“He Was a Muslim Knight Who Fought for Religion,Not for the World”. War and Religiosity in Islam: A Comparative Study between the Islamic East and West (Twelfth century)

In the second half of the twelfth century, the Maghreb and the Mashriq saw two new political and religious projects taking place, which shared a common reformist spirit. The Almohad movement and the process initiated by Zankī (r. 1127–1146) gave a crucial role to jihād, as well as introducing far-reaching religious reform, doing away with the supposed decadence that had taken hold in the years before. The combination of these two elements gave rise to a greater exchange between religiosity and war. A comparative analysis of Islamic sources from both east and west reveals this increase of religiosity in war in three different fields: the participation of religious elites in the armies; the rise in the use of rituals and religiosity while at war, by means of sermons, speeches and the use of “sacred” objects; and miraculous events related to acts of war.     

Islamic Historians of the Ayyūbid Era and Muslim Rulers from the Early Crusading Period: A Study in the Use of History

This article examines the presentation of Muslim rulers from the early crusading period, 490–540/1097–1146 in six of the main chronicles written during the first half of the seventh/thirteenth century. It discusses the themes, ideas and topoi in each, demonstrating that the historians appear to have been divided into two ‘camps’ over their presentation of these rulers, based on their personal views of the rulers of their time. The article also examines why this division may have occurred, and considers its ramifications for modern scholarship of Arabic historiography, Islamic history and the history of the Crusades, in both the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries.     

The ‘Non‐dit’ in the Zenana: representations of Muslim women in Islamic canonical texts,the neo‐colonial imagination and a feminist response from Bangladesh

Abstract

This essay recognizes that representations of the ‘Muslim woman’ as the Othered ‘object’ of the ‘Western’ gaze and the domesticated ‘object’ which the Islamic apologists strive hard to defend, are both constructions and false antitheses of each other. It seeks not the ‘truth’ regarding the Muslim women in the world of social reality but to examine how various representations of the women are constructed and to what effects and consequences these representations are mobilized. The essay proceeds in three stages. The first stage shows how the patriarchy mobilizes the Qur’an and the Hadith in order to construct the woman as the negative, the inessential and the abnormal of the man so as to exert complete subordination over her. However, the very act of attempting to mute the woman in Islam is the most strident proof that she is engaged in resistance against patriarchal control and the degree of resistance must be judged by the degree of patriarchal control. The second stage demonstrates how patriarchy operates in colonial and neo‐imperial landscape: it legitimizes the appropriation of Muslim woman ‘possessed’ by the Other (as exemplified by the orientalist seduction fantasy in William Dalrymple’s The White Mughals), but, haunted by the fear of rape and anxieties regarding the sexuality of the White woman possessed by the Self, it attempts to maintain strict control over her (as in the cases of Miss Wheeler in the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 and Private Jessica Lynch in the Iraq War). This struggle over the feminine body is perfectly in line with Islam’s hyper‐anxiousness to hide the female body and rigorously ensure monopolic possession over her. The third stage shows how Taslima Nasreen, a late‐20th century feminist from Bangladesh, speaks the unspoken and thereby attempts to subvert the normative representation of the muted women in her autobiographical novella, entitled āmār Meyebelā. In thus examining the representations of the Muslim women, this essay seeks an alternative ‘third space of enunciation’ and takes a distinct political stand located outside of the axis of the dichotomy of the ‘Western’ gaze and the construction of the Islamic theologians.     

‘“COFO Is Not Godot’ The Free Southern Theater,the Black Freedom Movement,and the Search for a Usable Aesthetic”*

ABSTRACT

This article explores the home as a site of ‘scientific’ enquiry in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland via the experiences of female experimenters. The focus of their investigation was the cultivation of silkworms for the purposes of making silk and substituting expensive foreign imports with domestic manufacture. This research argues that enquiry was just one of many domestic practices and that the relationship between domestic labour and intellectual work was enmeshed. The spaces and objects of home, alongside the tacit knowledge of its inhabitants, provided a flexible context for experiment, which was accessible to a broad section of eighteenth-century society.     

The view from within: a curatorial account of the rise and fall of visits to London museums from 1851–2016. A research note

ABSTRACT

This note addresses two questions: what comparing patterns of attendance at a group of museums and art galleries since 1851 might reveal? and how might the museums themselves have explained those figures? This note considers the rises and falls of visit numbers amongst a sample of 15 London museums over a 160-year period, and how the institutions themselves perceived those figures. The data used here were gathered from the museums’ published annual reports and internal documents, including daybooks and memos. Their presentation here introduces readers to an exceptionally long time series, and to the conventionally neglected voices of museums’ managers, whose circumstances and attitudes informed those museums’ management. These notes show that certain external factors affected simultaneous rises and falls in the majority of museums’ figures across the sample, although there were always exceptions. Some trends are revealed as general tendencies over a number of years. Discrete internal factors, such as temporary closures and exhibitions create peaks and troughs at individual institutions.     

“A Crusade from the First”: The Norman Conquest of Islamic Sicily, 1060–1091

In the creation myth of the Crusades, Pope Urban II (r. 1088–1099) is the founding father and 1095 is the critical year. During the twentieth century, French, Spanish, and English scholars challenged this myth; yet this myth remains as durable as ever. Because the origins of the crusading enterprise came to be associated with the so-called First Crusade (1095–1102), scholars have created a vision of crusading at odds with Pope Urban's vision, which views the “First” Crusade as the third part of a triptych: first, the Norman conquest of Sicily (1060–1091); then, the Castilian and Catalan advances in Iberia; and finally the 1095 Eastern Crusade. Today, the study of the Crusades is hampered by a failure to concentrate on the direct evidence and to take into account what contemporaries understood by crusading. To get a sense of what contemporaries understood by crusading, this paper examines the Norman Crusade in Sicily, drawing upon both Christian and Islamic sources.     

Medieval Diglossia: The Diversity of the Latin Christian Encounter with Written and Spoken Arabic in the “Crusader” County of Tripoli,with a Hitherto Unpublished Arabic Note from the Principality of Antioch (MS,AOM 3, Valletta: National Library of Malta,no. 51v)

The widespread use of Arabic in the “crusader” county of Tripoli was an obstacle between the Latin Christian Franks and their indigenous subjects. The concept of diglossia – the co-existence of divergent high and low registers within a single language – is an important but under-appreciated consideration. Arabic's marked diglossia militates against simplistic generalisations that the Franks either did or did not learn Arabic. The Romance-speaking, Latin-writing conquerors of the county of Tripoli failed to learn formal written Arabic to any appreciable degree. They did, however, learn informal spoken Arabic with more success. The Franks recognised the importance and utility of Arabic, so felt obliged to employ intermediaries – usually local Christians – to speak and write on their behalf. Some Arabic vocabulary entered the Frankish lexicon, but the consciously Latinising style of clerical authors often obscured this. Most surviving written sources from the Latin East are misleading at best, and sometimes deliberately so.     

The “scouse wedding” and other myths: reflections on the evolution of a “Liverpool model” for culture-led urban regeneration

This paper considers the development of a “Liverpool model” for culture-led urban regeneration, based on an analysis of the competition to become the UK's first City of Culture (UKCC) for 2013. The paper outlines New Labour's developing approach to culture-led regeneration, placing the UKCC in the context of the use of culture for various local development policies, particularly city branding and urban regeneration (Evans & Shaw, 2004; McGuigan, 2005). Within this context, the paper considers how Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2008 has been narrated by New Labour and the manner in which this narrative has influenced the development of the UKCC programme (Department for Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS], 2009; Garcia, Melville & Cox, 2010). The paper demonstrates how this narrative overlooks the ultimate specificity of Liverpool's success (Liverpool Culture Company, 2009; Garcia et al., 2010), which suggests a unique combination of political circumstance, cultural leadership and public and private investment are at the root of the perceived success of Liverpool's ECoC 2008, rather than an exportable, replicable policy (O'Brien & Miles, 2010) described by the policy literature, and substantiated by the competition to select the UKCC 2013 (DCMS, 2009). The paper's conclusion problematises the prospect of another city repeating the Liverpool experience. The “Liverpool model” of culture-led regeneration is shown as one which limits prospective cultural policies to a narrow vision of the possible, a vision which is unlikely to be sustainable in the foreseeable future.     

Scent of a history: the “12.3 Incident”: A history in Macao of 50 years ago

Fifty years ago, there were massive anti-colonial movements in Hong Kong and Macao. During the same period, the Cultural Revolution started in mainland China. The writings afterwards painted these movements, and these people, with the colour of the Cultural Revolution. Local is vanished. These movements constituted the starting point of modern Hong Kong and Macao. The aftershocks of these movements are still strong and widespread within the present political environment, the ideology of the public space and the sentiment of the public. It seems necessary to re-examine this history and to restore those people and those events from the distorted impression. Let’s try to read their oral history with sympathy and historical imagination, feeling the scent of a history.     

To die a guest at home: on Oh my name,stand and walk on! A posthumous collection of the works of Nakaya Kōkichi

Nakaya Kokichi is a writer whose work illustrates a singular unfolding of intellectual thought in Okinawa under the US military occupation. This article sheds light on the political potential of Nakaya’s thoughts through a close reading of his posthumous collection. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the three aspects of his thought. First, Nakaya’s texts reveal the violent nature of “interpellation” that sustains the system of the US–Japan military alliance. Nakaya’s work exposes the way in which such interpellation at once subject those who live in Okinawa and, therefore, prohibits them from becoming political subjects. Second, Nakaya’s writings critique the politics of Okinawan nationalist identity and seek an alternative political future in the solidarity among non-subjectified bodies. Third, Nakaya’s thoughts suggest a paradoxical possibility of Kakushi, or a death in a foreign land even in one’s own so-call “homeland,” once that helps to resituate Okinawa as an intersection of “refugees,” who remain unable to belong to nation-states, and their “histories that open up laterally.”     

“Why Do I Have to Pledge the U.S. Flag? It's Not My Country!”: Latina Youths Rearticulating Citizenship and National Belonging

Using interview data collected from high school students who attended school in Broward County, Florida, this article focuses on how first- and second-generation adolescent Latinas understand citizenship. The author explores participants’ citizenship formations using the conceptual frameworks of transnationalism and cultural dimensions of citizenship. Drawing richly from their voices, the author sheds light on the paradoxes of citizenship and national belonging by illuminating how Latina youth are positioned as ambiguous U.S. residents and citizens. She concludes with an exploration of the practical implications of attending to youths’ re-articulations of citizenship and national belonging.     

Christians and Muslims Faced with the Wrath of Abū Marwān al-Yuḥānisī, a Thirteenth-Century “Friend of God”

This article examines the nature of the wrath of Abū Marwān al-Yu[hdot]ānisī, a thirteenth-century Andalusi saint, and the protagonist of the Tu?fat al-mughtarib of al-Qashtālī. I have divided the study into two main parts. The first sets out and analyses various occasions on which the saint committed violent acts against Christians. Two of them died as a consequence of these aggressions. All the cases in this first part took place in the Muslim East during the saint's stay in this area. The second part examines cases of violence committed against Muslim people from al-Andalus. The victims suffered the consequences of the wrath of the saint, although he was not directly involved in the aggressions themselves. The stories are narrated by al-Yu[hdot]ānisī himself, and we do not know whether they really took place. Regarding these manifestations of violence, the hagiographic sources not only justify all the violent acts committed by the saint, murder included, but they present the saint to society as an “example” to follow, and indeed as a “hero”.