Ulama in Islamic Law‐Making and Adjudication in Contemporary Egypt

The article examines the legislative and judicial tasks of Islamic jurists and how they carried it out in constitutional or general legal structure. While the Pakistani experiment was inspired by the Iranian model of jurists' involvement in legislatures, Egypt took a different path by not recognizing any official role for Islamic jurists with ambiguous recognition of Islamic jurisprudence. The legislative role could take the form of incorporating Islamic jurists into the legislature, establishing a committee partially made up of Islamic jurists, or handing over some legislative task to an Islamic jurisprudential institution. Despite the fact that Islamization was intended to respond to the people's requests, it employed autocratic and authoritarian mechanisms. The project attempted to replace the typical class of socially recognized jurists with appointed committees entrusted with Islamic codification. The experiment was challenged for its operation and its Islamicity but never introduced Shari'a courts or Islamic clerical legislation.     

The Life of the Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Beyond the esoteric deliberations of Islamic jurists and their exegesis of criminal and private law doctrines, Iranian law lives a life of its own. It is a life of routine practices of judges, court clerks, lawyers and clients, each of whom is striving to turn the law to their own advantage. It is also a life of contested legality, a relentless struggle over the right to determine the law in a juridical field which is infused with strife and hostility. These conflicts are reproduced daily as two competing conceptions of law, and their corresponding perceptions of legality clash in pursuit of justice. The Iranian judiciary’s concept of law, its reconstruction of Islamic jurisprudence and methods of dispensing justice, which on the surface are reminiscent of Max Weber’s “qādi-justice,” collide with the legal profession’s formal rational understanding thereof. However, Iranian judges are not Weberian qādis, and the legal profession is not a homogenous group of attorneys driven by a collective commitment to the rule of law. To understand their conflict, we need to explore the mundane workings of the legal system in the context of the transformation of Iranian society and the unresolved disputes over the direction of its modernity.     

The reader of confession in María Zambrano

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is an attempt to understand the concept of ‘confession’ as a literary genre in the works of Spanish philosopher María Zambrano. Firstly, we will try to understand confession within Zambrano's most relevant philosophical concepts, in particular her study La confesión: género literario y método [Confession. Literary Genre and Method]. Secondly, we will offer reinterpretation to confession in dialogue with theories of Reception by Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss, and other authors like St. Agustin, Rosa Chacel, Mikhail Bakhtin, Miguel de Unamuno and Michel Foucault. Finally we will highlight the performative aspect of confession as something that is truly relevant to Zambrano’s theory. Zambrano understands confession as a method that can bring people's experiences closer to knowledge, and therefore a method that can change life. In this context, we propose that the reader of confession plays a fundamental role in understanding Zambrano’s conception.     

Carta di cabotaggio del Mare Adriatico (1822–1824): A Turning-Point in the Development of Adriatic Maritime Cartography

After almost five centuries of development in nautical charts depicting the Adriatic Sea, a systematic, complete hydrographic survey was carried out that resulted in the first modern nautical chart of the area. The survey, a coordinated operation undertaken jointly by Austrian, Neapolitan and British experts in 1818–1819, was the first scientific activity in the Adriatic region to be based on international cooperation. Until then, the gathering, processing and presentation of geographical data on Adriatic nautical charts were neither systematic nor institutionalized activities, so those charts could not serve as reliable, safe sources of different types of information for seafarers and others for whom spatial relations in coastal, island and sea regions were of primary importance. Given the quality and quantity of hydrographical and geographical content presented in the Carta di cabotaggio del Mare Adriatico (Coasting Chart of the Adriatic Sea), it immediately became an essential source of spatial information.     

Moulds,Graminhos and Ribbands: a pilot study of the construction of saveiros in Valença and the Baía de Todos os Santos area,Brazil

The survival of late medieval Mediterranean techniques to conceive and build ships and boats in Brazil was noted by John Patrick Sarsfield in the 1980s, but his study of the Valença shipwrights was interrupted by his untimely death in 1990. This paper summarizes Sarsfield's account of these shipbuilding techniques, examines that published by Lev Smarcevski (1996), and provides some preliminary results of the pilot stage of a project to further research traditional shipbuilding in Valença and the Baía de Todos os Santos region.     

Palaeolithic engravings and sedimentary environments in the Côa River Valley (Portugal): implications for the detection,interpretation and dating of open-air rock art

The pre-Magdalenian phase of the Côa River Valley open-air rock art is mostly distributed at the boundary between the rocky valley slopes and the floodplain that correspond to the most favourable geomorphological setting for the preservation of pecked and deeply superposed engravings of the most famous artistic phase of the area. The natural vertical panels of the engraved art located at this geomorphological interface have suffered weathering during two cold events of the Lateglacial. They were buried by several colluvial and alluvial deposits. The reconstruction of the sedimentary and archaeological context of the CôaRiver Valley engraving permits a better assessment of the preservation processes and interpretation of Palaeolithic open-air rock art.     

近20年来中国学界的原子弹轰炸及其相关问题研究

80年代以来,我国学术界对原子弹轰炸及其相关问题的研究呈现出十分活跃的局面,并取得了可喜的成果。研究主要集中在美国使用原子弹的原因和动机、原子弹轰炸的历史作用、原子弹轰炸的后果和影响、原子弹轰炸的正当性问题以及关于日本败降的决定因素等问题上。     

东汉士人群体自觉意识形成原因考察

中国古代士人的群体自觉意识,萌芽于春秋战国时期,全面兴起于东汉中后期。其兴起之原因,一是土地私有化的完成,地主庄园经济的出现,尤其是东汉士人对劳动态度的改变,使士人生存方式发生重大变化,使其在经济上有了独立性,为其人格独立打下了物质基础;二是东汉统治者对士人尤其是对归隐士人的相对宽容,为士人自觉意识的培养提供了宽松的环境;三是士人队伍的扩大,尤其是中央官学规模的扩大和校舍的扩充,为士人个体自觉意识转化为群体意识提供了中心场所;四是东汉中后期宦官外戚专权,又为士人群体自觉意识的激发和张扬提供了外部条件。     

织绣文物中的寿字装饰

我国于汉代已经在织锦的铭文中使用寿字.到明清时期,寿字与象征长寿的仙桃、菊花、仙鹤及寓意连绵万代的葫芦、字和寓意喜庆幸福的灯笼、蝙蝠等组成吉祥图案。寿宇的字体也随着时代的发展而不断丰富。本文按时代顺序将寿字的字形排列梳理,不仅可供读者了解其丰富的文化内涵.而且根据寿宇的字形变化.可作为判断织绣文物年代的一种依据。