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.     

Problematizing ‘Knowledge‐for‐Development’

This article argues that measures designed to improve the availability and accessibility of information as a key strategy to facilitate development have become ends in themselves, de‐linked from their potential to have an impact on Southern knowledge systems that may lead to improved development outcomes. The production and dissemination of ever‐greater volumes of information in response to concerns about the uneven availability of information, particularly for individuals and intermediaries based in the global South, are unable to address the persistent problem of the fragmentation of knowledge systems that result from knowledge for development (K4D) initiatives in which information and knowledge are treated as isolated entities. The article presents the findings of a study into the K4D practices of a network of women/gender information intermediaries. It reveals that attempts to strengthen Southern knowledge systems are forestalled by efforts that merely improve the supply of information rather than engaging with knowledge processes in their entirety, thus limiting their potential to promote improved development outcomes. Proxy measures of success are used that fail to challenge the typically neoliberal underpinnings of the dominant knowledge infrastructure. The author concludes that, if knowledge‐based development interventions are to be made more effective, K4D stakeholders need to find ways to engage not just with the supply but with the demand for information, as part of broader efforts to strengthen entire knowledge systems in ways that take account of concerns around hegemony.     

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.     

Being ‘there’: At the front line of the ‘European refugee crisis’ ‐ part 1

In the course of 2015, Skala Sykamnias, a fishing village and tourist idyll on the northern coast of Lesbos, by accident of its geographical location, has turned into the informal gate into Europe for more than 200.000 refugees. In this article the author analyses the massive flows of people and things that transverse his fieldwork site from different directions: the great diversity of actors enacting what are often dissonant ideals and strategies, the several theatres of operation and reception ‘structures’, both frontline and back stage, and the debates that revolve around humanitarian action in the region. The local community is falling apart whilst to the incoming it represents the gateway to freedom. It is becoming a mini theatre of conflicts that echoes wider debates on the political future of Europe.     

Fragments of an early Islamic Arabic papyrus from Khirbet Hamrā Ifdān

Excavations in 2013 at the site of Khirbet Hamrā Ifdān in the Faynān revealed several pieces of an Arabic papyrus, the first ever found in Jordan. Although the papyrus is poorly preserved, a detailed analysis of the fragments based on parallels have suggested that it dates to the late seventh/early–mid‐eighth century AD. This article discusses the papyrus fragments and places them within their papyrological and archaeological contexts.