scholarly journals Conceptualizing In-Text “Kshetra”: Postcolonial Allahabad’s Cultural Geography in Neelum Saran Gour’s Allahabad Aria and Invisible Ink

Text Matters ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 389-403
Author(s):  
Chhandita Das ◽  
Priyanka Tripathi

Literary renditions of cities have always gravitated towards the spatial imagination and its ethical counterpart outside the textual space. This paper explores the multicultural geography of the North Indian city Allahabad (recently renamed Prayagraj) observed through Neelum Saran Gour’s postcolonial narratives Allahabad Aria and Invisible Ink, projecting the narrative alignment of spatial aesthetics and cultural ethics. Interrogating the spatial dimensions of a “narrative world” within narrative theory (Ryan) and its interdisciplinary crossover with cultural geography (Sauer; Mitchell; Anderson et al.), the article seeks to examine Gour’s literary city not simply as an objective homogeneous representation, but as a “kshetra” of spatio-cultural cosmos of lived traditions, memories, experiences and collective attitudes of its people, in the context of E. V. Ramakrishnan’s theoretical reflections. The article proposes new possibilities of adapting the Indian concept “kshetra” to spatial literary studies; its aim is also to suggest a new source of knowledge about the city of Allahabad through a community introspection of “doing culture” in the texts, bringing into view people’s shared experiences, beliefs, religious practices and traditions as offshoots of the postcolonial ethos. The article aims to re-contextualize the city’s longstanding multicultural ethics in the contemporary times of crisis, which may affect a shift in the city’s relevance: from regional concern to large-scale significance within ethnically diverse South Asian countries and beyond.

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (40) ◽  
pp. 617-656
Author(s):  
Mohammed S. Mahan ◽  
Ghassan Muslim Hamza

       Babylon during Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC) was a great city. It had been a large city since Old Babylonian times, but Nebuchadnezzar’s expansion of the city and large-scale rebuilding of important buildings with good baked brick instead of the traditional unbaked mudbrick created something exceptional. Babylon now was larger than Nineveh had been and larger than any of the cities in the known world. The political and economic base for this development was of course that it was the centre of the Neo-Babylonian empire created by Nebuchadnezzar’s father Nabopolassar (625–605 BC) and succeeding the Neo Assyrian empire as the main political entity in the Middle East.         An attempt for the first time to bring together the main results of the German excavations in Babylon with the main results from the Iraqi excavations there and thereby make use of the available cuneiform documentation and a selected use of the best of the classical tradition. With the help of a GIS software (QGIS) and a BIM program (ArchiCAD) the use of satellite images and aerial photos combined with inspection on the site, the historical development of the site has been studied and a digital research model of Babylon for different periods of the city’s history has been created.          Only main buildings and constructions have been considered and placed in the appropriate historical and archaeological context. Part 1 includes some information about the historical development of buildings and nature in Babylon, the rivers and groundwater in Baybylon, as well as basics about the building materials used in Babylon. Part 2 discuss the city walls and city gates, introductory matters about the history, excavation and other documentations of the walls and gates. The chapter also includes presentation of the walls and gates during Nabopolassar followed by a detailed discussion of the walls and gates during Nebuchadnezzar. The Ištar gate and the area around it with the different levels and the upper level glazed decoration have been treated separately. Detailed interpretations about the palaces, development of the main traditional South Palace and the new constructed North are discussed in part 3. Reasonable suggestions for the Hanging Gardens in the North Palace have be provided.          The temples are discussed in part 4 detailing the Marduk temple and the zikkurrat. The historical development of the four temples reconstructed on the site in Babylon on their old foundations, i.e. Nabû, Ištar, Ašratum, and Ninmaḫ temples, is discussed with indication which levels have been used for the reconstructions. The historical development of the other excavated temples, i.e. the Ninurta and Išḫara temples, are discussed in a similar way. Attention will be paid to the remains of wall decorations in the temples.  


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Houseman

Istanbul and Bucharest are major European cities that face a continuing threat of large earthquakes. The geological contexts for these two case studies enable us to understand the nature of the threat and to predict more precisely the consequences of future earthquakes, although we remain unable to predict the time of those events with any precision better than multi-decadal. These two cities face contrasting threats: Istanbul is located on a major geological boundary, the North Anatolian Fault, which separates a westward moving Anatolia from the stable European landmass. Bucharest is located within the stable European continent, but large-scale mass movements in the upper mantle beneath the lithosphere cause relatively frequent large earthquakes that represent a serious threat to the city and surrounding regions.


1953 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 42-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Goodchild ◽  
J. B. Ward Perkins

During the North African campaigns of 1941–3 numerous air-photographs of the Tripolitanian coast were taken by the R.A.F. for operational purposes, and the site of Lepcis Magna was included in the area covered. Examination of these photographs (pl. XV) showed many suggestive features relating to the defences of the ancient city, and a preliminary ground survey was later (1947–50) undertaken to establish, with a minimum of excavation, the course of the successive wall-circuits.The results of this investigation are described below, and are discussed in relation to the historical and epigraphic evidence. It is not claimed that these results are exhaustive, or that they will not need modification in the light of future discoveries. Since, however, there is little likelihood of any early resumption of large-scale excavations at Lepcis, this preliminary study may help to illustrate the growth and subsequent decline of the city that came to be the most important centre between Carthage and Alexandria.


Antiquity ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 90 (354) ◽  
pp. 1692-1699
Author(s):  
Martin Millett

Our extensive knowledge of Roman London is the result of over four decades of large-scale excavation. In the UK, the establishment and growth of professional archaeology since the 1970s, coupled with the funding provided by property developers since 1990 (Fulford & Holbrook 2015), has transformed our understanding of both urban and rural sites—and nowhere more so than London. A combination of intensive building development in the City of London and the world-leading technical quality of many of the excavations means that Londinium is now probably both the most extensively and best-excavated major town of the Roman world. Knowledge generated by these excavations, however, has not always been made available through publications as it should have been. Although there is an important archive in which the records of past projects are curated, how and where to publish results has been a long-running problem, especially for the excavations of the 1970s and 1980s where post-excavation work was often not properly funded or supported. One major project to publish a synthesis of work on such sites in Southwark, south of the Thames, did result in a series of important volumes (Sidell et al. 2002; Cowan 2003; Hammer 2003; Yule 2005; Cowan et al. 2009), but a programme designed to provide systematic coverage of such projects in the City of London, to the north of the river (Maloney 1990; Perring & Roskams 1991; Williams 1993; Davis et al. 1994), failed to produce one of the five volumes promised—that concerning the archaeology of the key eastern hill. We also lack any up-to-date synthesis, a problem only partly compensated for by Dominic Perring's (1991) popular overview and Wallace's (2014) in-depth analysis of the evidence for the period down to the Boudiccan revolt in AD 60/61.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
И.В. Киселев

Цель публикации – всестороннее изучение хода борьбы за Краснодар между Красной Армией и вермахтом в начале 1943 г., в результате которой 12 февраля административный центр Кубани был освобожден от немецкой оккупации. Изучены различные аспекты сражения, развернувшегося за город во время наступления советских войск на территории Краснодарского края в начале 1943 г. Использованы данные, приведенные в работах советских историков. Основными источниками для исследования стали советские и немецкие оперативные документы и воспоминания участников битвы за Кавказ. Проанализированы планирование и подготовка операции на краснодарском направлении, дана характеристика советским и немецко-румынским силам, выделены основные этапы боев за Краснодар. Раскрыты трудности, с которыми столкнулись советские войска в ходе первой крупномасштабной наступательной операции на Северном Кавказе. Определены мотивы, которыми руководствовалось советское и германское военное командование в ходе борьбы за Краснодар. The offensive operation of the Red Army in the North Caucasus in 1943 was one of the turning points of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. During this battle, on February 12, Krasnodar, the administrative center of the Kuban and an important transport hub in southern Russia, was liberated from German occupation. According to the tradition established in historiography, the struggle for this city is associated with the events of the first half of February 1943, when the fighting took place within the city and on the outskirts of Krasnodar. The aim of the publication was a comprehensive study of the course of the struggle for Krasnodar between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht in early 1943. The article used the data presented in the works of A.S. Zavyalov, A.S. Kalyadin, A.A. Grechko, V. Tike, S.V. Janusz, R. Forzik. The main sources for the study were Soviet and German operational documents of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation and the National Archives and Documentation Administration of the United States. Along with them, the memories of the participants in the hostilities near Krasnodar were used. In the course of the study, the author relied on historical-comparative and historical-genetic methods. The planning and preparation of the operation in the Krasnodar direction are analyzed, the Soviet and German-Romanian forces are characterized, the main stages of the battles for Krasnodar are identified, the operations of the Red Army combat units in the course of the struggle for the city are studied and systematically described. Particular emphasis is placed on studying the difficulties that the Soviet troops encountered during the first large-scale offensive operation in the North Caucasus. Considerable attention is paid to determining the motives that guided the Soviet and German military commanders during the struggle for Krasnodar. The Red Army failed to implement the full-scale offensive plans near Krasnodar. Victories near Stalingrad and the Middle Don allowed counting on the defeat of the troops of Germany and its allies in the North Caucasus. But the Soviet troops did not have enough strength and time to implement this plan. The command of the German Seventeenth Army managed to escape encirclement and divert its forces to the line prepared for defense—the Kuban bridgehead. Nevertheless, the winter campaign of 1943 ended with a retreat, which means the defeat of the Wehrmacht in the Caucasus and the entire south of Russia, the beginning of a turning point in the struggle on the Soviet-German front.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gemma Bridge

BackgroundElectric micromobility vehicles such as e-bikes ande-scooters are increasing in popularity. E-bikes, in particular, represent a significantopportunity for promoting more active forms of travel, as they enable a widerrange of people to access individual mobility, whilst also having many of thehealth benefits associated with non-power assisted cycling. Beyond the fitnessbenefits, e-micromobilities offer community level benefits including reduced roadcongestion and reduced noise and air pollution. As a city, Leeds has committed to achieving net zero by 2030. In order to achieve that ambition, there is aneed for rapid, large-scale action, with increased active travel and e-micromobility use key to that shift. Despite their benefits, many questions relating to the use and growth of e-micromobilites remain unanswered. For instance, what infrastructurewould be needed? Should regulations be developed and applied? Will drivers require insurance, licencing or road tax? What impact will e-micromobilities have on transport inequalities? How will an increase in use of e-micromobilityvehicles impact existing travel behaviours? Exploring these questions at alocal and national level will be key to planning for the potential impacts,both positive and negative, that new powered modes of travel will have onstreets.MethodTo explore the questions posed above, a roundtablediscussion will be hosted in Leeds. Leeds is a city in the north of Englandthat has committed to achieving net zero by 2030. The roundtable will include adiverse sample of people from across the city, including policy makers, travelplanners, town planners, members of the public, and academics working in activetravel and micromobility research. To develop the questions asked, a literature reviewwill be conducted. The questions will be shared with key stakeholders tocomment on and finalise. The final list of questions will be shared with registeredparticipants ahead of the roundtable. During the roundtable, there will be timeprovided for open ended discussions about the key issues highlighted. All participants will be invited via email, with aninformation sheet provided to them. All participants will be asked to provideconsent before taking part and will be able to withdraw at any point up untildata analysis. Depending on the availability of participants 1 to 3 roundtableswill be hosted, each lasting up to 60 minutes. The roundtable will befacilitated to ensure all questions are explored and that everyone has a voice.The facilitator will act objectively. The discussion will be recorded andtranscripts produced. The transcripts will be thematically analysed to identifykey themes discussed.Possible outcomesA report will be produced from the roundtablediscussions. The report will be shared with key stakeholders across the cityand wider region. Based on the discussions, recommendations for the city willbe developed. The report and recommendations could be used to facilitatefurther discussion and inform future research.


Antiquity ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 50 (200) ◽  
pp. 216-222
Author(s):  
Beatrice De Cardi

Ras a1 Khaimah is the most northerly of the seven states comprising the United Arab Emirates and its Ruler, H. H. Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammad al-Qasimi, is keenly interested in the history of the state and its people. Survey carried out there jointly with Dr D. B. Doe in 1968 had focused attention on the site of JuIfar which lies just north of the present town of Ras a1 Khaimah (de Cardi, 1971, 230-2). Julfar was in existence in Abbasid times and its importance as an entrep6t during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-the Portuguese Period-is reflected by the quantity and variety of imported wares to be found among the ruins of the city. Most of the sites discovered during the survey dated from that period but a group of cairns near Ghalilah and some long gabled graves in the Shimal area to the north-east of the date-groves behind Ras a1 Khaimah (map, FIG. I) clearly represented a more distant past.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Andrew Jackson

One scenario put forward by researchers, political commentators and journalists for the collapse of North Korea has been a People’s Power (or popular) rebellion. This paper analyses why no popular rebellion has occurred in the DPRK under Kim Jong Un. It challenges the assumption that popular rebellion would happen because of widespread anger caused by a greater awareness of superior economic conditions outside the DPRK. Using Jack Goldstone’s theoretical expla-nations for the outbreak of popular rebellion, and comparisons with the 1989 Romanian and 2010–11 Tunisian transitions, this paper argues that marketi-zation has led to a loosening of state ideological control and to an influx of infor-mation about conditions in the outside world. However, unlike the Tunisian transitions—in which a new information context shaped by social media, the Al-Jazeera network and an experience of protest helped create a sense of pan-Arab solidarity amongst Tunisians resisting their government—there has been no similar ideology unifying North Koreans against their regime. There is evidence of discontent in market unrest in the DPRK, although protests between 2011 and the present have mostly been in defense of the right of people to support themselves through private trade. North Koreans believe this right has been guaranteed, or at least tacitly condoned, by the Kim Jong Un government. There has not been any large-scale explosion of popular anger because the state has not attempted to crush market activities outright under Kim Jong Un. There are other reasons why no popular rebellion has occurred in the North. Unlike Tunisia, the DPRK lacks a dissident political elite capable of leading an opposition movement, and unlike Romania, the DPRK authorities have shown some flexibility in their anti-dissent strategies, taking a more tolerant approach to protests against economic issues. Reduced levels of violence during periods of unrest and an effective system of information control may have helped restrict the expansion of unrest beyond rural areas.


Author(s):  
Sergey B. Kuklev ◽  
Vladimir A. Silkin ◽  
Valeriy K. Chasovnikov ◽  
Andrey G. Zatsepin ◽  
Larisa A. Pautova ◽  
...  

On June 7, 2018, a sub-mesoscale anticyclonic eddy induced by the wind (north-east) was registered on the shelf in the area of the city of Gelendzhik. With the help of field multidisciplinary expedition ship surveys, it was shown that this eddy exists in the layer above the seasonal thermocline. At the periphery of the eddy weak variability of hydrochemical parameters and quantitative indicators of phytoplankton were recorded. The result of the formation of such eddy structure was a shift in the structure of phytoplankton – the annual observed coccolithophores bloom was not registered.


The key aspects of the process of designing and developing an information and cartographic control tool with business analytics functions for the municipal level of urban management are considered. The review of functionality of the developed tool is given. Examples of its use for the analysis and monitoring of implementation of the program of complex development of territories are given. The importance of application of information support of management and coordination at all levels of management as an integral part of the basic model of management and coordination system of large-scale urban projects of dispersed construction is proved. Information and map-made tool with business intelligence functions was used and was highly appreciated in the preparation of information-analytical and presentation materials of the North-Eastern Administrative District of Moscow. Its use made it possible to significantly optimize the list of activities of the program of integrated development of territories, their priority and timing.


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