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Originality and Artistic Impulse: From a Medieval Scottish Friar to Malevich’s Black Square
Read more: Originality and Artistic Impulse: From a Medieval Scottish Friar to Malevich’s Black SquareIs there any such thing as a new idea? Bryony Coombs discusses similarities in artistic expression, centuries apart.
How to Get Banned from Teaching the Quran: Medieval Cairo Edition
by Shuaib Ally, McGill University Around the turn of the 15th century in Cairo, a hadith scholar named Salah al-Din al-Aqfahsi heard Salah al-Din al-Kalai, a scholar associated with the Sufi Shadhili order, teaching the Quran. Part of his teaching…
Situating the crusades in Syrian history: a Q&A with James Wilson
Tell us a bit about your book My book is about the situation in Syria before, during and after the first crusaders arrived in the near east. The crusader armies arrived in Syria in 1097 and immediately began interacting with…
Emotion, Mission, Architecture: Building Hospitals in Persia and British India, 1865-1914
by Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi How did patients feel when visiting mission hospitals built by British missionaries in Asia and Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? I am preoccupied with this question in my book, Emotion, Mission, Architecture:…
Q&A with Leandro Losada on ‘Machiavelli in the Spanish-Speaking Atlantic World’
by Leandro Losada Tell us a bit about your book. Machiavelli in the Spanish-Speaking Atlantic World, 1880-1940 pursues two comparative approaches. One is the history of liberal and anti-liberal political thinking. The other is the reception of Machiavelli’s works in…
Writing from the margins: Bosnian Hajjis’ understanding of the world
by Dženita Karić As I was doing research on the Hajj discourses in Bosnia from the 16th to the 21st century, I encountered a range of texts, published and unpublished, in Bosnian, Arabic and Ottoman Turkish languages. Some of the…
Folk Songs as Communication, Resistance, Lament, and Entertainment Among Women in Northeastern Afghanistan
By Wolayat Tabasum Niroo In the northeastern provinces of Afghanistan, talented women sing folk songs to entertain each other in female-only gatherings on happy occasions. The songs are accompanied by a diara or daff, a colorful frame drum made of…
The destruction of ‘un- Islamic’ edifices by ISIS and the Taliban
by Shivan Mahendrarajah The Taliban are back in power, ushering in renewed fears of destruction of cultural heritages. Their first time in office (1996–2001), the Taliban destroyed edifices on the basis that they were ‘un-Islamic’ and/or ‘beacons’ for polytheists (mushrikin).…
Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies Turns 20
By Professor Tayseer Abu Odeh Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies is an international refereed journal presenting a global platform and space for both critical…
C. S. Lewis and His Medieval Mirror
By Erik Eklund C. S. Lewis is best known for his introductory exposition of Christianity, Mere Christianity (1952), as well as his series of children’s books, The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–56), yet, notwithstanding his numerous theological works, his identity as…