This paper provides updated digital images of four Qurʾān fragments from Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum (OIM) that appeared in Nabia Abbott’s Rise of the North Arabic Script, and calls attention to features of their paleography and vocalization which are not apparent from her original black-and-white plates. In doing so, it demonstrates tha…[Read more]

This conference, co-organized by the Istanbul Research Institute
and Pera Museum, through local and international collaborations, seeks to offer new
insights on the complex layers of Istanbul’s urban landscape. It brings together innovative
studies in the fields of environmental history, political ecology, and critical art studies t…[Read more]

In his 1875 description of the language, Theodor Nöldeke describes Mandaic as among the purest of the Aramaic languages and the furthest from Western Aramaic, particularly with respect to its lexicon. As Mandæans identify their faith with that of John the Baptist and his community of followers, this observation is not without relevance for a…[Read more]

The Arabic-script Qurʾān fragments of the Cairo genizah collections have not yet drawn much interest among Arabic and genizah scholars. This paper aims to bring them to the attention of a broader audience by presenting the palaeographic features (§3) and vocalisation systems (§4) of eleven Arabic-script Qurʾān fragments from the Cambridge Unive…[Read more]

This article presents new data on links between the various medieval vocalisation traditions of Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic. These include the identification of overlaps in the Aramaic terminology used by Jewish Masoretes and Syriac Christian grammarians and in the phonological theories that underlie them, as well as connections between Syriac and…[Read more]

From the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the caliphal status and the legitimacy of the Ottoman sultans were constantly and increasingly challenged. One of the most effective and powerful tools that they utilized in order to strengthen their diminishing image in the eyes of their subjects was the re-appropriation of sacred places, either by…[Read more]

“Foreword.” YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies 2 (2020): 3

The factors behind the rise of Islamism in Turkey remain the subject of intense scholarly debate. There are remarkable relationships between the rise of Islamism and preceding changes in population dynamics in Turkey. Rapid urbanization and large-scale migration of Kurds and other ethnic minorities from the east of the county to major cities in…[Read more]

Unofficial Description: In Arab American studies, it’s long been understood that Syrian immigrants became “legally white” in 1915’s George Dow v United States. This access to whiteness was critical in getting access to US citizenship. However, US laws governing Syrian racial status also bore implications beyond the US context. Starting with Dow…[Read more]

“Lives in Turkish” is an ongoing research project held at Boğaziçi University Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies. We trace the journey of life-writing in Turkish, collect metadata and visuals about biographical publications and biography subjects introduced to the Turkish reader since the early 1800s. Our aim is to propose a c…[Read more]

“Lives in Turkish” is an ongoing research project held at Boğaziçi University Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies. We trace the journey of life-writing in Turkish, collect metadata and visuals about biographical publications and biography subjects introduced to the Turkish reader since the early 1800s. Our aim is to propose a c…[Read more]

Papers focusing on the urban environmental history of fires are invited for a panel to be submitted to
the European Society for Environmental History conference, which will be held at the
University of Bristol in July 2021.

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 the year 1397 in the parish of Tuttington (Norfolk), a woman whose name is lost to history, frantic to rid herself of the evil spirit that possessed her, turned to suicide. She attempted first to hang herself, but her husband discovered her while life remained in her body, cut down the rope, and comforted her. A few weeks later she tried once…[Read more]

An examination of three cases of judicial separation from the late medieval court of York.

Since the publication of Philippe Aries’ Centuries of Childhood in the early 1960’s, historians of the family have been intrigued by the prospect of a history of change in familial sentiment. 1 Aries’ study of attitudes about children from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, based primarily on art and material evidence, demonstrates…[Read more]

This paper asks us to rethink the boundaries between consent and coercion in medieval England. From gentle persuasion to threats and abuse, coercion was a part of the courtship process. Although late medieval society expected parents to play an active, even heavy-handed, role in matchmaking, the English church recognized the possibility that…[Read more]

When Isabelle, widow of Richard Vergeons, commissioned the writing of a bill of complaint to Chancery at the end of the fifteenth century, she was clearly at the end of her tether. Six months before the writing of the petition, the wife of Thomas Hyll, a wire monger of London, approached the petitioner’s husband, begging for ‘‘secour and saufg…[Read more]

According to medieval common law, assault against a pregnant woman causing miscarriage after the fi rst trimester was homicide. Some scholars have argued, however, that in practice English jurors refused to acknowledge assaults of this nature as homicide. The underlying argument is that because abortion by assault is a crime against women, male…[Read more]