scholarly journals History and Development of the National Library of Syria

Author(s):  
Ammar Saad Aldin

In the context of the decreasing intensity of the armed conflict, but still ongoing crisis in the Syrian Arab Republic (Syria), preservation of the historical and cultural monuments, including manuscript ones, is important for the country and its future. Al-Assad National Library of Syria has a leading role in the preservation of the documentary heritage of the country. The history of the emergence and development of the National Library of Syria has a number of political, cultural and social features. At present, Russian universities are updating the Arabic country studies. The author notes that the number of publications on the history and development of librarianship in Syria in the Russian professional press is insufficient, thus confirming the relevance of the present study. The fact that the National Library has survived despite the war is of great value to the Syrian people, the Arab world and the UNESCO World Heritage. The article considers the emergence, formation and development of the Al-Assad National Library of Syria. The author shows the revival of the first National library in the territory of Syria (Az-Zahiriya Library) during the Ottoman occupation and describes the historical and political situation that accompanied its appearance. The article highlights the main sources of the formation of Az-Zahiriya Library collections in the late nineteenth century. The author provides analytical information on the growth dynamics of its collections and considers the significant role of Az-Zahiriya National Library during the French mandate in Syria and after gaining independence. In the 1970s, strengthening processes of progressive socio-economic and cultural transformations led to the emergence of Al-Assad National Library, which became the new National library of Syria. The article analyses the main stages of creation of Al-Assad National Library and presents its main characteristics and challenges at present.

Author(s):  
Sarah Collins

This chapter examines the continuities between the categories of the “national” and the “universal” in the nineteenth century. It construes these categories as interrelated efforts to create a “world” on various scales. The chapter explores the perceived role of music as a world-making medium within these discourses. It argues that the increased exposure to cultural difference and the interpretation of that cultural difference as distant in time and space shaped a conception of “humanity” in terms of a universal history of world cultures. The chapter reexamines those early nineteenth-century thinkers whose work became inextricably linked with the rise of exclusivist notions of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and John Stuart Mill. It draws from their respective treatment of music to recover their early commitment to universalizable principles and their view that the “world” is something that must be actively created rather than empirically observed.


Author(s):  
Karen R. Roybal

This chapter discusses the ways in which the U.S. government created an alternative archive when it recorded Mexicanas/os' voices in the "official" record during land grant adjudication proceedings in the mid- to late nineteenth century. The testimonio of landowner María Cleofas Bóne de López serves as a prime focus in the chapter to emphasize the ways in which marriage to Mexican women was one way that both Anglo and Mexican men gained access to and amassed material property. Through this and other key cases, the chapter emphasizes that males' land ownership was often predicated on relationships to and with Mexican women and the ways Mexican men were effeminized within the U.S. legal system. The depositions serve as testimonials to the integral role of gender in the history of property ownership and dispossession.


Author(s):  
James Hopkins

Abstract This paper addresses a gap in our understanding of medical history - the architecture of medical schools - and demonstrates the ways in which architectural form can be used to better understand medical epistemology and pedagogy. It examines an instructive case study - the late-nineteenth-century medical school buildings in Manchester - and examines the concepts that were drawn together and expressed in the buildings. Through its exploration, the paper argues first, that medical schools and spaces for medical education should be given greater consideration as a significant category in the history of medical buildings. Second, that buildings such as its case study are an important source of evidence and means to understand the role of medicine in society and the ideas with which its contemporary practitioners and educators were concerned. Third, the paper argues that, to make best use of buildings as sources, we should view them as agents which have assembled divergent ideas and incorporated them into the built form. In this way, such buildings have woven into them an inventory of ideas which can be untangled using designs and physical evidence.


The pragmatist approach to philosophical problems focuses on the role of disputed notions—for example, truth, value, causation, probability, necessity—in our practices. The insight at the heart of pragmatism is that our analysis of such philosophical concepts must start with, and remain linked to, human experience and inquiry. As a self-conscious philosophical stance, pragmatism arose in America in the late nineteenth century, in the work of writers such as Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey. While popular wisdom would have it that British philosophy thoroughly rejected that of its American cousins, that popular view is coming into dispute. Many distinguished British philosophers have also taken this practical turn, even if few have explicitly identified themselves as pragmatists. This book traces and assesses the influence of American pragmatism on British philosophy, with particular emphasis on Cambridge in the inter-war period (for instance, the work of Frank Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein), on post-war Oxford (for instance, the work of Elizabeth Anscombe, P. F. Strawson and Michael Dummett), and on recent developments (for instance, the work of Simon Blackburn and Huw Price). There is a comprehensive introduction to the topic and the history of pragmatism, and Price and Blackburn, in their contributions, add their most recent thoughts to the debates.


Author(s):  
Henry A. McGhie

This book explores the life of Henry Dresser (1838–1915), one of the most productive British ornithologists of the mid-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it is also an exploration of ornithology during a period when the subject changed dramatically. The book is based on previously unpublished letters, diaries and photographs to provide the first detailed biography of any of the independent industrialist–naturalists who dominated nineteenth century British ornithology. Dresser travelled widely in Europe, New Brunswick and to Texas during the American Civil War before settling down to work in London in the timber and iron trades. He built enormous collections of skins and eggs of birds, many of which came from famous travellers and collectors. These collections formed the basis of over 100 publications on birds including some of the finest and some of the last of the great bird books of the late nineteenth century, combining cutting-edge scientific information with masterpieces of bird illustration. Dresser played a leading role in scientific society and in the early bird conservation movement. His correspondence and diaries reveal the inner workings, motivations, personal relationships and rivalries that existed among the leading ornithologists. This book is aimed at anyone interested in birds, history and natural history, and as a textbook for courses relating to history, history of science and museum studies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kijan Espahangizi

ArgumentGlass vessels such as flasks and test tubes play an ambiguous role in the historiography of modern laboratory research. In spite of the strong focus on the role of materiality in the last decades, the scientific glass vessel – while being symbolically omnipresent – has remained curiously neglected in regard to its materiality. The popular image or topos of the transparent, neutral, and quasi-immaterial glass container obstructs the view of the physico-chemical functionality of this constitutive inner boundary in modern laboratory environments and its material historicity. In order to understand how glass vessels were able to provide a stable epistemic containment of spatially enclosed experimental phenomena in the new laboratory ecologies emerging in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, I will focus on the history of the material standardization of laboratory glassware. I will follow the rise of a new awareness for measurement errors due to the chemical agency of experimental glass vessels, then I will sketch the emergence of a whole techno-scientific infrastructure for the improvement of glass container quality in late nineteenth-century Germany. In the last part of my argument, I will return to the laboratory by looking at the implementation of this glass reform that created a new oikos for the inner experimental milieus of modern laboratory research.


2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-409
Author(s):  
MILES LARMER

ABSTRACTZambia's unsuccessful coup attempt in 1980 was initiated by members of the country's intellectual and business elite, who had played a leading role in the postcolonial civil service and state bureaucracy, but who became disillusioned with the takeover of the state by the ruling party before and after the declaration of the one-party state in 1972. Among their number was Valentine Musakanya, one of those convicted for the coup attempt. Using Musakanya's biographical and other writings, this article explores his intellectual trajectory from head of the civil service to political prisoner. In so doing, it investigates the role of life writing in aiding understanding of the postcolonial political history of Africa.


2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 60-66
Author(s):  
Sh. Demissenova ◽  

The article considers the issues related to the role, features of social and pedagogical consulting in the field of ethnic relations and the requirements for the consultant himself. The history of counseling on the problems of interethnic relations, ethical and emic approaches to counseling are briefly described. The features of the consultation process in consulting on the problems of ethnic relations. The interrelation of positive ethnic identity and tolerance, ethnocultural competence of a person is revealed. The leading role of positive ethnic identity of the client's personality in overcoming ethnic problems has been determined. The role of the consultant is revealed. The requirements for a consultant, for his training and experience are analyzed. The factors that determine the effectiveness of consulting are considered. The actual problems of consulting on the problems of ethnic relations are analyzed. Practical recommendations for consultants based on a theoretical overview, are listed. The experience of social and pedagogical consultations initiated and organized by the Council of Mothers to the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan Kostanay’s region has been summarized. The most typical requests for consulting are analyzed. The problems and prospects of implementation such a practice are described.


2020 ◽  
pp. 90-109
Author(s):  
Nikita Istomin

This article analyzes the model of participation of many interested parties in governance of the Internet, as well as its definition on the international level and within the doctrine. The goal consists in determining the importance and the role of participation of multiple interested parties in the context of Internet governance, and its correlation to the transnational approach in international law. The model of participation of multiple interested parties is predominantly examined as participation in Internet governance of the actors of international law and private entities. The subject of this research is the provisions of summary documents, summits on the highest level regarding the questions of information community, resolution of the UN General Assembly and other branches of the UN system, provisions of acts of other transnational organizations that are dedicated to development of state policy in the area of Internet governance, as well as doctrinal sources covering history of the question. The scientific novelty lies in determination of correlation of the participation of interested parties in Internet governance. It is noted that in the practice of Internet governance there are two clear approaches for implementation of this model: ran by states and international organizations, or one that is ran by private entities. The international legal acts reflect the former approach towards implementation of this model. In accordance with this approach, the work on Internet governance in consultation of state with private entities, allowing private entities as observers, or creation of public-private partnerships aimed at solution of global issues. The leading role of the private sector is advanced by the United States and several other Western nations as an alternative to translational multilateral approach, which contradicts the international legal acts, since the role ICANN as a leader is delegated to private entities, rather than states.


Aschkenas ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-374
Author(s):  
Louise Hecht

Abstract The paper addresses an under-researched chapter in the history of the Jewish Reform movement which is at the same time a commonly overlooked period in the biography of Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), one of the founding members of Wissenschaft des Judentums. By placing his eight-month appointment as a preacher to the Reform synagogue in Prague in its socio-political and biographical contexts, the article sheds new light at Zunz’s commitment for the religious renewal of Judaism. A schematic comparison between the development of the Reform movement in the German lands and the Habsburg Monarchy, at the beginning of the nineteenth century highlights the role of state involvement into internal Jewish affairs. Finally, the analysis of Zunz’s Synagogenordnung from 1836, according to the original manuscript from the National Library of Israel, allows a re-evaluation of the (Reform) synagogue as an institution for social disciplining of its members.


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