This article explores a unique series of caricatures made between 1884 and 1896 by Yusuf Franko Kusa, a high-ranking Ottoman bureaucrat and a vener- ated member of n-de-siècle Pera’s high society. Yusuf Franko’s hitherto unstudied caricatures were comparable to contemporary European caricatures in style, but their subject matter was very loca…[Read more]

This article explores a unique series of caricatures made between 1884 and 1896 by Yusuf Franko Kusa, a high-ranking Ottoman bureaucrat and a vener- ated member of n-de-siècle Pera’s high society. Yusuf Franko’s hitherto unstudied caricatures were comparable to contemporary European caricatures in style, but their subject matter was very loca…[Read more]

This article uses both textual and archaeological evidence to examine the role of unbuilt land in the Babylonian city. Detailed study of such land is vital not only for understanding urban living conditions but also for any attempt to estimate urban population based on density of occupation of residential areas. By classifying and investigating…[Read more]

Section 295-C of Pakistan’s penal code prohibits insulting the Prophet and carries a mandatory death penalty. This law was passed based on a claim of ijma‘ (consensus among Islamic scholars) that such an offense is subject to a hadd (divinely fixed) punishment. Nearly half of those charged under this statute crimes of hadd are Christians, who mak…[Read more]

The present edition was originally prepared for a paper given at the international conference “Bridging the Worlds of Judaism and Islam” held at Bar-Ilan University on January 3-4, 2006 (“ʿAlī ibn Ṭaybughā’s commentary on Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, Sefer ha-Maddaʿ, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah I-IV: a philosophical ‘encyclopaedia’ of the 14th century…[Read more]

Among the great diversity of source material and multiple historio- and biographical works covering the history of the early Qāsimī state , Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn b. al-Qāsim’s (d. after 1100/1687) Bahǧat al-zaman fī tārīḫ al-Yaman occupies a position of paramount importance. For the political, economic, social, cultural and intellectual hi…[Read more]

Part of a larger roundtable series on Arab American histories for the Journal of American Ethnic History.

The proliferation of TV fiction can be partly explained by TV producers attuning their products to draw audience’s attention. Narratives of love dominate the plots and almost always the good is pitted against the evil, rich against the poor – ultimately the good always wins. The formula may be clichéd, but in places where news of war, te…[Read more]

The literary relation between Parvin E’tesami and Walt Whitman remains a largely unexplored field. This article analyzes the connection between “God’s Weaver” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider” to shed light on Parvin’s creative reception of Whitman. Creating a mixed-breed spider, combining characteristics from both
Whitman’s insect and the Persi…[Read more]

This article examines the panegyric across the literary traditions of West, South, and East Asia, concentrating on Arabo-Persian qaṣīda, the Sanskrit praśasti, and the Chinese fu. In radically different albeit analogous ways, each genre elaborated a political aesthetics of literary form. The West, South, and East Asian genres each cultivated a met…[Read more]

Building on the multivalent meanings of the Arabo- Persian tarjama (‘to interpret’, ‘to translate’, ‘to narrate’), this essay argues for the relevance of Qur’ānic inimitability (i’jāz) to contemporary translation theory. I examine how the translation of Arabic rhetorical theory (‘ilm al-balāgha) into Persian inaugurated new trends within the study…[Read more]

While the cosmopolitan turn in political and literary theory encourages us to move beyond national frameworks, the Caucasus remains mired in ethno-national categories from the Soviet past. This essay examines how these categories are being mobilized in the service of a nominally cosmopolitan agenda in the contemporary memorialization of the writer…[Read more]

While the cosmopolitan turn in political and literary theory encourages us to move beyond national frameworks, the Caucasus remains mired in ethno-national categories from the Soviet past. This essay examines how these categories are being mobilized in the service of a nominally cosmopolitan agenda in the contemporary memorialization of the writer…[Read more]

This essay examines how translation theory can globalize contemporary literary comparison. Whereas Persian studies has historically been isolated from the latest developments within literary theory, world literature has similarly been isolated from the latest developments within the study of non-European literatures. The methodology of hard…[Read more]

This paper assesses nine prominent readings of the imperial context/content of Verdi’s ‘Aida’ and offers a new perspective more adequate to basic tensions in the work. Readings have ranged from the literal (imperial Europe here stages an archaeological “ancient Egypt”) to the metaphorical (“Egypt” here is any repressive government). Or–somew…[Read more]

Commentators often express disappointment that the music for the main characters in _Aida_ is not more distinctive, i.e., does not make much use of the exotic styles that mark the work’s ceremonial scenes and ballets. It has also been argued that exotic style-elements here are mostly confined to female, hence powerless, characters. Such…[Read more]

The purpose of this study was to examine hockey’s identity, how the game constructs identity, and how the increasing participation of females in hockey in Canada and Turkey is altering identity. Through qualitative research and personal experience it is revealed that in order for hockey and Turkey to modernize, a new male identity needs to e…[Read more]

Discusses 1) Kalām and the Syro-Arabic transmission of Galen’s medico-philosophical writings, in particular On the Usefulness of the Bodily Parts, and Nemesius of Emesa’s On the Nature of Man; 2) the reception of Abū Bakr al-Rāzī in 10th and 11th century Muʿtazilī thought; includes an edition and translation of two chapters of Abū Jaʿfar Muḥamma…[Read more]

This study attempts to investigate the salient features of Turkish literary criticism through deconstructing the concepts of language, aesthetics and ideology intersecting the disciplines of sociology and history. It questions the nationality of the self-evident category of “Turkish literature” exploring in what ways the Turkish Literary Criticism…[Read more]