scholarly journals THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF UTENDI WA MWANA KUPONA: A SWAHILI/ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE

Author(s):  
Rayya Timammy ◽  
Amir Swaleh

This paper has the objective to make a thematic analysis of a classic poem Utendi wa Mwana Kupona using a Swahili/Islamic approach. The poem is believed to have been written by Mwana Kupona binti Mshamu in 1858. The poem is intended to be a motherly advice to her daughter about her religious and marital duties in a Swahili society.As a background to this paper, it was found out that Swahili culture has been greatly influenced by Islam. Ever since Arab, Persian, Indian and other merchants from Asia and the Middle East visited the East African coast to trade or settle, the Waswahili people embraced Islam. The Islamic religion influenced Swahili culture greatly. One of the more direct influences was the adoption of the Arabic script which the Swahili used to write their poetry and used it for other communication.The Arabic language had a lot of impact on the Kiswahili language, enriching it with new vocabulary, and especially religious and literary terminology. This is why a majority of the Waswahili are Muslims; hence Islam is an attribute accompanying the definition of ‘Mswahili’. A modest estimate would put words borrowed from the Arabic language into the Kiswahili language at between twenty to thirty percent.The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a rapid development of written Kiswahili literature, especially in verse form. The majority or almost all of the poets of the time were very religious or very knowledgeable about Islam. This is the reason most poems of the time were pervaded by Islamic religious themes or other themes but definitely using an Islamic perspective. Utendi wa Mwana Kupona is one such verse. It is a mother’s advice to her daughter about her duties and obligations towards God, and specifically, towards a husband.

1967 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Baer

In nineteenth-century Egypt Circassian females were mostly kept in the harems of wealthy Turks, the concubines of ‘middle class’ Egyptians generally were Abyssinians, while male and female Negro slaves were used for domestic service by almost all layers of Egyptian society. In addition to domestic service, black slaves were used as soldiers by Egypt's rulers and, contrary to the prevalent assumption, as agricultural workers on the farms of the Muḥammad Alī family and elsewhere in Upper Egypt and during periods of prosperity and shortage of labour also in Lower Egypt. Apparently there were at least 30,000 slaves in Egypt at different times of the nineteenth century, and probably many more.White slaves were brought to Egypt from the eastern coast of the Black Sea and from the Circassian settlements of Anatolia via Istanbul. Brown and black slaves were brought (a) from Darfur to Asyūṭ, directly or through Kordofan; (b) from Sennar to Isnā; (c) from the area of the White Nile; (d) from Bornu and Wadāy via Libya and the Western Desert; (e) from Abyssinia and the East African coast through the Red Sea. The slave dealers in Egypt were mainly people from Upper Egypt and the Oases, beduin and villagers of the Buḥayra province. They were divided into dealers in black and in white slaves and organized in a guild with a shaykh. Cairo was the great depot of slaves and the centre of the trade, but a very important occasion for trading in slaves was the annualmawlidof Ṭanṭā.Official measures taken against the slave-trade were among the important causes for the final disappearance of slavery in Egypt. These were, amongst others, the appointment of foreigners, mainly British, as governors of the Sudan and commanders of special missions to suppress the trade; two Anglo-Egyptian conventions, of 1877 and of 1895, for the suppression of slavery; and, from 1877 on, the establishment of offices and later a special service for the fight against the trade and for the manumission of slaves. However, were it not for the internal development of Egyptian society, these measures could never have succeeded; this is illustrated by the tremendous obstacles they encountered and their ineffectiveness for a long time. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century most of these impediments vanished. In addition to the Mahdist revolution and the reconquest of the Sudan, the most important change was the emergence of a free labour market as a result of accelerated urbanization and the collapse of the guild system. At the same time a small but important section of Egyptians had changed their attitudes towards slavery as a result of their cultural contact with Europe.


Author(s):  
Stephanie Wynne-Jones

Tanzania's central caravan route, joining Lake Tanganyika to the East African coast, was an important artery of trade, with traffic peaking in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and associated particularly with ivory, but also with the export of slaves. The central caravan route has recently been chosen as a focus for the memorialisation of the slave trade in eastern Africa, as part of a project headed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in collaboration with the Antiquities Division of Tanzania, and in response to a wider UNESCO-sponsored agenda. Yet the attempt to memorialise slavery along this route brings substantial challenges, both of a practical nature and in the ways that we think about material remains. This chapter explores some of these challenges in the context of existing heritage infrastructure, archaeologies of slavery, and the development of the region for tourism. It highlights the need for a more nuanced archaeology of this route's slave heritage.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Khatijah Othman ◽  
Muhamadul Bakir Yaakub ◽  
Ahmad F. Yousif

The philosophy of knowledge is known as an established discipline both from Islamic perspective and Western viewpoint. Generally, it can be understood as a source of economy, power and prosperity. With the knowledge as a source of provider, the economic development, political power, business transaction and networking; rapid development in telecommunication and technology, with various other developments in human engineering and education plus, etc.‟s; human civilization flourishes.  Focusing on the philosophy of knowledge and comparing its traditional sense with modern practice might lead us to discover some ways in which knowledge should be realized, managed and applied. Obviously, the issue and criteria that determine what constitutes knowledge is indeed crucial. Therefore, this paper highlights general concept of knowledge management from Islamic perspective and its significant contribution to human development. 


Author(s):  
Anna Mahtani

Abstract The ex ante Pareto principle has an intuitive pull, and it has been a principle of central importance since Harsanyi’s defence of utilitarianism (to be found in e.g. Harsanyi, Rational behaviour and bargaining equilibrium in games and social situations. CUP, Cambridge, 1977). The principle has been used to criticize and refine a range of positions in welfare economics, including egalitarianism and prioritarianism. But this principle faces a serious problem. I have argued elsewhere (Mahtani, J Philos 114(6):303-323 2017) that the concept of ex ante Pareto superiority is not well defined, because its application in a choice situation concerning a fixed population can depend on how the members of that population are designated. I show in this paper that in almost all cases of policy choice, there will be numerous sets of rival designators for the same fixed population. I explore two ways that we might complete the definition of ex ante Pareto superiority. I call these the ‘supervaluationist’ reading and the ‘subvaluationist’ reading. I reject the subvaluationist reading as uncharitable, and argue that the supervaluationist reading is the most promising interpretation of the ex ante Pareto principle. I end by exploring some of the implications of this principle for prioritarianism and egalitarianism.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Gao ◽  
Wenfen Liu

With the rapid development and application of medical sensor networks, the security has become a big challenge to be resolved. Trust mechanism as a method of “soft security” has been proposed to guarantee the network security. Trust models to compute the trustworthiness of single node and each path are constructed, respectively, in this paper. For the trust relationship between nodes, trust value in every interval is quantified based on Bayesian inference. A node estimates the parameters of prior distribution by using the collected recommendation information and obtains the posterior distribution combined with direct interactions. Further, the weights of trust values are allocated through using the ordered weighted vector twice and overall trust degree is represented. With the associated properties of Tsallis entropy, the definition of path Tsallis entropy is put forward, which can comprehensively measure the uncertainty of each path. Then a method to calculate the credibility of each path is derived. The simulation results show that the proposed models can correctly reflect the dynamic of node behavior, quickly identify the malicious attacks, and effectively avoid such path containing low-trust nodes so as to enhance the robustness.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (09) ◽  
pp. 65-84
Author(s):  
Aditi Gupta ◽  
◽  
Anshika Sharma ◽  
Prof. Patiraj Kumari ◽  
◽  
...  

The current situation of COVID 19 not only involves global health crisis but also economic and social crises. It has brought about a change in the system of education by conducting all academic activities online. Acc. to ILO, a world of universal distance education (as nearly 94% of learners have faced school closures) is created. Online education is a new concept for most Indians, creates room for incivility. Incivility is defined as a lack of manners, courteousness, and respect which deteriorates the decorum leading to disturbance in teaching and learning of the class. This study is focused on incivility in online teaching and learning. A total of 130 college students from around the country were asked to fill an open-ended online questionnaire to know their views on incivility in the online classroom. The overall thematic analysis resulted in the identification of three themes i.e. reported incidents, possible causes, and measures to reduce incivility in the online classrooms. In the time of pandemic where almost all the dissemination of education is done online to minimize the effect of the pandemic on the education system, incivility is a stumbling block. Therefore, it is important to bring incivility in online education in limelight as tackling incivility is the need of the hour.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 101-106
Author(s):  
М. Falaleev ◽  
◽  
N. Sitdikova ◽  
Е. Nechay ◽  
◽  
...  

The development of digital technologies, coupled with progress in the development of self-learning programs based on AI (Artificial Intelligence), has obvious advantages in improving the effectiveness of information impact on people around the world. During the 2010s, researchers have documented trends in the use of artificial intelligence for the construction and distribution of media content to indirectly manipulate political discourse at the national and global levels. Special interest in the context of this issue is how the rapid development of AI technologies affects political communication. The object of consideration within the framework of this article is the deepfake technology. Based on this, as a subject, the authors define deepfake as a phenomenon of modern political communication. Accordingly, the purpose of the study is to describe and predict the impact of deepfake technology on political communication at the global and national levels. The paper presents the definition of deepfake, assesses its characteristics depending on the methods and purposes of its distribution, and analyzes the prospects for using this tool to influence political discourse in modern Russia. To study the subject field of the research, methods of systematizing theoretical data, classification, analysis of a set of factors and forecasting have been applied. The practical significance of the work is presented by the authors’ definition and typology of the phenomenon of deepfake and describes its significance as a factor of political communication on the example of a particular country. The results of the work will be useful for researchers studying the problems of digitalization of the media space and modern means of disinformation in politics, both at the local and global levels


Zootaxa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4991 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-433
Author(s):  
TOMASZ W. PYRCZ ◽  
KLAUDIA FLORCZYK ◽  
STEVE COLLINS ◽  
SZABOLCS SÁFIÁN ◽  
OSCAR MAHECHA-J. ◽  
...  

The tribe Junoniini is a predominantly Paleotropical group of the cosmopolitan butterfly subfamily Nymphalinae (Nymphalidae), with highest diversity in the Afrotropical region. Its systematics and relationships are not entirely resolved. Question marks remain concerning the validity of some genera; and the apparently close relationship between the Indo-Australian genus Yoma and the Afrotropical Protogoniomorpha, as evidenced by molecular phylogenies, remains a puzzle. Here, we present a cladistic analysis, based on 42 characters of the male and female genitalia of 41 species of Junoniini belonging to six genera, nearly all of them continental Afrotropical, and 3 species of two Indo-Australian genera Yoma and Rhinopalpa. A ML COI-based tree is produced for 36 species of Afrotropical Junoniini and Yoma. The molecular data are consistent with previous studies. However, morphological analysis does not confirm a close relationship between Protogoniomorpha and Yoma. Despite the evolution of a number of modifications, the male genitalia within all genera and species of the Junoniini share a cohesive build plan, in particular a transformed sacculus, from which Yoma is highly divergent. The position of the genus Kamilla, previously synonymized with Junonia, is discussed. Three East African coast taxa, Junonia elgiva stat. reinst., Protogoniomorpha nebulosa stat. reinst. and Salamis amaniensis stat. reinst., and one from central Africa, Precis silvicola stat. reinst. are raised to species level, based on comparative analysis of their male genitalia.  


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