Surveying the Aspect of the Medieval West Anatolian Town

The aim of this short article is modest: it means to fill a lacuna in scholarly output by offering a concise and accessible survey of the physical structure of the typical west Anatolian town in the High Middle Ages. Attempts to locate such a study meet with disappointment. If one wishes to look through the eyes of medieval travellers in Anatolia, whether they be merchants, pilgrims or soldiers, and discover what type of construction they witnessed when approaching and entering a typical town, one is compelled to trawl through a great number of specialist articles and monographs dealing with specific archaeological sites or particular narrow periods of history. This laborious exercise will be made somewhat redundant by a brief synthesis of the appropriate evidence which historians and archaeologists have addressed and compiled since the late 1950s when attempting to reconstruct the development of the Byzantine city. The article traces the slow development of the typical Anatolian urban form and aspect from the late fourth century, through the mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries, and then through to a period of urban recovery until the latter part of the twelfth century. The choice of periods separated by some 800 years is not arbitrary: the physical character (and function) of the typical town began to change in the late fourth century, and the form it obtained during the seventh and eighth centuries continued to be the one retained (with inconsequential variations to the general pattern) during the intermediate periods of Byzantine recovery     

雷州西湖怀古

广东雷州市的西湖公园是我国最美的风景区之一。西湖原名罗湖，它可与杭州西湖、扬州瘦西湖、惠州（今属广东）西湖相媲美。园中烟波浩渺，一碧万顷，湖水既绿又柔，就像朱自清先生在《湖上》一诗中所写的那样：“绿醉了湖水，柔透了波光。”     

Ways of Seeing: The First Medieval Islamic and Christian Depictions of Roderick,Last Visigothic King of Spain

In the early eighth-century palace of Qu.(s)ayr ‘Amra in Syria, an image survives of Roderick, last Visigothic king of Spain, whose passionate love affair with the beautiful La Cava precipitated the Muslim invasion of his country in 711. Startlingly, this Umayyad painting predates the earliest written historical source narrating the invasion, the Cronica mozarabe of 754, and of Hispanic origin, which recounts the barest details of the Muslim conquest. The written account was later developed by medieval Christian and Arabic historians who had opposing views of this momentous event, creating a legend of extraordinary power and longevity, which has evolved in many different artistic forms from the Middle Ages to the present day. This essay assesses current scholarly opinion regarding the interpretation of this Arabic visual image of the Visigothic king and considers its implications in relation to the development of the legend of Roderick and La Cava in written form during the medieval period.     

A Blend of Past and Present,a MiX of East and West

Exhibition ＂Charm of Snow and Maple： Canada in Yuk-man Lars Eyes＂ Takes Place in China     

Truth,Tradition and Religion. The Association between Judaism and Islam and the Relation between Religion and Philosophy in Medieval Jewish Thought

The paper presents the unique philosophy of Moshe Ben Joshua of Narbonne (d. 1362), known as Moshe Narboni. Narboni wrote some fifteen different treatises dealing with various subjects: philosophy, Kabbalah, Biblical exegesis and medicine. The philosophical issues he addressed were logic, psychology, physics and metaphysics. Narboni was a keen disciple of the outstanding Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides, as well as a devoted commentator on works written by prominent Muslim philosophers: Al-Ghazālī, Ibn Bājja (Avempace) Ibn .(T)ufayl and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Narboni adopted the Averroistic view, held also by Maimonides, maintaining that religion was founded on philosophical principles, offering a popular adaptation of philosophy in favour of the uneducated mass. He thus felt that Judaism and Islam were both truthful monotheistic religions, teaching their adherents the same basic principles. However, he did regard Judaism as superior in three major aspects: i) Judaism is more ancient than Islam, and thus was the source for Islamic basic beliefs; ii) the Jewish law teaches the ideal way of life; iii) the Hebrew language lends to the concept of the Deity.     

Islam,state and society in Singapore

Abstract

Muslims are a politically significant religious minority in Singapore. This is compounded by the fact that an overwhelming number of Malays are also Muslims. This conflation of Malay ethnicity and religious identity has led to assumptions of homogeneity when addressing Islam in Singapore. This paper argues for greater care in understanding Muslims in Singapore. It tries to show how the conflation of ethnic and religious identities is a product of historical and political factors. It explores the growing pluralism within Islam as Singaporean Muslims are exposed to processes of modernization, globalization and Islamization. Ultimately, the paper argues that growing heterogeneity is leading to new tensions in the vertical linkages between Islam and the State in Singapore. New contestations for religious authority are producing pressures to de-link ethnic and religious identity in political representation.     

Louis IX in Medieval Arabic Sources: The Saint,the King,and the Sicilian Connection

This article examines the portrayal of Louis IX in medieval Arabic historiography to show the importance of cross-cultural Mediterranean interaction. It argues that the image of Louis was influenced by information originating from the Sicilian Hohenstaufen court and reports that Frederick II sent to Egypt. Arab historians connected to the courts of Frederick and Manfred disseminated a “Sicilian narrative” that shaped Louis's portrayal in Arabic historiography. This argument on the importance of cross-cultural transfer in understanding Arabic historiography is buttressed by reports about the King, the Pope, and the Emperor that are traced back to the entourage of prominent Muslims closely linked to Sicily. Moreover, it is argued that Arab authors were aware of Louis's proto-sanctity and pious reputation. This led to the infusion of medieval Arabic historiography with Western ideas about sacrosanctity. Finally, this research assesses how the portrayal of King Louis during his captivity was used in internal Muslim rivalries.     

The racialized surveillant assemblage: Islam and the fear of terrorism

ABSTRACT

Increasingly intense, multifaceted, and integrated forms of surveillance are a central feature of Western national security attempts to counter the violence of “Islamic terrorism.” However, there has been a lack of research examining contemporary regimes of surveillance as profoundly racialized. This study examines how counterterrorism efforts are underpinned by ill-conceived accounts of radicalization that preemptively construct Muslim migrants as a threat to national security, thereby justifying practices of mass surveillance that further propagate racist discourses of uncertainty and risk. We advance an analysis of a racialized surveillant assemblage, which is generative of mutable, algorithmically determined profiles of the Muslim-as-terrorist. Such a regime of mass surveillance effectively puts all Muslims under suspicion. We highlight that, paradoxically, mass data-mining operations stifle, rather than aid, the identification of actual terrorist threats. This conditions a paranoid surveillant racism, through which Muslim populations become modulated as an unknowable threat of death and destruction.