This working paper presents a 16th- or 17th-century Ottoman translation-cum-commentary of the preface and introduction of one of the classics of Islamicate rhetoric, al-Qazwīnī’s Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ (The Key’s Digest), a 14th-century work on rhetoric based on al-Sakkākī’s 13th-century seminal Miftāḥ al-ʿUlūm (The Key of Sciences). This part…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is well known as a repository for hundreds of thousands of manuscripts that the Jewish residents of Fustat (Old Cairo) produced and consumed in the premodern period. Foreign “collectors” acquired most of these manuscripts for European libraries in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the majority arriving at the Cam…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is well known as a repository for hundreds of thousands of manuscripts that the Jewish residents of Fustat (Old Cairo) produced and consumed in the premodern period. Foreign “collectors” acquired most of these manuscripts for European libraries in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the majority arriving at the Cam…[Read more]

This article investigates the prosecution of key members of two distinct wings of the Turkish intelligentsia at the dawn of the Cold War. As Turkey emerged from World War II having maintained a delicate neutrality for nearly the entire conflict, the patterns of repression in the public sphere shifted markedly to accommodate both fears of Soviet…[Read more]

The translation of a short treatise on paranomasia, simile, and metonymy, by the foremost Persian-Turkish lexicographer of the 15th century, Lütfu’llāh el–Ḥalīmī. The text combines a rather dense and elliptic prose style with a remarkably lucid and clear-cut typology of seven types of tajnīs, seven types of tashbīh, and nine types of majāz, ofte…[Read more]

The translation of a short treatise on paranomasia, simile, and metonymy, by the foremost Persian-Turkish lexicographer of the 15th century, Lütfu’llāh el–Ḥalīmī. The text combines a rather dense and elliptic prose style with a remarkably lucid and clear-cut typology of seven types of tajnīs, seven types of tashbīh, and nine types of majāz, ofte…[Read more]

This paper examines the influence of urban fashion ideas disseminated worldwide from France and how they impacted the Romanian ideas of style and beauty, as well as the nature of the communication between Paris and the so-colled ”Little Paris”. My aim is to decode the interwar Romanian interpretation of the new woman notion and assess what typ…[Read more]

The essay discusses Maya Rao’s Walk and The Mothertongue Project’s Walk: South Africa to explore the languages of transnational and embodied feminist politics that these performances conjure. The two performances are instances of artistic responses to sexualized violence in India and South Africa as they engage with the politics of walking in the…[Read more]

I discuss the walking practice of Delhi-based artist Mallika Taneja in the context of its engagement with, and intervention in, the contemporary conversations on sexualised violence, gender, space and mobility in India. Taneja’s work is part of a variety of feminist activism to take place in India since the horrific gang rape of Jyoti Singh in D…[Read more]

Through the case of Emerson’s appropriation of Persian poetry this volume provides a thought-provoking example of how the literary founding father of a nation is cosmopolitan and receptive of foreign cultures in what might seem a purely “nationalistic” agenda. It will appeal to those in the field of Persian literature, comparative liter…[Read more]

In celebration of the tenth anniversary of the second centennial of Ākhūndzade’s birth, three Azerbaijani texts in translation by the Molière of Azerbaijan. The texts—one poem, one letter, and one prose text—reflect Ākhūndzāde’s sharp, sometimes vitriolic, take on Rūmī ’s teaching (a dangerous, incomprehensible word jumble), most poetry and po…[Read more]

In celebration of the tenth anniversary of the second centennial of Ākhūndzade’s birth, three Azerbaijani texts in translation by the Molière of Azerbaijan. The texts—one poem, one letter, and one prose text—reflect Ākhūndzāde’s sharp, sometimes vitriolic, take on Rūmī ’s teaching (a dangerous, incomprehensible word jumble), most poetry and po…[Read more]

First translated into Persian in 1949, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is among the most popular works of American fiction in Iran. Although the anti-US policy of the post-1979 political system has tried to erase the manifestations of the previous period’s American influence, Iranian interest in Huckleberry Finn has been inc…[Read more]

The “Spanish influenza” pandemic that struck Egypt in fall 1918 resulted in the death of eleven out of every one thousand people. Despite the mass suffering caused by the pandemic, it has been largely ignored by historians. I describe how the Egyptian public health service was unprepared for a major health crisis because resources were red…[Read more]

Are you tripping over your own feet, incapable of advancing even a single metre, when it comes to understanding the technicalities of the feet and metres of pre-modern Islamicate poetry? Then you should probably not consult Nevāʾī’s Meter of Meters, since you are better off with the works of a Wheeler Thackston or a Finn Thiesen… If, howe…[Read more]

Are you tripping over your own feet, incapable of advancing even a single metre, when it comes to understanding the technicalities of the feet and metres of pre-modern Islamicate poetry? Then you should probably not consult Nevāʾī’s Meter of Meters, since you are better off with the works of a Wheeler Thackston or a Finn Thiesen… If, howe…[Read more]

Henrietta Liston, wife of a British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century, recorded her travels in a private journal, now held in the National Library of Scotland. Together with academics from Bilkent University in Ankara, the Library is currently working to publish the journal for the first time. Dora Petherbridge,…[Read more]

This article examines the unpublished memoirs of Sevim Sertel O’Brien, a journalist and daughter of prominent journalists and intellectuals Sabiha and Zekeriya Sertel. The memoirs, written in English and told as bedtime stories to O’Brien’s Turkish-American children in the 1950s and 1960s, provide a unique lens on the early history of the Turkish…[Read more]

This article examines the unpublished memoirs of Sevim Sertel O’Brien, a journalist and daughter of prominent journalists and intellectuals Sabiha and Zekeriya Sertel. The memoirs, written in English and told as bedtime stories to O’Brien’s Turkish-American children in the 1950s and 1960s, provide a unique lens on the early history of the Turkish…[Read more]

With the introduction of the horse-drawn tramway in 1871, the citizens of Istanbul were forced to reckon with a new type of public space—the crowded confines of the tramcar. This article focuses on the removal of a curtain that separated men and women on public transit in 1923, analyzing the discourses that shaped the decision and the way in w…[Read more]