Behçet Kemal Çağlar's Kur’ân‐ı Kerîm'den İlhamlar (Inspirations from the Holy Qur’ān): A Kemalist's Personal,Poetic Response to the Qur’ān

Behçet Kemal Ça?lar, 1908–1969, is the author of a commentary of the Qur’ān, Kur’ân‐? Kerîm'den ?lhamlar (‘Inspirations from the Holy Qur’ān’), published in 1966. This work can be described as a poetic reflection on the Qur’ān. It does not adhere to rendering every line or verse, but instead insists on maintaining a rhythmic cadence and end‐rhyme. Although it resembles a translation in some ways, Ça?lar refuses to call his work a translation. This paper begins by introducing Ça?lar and his text, a brief history of Turkish translations of the Qur’ān, then Ça?lar's approach is contrasted with the aims of translators of the Qur’ān. Ça?lar's text is studied in more detail, providing a sample of the Turkish text and a translation of it into English, focusing on Ça?lar's reflection on Sūrat ?aha. Through this study, it becomes clear that as a result of his prioritizing the literary aspects of the Qur’ān in his reflection, Ça?lar's book has an advantage over literal translations of the Qur'an and it can be useful for Qur’ān translation. At the same time, Ça?lar's book is a reflection of a desire to develop a Turkish Islam—a manifestation of Islam that came from Turkey, that reflected its language and culture and that was intelligible to its people.     

Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra in Translation: A Century of Interpretation of a Sanskrit Mahāyāna Text

Many translations of ?āntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra, a Sanskrit Mahāyāna Buddhist text of seventh/eighth‐century India, have been published since 1892. ?āntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra is one of the few Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist texts available in Sanskrit and it was influential in Tibetan Buddhist schools. This article explores how translation of the Bodhicaryāvatāra is no longer the preserve of scholars but has moved to being carried out by Buddhist practitioners influenced by Tibetan schools of Buddhism. It shows how translators’ motives for translating the text have reflected changing attitudes to Buddhism and its texts. ?āntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra has been translated as a source of information, a literary work, an inspirational work and, with the rise of Western interest in Tibetan Buddhism in the late twentieth century, as a vehicle for the transmission of Buddhist teachings. Nevertheless, further scholarly investigation of the Sanskrit text of the Bodhicaryāvatāra remains to be done.     

The Social and Literary Context of German Translations of Saʿdi’s Golestān

Sa?di’s Golestān has been translated into German numerous times since the seventeenth century. The purpose of this article is to examine the social and literary context of three German translations and translators: Karl Heinrich Graf, a theologian and researcher of the Old Testament, published his translation of the Golestān in 1846 during German Romanticism; Dieter Bellmann, a professor of Oriental studies, published a revision of Graf’s Rosengarten in 1982 in the German Democratic Republic, where literature was strictly regulated; Kathleen Göpel published her indirect translation from English, prepared by the Afghan translator Omar Ali-Shah, in 1997, at a time of intercultural literature, also called “bridge literature.” Through examples the article shows how the context may have influenced their translations and how the text has changed when traveling across linguistic and cultural borders.     

Planting Islands: Marshall Islanders Shaping Land,Power, and History

This paper reframes encounters between ri-aelōñ-kein (Marshall Islanders) and ri-pālle (outsiders) between the 16th and 19th centuries through a ri-aelōñ-kein cultural lens. It applies a deep ethnographic approach and frameworks of cross-cultural exchange and mutual possession to re-present ri-aelōñ-kein engagements across the beach as purposeful attempts to ‘plant’ ri-pālle on land and within genealogies. It argues that, in addition to violence, ri-aelōñ-kein used ‘gifts’ of land and other exchanges to ‘plant’ ri-pālle within their realms and, in turn, augment their social status. While deployed most often by irooj (chiefs), kajoor (commoner) men and women used similar tactics with some success. Throughout, ri-aelōñ-kein made history by deploying aspects of culture to advance local ambitions through engagements with ri-pālle.     

The Dragoman and the Scholar: Two Polish Translations of Saʿdi’s Golestān

This article discusses two Polish translations of Sa?di’s Golestān, prepared by Samuel Otwinowski and Wojciech Biberstein-Kazimirski (alias Albert Kazimirski de Biberstein) and published in 1879 and 1876 respectively. Though edited at the end of the nineteenth century, Otwinowski's translation had been originally completed in the first half of the seventeenth century and is assumed to be the first one or one of the very first renderings of Sa?di's work into a European language. The question that remains unresolved is whether or not Otwinowski's translation, despite being unpublished, was known to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Polish poets. One can find some stories and motifs “picked” from Sa?di’s Golestān in their poetry, but they seem more likely to have been influenced by non-Polish renderings. This article describes the different translation strategies adopted by the two translators, the literarily gifted dragoman Otwinowski and the nineteenth-century philologist Biberstein Kazimirski.     

Iskandar's Bibulous Business: Wine,Drunkenness and the Calls to the Sāqī in Nizāmī Ganjavī's Sharaf-nāma

The twelfth-century poet Nizāmī Ganjavī has produced his version of the adventures of Alexander as a unique composition mingling known Persian historiography and Qur'anic legends with unusual non-Islamic, especially Greek, elements in order to create his Iskandar-nāma (containing two parts, the Sharaf-nāma and the Iqbāl-nāma) as a synthesis of eastern and western cultures. A first point is the examination of the reasons behind the importance given to wine and drunkenness within the narrative. The poet has stressed this further by heading each chapter with a call to the sāqī. The essay examines the appositeness of the invocations with the episodes in the narrative, it analyses examples of wine imagery (containing references to medicine, to the mirror and to religion) and questions the relation between authorial persona, narrator and characters, examining in particular the famous teetotaler claim in one of the introductory chapters of the first part of the Iskandar-nāma.     

Persian Monshi,Persian Jones: English Translations of Saʿdi’s Golestān from the Late Eighteenth to the Mid-Nineteenth Centuries

From the seventeenth century, Mosleh al-Din Sa?di Shirazi (d. 1291), a key figure in Persian classical literature, became the center of Europeans’ attention: his name appeared in travelogues and periodicals, and selections of his tales were published in miscellaneous Latin, German, French, and English works. To follow Sa?di’s impact on English literature, one needs to search for the beginning of the “Sa?di trend” and the reasons that led to the acceleration of the translation process of his works into the English language in the nineteenth century. This article examines the role of the British educational institutions in colonial India in the introduction of Sa?di and his Golestān to the English readership, and, in parallel, it uncovers the role of the Indo-Persian native scholars (monshis) who were involved in the preparation of translations. The article discusses how the perception of the British towards Sa?di’s literature developed in the first half of the nineteenth century and how their approach towards the translation of the “text” and its “style” evolved in the complete renderings of the Golestān.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Iran Between Two Revolutions , By Ervand Abrahamian Mollā Sadrā Sh?rāz?: Le Livre des pénétrations métaphysiques (Kitāb al-Mashāir). Translated from the Arabic, with an Introduction and Notes, by Henry Corbin Le livre du licite et de l'illicite (Kitāb al-halāl wa-l-harām , Book XIV of Al-Gazāl?'s Ihyā Ulūm ad-D?n). Introduction, translation and notes by Régis Morelon Society, State, and Urbanism: Ibn Khaldun's Sociological Thought. By Fuad Baali Shari'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam. Edited by Katherine P. Ewing The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad. By Gordon Darnell Newby Muslim Hausa Women in Nigeria: Tradition and Change. by Barbara J. Callaway Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society. By Hisham Sharabi The Islamic Impulse. Edited by Barbara Freyer Stowasser Christians and Muslims Together: An Exploration by Presbyterians. Edited by Byron L Ägypten unter Mubarak: Identität und nationales Interesse. by Gudrun Krämer Towards Understanding the Qur⁾ān. Vol. 1, Sura 1–3. English version of Sayyid Abul A⁽la Mawdudi's Tafhim al-Qur⁽ān, translated and edited by Zafar Ishaq Ansari Middle East Contemporary Survey. Vol. IX. Edited by Itamar Rabinovich and Haim Shaked. The Sufi Path of Knowledge : Ibn al-⁽Arab?'s Metaphysics of Imagination. By William C. Chittick Colonising Egypt. By Timothy Mitchell Past-Revolutionary Iran. Edited by Hooshang Amirahmadi and Manouchehr Parvin Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice. By M. E. Combs-Schilling Islam: The Straight Path. By John L. Esposito Islam, Politics, and Social Movements. Edited by Edmund Burke, III, and Ira M. Lapidus Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. By Lila Abu-Lughod     

BOOK REVIEWS

Studies in a Masque (1883, 1893). By S. Lane-Poole. Reprint, Beirut: Khayats, 1966. Sad b. MansāTgr ibn KammāTna's Examination of (the Inquiries into the Three Faitha Edited by Moshe Perlmann. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967. pp. xii plus 119. $ 4.00. Islamic Shiite Encyclopedia, Volume I. By Hassan Al-Amin. London: Luzac & Co., Ltd, 1967. 271 pp. 3.00. L'Egypte Moderne, by Nada Tomiche. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1966 (No. 569 in Series entitled, “Que Sais-Je?” Le Point des Connaissances ActuelleS). The Mgarian Insurrection: 1954–1962. By Edgar O'Ballance. Hamden, Conn, Archon Books, 1967. pp. 231. $ 7.00. English-Arabic Dictionary of Political, Diplomatic and Conference Terms. By M. Mansoor. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1961. pp. 352. Al-LisāTn al-^CArabi: Majallah dawryah lil-abhāTth al-lughawiyah wa-nashāTt al-tarjamah wa-al-ta rib al-alam al-^carabi. Published by Al-Maktab al-dāTim li-tansq al-ta^Crib, al-tāTbi^C li-jāTmi^cat al-duwal al^carabiyah. Rabat, Morocco, Vol. iv, for Rabi^c al-thāTn, 1386 (August, 1966). pp. 389. The Contribution of Arabic Language to Ancient Civilization. By Abdul-Hak Fadil (^CAbd al-Haqq FāTdil). Rabat: The Permanent Bureau of Arabisation in the Arab Counties, n.d. pp. 13.     

Siyāvoš as a Vegetation Deity

Because of annual communal lamentations dedicated to Siyāvo?, he is considered to be a unique character among heroes of the ?āhnāmeh. The elements of the rituals revolving around Siyāvo? are compatible to those of vegetation deities in some other religions. Of particular interest is the cycle of birth-death-rebirth of vegetation deity that takes place according to a specific sequence of events. In the present article, the author attempts to trace conformities and nonconformities in the Siyāvo? tale as described in the ?āhnāmeh and correlates them with the life-death-rebirth cycle of vegetation deity.     

The Battīl and Zārūqah of Musandam,Oman

Most of the traditional boats still in use in Musandam, Oman, are essentially batātīl or zawārīq. Both types of vessel are described and compared in detail and placed within the larger context of boat types found in the surrounding region. This article attempts to establish a classification based primarily on shape, construction and decorative features, and provides names of individual components in both in Arabic and Kumzari.     

Vintages of the Sāqī-nāma: Fermenting and Blending the Cupbearer's Song in the Sixteenth Century

Drawing on a rich tradition of anacreontic poetry and taking inspiration from works by Nizāmī and Hāfiz, the sāqī-nāma or “cupbearer's song” emerged as an independent genre in the early sixteenth century and flourished throughout the Persian literary world for the next 250 years. Looking back on the development of the genre, the early seventeenth-century literary historians ‘Abd al-Nabī Qazvīnī and Awhadī Balyānī give contrasting accounts of its formation, but both agree on the significance of the work of Hakīm Partuvī Shīrāzī (d. 928/1520–21). An examination of his sāqī-nāma, together with two other early representatives of the genre by Sidqī Astarābādī (d. 952/1545) and Sharaf Jahān Qazvīnī (d. 968/1561), shows how closely this new genre was tied to the politics and ideology of the new Safavid state and reveals profound structural similarities to the preeminent panegyric genre of the Islamicate world, the qasīda. But once the basic components of the sāqī-nāmā were distilled and taken up by poets outside this socio-political environment, the genre proved to be as protean as the wine symbolism at its core. Cupbearer songs from the end of the century, particularly those of Muhammad Sūfī Māzandarānī (d. 1035/1625–26) and Sanjar Kāshānī (d. 1021/1612), show how the basic elements of the genre could be reconfigured to serve a variety of more personal interests.     

Of Śüdras,Sütas,and Ślokas: Why is the Mahāabhārata Preeminently in the Anustubh Metre?

One striking difference between Vedic and post-VedicHindu literature lies in the fact that while the anustubh metre is sparsely represented in the Veda asa whole, it is the standard metre of post-Vedicreligious literature of Hinduism available inSanskrit. Thus the Mahābhārata, a major documentof post-Vedic Hinduism, is preeminently in the anustubh metre. How is this striking metrical fact tobe explained? This paper discusses the variousexplanations that may be offered to account for it. Inpart I it discusses the explanations that could beoffered on the basis of modern critical scholarship.In parts II–IX it develops the suggestion that theanswer may lie in the association of the Mahābhārata with the śūdras and of theśūdras with the anustubh metre.

     

Devonian trilobites from the Shogrām Formation,Kurāgh,Chitral (NW Pakistan)

Late Devonian trilobites from horizons close to the Frasnian-Famennian boundary in the Shogrām Formation at Kurāgh, Chitral (NW Pakistan) are described. A new species of Asteropyginae, Neocalmonia chitralensis sp. nov., and a new subpecies, Neocalmonia batillifera orientalis subsp. nov., are described; these extend the range of Asteropyginae eastwards from Iran and southern Afghanistan. The Upper Kellwasser Event is located within KUR 19 of Talent et al. (1999).     

Kāi Tahu me te Hopu Tītī ki Rakiura:

This article examines te hopu tītī ki Rakiura — the customary harvesting of tītī or ‘muttonbirds’ (sooty shearwaters/puffinus griseus) from islands adjacent to Rakiura (Stewart Island), by members of Kāi Tahu — the iwi (tribe) that has traditional authority over the majority of Te Wāhi Pounamu (the South Island of New Zealand). The article illustrates the pre and post-contact importance of te hopu tītī to Kāi Tahu and argues that, because the harvest is now and has always been the sole domain of the iwi, this sets it apart from prevailing settler society narratives whereby indigenous people usually lose out. The article also shows how the harvest did and continues to contribute to Kāi Tahu tribal identity. The author is both Kāi Tahu and an active participant in the tītī harvest as well as a post-graduate history student. This enables him to offer both a unique reading of the archives relating to the harvest as well as access to oral histories and early photographs associated with it.     

The man behind the syndrome: Argyll Robertson,Scotland's ambassador extraordinary in the realm of ophthalmology

Abstract

The aim of this study is to find out whether bromide was able to cause conversion of epilepsy to psychosis i.e., so‐called paradoxical normalization such as has been seen in treatment with modern antiepileptic drugs. Spontaneous conversion has been known for three hundred years. Locock introduced bromide in the treatment of epilepsy in 1857. Belgrave wrote in 1868 on its effect on epileptic attacks and concommitant insanity. In 1868 Holm observed reduction of the frequency of seizures at the same time as psychotic symptoms or just dysphoria. In 1875 Voisin described a dose‐dependent intoxication with psychosis and/or neurological signs. Stark in 1875 and Bannister in 1881 were the first to clearly describe the antagonism between epileptic seizures and psychotic symptoms, an antagonism or conversion described by many authors, both in cases with high and low dosage, and with and without intoxication. Thus, the title of this paper should be answered in the affirmative.

Bromide has been used as a sedative and has rarely caused intoxication. Thus the presence of epilepsy is not a condition for the development of bromide intoxication. A case with epilepsy and fatal massive bromide intoxication is reported. It is discussed whether the pathological findings give support to Wolf's hypothesis of latent epileptic activity in subcortical pathways during “normalization”;.     

What's in a Name? The Practice and Politics of Classifying Māori Textiles

Abstract

Textiles form an important part of Māori culture, of interest to Europeans since contact with New Zealand in 1642. The need to describe Māori textiles in English has determined the terminology chosen to describe them, and also affected understandings of Māori weaving. Ethnographic observation and recording of Māori textile production by European non-weavers, inaccurate translation of Māori words, as well as incorrect use of terms have all contributed to difficulties in understanding Māori textile structures. The development of current terminology for describing Māori textiles is discussed, highlighting how it arises as a result of temporal, cultural and political factors, and the consequent importance of names. The values implicit in names given to Māori textiles then affect knowledge, scholarship and communication of their attributes. One Māori textile form, rāranga, illustrates how basing classification on structure alone could clarify understanding, remove implicit value judgements, and enable accurate communication of the properties of artefacts.