Hidāyat’s Libidinal Hell: Persian Fiction and Inscribing the Demonic

The prominent modern Iranian author ?ādiq Hidāyat (1903?51/1281?1330 sh.) was arguably the most observant expositor of the contortions within the inner world of Iranian demonology during the first Pahlavī period (1921?41/1299?1320 sh.). Through an investigation of his many interbellum titles, such as “Zindah bih Gūr,” “S.G.L.L.,” and “‘Alavīyah Khanum,” the purpose of this paper is to flesh out Hidāyat’s role as a demonographer, meaning someone who inscribes the demonic in his works. It is argued that Hidāyat’s uniqueness was located in his ability to allow the demonic, “the world as it is before the human imagination begins to work on it,” to interact with man at his most nihilistic moment. As such, it is unsurprising that recognition of the demonic was often simultaneously the moment when the voice and visage of Nature itself became apparent.     

Authorial Voices and the Sense of an Ending in Persian Diaries: Notes on Eʿtemād al-Saltaneh and ʿAlam

This essay examines certain common themes as well as conflicting voices in two extensive sets of Persian diaries, written almost a century apart, by Mohammad-Hasan Khān E?temād al-Saltaneh (1843?96), a long-time courtier and confidant of Nāser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848?86) and Asadollāh ?Alam (1919?78) a close associate and court minister of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941?79). On the whole these diaries provide significant amounts of information about the inner workings of the court and the overall institutional setup of the Iranian state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although in writing their diaries these authors did not set out to produce a literary work, and nor did they intend to chronicle a general history, each in his own way captured his respective epoch and, within their limitations of time, scope, and insight, each reflected a broad range of private and social relationships. Also each in his own way echoed older ministerial voices, reminiscent of the voice that often resonates in the “mirror for princes” genre, of part player part intimate observer, and with a certain sense of admonition and resignation, lamenting the loss of an era which they felt was slipping away as they wrote.     

Paria la Viexa and an expanding empire: Provincial centers in the political economy of the Inka Empire (a.d. 1440–1532)

Abstract

The fastest growing and largest territorial empire of the Americas was the Inka Empire. At the time of its emergence in the 14th century, the empire lacked an urban network, a developed division of labor, a sophisticated craft industry, and an exchange network like that of most pre-industrial states. The emerging Inka state had to create the social and economic institutions that would ensure its growth and long-term operation. Data from Paria la Viexa, an Inka provincial center in Bolivia, illustrates how the Inka Empire created the necessary conditions for its expansion and operation through a network of provincial centers it had called to life.     

A Diplomatic Edition of the Introductory Section of Yamāri's Pramā(n)avārttikāla(n)kāra(t)īkā Supari(s)uddhā——Folios 3a1-10a1

Introduction As it is well-known,Yamāri's Pramā(n)avārttikāla(n)kāra(t)īkā Supari(s)uddhā (hereafter PVATS)1 on Praj(n)ākaragupta's Pramā(n) avārttikāla(n)kāra (hereafter PVA) contains a lot of materials concerning various topics which are very important for historical reconstruction of the later development of the Buddhist epistemological system,especially the tradition beginning with Dharmakīrti's Pramā(n)avārttika (hereafter PV).     

“A Twist in the Tale” of a Surgeon and his Patient: An Australian First in Seizure Localization

In 1894 at St. Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, George Adlington Syme removed a meningioma from a patient with symptomatic focal epilepsy. The operation stands as the first surgery based on seizure localization in Australia. It is also the country's first documented successful resection of an intracranial meningioma. It followed William Macewen's landmark cerebral localization case on the boy John McKinley by 18 years and Victor Horsley's first epilepsy case on Hughlings Jackson's patient James B. by a mere 8 years. Syme's patient, Constable John G., survived the operation by some 23 years, dying from a gunshot wound to the head in 1917. Newly discovered inquest papers reveal that the coroner's judgment that the death was accidental completely fails to address the more credible scenario of suicide. The story makes for a fascinating epilogue to an important landmark in Australia's neurosurgical history.     

Contested Cartographies: Empire and Sovereignty on a Map of Sistān,Iran (1883)

ABSTRACT

The papers of Malkam Khān (1833–1908), Iranian ambassador in London from 1872 to 1889, a staunch supporter of Iranian state modernization and a scholar, include an often-overlooked map of the Iran–Afghanistan border dating to 1883. Mirzā Mohammad-Rezā Tabrizi compiled this exceptional piece of nineteenth-century Iranian cartography. The map is an illustration of how quickly the Qajar administration was able to emulate European cartographical discourses to protect its own interests in the context of the so-called ‘Great Game’, that is, the often confrontational Russo–British relations over the control of Central Asia and Afghanistan in the nineteenth century. In this article we show that Iranian officials had developed a much more substantial articulation between cartography and statecraft than is conveyed by the stereotypes in nineteenth-century Western literature, when the capacity of local players to use counter-mapping to their own advantage was often underestimated by European agents. Mirzā Mohammad-Rezā Tabrizi’s map of Sistān exemplifies how the apparently all-powerful Western science that seemingly supported nineteenth-century imperial expansion was rarely left unchallenged locally. The genealogy and circulation of the map also reflects how overly simplistic the postulation of a polarization of ‘Western’ knowledge and ‘Eastern’ attempts at safeguarding local sovereignty can be.     

Preaching laughter in the thirteenth century: the exempla of Arnold of Liège (d. c.1308) and his Dominican milieu

Historians of medieval laughter have, over the past few decades, imagined the thirteenth century as a period of Christian rapprochement with laughter and humour. Whereas in the twelfth century and before, laughter was largely associated – in art, exegesis, narrative and in preaching – with diabolism and damnation, the consensus is that in the 1200s and beyond Christian culture began deploying and preaching laughter as a positive spiritual expression and strategy. Above all, scholars have identified this shift with the thought and practice of the Dominican Order. This paper enriches this narrative by analysing the neglected exempla collection of the Dominican preacher Arnold of Liège (d. c.1308). Reading Arnold's collection – which harshly forbids laughter – in relief to a number of similar compilations made by Dominicans in the same period, offers an image of how the significance of laughter had become pluralised in mendicant theology by 1300, and of how old ideas of a radically negative laughter persisted in haunting the pulpits and street corners of the thirteenth century.     

The cemetery of Houlouf in northern Cameroon (AD 1500–1600): fragments of a past social system

The research presented in this paper aims to study the transfer of patterns of social behaviours into mortuary contexts. It is an attempt to bring to light nested levels and conflicting aspects of human social actions during the relatively short time represented in the Houlouf archaeological record. Different parameters of mortuary evidence are considered at different levels of structuration using competing or alternative models to make sense of the diversity, variability and patterns observed. The studied cemetery appears to have emerged during a period of tension between competing peer-polities and to have been used for the inhumation of a small elite fragment of the whole society. This elite was composed of four groups interpreted as descent groups. Individuals belonging to this elite were divided into three main ranked occupational categories, and they were probably buried by a craft specialist; a blacksmith acting as undertaker and grave-digger.

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Résumé Les recherches présentées dans cet article visent à analyser la façon dont certains aspects des comportements humains sont transférés dans les contextes mortuaires. Il s'agit de mettre en lumière l'imbrication des multiples niveaux du système social, ses aspects conflictuels qui se manifestent dans le traitement et l'enterrement des morts pendant une séquence temporelle relativement courte de l'occupation de Houlouf. Different paramètres archéologiques du programme mortuaire sont étudiés et évalués à différent niveaux d'argumentation afin de comprendre et d'expliquer le sens de la diversité, de la variabilité et des configurations des vestiges observées dans le cimetière. Il apparaît ainsi que le cimetière étudié a été mis en place au cours d'une période particulièrement marquée par des tensions entre polities en compétition dans la plaine tchadienne. Ce cimetière était réservé à l'enterrement d'une fraction de la population, l'élite. Cette élite se composait de quatre groupes considérés comme groupes de descendance dont les membres étaient répartis en trois principales catégories de rôles. Le rituel funéraire et l'inhumation étaient vraisemblament exécutés par un forgeron-fossoyeur.

     

Persian Studies and the Military in Late Imperial Russia (1863–1917): State Power in the Service of Knowledge?

This article pursues the goal of going beyond Saidian notions of Orientalism and Said's assumption of the “complicity of knowledge with power” to reach back to Foucault's initial postulations on the role of institutions and the intellectual in the interplay of power/knowledge relations. The article concentrates on the role of Russian military Oriental studies institutions and Orientologists in the context of discourses (the promotion of Russkoe Delo, the juxtaposition of Russia with the West and the Orient, etc.) that existed in late Imperial Russia and influenced the accumulation and development of scholarly knowledge on the Orient. Therefore, the significant contribution of the military domain to Russian Oriental studies on both the institutional and individual levels are examined from the angle of intra-Russian discourses in the period from the establishment of the Asiatic Section of the General Staff in 1863 up to 1917.     

Jāmī's Salāmān va Absāl: Political Statements and Mystical Advice Addressed to the Āq Qoyūnlū Court of Sultān Ya‘qūb (d. 896/1490)

This article explores Salāmān va Absāl, one of seven poems which comprise Jāmī's collection of long masnavīs, known collectively as the Haft aurang. The work, which gained some renown outside Iran due to the English version of Edward FitzGerald, has nevertheless received little attention in modern scholarship. The few investigations of Salāmān va Absāl, moreover, have dwelled on its narrative, which tells the story of the carnal attraction of a prince for his wet-nurse, and never situated the work in its historical context or examined its political content. In addition, the allegorical symbolism of the tale, especially its depiction of key stages of the Sufi path, such as the act of repentance, has not been discussed in terms of representing a work of mystical advice. With these concerns in mind, the present article discusses the possibility that the political elements in Salāmān va Absāl complement the advice it gives on becoming a Sufi. Seen from this perspective, it would appear that Salāmān va Absāl correlates the notion of the just ruler to the Sufi concept of the “Perfect Man” to the extent that Jāmī presents the Sufi-king as the ideal medieval Islamic ruler. By implication, the work advises its royal patron, Sultān Ya‘qūb, to repent and embark upon the Sufi path, doing so, Jāmī intimates, would lead Ya‘qūb to realize his rank as God's “true” vicegerent.