Saladin, The Latin Crusaders, and Palestine: David Eldridge's Holy Warriors and the ‘Clash of Civilisations’ Propaganda

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-222
Author(s):  
Nisreen Tawfiq Yousef

This article explores representations of the Third Crusade in David Eldridge's play Holy Warriors: A Fantasia on the Third Crusade and History of Violent Struggle in the Holy Lands (2014). It argues that Eldridge tries in some instances to present the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a legacy of European imperialism in the Middle East and warns against contemporary Western involvement in the region. However, on other occasions, he suggests that Islamic cultures are incompatible with Western values of secular democracy and therefore the two-state solution is more applicable a solution that the one-state settlement. Ultimately, Eldridge shares some of the ideas behind Huntington's theory of the ‘Clash of Civilisations’ and supports Western military action in Muslim-majority countries.

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 67-107
Author(s):  
Ines R. Artola

The aim of the present article is the analysis of Concerto for harpsichord and five instruments by Manuel de Falla – a piece which was dedicated by the composer to Wanda Landowska, an outstanding Polish harpsichord player. The piece was meant to commemorate the friendship these two artists shared as well as their collaboration. Written in the period of 1923-1926, the Concerto was the first composition in the history of 20th century music where harpsichord was the soloist instrument. The first element of the article is the context in which the piece was written. We shall look into the musical influences that shaped its form. On the one hand, it was the music of the past: from Cancionero Felipe Pedrell through mainly Bach’s polyphony to works by Scarlatti which preceded the Classicism (this influence is particularly noticeable in the third movement of the Concerto). On the other hand, it was music from the time of de Falla: first of all – Neo-Classicism and works by Stravinsky. The author refers to historical sources – critics’ reviews, testimonies of de Falla’s contemporaries and, obviously, his own remarks as to the interpretation of the piece. Next, Inés R. Artola analyses the score in the strict sense of the word “analysis”. In this part of the article, she quotes specific fragments of the composition, which reflect both traditional musical means (counterpoint, canon, Scarlatti-style sonata form, influence of old popular music) and the avant-garde ones (polytonality, orchestration, elements of neo-classical harmony).


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Ahmad Kilani ◽  
Mohammad Ali Alawieh ◽  
Mussaui-Ulianishcheva E. V. ◽  
Ulyanishcheva L. V.

After almost twenty-five years since the Oslo accords, the last relatively successful peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis, Trump’s plan is the newest attempt to achieve sustainable long-lasting peace in the Middle East between the two conflicting parties. This paper argues that the P&P plan is designed to a one-state solution. Through a comparison between the Oslo Accords and the P&P plan we can observe the shift from the two state notions to the one state concept with a system of apartheid. The article also attempts to suggest improvements on the plan to be more suitable for both parties under a one state solution, namely, to include a new constitution.


2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-128
Author(s):  
Kamran Asghar Bokhari

Many scholars have attempted to tackle the question of why democracy has seemingly failed to take root in the Islamic milieu, in general, and the pre dominantlyArab Middle East, in particular, while the rest of the world has witnessed the fall of"pax-authoritaria" especially in the wake of the demercratic revolution triggered by the failure of communism. Some view this resistance to the Third Wave, as being rooted in the Islamic cultural dynamics of the region, whereas others will ascribe it to the level of political development (or the lack thereof). An anthology of essays, Challenges to Democracy in the Middle East furnishes the reader with five historical casestudies that seek to explain the arrested socio politico-economic development of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, and the resulting undemercratic political culture that domjnates the overall political landscape of the Middle East. The first composition in this omnibus is "The Crisis of Democracy in Twentieth Century Syria and Lebanon," authored by Bill Harris, senior lecturer of political studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Haris compares and contrasts the political development of Syria and Lebanon during the French mandate period and under the various regimes since then. He examines how the two competing forms of national­ism, i.e., Lebanonism and Arabism, along with sectarianism, are the main factors that have contributed to the consolidation of one-party rule in Syria, and the I 6-year internecine conflict in Lebanon. After a brief overview of the early history of both countries, the author spends a great deal oftime dis­cussing the relatively more recent political developments: Syria from 1970 onwards, and Lebanon from I 975 to the I 990s. Harris expresses deep pes­simism regarding the future of democratic politics in both countries, which in his opinion is largely due to the deep sectarian cleavages in both states. The next treatise is "Re-inventing Nationalism in B􀀥thi Iraq 1968- 1994: SupraTerritorial Identities and What Lies Below," by Amatzia Baram, professor of Middle East History at the University of Haifa. Baram surveys the Ba·th's second stint in power (1968-present) in lraq. Baram's opinion is that a shift has occurred in B􀀥thist ideology from an integrative Pan-Arab program to an Iraqi-centered Arab nationalism. She attributes this to Saddam's romance with the past, on the one hand, which is the reason for the incorporation of themes from both the ancient Mesopotamian civiliza­tion and the medieval Abbasid caliphal era, and, on the other hand, to Islam and tribalism, that inform the pragmatic concerns of the Ba'thist ideological configuration ...


Author(s):  
Mohamed Saleh

This chapter investigates a long-standing puzzle in the economic history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region: why do MENA’s native non-Muslim minorities have better socioeconomic (SES) outcomes than the Muslim majority, both historically and today? Focusing on the case of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the largest non-Muslim minority in absolute number in the region, and employing a wide range of novel archival data sources, the chapter argues that Copts’ superior SES can be explained neither by Islam’s negative impact on Muslims’ SES (where Islam is defined as a set of beliefs or institutions) nor by colonization’s preferential treatment of Copts. Instead, the chapter traces the phenomenon to self-selection on SES during Egypt’s historical conversion from Coptic Christianity to Islam in the aftermath of the Arab Conquest of the then-Coptic Egypt in 641 CE. The argument is that the regressivity-in-income of the poll tax on non-Muslims (initially all Egyptians) that was imposed continuously from 641 to 1856 led to the shrinkage of (non-convert) Copts into a better-off minority. The Coptic-Muslim SES gap then persisted due to group restrictions on access to white-collar and artisanal skills. The chapter opens new areas of research on non-Muslim minorities in the MENA region and beyond.


Author(s):  
Peter Mitchell

Over 50,000 years ago a Neanderthal hunter approached a wild ass on the plains of northeastern Syria. Taking aim from the right as the animal nervously assessed the threat, he launched his stone-tipped spear into its neck, penetrating the third cervical vertebra and paralyzing it immediately. Butchered at the kill site, this bone and most of the rest of the animal were taken back to the hunter’s camp at Umm el Tlel, a short distance away. Closely modelled on archaeological observations of that vertebra and the Levallois stone point still embedded within it, this incident helps define the framework for this chapter. At the start of the period it covers, human interactions with the donkey’s ancestors were purely a matter of hunting wild prey, but by its end the donkey had been transformed into a domesticated animal. Chapter 2 thus looks at how this process came about, where it did so, and what the evolutionary history of the donkey’s forebears had been until that point. Donkeys and the wild asses that are their closest relatives form part of the equid family to which zebras and horses also belong. Collectively, equids, like rhinoceroses and tapirs, fall within the Perissodactyla, the odd-toed division of hoofed mammals or ungulates. Though this might suggest a close connection with the much larger order known as the Artiodactyla, the even-toed antelopes (including deer, cattle, sheep, and goats), their superficial resemblances may actually reflect evolutionary convergence; some genetic studies hint that perissodactyls are more closely related to carnivores. Like tapirs and rhinoceroses, the earliest equids had three toes, not the one that has characterized them for the past 40 million years. That single toe, the third, now bears all their weight in the form of a single, enlarged hoof with the adjacent toes reduced to mere splints. This switch, and the associated elongation of the third (or central) metapodial linking the toe to the wrist or ankle, is one of the key evolutionary transformations through which equids have passed. A second involves diet since the earliest perissodactyls were all browsers, not grazers like the equids of today.


Author(s):  
Sharon Pardo

Israeli-European Union (EU) relations have consisted of a number of conflicting trends that have resulted in the emergence of a highly problematic and volatile relationship: one characterized by a strong and ever-increasing network of economic, cultural, and personal ties, yet marked, at the political level, by disappointment, bitterness, and anger. On the one hand, Israel has displayed a genuine desire to strengthen its ties with the EU and to be included as part of the European integration project. On the other hand, Israelis are deeply suspicious of the Union’s policies and are untrusting of the Union’s intentions toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the Middle East as a whole. As a result, Israel has been determined to minimize the EU’s role in the Middle East peace process (MEPP), and to deny it any direct involvement in the negotiations with the Palestinians. The article summarizes some key developments in Israeli-European Community (EC)/EU relations since 1957: the Israeli (re)turn to Europe in the late 1950s; EC-Israeli economic and trade relations; the 1980 Venice Declaration and the EC/EU involvement in the MEPP; EU-Israeli relations in a regional/Mediterranean context; the question of Israeli settlements’ products entering free of duty to the European Common Market; EU-Israeli relations in the age of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP); the failed attempt to upgrade EU-Israeli relations between the years 2007 and 2014; and the Union’s prohibition on EU funding to Israeli entities beyond the 1967 borders. By discussing the history of this uneasy relationship, the article further offers insights into how the EU is actually judged as a global-normative actor by Israelis.


2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Symes

Soon after he was consecrated bishop in 963, Æthelwold of Winchester (909–84) began to promulgate a series of new rules for worship and religious life in the monasteries of England. In one passage that is well known to theatre historians, Æthelwold insisted on the following performance of the Easter morning liturgy.While the third lesson is being read aloud, four of the brothersshould dress themselves.One of them, wearing an alb,should come in as though intent on other businessand gostealthilyto the place of the sepulchre, and therehe should sit quietly….The three remaining brothers …should make their way slowly and haltingly, coming before the place of the sepulchreas if they are seeking something. For these things are done in imitation of the angel seated on the tomb and of the women coming with perfumes to anoint the body of Jesus.When, therefore, the one sitting there sees the three drawing near, who are still wandering aboutas though seeking something, he should begin to singsweetly, in amoderatevoice: “Whom do you seek?”


Slovene ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-253
Author(s):  
Dmitry Rudnev ◽  
Heng Fu

The article presents a many-sided analysis of a pamphlet by Giovanni Marana translated by Antiochus Kantemir into Russian in 1726. In the first part of the article, we describe various editions of Marana’s pamphlet and establish the one that became the source for Kantemir’s translation. This source is found out to be the publication of the pamphlet in one of the “Élite des bons mots” collections. Next, the correspondence between the text of the translation and the French text is analyzed, the deviations and errors in the Kantemir’s text are revealed and their explanation is given. It is concluded that the surviving manuscript of the translation was made from an earlier one and was not the final version of the text. The manuscript of the translation was published in 1868 as a part of the collected works by Antiochus Kantemir and was subjected to a considerable revision. The second part of the article is devoted to comparing the text of the manuscript and the published text, describing spelling and punctuation corrections, as well as mistakes made during the publication of the manuscript. The contradictions in introduced spelling corrections are noted. In the third part of the article, the technique of translation, ways of transferring lexical and syntactic units to Russian are analyzed. Kantemir uses a large number of borrowed words to describe the everyday life in Paris and France, however, mainly Slavic word-building models are used for translating the behavioral sphere vocabulary. The fourth part of the article describes the stylistic key of translation. While making the language of translation closer to the language of the French original, the translator left Russian as a basis, which he slavicised in two ways: first, with a small number of “background slavonicisms”, evenly distributed throughout the text; secondly, with “slavonicisms-inclusions”, creating points of stylistic tension. It is concluded that the degree of slavicisation of the text is not great.


2019 ◽  
pp. 21-38
Author(s):  
Martin Stokes

A glance at the ethnomusicology of the Muslim-majority Middle East might suggest it is peculiarly exposed to historiographical problems now familiar thanks to decades of orientalism critique. Namely, that music is understood in this part of the world via a peculiarly objectivising colonial ethnography, that it is understood in ways that deny its historical circumstances, and that it is subject to a relentless aestheticisation, which is to say, treated in analogous way to the Islamic art objects and miniatures ripped out of context and put on display in the museums of the western metropolis. The history of ethnomusicology suggests a long line of exceptions to this ‘rule’. The chapter explores the work of Villoteau, Lachmann and more recent work in and around sound archives asking to what extent we might see this work prefiguring recognisably modern and critical dispositions towards ethnography.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (47) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stiegler Bernard

Stiegler argued in Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise (the third volume of Technics and Time) that we must refer to archi-cinema just as Derrida spoke of archi-writing. In this article he proposes that in principle the dream is the primordial form of this archi-cinema. The archi-cinema of consciousness, of which dreams would be the matrix as archi-cinema of the unconscious, is the projection resulting from the play between what Husserl called, on the one hand, primary and secondary retentions, and what Stiegler, on the other hand, calls tertiary retentions, which are the hypomnesic traces (that is, the mnemo-technical traces) of conscious and unconscious life. There is archi-cinema to the extent that for any noetic act – for example, in an act of perception – consciousness projects its object. This projection is a montage, of which tertiary (hypomnesic) retentions form the fabric, as well as constituting both the supports and the cutting room. This indicates that archi-cinema has a history, a history conditioned by the history of tertiary retentions. It also means that there is an organology of dreams.


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