Rituals of Commemoration,Rituals of Self-Invention: Safavid Religious Colleges and the Collective Memory of the Shi‘a

Shi‘ism, perhaps more than any other current of Islam, places emphasis on numerous forms of commemorative culture. Throughout the history of Shi‘ism, commemorative rituals have provided a comprehensive framework for interpreting a wide array of historical encounters between the Shi‘a and the dominant Sunni culture, thereby allowing Shi‘ism to construct itself as a community of learning and remembering. This self-construction required both a high degree of institutionalization as well as specialists to preserve the religious identity of the Shi‘a and to transmit religious knowledge to the next generation. Madrasas (Islamic institutions of higher learning) as well as the shrines of the Shi‘i Imams and their progeny served as the best institutions to achieve these goals. This paper argues that Safavid madrasas were not only centers for disseminating religious knowledge and preserving Shi'a intellectual heritage. They also rearticulated and contemporized the community's past through the active memorializing of pivotal events in the religious calendar of the Shi‘a. More specifically, the paper delineates the nature and scope of religious rituals and rites carried out in the Madrasa-ye Sultānī and a number of other madrasa-mosque complexes of Safavid Isfahan in order to explore the process by which the Shi‘i past was contextualized or contemporized as salient to suit the needs of Safavid power and society.     

The 13th century polynesian colonization of Hawai’i Island

We assess 926 radiocarbon dates from Hawai’i Island, the largest assemblage of dates compiled from a single island in Oceania. Based on a classificatory approach that arranges the dates based on their reliability, accuracy, and precision, our results indicate that the most reliable estimate for the initial Polynesian colonization of Hawai’i Island is AD 1220–1261, ∼250 to 450 years later than the current consensus. This conclusion is strikingly convergent with recent estimates for the colonization of remote East Polynesia. Our analysis highlights the need for wood charcoal identification to insure selection of short-lived plants/plant parts for radiocarbon dating, and that a reliance on dating unidentified wood charcoal is a waste of resources that only serves to retard progress in refining the settlement chronology of Hawai’i Island and other locations.     

Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence analysis of Haleakalā basalt adze quarry materials, Maui, Hawai‘i

One of Hawai‘i’s major prehistoric basalt adze quarries (SIHP 50-50-11-2510) is located in the summit region of Haleakalā, Maui. Situated at approximately 2750 m above sea level (9000 ft), the quarry shares a similar high-altitude setting with the Mauna Kea adze quarry on Hawai‘i Island. Adding to a growing Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) database for the Hawaiian Islands, we present the results from 255 geological and archaeological lithic samples from the Haleakalā quarry site. We also briefly discuss why this non-destructive XRF technique is particularly applicable in the Hawaiian cultural context.     

Cartography and Urban Planning: The City Plan of Barcelona by Miquel Garriga i Roca (1856–1862)

ABSTRACT

Due to the passing of Spanish laws that promoted the creation of urban cartography and the need to redevelop an overcrowded city, the Barcelona City Council commissioned the architect Miquel Garriga i Roca in 1856 to create a municipal plan. During the following six years he compiled what is known as the Plan of Barcelona, a collection of cartographical documents that depicts with unprecedented levels of detail how Barcelona appeared right after the demolition of the city walls. This paper explains how and why the maps were commissioned, how they were made, and the resultant cartographical output.     

Unstrategic essentialism: material culture and Hawaiian articulations of indigeneity

Often rendered synonymous with deep historical attachments to particular landscapes, indigenous identities are inseparable from questions of geography. The meeting ground of place and nativeness is fecund with politics. All over the world, claims of indigeneity have become indispensable in struggles over territory, natural resources, and basic political rights in place. This article focuses on both a handful of cases from the secondary literature and empirical research on Hawai′i's Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail. It discusses essentialist expressions of indigeneity around the preservation and interpretation of Native Hawaiian material culture. Engaging with the literature on articulation theory and indigeneity, it suggests that these essentialisms emerge unintentionally rather than strategically. Its central claim is that the materiality of heritage objects, artifacts, sites, and landscapes plays an unnoticed role in shaping discourses around indigenous identity. The article concludes by suggesting that such unstrategic essentialisms pose real political risks for Native Hawaiians and offer suggestions for a more intentional engagement with the essentializing properties of indigenous material culture.     

‘Brothel of the Pacific’: Syphilis and the Urban Regulation of Laikini Wahine in Honolulu, 1855–75

ABSTRACT

By 1860, Hawai‘i’s Indigenous population had declined by 75 per cent when compared to its estimated pre-contact level. Legislators and physicians attributed this crisis to the seasonal migration of Hawaiian prostitutes. After contracting syphilis from sailors in Honolulu, these women returned to their Native villages where they unwittingly spread the disease. Drawing on legislation, health reports, and newspapers, this article underscores the urban-rural nature of Hawai‘i’s syphilis epidemic by analyzing the 1860 Act to Mitigate the Evils and Diseases Arising from Prostitution (ATM). The law compelled prostitutes to enlist on a government registry, undergo medical inspections, and submit to treatment if infected. Arresting depopulation, adherents argued, hinged on the government’s ability to police Indigenous women within a conspicuous urban environment. In designing and enacting the ATM, legislators and physicians characterized Honolulu as a syphilitic breeding ground that catalyzed Indigenous depopulation by sheltering transient carriers of this highly gendered disease.     

MANUSCRIPT XXXIV: ‘The feelings of friendship which We have always entertained’: Fragments of Tongan–Hawaiian Relations, 1880–8

ABSTRACT

After the Hawaiian Kingdom had played an important part as a model for Tonga's transition to a modern constitutional monarchy from the 1850s to 1870s, Tonga's government attempted to reconnect with Hawai‘i in the 1880s by suggesting a friendship treaty between the two kingdoms but then failed to follow through, despite Hawaiian enthusiasm for the project. Correspondence in the Hawai‘i State Archives, hitherto unacknowledged by historians, documents these late 19th-century fragments of Hawaiian–Tongan relations.