scholarly journals Reading Nineteenth-Century Persian Histories from the Caucasus

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Karamustafa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Important Impact

This essay examines six Persian-language historical works that were produced in the Caucasus during the nineteenth century. These works have conventionally gone unnoticed due to the language of composition and the predominant approach to the region as a Russian imperial province. Interestingly, these texts bear the mark of the Afsharid period, and demonstrate a marked interest in the figure of Nader Shah. They demonstrate that the Safavid collapse and the subsequent developments of the eighteenth century had an important impact on conceptions of political legitimacy in the Caucasus. They also suggest that the birth of new local Persianate historiographical traditions in the region should not only be viewed through the lens of Russian imperial modernity and instead be better situated in their local and historical context.

The Five Adored in Early-Nineteenth-Century Sikh Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-116
Author(s):  
Louis E. Fenech
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gradual Rise ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Power And Authority

This chapter begins with a summary of the early- to mid-eighteenth-century historical context, which was marked by a decline in the power and authority of the Mughal court and the gradual rise of Sikh power in the Punjab. It then moves on to examine the formation of the Panj Piare construct in the context of the rise of various armed ascetic movements in the late eighteenth century, many of which competed for resources with the various Khalsa Sikhs of the period. It ends by examining the origin story of the Five Beloved in early-nineteenth-century Sikh texts such as Gur-panth Prakāś, Siṅgh Sāgar, and the Sūraj Prakāś.

1771 et au-delà : comment la France est passée de la persanerie au persanisme?

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 316-328
Author(s):  
Helia Tavakoli
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Holy Book

This article summarizes the birth and evolution of Persian studies in France. The year 1771 marks the beginning of Persian studies in Europe. In that year the major translation of the holy book Avesta by Anquetil-Duperron appeared in French, while A Grammar of the Persian Language by William Jones was published in England. Focusing on the knowledge of and allusions to Persian culture and literature in France from 1771 on, the study offers to answer these questions: How did the publication of these two major works contribute to the genesis of Persian studies in France? What changes emerged after the appearance of these two books in France? Was the nineteenth century also influenced by the work of these two scholars, or was their effects limited to the eighteenth century?

Gurney and Sons

2019 ◽  
pp. 6-20
Author(s):  
Hugo Bowles
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Design Structure ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
David Copperfield

Dickens learned shorthand in 1828 from a manual called Brachygraphy, written by Thomas Gurney, which he memorably describes in David Copperfield as a ‘savage stenographic mystery’. This chapter contextualizes the mystery by placing Gurney shorthand in its historical context, as one of many competing alphabetical shorthand systems in the Victorian period. Section 1.1 of the chapter traces the chronological development of sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth-century stenographies and contrasts the alphabetical design, structure, and contents of Brachygraphy with the phonographic system of Isaac Pitman, which came to dominate the nineteenth-century market. Section 1.2 sets out the principles of economy in speech and writing which constrained stenographers in the design of their systems. Section 1.3 examines the surviving shorthand texts that Dickens produced. It also introduces Dickens’s ‘Manchester notebook’, showing how his shorthand teaching notes sought to iron out defects in the Gurney system and provide creative alternatives.

Eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Hathaway
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
East African ◽  
Young Turks

Abstract This article surveys the employment of eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire. After placing the use of court eunuchs in a global historical context, the study turns to the earliest eunuchs in Ottoman employ, who were probably Byzantine prisoners of war. By the early fifteenth century, East African harem eunuchs had become an important element of the palace eunuch population, and the article discusses their procurement and castration. The construction of Topkap Palace in newly-conquered Constantinople during the 1450s laid the ground for the dichotomy between African harem eunuchs and white Third Court eunuchs. An equally important watershed occurred in the late sixteenth century, when the Chief Harem Eunuch assumed the supervision of the imperial pious endowments for Mecca and Medina, making him one of the most powerful figures in the empire. By the late seventeenth century, deposed Chief Harem Eunuchs often commanded the eunuchs who guarded the Prophet Muhammads tomb in Medina. The influence of all palace eunuchs decreased during the eighteenth century, as the grand vizier acquired ever more control over the empires administration. Nineteenth-century reforms dealt a permanent blow to the harem eunuchs authority, which ended entirely when the Young Turks disbanded the harem in 1909.Аннотация Статья рассматривает вопрос о привлечении на службу евнухов в Османскои империи. После общего обзора роли придворных евнухов в глобальном историческом контексте, исследование обращается к первым евнухам на османскои службе, которые вероятно были византиискими военнопленными. К началу XV в. восточно-африканские евнухи гарема стали важнои фракциеи среди дворцовых евнухов в статье рассматривается методика их отбора и кастрации. Строительство дворца Топкапы в недавно завоеванном Константинополе в 50-х гг. XV в. положило начало дихотомии между африканскими евнухами Гарема и белыми евнухами Третьего Двора. Не менее важным рубежом становится и конец XVI в., когда старшии евнух Гарема принял на себя обязанности по управлению имперскими благотворительными пожертвованиями в Мекку и Медину, что сделало этого сановника одной из самых могущественных фигур империи. К концу XVII в. низложенные главные евнухи Гарема часто принимали командование над евнухами, охранявшими гробницу Пророка Мухаммеда в Медине. Влияние дворцовых евнухов оказывается ослабленным в XVIII столетии, по мере того как великии визирь получал все большую власть над управлением империи. Реформы XIX столетия нанесли решающии удар по власти евнухов Гарема, которая полностью сошла на нет при расформировании его младотурками в 1909 г.

Japan and the Contested Center of Eighteenth-Century East Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 27-58
Author(s):  
Nobuko Toyosawa
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Publishing Industry ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Scenic Beauty ◽  
Historical Figure

Eighteenth-century Japan is known for the rise of the publishing industry and the spread of sociability through popular media. Reading against this broader historical context, this paper analyzes texts from different literary genres—namely, a guidebook series called The Illustrated Scenic Beauty of Japan (Fusō meishōzu, 1713–28) and The Battles of Coxinga (Kokusen’ya kassen, 1715), followed by its sequel, The Battles of Coxinga in Later Days (Kokusen’ya gonichi kassen). The paper explores what representative qualities and characteristics were considered Japanese in these texts, especially in contrast to the dominant other at that time, China. For example, drawing from a real historical figure, Zheng Chenggong (1624–1662), otherwise known as Coxinga, the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1725) produced a tale about the revival of Ming dynastic rule in collaboration with Tokugawa Japan. Given that certain virtues and values held a particular importance in these texts, they can be read analogously with a rise in ambivalence toward the moral and political authority of the shogunate. The changing visions of ideal leadership suggest that the reading public was partaking in the debate about political legitimacy, albeit in the space of popular culture, adding a renewed significance of popular participation to the production of communal identity during the era known as the “Great Peace under heaven” (tenka taihei).

Pre-Linnaean pictures of the secretarybird, Sagittarius serpentarius (J. F. )

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAGNAR K. KINZELBACH
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Rain Forests ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
The Family ◽  
Other Information ◽  
Sub Saharan

The secretarybird, the only species of the family Sagittariidae (Falconiformes), inhabits all of sub-Saharan Africa except the rain forests. Secretarybird, its vernacular name in many languages, may be derived from the Arabic “saqr at-tair”, “falcon of the hunt”, which found its way into French during the crusades. From the same period are two drawings of a “bistarda deserti” in a codex by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250). The original sketch obviously, together with other information on birds, came from the court of Sultan al-Kâmil (1180–1238) in Cairo. Careful examination led to an interpretation as Sagittarius serpentarius. Two archaeological sources and one nineteenth century observation strengthened the idea of a former occurrence of the secretarybird in the Egyptian Nile valley. André Thevet (1502–1590), a French cleric and reliable research traveller, described and depicted in 1558 a strange bird, named “Pa” in Persian language, from what he called Madagascar. The woodcut is identified as Sagittarius serpentarius. The text reveals East Africa as the real home of this bird, associated there among others with elephants. From there raises a connection to the tales of the fabulous roc, which feeds its offspring with elephants, ending up in the vernacular name of the extinct Madagascar ostrich as elephantbird.

Historical Fragments’ Mobile Echo

Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Third ◽  
Opium War ◽  
The Subject

Translocation – Transformation is an ambitious contribution to the subject of mobility. Materially, it interlinks seemingly disparate objects into a surprisingly unified exhibition on mobile histories and heritages: twelve bronze zodiac heads, silk and bamboo creatures, worn life vests, pressed Pu-erh tea, thousands of broken antique teapot spouts, and an ancestral wooden temple from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) used by a tea-trading family. Historically and politically, the exhibition engages Chinese stories from the third century BCE, empires in eighteenth-century Austria and China, the Second Opium War in the nineteenth century, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, and today’s global refugee crisis.

Living Same-Name Siblings and British Historical Demography

2011 ◽  
pp. 15-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Galley ◽  
Eilidh Garrett ◽  
Ros Davies ◽  
Alice Reid
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Demography ◽  
Vital Registration ◽  
Regional Variations ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Registration Data ◽  
Vital Registration Data ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Isle Of Skye

This article examines the extent to which living siblings were given identical first names. Whilst the practice of sibling name-sharing appeared to have died out in England during the eighteenth century, in northern Scotland it persisted at least until the end of the nineteenth century. Previously it has not been possible to provide quantitative evidence of this phenomenon, but an analysis of the rich census and vital registration data for the Isle of Skye reveals that this practice was widespread, with over a third of eligible families recording same-name siblings. Our results suggest that further research should focus on regional variations in sibling name-sharing and the extent to which this northern pattern occurred in other parts of Britain.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowan Strong
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Christian Society

The Introduction looks at the historical context of British and Irish Christianity in the 1840s when the Anglican emigrant chaplaincy began. It also looks at conclusions of historians examining British and Irish emigration in the nineteenth century. Scholars have known for many years that the Victorian period in Britain was one of massive religiosity. Yet, when historians describe emigrants from this highly Christian society arriving in British colonies, the settlers are often described as generally religiously indifferent, unchurched, and even hostile to religion. On this basis it becomes difficult to understand how so many churches were built by British colonists in Australia and other settler colonies; how colonial denominations became established so quickly and effectively; and how sectarianism began, let alone flourished. Finally, this Introduction provides a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the groups of sources that have been used in this study.

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