The Word of God in One’s Hand: Touching and Holding Pendant Koran Manuscripts

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 338-357
Author(s):  
Cornelius Berthold
Keyword(s):  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
The Body ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Rare Occurrence ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Solid Objects ◽  
Cylindrical Form ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era

AbstractKoran manuscripts that fit comfortably within the palm of one’s hand are known as early as the 10th century CE.For the sake of convenience, all dates will be given in the common era (CE) without further mention, and not in the Islamic or Hijra calendar. Their minute and sometimes barely legible script is clearly not intended for comfortable reading. Instead, recent scholarship suggests that the manuscripts were designed to be worn on the body like pendants or fastened to military flag poles. This is corroborated by some preserved cases for these books which feature lugs to attach a cord or chain, but also their rare occurrence in contemporary textual sources. While pendant Korans in rectangular codex form exist, the majority were produced as codices in the shape of an octagonal prism, and others as scrolls that could be rolled up into a cylindrical form. Both resemble the shapes of similarly dated and pre-Islamic amulets or amulet cases. Building on recent scholarship, I will argue in this article that miniature or pendant Koran manuscripts were produced in similar forms and sizes because of comparable modes of usage, but not necessarily by a deliberate imitation of their amuletic ‘predecessors’. The manuscripts’ main functions did not require them to be read or even opened; some of their cases were in fact riveted shut. Accordingly, the haptic feedback they gave to their owners when they carried or touched them was not one of regular books but one of solid objects (like amulets) or even jewellery, which then reinforced this practice.

2. Religion and theatre

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Common ◽  
Mosaic Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Common Era

‘Religion and theatre’ attempts to describe some general patterns and contrasts, and suggests some historical and geographical implications of the relationship between theatre and religion. Beginning with Western monotheistic religion—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—it shows that the condemnation of images, fundamental to Mosaic law, encouraged a deep suspicion of any form of mimesis, especially involving the body. Despite this, they all developed significant theatrical traditions with close ties to religious celebrations and ceremonies. Generally, non-Western performance has been tied to religious practice from the very beginning. In India, early theatre was intertwined with Hinduism and Buddhism, the two major religions of the subcontinent at the start of the common era.

Poisonous Honey or Pure Manna: The Eucharist and the Word in the “Beehive” of Marnix of Saint Aldegonde

1992 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 382-393
Author(s):  
F. E. Beemon
Keyword(s):  
Lord's Supper ◽  
The Body ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Sociocultural Context ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Popular Audience ◽  
Theological Message

With the publication of his Den Byencorf der H. Roomische Kercke (The Beehive of the Holy Roman Church) in 1569, the Netherlandic Calvinist Marnix of Saint Aldegonde launched a satirical attack onthe clergy, polity, and sacramental practice of Catholicism. Though the fame of the book and its author have been eclipsed, they were both well known during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesas shown by the frequency of publication. Marnix's task, in common with other sixteenth-century religious propagandists, was to communicate a theological message to a popular audience. The success of this effort depended on reaching across the separation between systematic theology and folk religiosity. The object was not original theology, nor even doctrinal subtleties, but the creativeuse of common terms to explain divergent schemes of basic dogma. Because the subject was more religious than theological, the separation between Latin and the vernacular cultures could be bridged by the use of metaphors common to both high and popular culture. In this, Marnix's work is distinguished by his use of the metaphors of beehive, honey, and manna to explain the differences between the Catholic Eucharist and the Calvinist Lord's Supper. The use of manna is not surprising as one would expect it to be a common image; however, the metaphors of hive and honey are less expected. While the former is clearly biblical in origin, the apiary metaphors are not. Thus, Marnix relies on the common sociocultural context of the beehive to instruct a popular Dutch audience in a fundamental difference between Calvinism and Catholicism. By identifying the Catholic host with polluted honey, Marnix defends the necessary presence of the Word for the Calvinist Lord's Supper, which he portrays as pure manna. Rather than feeding on the body of Christ, Marnix argues, the true Church feeds on the Word of God, which is present in the Calvinist wafer.

The Common as Body Without Organs

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (supplement) ◽  
pp. 46-63
Author(s):  
Vidar Thorsteinsson
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Body Without Organs ◽  
Social Factory ◽  
The Common

The paper explores the relation of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's work to that of Deleuze and Guattari. The main focus is on Hardt and Negri's concept of ‘the common’ as developed in their most recent book Commonwealth. It is argued that the common can complement what Nicholas Thoburn terms the ‘minor’ characteristics of Deleuze's political thinking while also surpassing certain limitations posed by Hardt and Negri's own previous emphasis on ‘autonomy-in-production’. With reference to Marx's notion of real subsumption and early workerism's social-factory thesis, the discussion circles around showing how a distinction between capital and the common can provide a basis for what Alberto Toscano calls ‘antagonistic separation’ from capital in a more effective way than can the classical capital–labour distinction. To this end, it is demonstrated how the common might benefit from being understood in light of Deleuze and Guattari's conceptual apparatus, with reference primarily to the ‘body without organs’ of Anti-Oedipus. It is argued that the common as body without organs, now understood as constituting its own ‘social production’ separate from the BwO of capital, can provide a new basis for antagonistic separation from capital. Of fundamental importance is how the common potentially invents a novel regime of qualitative valorisation, distinct from capital's limitation to quantity and scarcity.

Our Bodies, Whose Property?

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
Human Organs ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Right

No one wants to be treated like an object, regarded as an item of property, or put up for sale. Yet many people frame personal autonomy in terms of self-ownership, representing themselves as property owners with the right to do as they wish with their bodies. Others do not use the language of property, but are similarly insistent on the rights of free individuals to decide for themselves whether to engage in commercial transactions for sex, reproduction, or organ sales. Drawing on analyses of rape, surrogacy, and markets in human organs, this book challenges notions of freedom based on ownership of our bodies and argues against the normalization of markets in bodily services and parts. The book explores the risks associated with metaphors of property and the reasons why the commodification of the body remains problematic. The book asks what is wrong with thinking of oneself as the owner of one's body? What is wrong with making our bodies available for rent or sale? What, if anything, is the difference between markets in sex, reproduction, or human body parts, and the other markets we commonly applaud? The book contends that body markets occupy the outer edges of a continuum that is, in some way, a feature of all labor markets. But it also emphasizes that we all have bodies, and considers the implications of this otherwise banal fact for equality. Bodies remind us of shared vulnerability, alerting us to the common experience of living as embodied beings in the same world. Examining the complex issue of body exceptionalism, the book demonstrates that treating the body as property makes human equality harder to comprehend.

scholarly journals Excited delirium syndrome from psychostimulant abuse can mimic a violent scene of death

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shatishraj Jothee ◽  
Mohamed Swarhib Shafie ◽  
Faridah Mohd Nor
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Manifestations ◽  
The Body ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Manner Of Death ◽  
Case Presentation ◽  
Excited Delirium ◽  
The Common ◽  
Violent Scene ◽  
Naked Body ◽  
Psychostimulant Abuse

Abstract Background Previous reported cases on excited delirium syndrome studied on the common clinical manifestations of the syndrome. The usual forensics implication for the syndrome is that death commonly is associated with restraint procedures by law enforcement agencies; however, not many cases reported highlights the difficulties in attributing a violent scene of death to the syndrome. Case presentation We present a case of a partially naked body found in an apartment unit under suspicious circumstances with multiple injuries. The scene of death was violent, and the body was found with blood wiped all over the floor and walls. Investigators believed a violent crime had occurred, and a suspect was reprimanded. However, upon autopsy, it was found that all injuries were superficially inflicted and were unlikely to have been part of an act of commission or caused his death. Internal examination found no remarkable pathology. Toxicology revealed a presence of psychostimulants, that is, methamphetamine, MDMA, and ethyl alcohol. Reconstruction of events by the witness, who was initially suspected of the ‘murder’, revealed that the injuries and his death could likely be explained by an episode of excited delirium. Conclusion The case highlights the challenges faced when attributing excited delirium syndrome as a cause of death. The syndrome can present with injuries from aggressive or bizarre behaviour, coupled with the destruction of property, which may confuse investigators on the possible manner of death.

Marking Religious and Ethnic Boundaries: Cases from the Ancient Golan Heights

2000 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Gregg
Keyword(s):  
Rhode Island ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Rural Settings ◽  
The Common ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Common Era

In the aftermath of the 1967 “Six Days' War,” 254 ancient inscribed stones were found in forty-four towns and villages of the Golan Heights—241 in Greek, 12 in Hebrew or Aramaic, and 1 in Latin. These stones, along with numerous architectural fragments, served as the basis of the 1996 book by myself and Dan Urman, Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Golan Heights—a study of settlement patterns of people of the three religions in this region in the early centuries of the common era.1 The area of the Golan heights, roughly the size of Rhode Island, was in antiquity a place of agriculture and, for the most part, small communities. Though historians of religions in the late Roman period have long been aware of the “quartering” of cities, and of the locations of particular religious groups in this or that section of urban areas, we have had little information concerning the ways in which Hellenes, Jews, and Christians took up residence in relation to each other in those rural settings featuring numerous towns and hamlets— most presumably too small to have “zones” for ethnic and religious groups. The surviving artifacts of a number of the Golan sites gave the opportunity for a case study. Part 1 of this article centers on evidence for the locations and possible interactions of members of these religious groups in the Golan from the third to the seventh centuries and entails a summary of findings in the earlier work, while part 2 takes up several lingering questions about religious identity and ways of “marking” it within Golan countryside communities. Both sections can be placed under a rubric of “boundary drawing and religion.”

Of the Movement of Worms

1950 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
GARTH CHAPMAN
Keyword(s):  
Hydrostatic Pressure ◽  
Closed System ◽  
Body Fluid ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Working Length ◽  
Cylindrical Form ◽  
Maximum Thrust

Four aspects of the functioning of a fluid-filled cylindrical animal have been examined, viz.: (I) the role of the body fluid as a skeleton for the interaction of the longitudinal and circular muscles of which the animal must be composed; (2) the measurement of the maximum thrust which the animal can exert by measurement of its internal hydrostatic pressure; (3) the application of the force to the substratum and the part played by friction; (4) the relation between the changes in dimensions of the animal and the working length of the muscles. Under (1) the necessity for a longitudinal and circular construction has been shown and the necessity for a closed system emphasized. Under (2) the pressure exerted on the body fluid by the contraction of the longitudinal and circular muscles is discussed, and from their cross-sectional areas it is shown to be probable that when contracting maximally in Lumbricus they are not balanced, but that the longitudinals are about ten times as strong as the circulars. Under (3) it is shown that the strength of an animal as measured by its internal hydrostatic pressure is sufficient to account for its customary activities. Use which may be made of the longitudinals during burrowing is pointed out. Under (4) it is shown to be mechanically sound for burrowing animals of cylindrical form to be ‘fat’, but that a ‘thin’ animal is more efficient at progression.

scholarly journals Common Sports Injuries among Physical Activities Practitioners at the Physical Fitness Centers in Jordan (Comparative Study)

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Majed F. Mujalli ◽  
Maen Z. Zakarneh ◽  
Ala’a Kh. Abu Aloyoun
Keyword(s):  
Physical Fitness ◽  
Sports Injuries ◽  
Physical Activities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fitness Centers ◽  
Warm Up ◽  
Medical Checkup ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Lumbar Area ◽  
The Common

<p>The aim of the study was to investigate the common sports injuries among physical activities practitioners at the physical fitness centers in Jordan. Study sample consisted of (272) volunteered male (n=221) and female (n=51) (age 30±3). Researchers used a special form used to evaluate athletic injuries. After collecting and analyzing the data. Results showed that the most common sports injuries among sample of the study was muscular tears 27.7%, muscle spasm 20.7%, and tears ligament 20.2%. And the most exposed parts of the body to injury is the lumbar area 26.8%, elbows 16.9%, followed by shoulders 8.9%. Also the study results revealed that the most cusses of injuries was over training 24.14%. Poor warm-up 22.1% and bad technic 11.3%. Bodies-building was the most type of activities subjects to injury with 18.8%. Physical Fitness 6.6% and weight loss 27.7. Results also showed that physical therapy was the most means of treating injuries 54.14%, drugs therapy 33.3% and surgical intervention 4.2%. Also the study shows that males are more exposed to injuries than females.</p><p>Conclusions: These finding indicate that sports injures is part of physical</p><p>Activities participations, preventive measures should be taken by participant's the researchers recommended the need for physical and medical checkup before participation in physical activity at the physical fitness centers.</p>

XXIV. Observations on the Chariots of the antient Britains. By the Rev. Mr. Pegge. In a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Norris

Archaeologia ◽  
1785 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 211-213
Author(s):  
Pegge
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Common Mistake ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
The Common ◽  
As If

Besides the common mistake of the annalists and historians in regard to this passage in Juvenal,Regem aliquem capies, aut de temone BritannoExcidet Arviragus—Juvenal IV. 126.By taking Arviragus for the proper name of a person, and not of an officer; the words of the satyrist are memorable in another respect, as serving to inform us, by the word temone, of a singular mode of fighting amongst the Britons; as if by leaving his carriage, and running upon the pole, the combatant from thence, or from the yoke, engaged the enemy, as long as he thought prudent and convenient, and then retreated back into the body of the vehicle.

scholarly journals The inheritance of sinistrality in Limnœa peregra

1929 ◽  
Vol 104 (729) ◽  
pp. 152-152 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Recessive Character ◽  
Freshwater Mollusc ◽  
The Common

1. The common freshwater mollusc, Limnœa peregra , in normally dextral: a sinistral variety, in which the spiral twist of the body and shell is completely reversed, is very rare. 2. Sinistrality behaves as a mendelian recessive character, but the appearance of any change of twist imposed by crossing is delayed by one generation. Thus a sinistral fertilised by a dextral produces (F 1) sinistral young which (F 2) produce dextral broods: these dextrals produce (F 3) dextral and sisital broods in the proportion of 3 to 1. Similarly a dextral fertilised by a sinistral produces dextrals in F 1 and F 2 and a 3 to 1 mixture of dextral and sinistral broods in F 3.

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