Reflections On Knowledge And Language In Middle Eastern Societies

Author : Yonatan Mendel,Bruno De Nicola,Husain Qutbuddin
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2010-08-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781443824736

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Reflections on Knowledge and Language in Middle Eastern Societies by Yonatan Mendel,Bruno De Nicola,Husain Qutbuddin Pdf

This book presents a collection of articles that put forward original research and significant insight regarding several key issues related to knowledge and language in Middle Eastern societies. The aspects studied include: the role of knowledge and language in affirming and negating political agendas and self-identities within areas of conflict and tension; ideas regarding the usefulness and interaction of religious and secular knowledge; and the attributes that render knowledge and language, especially that which is believed to be of divine origin, outstanding and worthy of admiration. The selection of studies has been purposefully diverse to include a variety of languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew and Persian, within multiple traditions, including Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, while focussing on a range of periods, from the classical to the mediaeval to the modern, and examining a range of issues, such as methods of analysing and interpreting Persian, Turkish and Arabic literature, literary and other attributes of the Bible and the Qur’an, diglossic languages, the Turkish modernisation project, Turkish-Kurdish tensions, Andalusian music, Azerbaijani politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By underlining the substantial commonalities that exist between such seemingly different fields of research, the book highlights the idea—increasingly on the wane in departments of Middle Eastern Studies across many universities—that a shared area of study, viz. the Middle East, naturally and inherently entails a shared cultural, historical, and sociological milieu. It suggests that academics who engage in different branches of research related to this area should—rather than focussing singly on their own field—avail substantially and meaningfully of one another’s scholarship, learn from each other’s methodologies, and collectively build upon a body of knowledge that should never be seen as dissociated.

Author : Hülya Çelik,Petr Kučera
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2023-07-07
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781527515260

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Selected Studies on Genre in Middle Eastern Literatures by Hülya Çelik,Petr Kučera Pdf

The examination of literary genres in the Middle East opens the possibility of gaining new insights into the intellectual universe of Middle Eastern societies, the question of production of meaning, what “literature” meant in different historical periods, and the underlying epistemology of producing knowledge, and how this epistemology has changed over time. This book comprises 12 case studies from the three major Middle Eastern languages – Arabic, Persian, and Turkish – written by experts in the field. It brings together a wide range of approaches – from the study of epics to an analysis of travelogues, and from classical poetry to novels. Instead of focusing on one period or juxtaposing the classical genres and the West-induced development of “modern genres,” the studies in their totality apply a broad diachronic and synchronic perspective, with the potential to create a comparative framework for the study of the sociocultural and narratological dimensions of genre in the Middle East.

Author : Dana Hercbergs
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2018-10-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780814341094

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Overlooking the Border by Dana Hercbergs Pdf

Overlooking the Border: Narratives of Divided Jerusalem by Dana Hercbergs continues the dialogue surrounding the social history of Jerusalem. The book’s starting point is the border that separated the city between Jordan and Israel in 1948–1967, a lesser-known but significant period for cultural representations of Jerusalem. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the book juxtaposes Israeli and Palestinian personal narratives about the past with contemporary museum exhibits, street plaques, tourism, and real estate projects that are reshaping the city since the decline of the peace process and the second intifada. What emerges is a portrayal of Jerusalem both as a local place with unique rhythms and topography and as a setting for national imaginaries and agendas with their attendant political and social tensions. As sites of memory, Jerusalem’s homes, streets, and natural areas form the setting for emotionally charged narratives about belonging and rights to place. Recollections of local customs and lifeways in the mid-twentieth century coalesce around residents’ desire for stability amid periods of war, dispossession, and relocation—intertwining the mythical with the mundane. Hercbergs begins by taking the reader to the historically Arab neighborhoods of West Jerusalem, whose streets are a battleground for competing historical narratives about the Israeli-Arab War of 1948. She goes on to explore the connections and tensions between Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians living across the border from one another in Musrara, a neighborhood straddling West and East Jerusalem. The author rounds out the monograph with a semiotic analysis of contemporary tourism and architectural ventures that are entrenching ethno-national separation in the post-Oslo period. These rhetorical expressions illuminate what it means to be a Jerusalemite in the context of the city’s fraught history. Overlooking the Border examines the social and geographic significance of borders for residents’ sense of self, place, and community, and for representations of the city both locally and abroad. It is certain to be of value to scholars and advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Middle Eastern studies, history, urban ethnography, and Israeli and Jewish studies.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 861 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2024-01-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004682504

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Teachers and Students, Reflections on Learning in Near and Middle Eastern Cultures by Anonim Pdf

Teachers and Students: Reflections on Learning in Near and Middle Eastern Cultures. Collected Studies in Honour of Sebastian Günther contains essays on the developments, ideals, and practices of teaching and learning in the Islamicate world, past and present. The authors address topics that reflect – and thus honour – Sebastian Günther’s academic achievements in this particular area. The volume offers fresh insights into key issues related to education and human development, including their shared characteristics as well as their influence on and interdependence with cultures of the Islamicate world, especially in the classical period of Islam (9th-15th century CE). The diverse spectrum of topics covered in the book, as well as the wide range of innovative interdisciplinary approaches and research tools employed, pay tribute to Sebastian Günther’s research focus on Islamic education and ethics, through which he has inspired many of his students, colleagues, and friends.

Author : Nuha Al-Shaar
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2014-12-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781317575849

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Ethics in Islam by Nuha Al-Shaar Pdf

Offering a new reading of Islamic ethical and political thought in the Būyid period (334-440/946-1048), this book focuses particularly on the philosopher Abū Hayyān al-Tawhīdī who lived in Baghdad and what is now western Iran. Ethics in Islam provides the first major treatment of al-Tawhīdī's ethics, political thought, and social idealism, investigating the complex influences that shaped this thought and especially his concept of friendship, which is analysed in the unique context of Būyid society. Al-Tawhīdī revives the value of friendship in politics. He introduces it as the best way to reform social and political order and as a means to the good life, to restrain passion and self-interest, to bring about cooperation and promote reason, and for action in opposition to religious zeal. Instead of seeing him as alienated from society, supposedly rejecting traditional Muslim beliefs, this book places him in his historical and intellectual contexts, and shows that while he was original in many ways, his outlook was firmly rooted in the Islamic culture in which he was educated. Contributing to modern discussions of Islam and political ethics, this book is of interest to scholars and researchers of political philosophy, comparative ethical thought and Islamic studies.

Author : Stephen Alan Baragona,Elizabeth Louise Rambo
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2018-01-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9783110562255

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Words that Tear the Flesh by Stephen Alan Baragona,Elizabeth Louise Rambo Pdf

The rhetorical trope of irony is well-trod territory, with books and essays devoted to its use by a wide range of medieval and Renaissance writers, from the Beowulf-poet and Chaucer to Boccaccio and Shakespeare; however, the use of sarcasm, the "flesh tearing" form of irony, in the same literature has seldom been studied at length or in depth. Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to pick out in a written text, since it relies so much on tone of voice and context. This is the first book-length study of medieval and Renaissance sarcasm. Its fourteen essays treat instances in a range of genres, both sacred and secular, and of cultures from Anglo-Saxon to Arabic, where the combination of circumstance and word choice makes it absolutely clear that the speaker, whether a character or a narrator, is being sarcastic. Essays address, among other things, the clues writers give that sarcasm is at work, how it conforms to or deviates from contemporary rhetorical theories, what role it plays in building character or theme, and how sarcasm conforms to the Christian milieu of medieval Europe, and beyond to medieval Arabic literature. The collection thus illuminates a half-hidden but surprisingly common early literary technique for modern readers.

Author : Gowaart Van Den Bossche
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2023-09-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783110753134

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Literary Spectacles of Sultanship by Gowaart Van Den Bossche Pdf

The so-called Mamluk sultans who ruled Egypt and Syria between the late thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries AD have often been portrayed as lacking in legitimacy due to their background as slave soldiers. Sultanic biographies written by chancery officials in the early period of the sultanate have been read as part of an effort of these sultans to legitimise their position on the throne. This book reconsiders the main corpus of six such biographies written by the historians Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir (d. 1293) and his nephew Shāfiʿ ibn ʿAlī (d. 1330) and argues that these were in fact far more complex texts. An understanding of their discourses of legitimisation needs to be embedded within a broader understanding of the multi-directional discourses operating across the texts. The study proposes to interpret these texts as "spectacles", in which authors emplotted the reign of a sultan in thoroughly literary and rhetorical fashion, making especially extensive use of textual forms prevalent in the chancery. In doing so the authors reimagined the format of the biography as a performative vehicle for displaying their literary credentials and helping them negotiate positions in the chancery and the wider courtly orbit.

Author : Margaret Cameron,Robert J. Stainton
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2015-03-19
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191046339

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Linguistic Content by Margaret Cameron,Robert J. Stainton Pdf

Philosophy of language has a rich and varied history stretching back to the Ancient Greeks. Twelve specially written essays explore this richness, from Plato and Aristotle, through the Stoics, to medieval thinkers, both Islamic and Christian; from the Renaissance and the early modern period, all the way up to the twentieth Century. Among the many topics that arise across this 2500-year trajectory are metaphysical questions about linguistic content. A first focal point of the volume is the issue of which broad ontological family linguistic contents belong to. Are linguistic contents mental ideas, physical particulars, abstract Forms, social practices, or something else again? And do different sorts of linguistic contents belong to different ontological categories-e.g., might it be that names stand for ideas, whereas logical terms stand for mental processes? The second focal point is the metaphysical grounding of linguistic content: that is, in virtue of what more basic facts do content facts obtain? Do words mean what they do because of natural resemblances? Because of causal relations? Because of arbitrary conventional usage? Or because of some combination of the above?

Author : Alireza Korangy,Wheeler M. Thackston,Roy P. Mottahedeh,William Granara
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 476 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2016-05-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9783110313789

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Essays in Islamic Philology, History, and Philosophy by Alireza Korangy,Wheeler M. Thackston,Roy P. Mottahedeh,William Granara Pdf

The articles in this volume are dedicated to Professor Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani for the breadth and depth of his interests and his influence on those interests. They attest to the fact that his fervor and rigorously surgical attention to detail have found fertile ground in a wide variety of disciplines, including (among others) Persian literature and philology; Islamic history and historiography; Arabic literature and philology; and Islamic philosophy and jurisprudence. The volume has brought together some of the most respected scholars in the fields of Islamic studies and Islamic literatures, all his prior students, to contribute with articles that touch on the fields Professor Mahdavi Damghani has so permanently touched with his astonishing scholarship and attention to detail.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2023-11-02
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780850142433

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Higher Education - Reflections From the Field - Volume 4 by Anonim Pdf

COVID wrought havoc on the world’s economic systems. Higher education did not escape the ravages brought on by the pandemic as institutions of higher education around the world faced major upheavals in their educational delivery systems. Some institutions were prepared for the required transition to online learning. Most were not. Whether prepared or not, educators rose to the challenge. The innovativeness of educators met the challenges as digital learning replaced the face-to-face environment. In fact, some of the distance models proved so engaging that many students no longer desire a return to the face-to-face model. As with all transitions, some things were lost while others were gained. This book examines practice in the field as institutions struggled to face the worst global pandemic in the last century. The book is organized into four sections on 'Embracing Quality Assurance”, 'Educational Standards and Quality Assurance”, 'Evaluating Educational Access” and 'Why Assessment?”. It presents various perspectives from educators around the world to illustrate the struggles and triumphs of those facing new challenges and implementing new ideas to empower the educational process. These discussions shed light on the impact of the pandemic and the future of higher education post-COVID. Higher education has been forever changed, and higher education as it once was may never return. While many questions arise, the achievements in meeting and overcoming the pandemic illustrate the creativity and innovativeness of educators around the world who inspired future generations of learners to reach new heights of accomplishment even in the face of the pandemic.

Author : Harvard University. Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Publisher : Harvard CMES
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Education
ISBN : 0976272709

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Reflections on the Past, Visions for the Future by Harvard University. Center for Middle Eastern Studies Pdf

"Area studies"--and especially Middle Eastern studies--have been in a state of crisis since the spread of globalization. This volume focuses on one of the field's leading institutions, Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), which was founded 50 years ago to further research and teaching about a region that remains enigmatic to the U.S.

Author : Noam Chomsky
Publisher : Pantheon
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 1974
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015001985608

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Peace in the Middle East? by Noam Chomsky Pdf

Author : Jean Makdisi,Noha Bayoumi,Rafif Rida Sidawi
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2014-01-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781786724595

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Arab Feminisms: Gender and Equality in the Middle East by Jean Makdisi,Noha Bayoumi,Rafif Rida Sidawi Pdf

Is there a truly Arab feminist movement? Is there such a thing as 'Islamic' feminism? What does it meant to be a 'feminist' in the Arab World today? Does it mean grappling with the main theoretical elements of the movement? Or does it mean involvement at the grassroots level with everyday activism? This book examines the issues and controversies that are hotly debated and contested when it comes to the concept of feminism and gender in Arab society today. It offers explorations of the theoretical issues at play, the latest developments of feminist discourse, literary studies and sociology, as well as empirical data concerning the situation of women in Arab countries, such as Iraq and Palestine. It is certainly not surprising that when looking at the situation on the ground in many countries of the Arab World- particularly Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as Sudan- issues of war, civil conflict, military occupation and imperialism often override those of gender. The place of feminism in this context is extremely problemati, as nationalist, sectarian, religious and class interests- not to mention the interests of occupation authorities and the resistance movements that oppose them- supersede feminism as a public concern, even among many women. Arab feminists are thus either co-opted by these interests or find themselves in the frustrating position of negotiating their way through a minefield of contradictory imperatives and loyalties. Arab Feminisms examines these contexts and sheds light upon the difficult position in which feminists often find themselves. It looks at different social and political situations, such as the development of Palestinian feminist discourse in a post-Oslo world, the impact of the civil war in Lebanon on women, and Kuwaiti women's struggles for equality. This book therefore offers valuable theoretical analysis as well as indispensable first-hand accounts of feminism in the Arab World for those researching gender relations in the Middle East and beyond.

Author : Mohammad Salama
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2018-11-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108417181

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Islam and the Culture of Modern Egypt by Mohammad Salama Pdf

Examines the influence of Islam, as a religion, a practice, and a tradition, on Egypt's visual and literary modernity.

Author : UNESCO Office Cairo and Regional Bureau for Science in the Arab States
Publisher : UNESCO Publishing
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2022-10-13
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9789231005459

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Building knowledge societies in the Arab region by UNESCO Office Cairo and Regional Bureau for Science in the Arab States Pdf