Among the numerous Jewish uṣūl al-dīn compositions in the Second Firkovitch Collection at the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg there is one that I have labelled “A Hamaḏānian Patchwork”. You might just as well call it “A Persian Carpet”. It is another magnificent specimen of “diachronic intertextualities”.
The treatise, which is…[Read more]

In West Africa, Berber groups such as the Tuareg use inscribed silver jewelry – rings, pendants and plaques – as talismans. A ring with a curved or flat frontal area may be inscribed with a linear cipher or, if large, carry a “magic square” design. A survey of 132 Tuareg/Berber items revealed that the symbol repertoire appears to be drawn from ov…[Read more]

In Islamic mysticism and theurgy, the Seven Seals represent in graphic form the Greatest Name of God; in Jewish Kabbalah, the Seals bear individual Divine Names which collectively form a “Great Name.” We review and compare the primary interpretations and secondary associations for each Seal in Islam and Judaism, from which it is clear that the two…[Read more]

This is an Urdu translation of the work “Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law and Non-Muslims”

The hermit-poet of modern Persian literature, Bijan Elahi (1945-2010) was a modernist poet, a prolific translator of Eliot, Rimbaud, Michaux, Hölderlin, and the founder of Other Poetry, the leading avant-garde movement within Persian modernism. Elahi passed the last three decades of his life in seclusion in his house in Tehran. He stopped…[Read more]

Over the course of the last year the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) and the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park (Roshan Institute-UMD) have begun collaborating with the Raja of Mahmudabad family on the preservation of their important manuscript collection. The project will help protect the…[Read more]

This work provides a close linguistic and thematic analysis of the dialogues in the two novels Midaq Alley by N. Mahfouz and Rosa Mistika by E. Kezilahabi, as they reflect fundamental assumptions about gender, tradition, and modernity. Certain complex clauses that have been traditionally recognized in Logic and Philosophy to be used in argument…[Read more]

This paper presents an applied methodology for the graphic documentation, analysis and criteria determination for the protection and conservation of built heritage. One of the main risks when restoring medieval rammed earth architecture is the lacking of an optimal graphic base of its structures. This paper’s main objective is the holistic k…[Read more]

Computer-aided comparison between large textual corpora, first and foremost in the areas of falsafa, ʿilm kalām, and uṣūl al-fiqh, Muslim & Jewish & Christian.

Nimā Yushij (1897-1960), the first major modern Persian poet, developed a poetic form later called New Poetry, Free Poetry or Nimāic Poetry to remove the restrictions of traditional rhyme and meter. Although he was not the only or even the first trying to modernize Persian poetry, he was the one on whom was bestowed the title “the father of mod…[Read more]

This article engages with cosmopolitan conceptions of culture that flourished in the nineteenth century Caucasus with a view to clarifying the relevance of these legacies today. I focus in particular on the polymath writer ʿAbbās Qulī Āghā Bākīkhānūf (1794–1847). As I explore Bākīkhānūf’s historical writing, I consider how the Persianate liter…[Read more]

بخشی از مطالعات ادبی بینارشته‌ای شامل بررسی ارتباط میان ادبیات و تصویر می‌شود. در این زمینه ارتباط میان ادبیات و سینما شناخته‌شده‌ترین حوزۀ پژوهشی است که تعداد چشمگیری اثر پژوهشی، اعم از رساله و مقاله، در این حوزه نگاشته شده‌ است. در همین زمینه می‌توان به ارتباط میان ادبیات و نقاشی اشاره کرد که در سال‌های اخیر شاهد تعداد انگشت‌شماری اثر تحقیق…[Read more]

Book Review Literary Translation in Modern Iran: A Sociological Study by Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014, ISBN 978 90 272 5854 0 (hbk), 236 pp

Dini çoğulculuk, dini dışlayıcılık ve kapsayıcılıktan farklı olarak, her dinsel inanış taraftarlarının kendi dinleri içinde kalarak ilahi selamete erişeceğini söyler. Temelde, teolojik ve felsefi boyutları olan dini çoğulculuk tartışmasının siyasete bakan bir yönü de vardır. İslam tarihinde Meşşâî felsefenin kurucusu ve mutluluk filozofu ola…[Read more]

Este artículo tiene como objetivo realizar el análisis de la secuencia constructiva de la torre-puerta de la alcazaba medieval de Guadix (Granada). Para ello, se efectuó un levantamiento tridimensional de la estructura mediante fotogrametría, una lectura estratigráfica de paramentos en profundidad y una caracterización de técnicas constr…[Read more]

Based on ethnographic research that is part of a larger project on the role of music and sound among migrant Moroccan men in Italy, this article focuses
on ‘L-ḥərraga’, a song that narrates the voyage and the experience of undocumented migration that ends with the tragic death of a young
Moroccan man crossing the Mediterranean. Through ‘L-ḥər…[Read more]

‘L-ʿalwa’, a sung poem whose text recounts the pilgrimage to a saint’s shrine in Morocco, is celebrated for its ability to convey images and emotions stirred up by the sacred journey. As part of the repertory of ʿaita—a genre of sung poetry from the Moroccan plains and plateaus traditionally performed by professional female singer-danc…[Read more]

Walt Whitman, a world poet and the father of American free verse, has been received by diverse audiences from around the world. Literary and cultural scholars have studied Whitman’s interaction with social, political and literary movements of different countries. Despite his continuing presence in Iran, Whitman’s reception in this country has rem…[Read more]

Undotted consonantal skeleton of the Quranic text produced for a students’ exercise. The display is constrained by the limitations of the font and by no means meant to reproduce scribal practices of early Qurʾān manuscripts! Full document available on request (gs50[at]soas.ac.uk).

While the trope of the Islamic pilgrimage (ḥajj) is well known, the impact of the imagery and concept of travel on poetic production from the Islamic world, particularly in Persian, has not merited the same scrutiny. This chapter introduces one of the most important and yet least-studied Persian travel narratives to an interdisciplinary r…[Read more]