Window opening effects on structural behavior of historical masonry Fatih Mosque

Structural walls of old historical structures are either blind or have openings for functional requirements. It is well known that in and out of plane responses of structural walls are affected by the size, locations, and arrangements of such openings. The purpose of this investigation is to study the window opening effects on static and seismic behaviors of historical masonry old mosques. Fatih Mosque, which was converted from a church, constructed in 914 in Trabzon, Turkey, is selected for this purpose. The mosque is being restored. Structural exterior walls of the mosque were made using stone and mortar materials. When the plaster on the walls was removed during the restoration, 12 window openings were found as blind on the exterior structural walls of the mosque. Within the scope of restoration works, it is aimed to open such blind windows. In order to investigate the effects of the window openings on the structural behavior of the mosque, 3D solid and finite elements models of the mosque with and without window openings are initially developed. The experimental dynamic characteristics such as frequency, damping ratio, and mode shapes of the current situation of the mosque, where some windows openings are blind, are determined using Ambient Vibration Testing. Then, the finite element model of the current situation of the mosque is updated using the experimental dynamic characteristics. The static and seismic time history analyses of the updated finite element model with and without window openings are carried out. Structural behaviors of the mosque with and without window openings are compared considering displacement and stress propagations.     

In the Shadow of the Tower: Spatial proximity to mosques,visible diversity,and support for the radical right

Growth in racial, ethnic, and religious minority populations in western societies has coincided with the growing success of nativist and radical right political parties. A leading target for nativist politicians has been Islamic religious symbols, particularly mosques. But does the presence of mosques within citizens’ milieux influence their political behaviour? To explore this question, we draw on longitudinal survey data from the Netherlands augmented by a web-scraped list of Dutch mosques to investigate the influence of local context – both architectural context in the form of spatial proximity to mosques and local demographic context in the form of visible diversity – on support for the Party for Freedom (PVV), a radical right, nativist political party. Our analyses reveal that while proximity to a mosque increases support for the radical right, proximity to a mosque with a minaret exerts a stronger effect. Also, closer proximity to a mosque with a minaret and greater local diversity amplify the differences in party support between the left and right. These findings allow us to better understand the impact of symbolic cultural threat on voting for nativist parties.     

A mosque event: the opening of a purpose-built mosque in Copenhagen

This paper explores the opening of a purpose-built mosque in Copenhagen, treating it as a case of cross-cultural encounters in urban public space. The encounters explored, then, take a specific form; they are mediated through the architecture and materiality of the mosque and the symbolic signs and public imaginations attached to it. And they are connected to a specific event – the opening of the mosque. In the first part, a conceptual framework is presented bringing together literature on three notions: encounters, visibility and the event. Following this, the paper explores the opening event, the public debate that surrounds it, the process leading up to it and some reactions in the months that followed. The paper concludes by showing how the opening event expresses several paradoxes. The controversies over the visibility of Islam in public space push stereotypical imaginations and Islamophobic feelings to the extremes. At the same time, however, they bring together different groups in unprecedented ways and create new constellations over political, religious and cultural boundaries.     

New evidence for the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles from Fatih Camii, Istanbul

The Church of the Holy Apostles was one of the most important buildings in Byzantine Constantinople. The mausolea of Constantine the Great (the main imperial burial place until the eleventh century) and of Justinian I were in the complex surrounding this vast cruciform church. Nothing of this complex appeared to have survived its demolition to clear the site of the Ottoman mosque complex of Fatih Camii after 1461. Fieldwork in 2001 recorded walls pre–dating the fifteenth–century phase of the mosque complex, still standing above ground level and apparently including a large rectilinear structure. This is identified as the Church of the Holy Apostles and an adjacent enclosure may be that containing the mausoleum of Constantine the Great. The reconstructed church plan resembles those of St John of Ephesus and St Mark's (San Marco), Venice – churches known to have been modelled on the Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople.     

The political geographies of religious sites in Moscow’s neighborhoods

Abstract

This paper addresses the spatial politics of Russia’s increased religiosity in Moscow. It analyzes the rights of minority Muslim communities within the context of increased political support for expressions of Russian Orthodoxy in Moscow’s public space. Moscow’s Russian Orthodox and Muslim religious leaders claim that their communities have a lack of religious infrastructure, with one church per 35,000 residents and one mosque per three million residents, respectively. The Russian Orthodox Church has been more successful than Muslim organizations at expanding their presence in Moscow’s neighborhoods. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, religious spaces are examined as sites of dissent as well as participatory, active citizenship at three different sites in Moscow. Protests over Russian Orthodox Church construction in one neighborhood are contrasted with the protests over mosque construction in two neighborhoods. This paper provides insights into how civil society and religious groups have increased their public presence in Moscow and shows the unequal access that different groups have to public space in that city.     

The Early Modern Sensorium: The Rosary in Seventeenth-Century Rome†

My purpose in this article is to explore the relationship between emotion and the senses in relation to the rosary and rosary confraternities in seventeenth-century Rome, with a particular emphasis on the experience of women.The rosary is well suited to an approach grounded in sensory methodology, as it is defined both as a prayer and as an object. As a object it was always kept close to the body. Praying the rosary was not only tactile (each bead was handled during prayer) but also auditory, as the prayer was said aloud. Scented rosaries were also common, adding an olfactory component to the ritual. The sense of sight was also important: as confraternities of the rosary obtained their own chapels, large altarpieces of the Madonna of the Rosary were commissioned as visual aids to prayer. Artists incorporated haptic and olfactory prompts into these images, knowing that the audience would be praying in front of them. The rosary, therefore, constituted a ‘sensorium’, defined here as the intertwining and interdependence of multiple sense modalities.The complex interaction in the rosary between prayer, bead and the scenes from the mysteries, developed gradually from older tradition of prayer beads, which is summarised here.     

“Like the father's home:” perceived state of the Turkish-Sunni community in Germany

Focusing on a mosque organization, the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), this paper engages with the Turkish-Sunni diaspora's complex perception of the ‘state’ in Germany. DITIB is a Sunni-Islam based mosque organization that oversees over 900 mosques across Germany. However, the Turkish-Sunni diaspora does not consider DITIB mosques as simply religious or cultural spaces but instead attributes a highly complex quasi-stateness to it. My field research between 2016 and 2018 reveals that for this community, DITIB reflects an intimate familial version of the Turkish state in Germany. While DITIB has significant connections to the state in Turkey, based on my findings I argue that these connections alone do not explain why the diaspora perceive DITIB like a state. Rather, DITIB's perceived stateness has been constructed through a historical process that brings to the fore diasporic experiences, feelings, and memories centered at the ethnoreligious spaces of mosques. Thus, this research produces new questions for, and theoretical approaches to geographies of states, extending this literature's emphasis on everyday and intimate perspectives. I build on feminist geopolitics and diaspora studies to contribute to this scholarship by analyzing the role of feelings and memories in forming perceptions of the state. I explain how spaces of perceived states become fluid, cross the borders of officially defined national territories, and exceed the classical spaces and embodiment of states. Instead, spaces like mosques come to be perceived like a state through their association with care, unity, and a home. This analysis points to the emotional and memory-based production of what is perceived as a state and how those perceptions are formed.     

新疆喀什艾提尕尔清真寺保护探讨

新疆喀什艾提尕尔清真寺历史悠久,名闻遐迩。但由于自然和人为因素的影响,该清真寺存在着漏雨、裂隙等多种病害。已经对建筑的安全造成威胁。经过对建筑群的现场勘察,设计人员在有针对性地制定了保护修缮措施。通过保护工程的实施,喀什艾提尕尔清真寺各单体建筑得到了合理加固、修缮,原有病害得以控制,建筑安全隐患消除。清真寺保护环境得到了改善。     

Turkish–Dutch mosques and the formation of moral subjects

This article explores how mosque spaces become everyday sites of ethno-religious subjectivation for immigrants and citizens originating from Turkey in the Netherlands. I argue that the symbolic and material constructions of mosques as simultaneously moral and moralizing spaces undergird the production of ethno-religious subjectivities through mosque-centered everyday practices. The articulation of Muslimness to Turkishness at mosques in culturally specific and gendered ways is crucial for the formation of a particular modality of the Turkish–Dutch self as moral subject. The ensuing incorporation of practices and activities that are deemed ‘secular,’ i.e. ‘cultural’ or ‘recreational’ to mosque services engenders a creative tension between the sacred and profane conceptions of mosque space. Mosque administrators and their congregations concur that recreational activities and quotidian accessibility to mosques are essential to the long term survival of Turkish–Dutch alterity, for mosques are spaces where children and youth are exposed to the performances of Turkish-Islamic morality and subjected to collective social control. However, the diversification of mosque services does not always sit comfortably with the meaning and use of mosques as sacred sites proper within a secularized framework. A creative tension between mosques as serene and pure spaces of the sacred and mosques as impure and immoral spaces of the everyday arises, as a result.     

Mission Impossible: "Nonsectarian" Prayer in the Military Chaplaincy

Abstract

Recent media-saturated events such as then-Navy Chaplain Klingenschmitt's hunger strike in front of the White House, an ultimately unsuccessful class-action lawsuit against the Navy that alleged discrimination against evangelical Christians, and formal charges of religious bias at the US Air Force Academy have renewed concerns about the content of chaplain-led public prayers in ostensibly secular contexts. Some have accordingly touted the advantages of offering "nonsectarian" prayer in command-hosted settings, where attendance by service personnel is mandatory in a real or de facto sense. This paper argues that this push toward nonsectarian prayer ultimately does a disservice to the chaplains themselves and the religious communities from whence they come, whether civic prayer is interpreted as an instance of "ceremonial deism" or a rite of civil religion. But the solution it offers is not for public prayers to become more religiously particular, but for military commanders to cease requesting that chaplains lead public prayer of any kind in such settings.     

A Theory of Vernacular Rhetoric: The Case of the “Sinner's Prayer” Online

This paper seeks to rigorously define and illustrate the analytic category of “vernacular rhetoric” through an examination of the “Sinner's Prayer” as it appears on an amateur web page. In the online environment, this invitation to a traditional prayer performance seems to be a strategy for converting non-Christians. Through the application of the concept of vernacular rhetoric, however, it becomes clear that the deployment of the prayer can also function as an invitation for the already-converted to “testify” to their faith. In this way, the apparently evangelic prayer form also functions as an invitation for the already-converted to perform previously held values. By applying the concept of vernacular rhetoric to this example of online discourse, its value as an analytic category becomes clear because it can address the performative nature of World Wide Web-based documents.     

Seismic Load Capacity of Historical Masonry Mosques by Rigid Body Kinetics

ABSTRACT

Kinetic analysis methods based on linear and nonlinear rigid body dynamics are used to evaluate earthquake safety of masonry structures. In this study, the formulas used to calculate the in-plane and out-of-plane load capacities of masonry load-bearing walls were evaluated and a procedure based on rigid body mechanism was proposed to calculate the out-of-plane load capacities of the walls of Ottoman period masonry mosques. New aspects of the method with respect to existing formulations is the inclusion of dynamic axial load and definition of the collapse limit spectral acceleration on the overturning wall. The calculated capacities of the mosque and individual walls were compared with the results of nonlinear pushover analysis and time history analyses performed under 1.0 and 0.5 scaled forms of nine different 3-component ground motion records. It was displayed that the seismic load capacity estimated by the proposed method is very close to the values calculated by pushover and time history analyses. The method was developed on Lala Pasha Mosque, and the reliability and applicability of the proposed methodology is verified on a different historical masonry mosque in comparison to finite element analyses results.     

城市回族社区的地方性——基于开封东大寺回族社区地方依恋研究

作为中国城市化水平最高的少数民族,回族社区的地方性在城市化过程中受到严重挑战。论文以"地方依恋"为理论模型,以开封东大寺回族社区为典型案例,对城市回族社区的"地方性"进行深入解读。研究发现,由于围寺而居和强烈的回族认同感,城市回族社区的地方性特征主要受居住时间、文化程度、年龄大小和宗教信仰的深刻影响,地方依恋较深的地方主要在"寺市并存"或距离寺市都近的街道,内部空间上存在不同的宗教知识传承模式。这为丰富社区地理尺度的地方依恋理论和揭示回族社区人地关系机制提供了重要实证依据。     

紫禁城太和殿所供符板及其宗教思想研究

太和殿顶棚上东、西、南、北、中五个方向上分别供奉着五块符板,每块符板上镌刻了佛教常见的经咒(陀罗尼)、咒牌和宫宅神王尊名以及道教七十二镇宅灵符,反映出清代宫廷佛道合一、汉藏佛教交融现象的普遍存在。本文在对每块符板上各部分内容作详尽的分析之后发现,五块符板组成了一个完整的以祈寿、镇宅、护国佑民为主旨的供奉思想。     

Special Days of Worship and National Religion in the Australian Colonies, 1790–c. 1914

Throughout the period between 1790 and 1914 the governments of the Australian colonies asked their populations to suspend work and amusements and join in collective acts of prayer. Australia’s special days of prayer have much historical significance and deserve more scholarly attention. They had an enduring popularity, and they were rare moments when a multi-faith and multi-ethnic community joined together to worship for a common cause. This article builds on recent work on state prayers in Britain by considering what the colonial tradition of special worship can tell us about community attachments in nineteenth-century Australia. ‘Fast days’ and ‘days of thanksgiving’ had both an imperial and a regional character. A small number of the Australian days were for imperial events (notably wars and royal occasions) that were observed on an empire-wide scale. The great majority, such as the numerous days of fasting and humiliation that were called during periods of drought, were for regional happenings and were appointed by colonial authorities. The article argues that the different types of prayer day map on to the various ways that contemporaries envisaged ‘Greater Britain’ and the ‘British world’. Prayer days for royal events helped the empire’s inhabitants to regard themselves as imperial Britons. Meanwhile, days appointed locally by colonial governments point to the strength of regional attachments. Colonists developed a sense that providence treated them differently from British communities elsewhere, and this sense of ‘national providence’ could underpin a sense of colonial difference—even a colonial nationalism. Days of prayer suggested that Greater Britain was a composite of separate communities and nationalities, but the regional feelings they encouraged could still sit comfortably with attachments to an imperial community defined by commonalities of race, religion and interest.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 1. February 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 1 Front cover ALTERNATIVE FACTS In response to discourses of alternative facts, denials of climate science and the undermining of science in the public sphere, on 22 April 2017, protestors marched for science in cities across the United States. In this image of the San Francisco march, a protestor holds a sign proclaiming ‘science is universal’. While some protestors' slogans assumed the objectivity of science and facts, others asserted the importance of diversity, equality and inclusion in science. Scholars of science and technology studies have long deconstructed claims of universality, but recently some have argued that the authority of science and facts must be reclaimed. Bruno Latour emphasizes that it is untenable to talk about scientific facts as though their rightness alone will be persuasive. Analyses of human rights and political violence disclose how narratives and propaganda shape not just individual attitudes but also the functioning of institutions. Contexts of gaslighting, repetition, distraction and undermining facts require different strategies for understanding how institutions and societies are perpetrating and perpetuating injustices. In this issue, Drexler's article develops a framework of multidimensional and intersectional justice for analyzing the layered, compounded, dynamic forms of power and inequality that contribute to particular injustices. Understanding justice as multidimensional and intersectional is part of a struggle from which new forms of knowledge and truth can emerge. Back cover ‘NEW SCHISM’ IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY? A supplicatory prayer service (Moleben) to Saint Emperor Nikolay II in an Orthodox church in the Russian Federation. On the commemoration day of his death, believers line up to venerate large icons of the tsar installed in the church, as in many other churches of the ‘Russian world’. When kissing the holy icons and listening to the words of prayer, they participate in a theopolitical performance of belonging to a community of co-believers and compatriots, of people who share the same faith and the same nation, an enactment of the model ‘one state, one church’ prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy. What happens, however, when state borders change, when new sovereign states emerge or become stronger? Is it possible for Orthodox Christians to practise their faith outside the national-territorial logic? Since the summer of 2018, Jeanne Kormina and Vlad Naumescu have been observing a rapidly developing cold war within Orthodox Christianity. This war between different claims for sovereignty and jurisdiction over ‘canonical territories’ has followed clear logics of religious nationalism and imperialism. In this conflict, the less privileged — ordinary believers and local religious communities — have suffered most. In this issue, Kormina and Naumescu analyze the recent ‘schism’ in Eastern Orthodoxy to show how religion and politics are strongly intertwined in disputes over territory and sovereignty. Drawing a parallel between the post-socialist revival of religion in Ukraine and the current mobilization on the ground, they show how the theopolitics of ‘communion’ and ‘canonical territory’ shape the fate of people, churches and states.     

The rise and ruin of a medieval port town: A reconsideration of the development of Julfar

Julfar was a major port town of the Persian Gulf during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries AD. A possession of the Hormuzi empire, it was a lucrative source of taxes and pearls, and a port of trade for northern Oman, tapping into maritime trading networks connecting the Middle East with Africa, India, Southeast Asia and China. The site is found north of modern Ras Al-Khaimah, UAE. Julfar Al-Nudud was previously considered to be a late suburb of an urban core, Julfar Al-Mataf, and is located on a creek opposite the latter. However, excavations in 2010 indicated that Al-Nudud was part of the original urban core, which had grown up on either side of the creek. Moreover, re-examination of previous work in Al-Mataf, where a large mosque and fortification were excavated (by British and French teams), shows that the two areas followed different trajectories. Significant occupation in Al-Nudud and southern Al-Mataf (revealed by previous Japanese excavations) ended before the start of the sixteenth century, while use of the mosque and fort in central Al-Mataf continued into the seventeenth century, albeit discontinuously. A revised concordance of the phases derived from the work of various archaeological teams is therefore proposed.     

Nationalism,Reform Judaism and the Hebrew Prayer Book

ABSTRACT. The Hebrew prayer book (siddur), the oldest of which dates from the ninth century, frequently expresses Jewish chosenness and hopes for the gathering of the exiles and the return to the Land of Israel. In nineteenth‐century German Reform prayer books, such references to Jewish nationalism were altered or eliminated. In an age of growing European nationalism, this attempt to ‘de‐nationalise’ Jewish identity was virtually unique. Responding to accusations that Jewish citizenship in the modern nation‐state was incompatible with Judaism, Reform rabbis, who were engaged in the struggle for Jewish emancipation, claimed that patriotic loyalty to the German fatherland must supersede Jewish national identity. This article discusses the offending nationalist content of the siddur and the historical context in which it was suppressed. It concludes that the German reformers, by drawing attention to the nationalist potential of traditional Judaism, indirectly prepared the way for the rise of Jewish nationalism in reaction to racial anti‐Semitism in the late nineteenth century.     

The Heartbreak of the Place: Space,Religion and Politics in Post‐9/11 Mosque Controversies

In recent years, there have been a series of public controversies related to construction of Islamic worship spaces in the U.S. One of these controversies, surrounding a proposal for an Islamic community center in New York City known as Park51, dominated media coverage for several weeks in the summer of 2010 and is one of several high‐profile mosque‐building debates in the U.S. Another contentious debate occurred in the community of Temecula, Calif. These controversies represent the still‐uncertain place Islam holds in the American public sphere. Using framing theory, this article considers the ways in which Islam is portrayed in news media content by political actors and the potential consequences of such framing.     

Commodities and the Power of Prayer: Pentecostalist Attitudes Towards Consumption in Contemporary Ghana

This article addresses the phenomenal success of pentecostalism, a global religious movement par excellence, throughout postcolonial Africa. Investigating pentecostalist views of and attitudes towards commodities in southern Ghana, the article shows that pentecostalists represent the modern global economy as enchanted and themselves as agents of disenchantment: only through prayer may commodities cease to act as ‘fetishes’ which threaten the personal integrity and identity of their owners. Pentecostalism creates modern consumers through a ritual of prayer, which helps them handle globalization and control foreign commodities in such a way that they can be consumed without danger. Through prayer, commodities cease to possess their owners; the latter are rather enabled to possess the former. Pentecostalism engages in globalization by enabling its members to consume products from the global market and by offering its followers fixed orientation points and a well-delimited moral universe within globalization's unsettling flows.