Browse results
Abstract
Basātin al-ons (The Gardens of Fondness, 1325–26) is the sole surviving work of an erudite courtier named Akhsetān Dehlavi (1301–51), who spent most of his adult life in the service of the sultan Gheyās al-Din Toghloq (r. 1320–24) and his son Mohammad b. Toghloq Shāh (r. 1324–51). This work exemplifies one of the earliest efforts by an Indian writer to interweave history, autobiography, eulogy, and folklore in the Persian genre of stylized prose (nasr). Against this backdrop, my essay examines the preface of the Basātin al-ons to elucidate the factors that motivated Akhsetān Dehlavi to narrate a collection of Hindavi tales in Persian prose.
Abstract
In 1796, Claude Martin (1735–1800), a wealthy French officer of the East India Company living in Lucknow, commissioned the Brahman Delārām to translate into Persian two classical texts from the Digambara Jain philosophical tradition. Using the Braj Bhāṣā commentaries composed by the seventeenth-century Jain author Hemrāj Pāṇḍe, Delārām was able to access the original Prakrit texts of the eighth- and tenth-century philosophers Kundakunda and Nemicandra via an updated vernacularized version. His translations are as an exceptional document showing the hermeneutic tools that a Persian-speaking Brahman could use to parse the doctrinal system of Jainism. Delārām’s language was markedly shaped by his familiarity with Advaita Vedānta and the “unity of being (vahdat al-vojud)” school of Sufism, focused on ontological unity. More specifically, the Sufi-Advaita idiom that developed in Persian from the early Mughal period onward functioned for Delārām as a lens through which he could engage with the doctrinal diversity of India’s religious landscape. His efforts to translate the unfamiliar and sometimes perplexing elements of Jainism reveal the complex modalities of crossing linguistic and religious boundaries through Persian in South Asia and their partial incommensurabilities.
Abstract
Alan Ward, an Irishman newly graduated from Oxford, arrived in Diyarbakir in the autumn of 1960 to teach at an elite high school. Within four months of his stay, though, he was deported from Turkey due to his interest in Kurdish. Back in Europe, he wrote a poem about the Kurds and Diyarbakir in the Occitan language, with the title La Còrda Roja (The Red Rope) in reference to Kurds hanged under the Turkish state. Discovered by Kurdish solidarity movements in the mid-1960s, he was drawn into Kurdish language and literature studies and produced several works, part of which have remained unpublished in archives. This article introduces Alan Ward as a little-known protagonist of the Kurdology of the 1960s based on both published and unpublished works authored by him as well as his correspondence with Silvio van Rooy, the founder of the International Society Kurdistan.
Abstract
Current and past historical research on Russia and China’s borderlands heavily relies on the concept of ethnicity. Both the Russian and Qing empires ascribed to an “ethnic mode of ruling” in their borderlands, reflected in the estate inorodtsy and the Eight Banner system. In view of how strongly state-determined categories of ethnic identification can influence historical analysis, this paper observes that the focus of research is shifting from “ethnicity” to “regionality”. The paper also explores how the communist regimes in Russia and China of the 20th century handled the legacy of the multiethnic empire with the politicization of ethnic groups.
Abstract
COVID-19 vaccination in Laos has been affected by challenges in reaching the whole population and preexisting mistrust in the health system. Vaccination rates are low among the Hmong, whose healing epistemologies are rooted in animism and Christianity, while most healthcare staff are from the lowland Buddhist majority. However, local notions of immunity and religious practices are not the main factors influencing confidence in vaccines, as these are flexible and pragmatic in incorporating different approaches to curing illness. Instead, the root causes are patterns of mistrust and inequity enacted through Hmong peoples’ experiences with health services. An innovative government-led initiative focusing on trust-building and local ownership through relational community engagement, utilizing existing village, family, ethnic, and religious structures and promoting effective communication and cultural sensitivity led to a rapid increase in vaccine uptake. Trust in vaccines is therefore not an abstract concept but highly relational, and so can be intentionally developed.
Abstract
In this paper, I explore how both the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, India, and the Bhutanese government utilized Buddhist leaders and religious practices to promote public health measures during the pandemic, considering that there was a high acceptance rate of COVID-19 vaccination in these Buddhist communities. I also touch upon how classical Sowa Rigpa understandings of infectious disease transmission and prevention might have played a role in vaccination acceptance. I hypothesize that Buddhist leaders in Dharamsala and in Bhutan were able to utilize their authority to support the advice of their health departments in multiple ways partly because ideas of disease prevention and protection – Sowa Rigpa protective pills, Buddhist rituals, and vaccination history – were already prevalent in the communities. Specifically, I argue that during 2021/22, medico-religious and ritual engagements played a supportive role in COVID-19 vaccination efforts. They reveal different layers of trust, such as in existing public health systems and in religious and political authorities. I raise further questions about how Sowa Rigpa was utilized differently in Dharamsala and Bhutan and to what extent it was integrated into public health efforts. This paper is largely based on articles that were published during the pandemic between 2020 and 2022.
Abstract
In this conversation, Omar Sheikhmous (author, researcher, activist, and broadcaster), talks with Farangis Ghaderi (author and academic at the University of Exeter), about his life, involvement with and contributions to Kurdish political and academic activities, as well as his archive hosted at the University of Exeter. The conversation covers the content and the development of the Sheikhmous archive, challenges of archiving resistance movements and preserving Kurdish materials, and the intersection of activism and archival practice. It also sheds light on Kurdish student associations and activism in Europe.
Abstract
This article examines the tendency towards political individualism and its impact among first-generation political immigrants with a leftist political background from Iran/Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat) living in Western Europe, from the perspective of individuals’ political identity in terms of relations with political organizations and their ideological stance. Following a qualitative approach, data was collected through semi-structured in-depth and focus group interviews with members and ex-members of political parties. The findings show that, as a result of leaving Iran’s political climate as well as Kurdish political organizations, and with the influence of a new political culture, many interviewees have adopted individualized politics based on their own opinions and self-interest. The immigrants have found a multi-dimensional political view that simultaneously pays attention to the ethno-national, class, and gender issues of Kurdish society.
Abstract
Istiṣḥāb al-ḥāl, the presumption of the persistence of a state or ruling, is a disputed source within Islamic jurisprudence. For some scholars, it is one of the main sources of Islamic law. Many juristic principles are based on istiṣḥāb. The Hanbali scholar al-Ṭūfī (d. 716/1316) follows this idea in Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar al-Rawḍa and holds that istiṣḥāb is the fourth source of law after the Quran, Sunna, and Consensus. Al-Ṭūfī argues for the validity of istiṣḥāb with regard to a physical theory in kalām known as atomism. He discusses the possibility of continuation in existence. In his view istiṣḥāb is based on the principle that persistence/continuation (baqāʾ) is an accident (ʿaraḍ) that is not re-created in each moment in contrast to kalām atomism, which postulates that accidents are re-created constantly. This article presents al-Ṭūfī’s original approach to the validity of istiṣḥāb that guarantees the continuous existence of a state and ruling.
Abstract
How and when did domestic donkeys arrive in China? This article sets out to uncover the donkeys’ forgotten trail from West Asia across the Iranian plateau to China, using archaeological, art historical, philological, and linguistic evidence. Following Parpola and Janhunen’s (2011) contribution to our understanding of the Indian wild ass and Mitchell’s (2018) overview of the history of the domestic donkey in West Asia and the Mediterranean, we will attempt to shed light on the transmission of the beast of burden to Eastern Eurasia.
Due to its length, the paper is published in two instalments: Part I covers archaeological, art historical and textual evidence for the earliest occurrence and popularization of donkeys in China. Part II (in the fall issue) contains three sections: Two sections explore possible etymologies of ancient zoonyms for donkeys or donkey-like animals in Iranian and Chinese languages respectively. In a final discussion, possible ways of transmission for the donkey from the Iranian plateau to the Chinese heartland are evaluated with regard to the cultural, linguistic, and topographic conditions reflected in the previous parts.