Diaspora and nostalgia: travelling Jewish tales in the Mediterranean

The article addresses narratives that tell of a member of the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel who comes to the rescue of a Jewish community. The tales were documented at the Israel Folktale Archives, in the second half of the twentieth century, and were told by informants from Morocco and Greece. While it is probably impossible to trace the exact routes of these “cultural possessions”, around and across the Mediterranean, the texts nevertheless provide a glimpse into the ways in which a network of Jewish communities shared a meta-narrative while adapting it to their own regional contexts. Although these tales are quintessentially diasporic, they also provided a platform for negotiating post-exilic identities in the new Israeli national context.     

Memory,Identity and Aspiration: Early Modern Jewish Maps of the Promised Land

In the sixteenth century Jews began to produce maps showing the Exodus to the Promised Land. My aim in this article is to show that, through unique compositions of written biblical references and pictured symbolism (both Jewish and Christian), maps such as the Mantua map (1560s) and, a century later, the Amsterdam Haggadah [Passover] map (1695) were a means of constructing Jewish cultural memory and identity in the Diaspora and fostering aspiration for a second salvation through a return to Zion. I also explore the Jewish approach towards the biblical land as this was reflected in the maps.     

黑水靺鞨的装饰品及渊源

黑水靺鞨装饰品体系由A系、B系与C系组成.A系具有土著特色,B系来源于唐文化,C系来源于突厥文化.黑水靺鞨装饰品从一个侧面反映了黑水靺鞨文化的多元性.     

“Special Forces”: A Stereotype of Benjaminite Soldiers in the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles

This article explores one point of contrast between the characterizations of Benjamin-Judah relations in the DtrH and Chronicles. The argument is that the Deuteronomist offers a stereotype of Benjaminite “special forces,” which the Chronicler then co-opts in service of his own agenda. The remarkable aspect of this cooption is that the Chronicler does not retain or adapt any of the Deuteronomistic material that contributes to this Benjaminite stereotype, only the stereotype itself—i.e., the stereotype only manifests itself in the Sondergut material. The article suggests that the Chronicler repurposes the stereotype in service of a conciliatory agenda: the reincorporation of wealthy Benjaminites into the Jerusalem temple’s sphere of influence.

The irony of “Benjaminite” left-handedness is not a new observation; this essay suggests that they should be linked to the motif of “skill with long-distance weapons.” The two motifs are linked in three ways: 1) in practice, they represent a deviation from “regular” hand-to-hand warfare; 2) they overlap within the narratives; and 3) both are specifically linked to Benjaminites—left-handedness by the irony of the name, and long-distance weaponry by the fact that Benjaminites are characterized uniquely among the tribes by that skill (i.e., whenever Benjaminites are noted in a tribal list as having skill with the sling or bow, they are the only tribe that possesses that skill).     

赋役制度与政区边界——基于明清湘鄂西地区的考察

在湘鄂西地区,从明初至清雍正年间,土司、卫所等特殊形式的政区与经制州县政区在地理空间上都是彼此毗邻乃至交错的。不同类型的政区意味着不同的赋役制度与管理方式,在土司、卫所与州县势力彼此消长的背景下,更导致了种种土地纠纷与赋役规避问题。清雍正间,通过改卫归流与改土归流,三者之间的土地与赋役纠纷随着卫所、土司的取消与州县政区主体地位的确立而逐渐消弭。     

明代蒙古部落大批入据青海考论

本文考证明代蒙古部落大批入据青海这一纷乱、复杂的历史过程,深入分析多方面矛盾交织的内、外因,对厘定明代中后期这一影响巨大的西北边疆少数民族迁徙事件的历史真相有重要史学价值,同时对当代处理民族关系问题和民族宗教问题也有一定借鉴意义。     

The Jewish Communities of Central Asia in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

When the Jews first settled in Central Asia is uncertain, but circumstantial evidence clearly indicates that this happened at least two and a half thousand years ago. In the first millennium AD, the Jews lived only in cities no farther than 750?km east of the Caspian sea (in the eighth–eleventh centuries the sea was called Khazarian). Only later did they migrate to the central part of the region, to cities like Samarkand and Bukhara. It is possible that Jews from Khazaria joined them, since they already had tight trade connections with Central Asia and China. There is no trace of evidence regarding the existence of Jews in the entirety of Central Asia in the early sixteenth century. At the very end of the sixteenth century Bukhara became the new ethnoreligious center of the Jews in that region. In the first half of the nineteenth century, thanks to European travelers visiting Central Asia at that time, the term “Bukharan Jews” was assigned to this sub-ethnic Jewish group. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary source materials, this article aims to prove that the presence of Jews in Central Asia was not continuous, and therefore the modern Bukharan Jews are not descendants of the first Jewish settlers there. It also attempts to determine where Central Asia’s first Jewish population disappeared to.     

商王朝东征与商夷关系

商王朝东征始自中商仲丁时期,此后直至商末,商王朝持续对东方夷族用兵。商王朝东征对商代的历史和商夷关系产生了重大影响,一是推动夷族商化,二是商夷之间长期对峙,并导致夷族内部的分化。中商时期商王朝东征是为了转移内部矛盾并掠夺资源,晚商时期几次大规模的东征是征伐不服于商王朝的以人方为代表的东夷族。     

The Political Art of Patience: Adivasi Resistance in India

Abstract: This article documents the emergence of the Denotified Rights Action Group (DNG‐RAG), a national social movement orchestrated to assert the citizenship rights of adivasi (indigenous) populations in India. It assesses the movement's efforts to engage the central Indian government in meaningful dialogue to accommodate the inclusion of marginalized adivasis in the democratic politics of the nation. In doing so, the DNT‐RAG reasserts the primacy of the Indian state as the principal engine driving the project of nation building, and as such, the site that activists target to further an agenda of equitable development and democratic rights for those known as India's Denotified Tribes.     

明代蒙古部落大批人据青海考论

本文考证明代蒙古部落大批入据青海这一纷乱、复杂的历史过程,深入分析多方面矛盾交织的内、外因,对厘定明代中后期这一影响巨大的西北边疆少数民族迁徙事件的历史真相有重要史学价值,同时对当代处理民族关系问题和民族宗教问题也有一定借鉴意义。