‘Everyone Has One’s Own Siberia’ dedicated to the important period in the history of Kalmykia though not yet sufficiently explored by anthropologists and sociologists — the deportation of Kalmyks to Siberia (1943–1956) and related memories. Goals. The project seeks to show the daily survival practices of Kalmyks in Siberia. In the spontaneous biographical interviews focusing on the years of Kalmyk deportation, not only the facts cited are important — of which we would otherwise stay unaware but from the oral narratives — but also the introduced stories of inner life: feelings and thoughts of growing girls. Methods. The paper involves the use of textual analysis and the method of text deconstruction. Results. The transcribed texts show survival and adaptation strategies employed by the young generation of ‘special settlers’ in places of forced residence. For many Kalmyks of that generation, high school was a ‘glass ceiling’, a limitation in life choices. In the narrative of R. Ts. Azydova, we face a today unthinkable social package for KUTV students with children — this illustrates how the korenization policy for indigenous populations in the USSR worked, and provides insight into daily practices of pre-war Elista. The story of T. S. Kachanova especially clearly manifests the ‘language of trauma’, first of all, through the memory of the body, vocabulary of death and displays of laughter. The texts of the interviews shall be interesting to all researchers of Kalmyk deportation and the memory of that period.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Paul Moody

Verity Lambert's brief period as Director of Production at Thorn-EMI Screen Entertainment (TESE) was responsible for the in-house development of five films: Morons from Outer Space (1985), Restless Natives (1985), Dreamchild (1985), Link (1986) and Clockwise (1986), although she had left the company before the last three were released. There has been limited critical engagement with these productions and Lambert's tenure in general, with the existing literature on this material tending to emphasise the eclectic nature of what were to be TESE's last releases before the company's sale to Cannon ( Hill 1999 ; Moody 2018 ; Park 1990 ; Walker 1985 ; Walker 2004 ; Wickham and Mettler 2005 ). Drawing on a series of detailed interviews with former TESE Production Executive, Graham Easton, along with previously unreleased archival documents from the Film Finances archive, this article develops a more detailed textual analysis and production history of these releases, in order more clearly to map TESE's complexities during this period. By engaging more coherently with the themes and aesthetics of TESE's output, the article argues that there is a consistency to Lambert's productions which can be seen at both a thematic and a stylistic level, centred on notions of constraint and obstacles to communication, and that this was nurtured by the environment created by Lambert and the Film Finances completion bond for each film.


Author(s):  
Amilah binti Awang Abd Rahman

Abstract This paper will analytically study the Islamic meaning of akhlaq as portrayed by two Western writers in the article entitled “Akhlak” published in the Encyclopedia of Islam. The author highlights the contribution of Western scholars especially Walzer and Gibb to the understanding of history of the development of Islamic thought and disciplines. By employing the qualitative methodology, the author uses textual analysis and comparative method on the writings of both thinkers and others.  Findings indicate that there are several weaknesses in the writing that include limiting the scope of akhlaq to practical ethics of selected virtues, the lacking of clear detachment between akhlaq and ethical thought, and others.  Key words: Ethics, Akhlaq, Philosophy, Islam, Encyclopedia of Islam.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Raissa De Gruttola

Abstract Christian missionaries play an important role in the history of the relationship between China and Europe. Their presence in China has been widely explored, but little attention has been paid to the role played by the Bible in their preaching. From 13th to 19th century, although they did not translate the Bible, Catholic missionaries preached the Gospel orally or with catechisms. On the other hand, the Protestant missionaries had published many version of the Chinese Bible throughout the 19th century. It was only in the 20th century that the Franciscan friar Gabriele Allegra decided to go to China as a missionary to translate the Holy Scriptures into Chinese. He arrived in China in 1931 and translated from 1935 to 1961. He also founded a biblical study centre to prepare expert scholars to collaborate in the Bible translation. Allegra and his colleagues completed the translation in 1961, and the first complete single-volume Catholic Bible in Chinese was published in 1968. After presenting the historical background of Allegra’s activity, a textual analysis of some passages of his translation will be presented, emphasizing the meanings of the Chinese words he chose to use to translate particular elements of Christian terminology. This study will verify the closeness of the work by Allegra to the original Greek text and the validity of some particular translation choices.


Author(s):  
Bernard Boxill

Appalled by Kant’s views on race, some Kantians suggest that these views are unrelated to his central moral teaching that every human being “exists as an end in itself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will.” But Kant developed his racial views because of his teleological view that we regard the history of the human species as the completion of a hidden plan of nature to establish an externally perfect state constitution as the necessary means to the end of developing all human predispositions. To evade the difficulty, Kantians may claim that Kant’s teleology and moral theory are not essentially related, but Kant thought that they were and close textual analysis supports their connection.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-241
Author(s):  
LORELY FRENCH

This article presents a close reading of the Romani characters and their actions in five stories by Viennese Romani writer and activist Samuel Mago and in two stories by his brother, Hungarian award-winning journalist Károly Mágó, in their bilingual Romani and German collection glücksmacher - e baxt romani. Brief biographies and an outline of the history of Roma and antiziganism in Austria provide background to textual analysis that focuses on how characters in the stories engender baxt/“Glück,” which means both happiness and luck. This dual meaning has inspired philosophical, psychological, economic, and anthropological studies, but literary scholars have rarely examined the concept in texts by Roma. For the protagonists in the brothers’ stories, happiness and luck become based less on monetary fortunes than on other means to live and survive in dark times of persecution and discrimination. The characters’ decisions unveil perceptions of baxt that rely largely on acquiring food, preserving and passing down family heirlooms, receiving an education, and freeing oneself and one’s family from persecution.


Author(s):  
James Rose

No-one who has ever seen the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is ever likely to forget the experience. An intense fever dream (or nightmare), it is remarkable for its sense of sustained threat and depiction of an insane but nonetheless (dys)functional family on the furthest reaches of society who have regressed to cannibalism in the face of economic hardship. As well as providing a summary of the making of the film, this book discusses the extraordinary censorship history of the film in the UK (essentially banned for two decades) and provides a detailed textual analysis of the film with particular reference to the concept of ‘the Uncanny’. The book also situates the film in the context of horror film criticism (the ‘Final Girl’ character) and discusses its influence and subsequent sequels and remakes.


Author(s):  
Benaouda Bensaid ◽  
Salah Machouche

This chapter seeks to explore the crossroads between learning in Islam and spirituality, and also the methods according to which Muslim instructors shape students' experiences in a context of piety development. This study also examines questions pertaining to the concept of spirituality in education, methods pedagogic principles that further merge spiritual discipline with knowledge acquisition. The theoretical research draws on the textual analysis of early works of Muslim scholars, more specifically on Abdul Ibn Khaldun and Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, given their prominent positions in the history of Muslim education. This study shows that the Islamic learning has always taken students' spiritual growth for granted and has, despite differences of practices across Muslim regions, always maintained the refining of learners' spiritual character.


Author(s):  
Nicholas Benson

In 1974, CBS premiered a television series based on the popular Planet of the Apes films. Despite high expectations from the network, the series was a critical and ratings flop and CBS quickly canceled it in the middle of its first season. This article considers the short-lived Planet of the Apes (1974) series as an early attempt at transmedia storytelling and asks what its failure might reveal about certain pre-conglomeration, pre-franchising industrial logics, particularly as they relate to properties that transition from film to television. The Apes television series offers an opportunity to understand certain logics of transmedia textual management before they become entrenched in discourses of media franchising. Through a combination of industrial and textual analysis, I trace the history of the programme and ultimately argue that the industrial considerations (specifically those of network era broadcast television) heavily informed the intertextual relationships between the film series and the TV show.


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