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Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference
Drawing on a broad range of sources in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic this book offers a new interpretation of late Ottoman imperial rule in Yemen and situates the Ottoman Empire among competing imperial powers in the long nineteenth century.
Photography's Orientalism
The Middle East played a critical role in the development of photography as a new technology and an art form. Likewise, photography was instrumental in cultivating and maintaining Europe’s distinctively Orientalist vision of the Middle East. As new advances enhanced the versatility of the medium, nineteenth-century photographers were able to mass-produce images to incite and satisfy the demands of the region’s burgeoning tourist industry and the appetites of armchair travelers in Europe. In this way, the evolution of modern photography fueled an interest in visual contact with the rest of the world. Photography’s Orientalism offers the first in-depth cultural study of the works of European and non- European photographers active in the Middle East and India, focusing on the relationship between photographic, literary, and historical representations of this region and beyond. The essays explore the relationship between art and politics by considering the connection between the European presence there and aesthetic representations produced by traveling and resident photographers, thereby contributing to how the history of photography is understood.
Ritual, Media, and Conflict
Rituals can provoke or escalate conflict, but they can also mediate it and although conflict is a normal aspect of human life, mass media technologies are changing the dynamics of conflict and shaping strategies for deploying rituals. This collection of essays emerged from a two-year project based on collaboration between the Faculty of Religious Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and the Ritual Dynamics Collaborative Research Center at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. An interdisciplinary team of twenty-four scholars locates, describes, and explores cases in which media-driven rituals or ritually saturated media instigate, disseminate, or escalate conflict. Each multi-authored chapter is built around global and local examples of ritualized, mediatized conflict. The book's central question is: "When ritual and media interact (either by the mediatizing of ritual or by the ritualizing of media), how do the patterns of conflict change?"
The Sublime Post
A history of the postal system that once connected the Ottoman Empire Before the advent of steamships or the telegraph, the premier technology for long-distance communication was the horse-run relay system. Every empire had one--including the Ottoman Empire. In The Sublime Post, Choon Hwee Koh examines how the vast Ottoman postal system worked across three centuries by tracking the roles of eight small-scale actors--the Courier, the Tatar, Imperial Decrees, the Bookkeeper, the Postmaster, the Villager, Money, and the Horse. There are stories of price-gouging postmasters; of murdered couriers and their bereaved widows; of moonlighting officials transporting merchandise; of neighboring village...
Ritual and Narrative
Ritual and narrative are pivotal means of human meaning-making and of ordering experience, but the close interrelationship between them has not as yet been given the attention it deserves. How can models and categories from narrative theory benefit the study of ritual, and what can we gain from concepts of ritual studies in analysing narrative? This book brings together a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including literary studies, archaeology, biblical and religious studies, and political science. It presents theoretical explorations as well as in-depth case studies of ritual and narrative in different media and historical contexts.
The Theory of Citrasutras in Indian Painting
The study of technical treatises in Indian art has increasingly attracted much interest. This work puts forward a critical re-examination of the key Indian concepts of painting described in the Sanskrit treatises, called citrasutras. In an in-depth and systematic analysis of the texts on the theory of Indian painting, it critically examines the different ways in which the texts have been interpreted and used in the study of Indian painting, and suggests a new approach to reading and understanding their concepts. Contrary to previous publications on the subject, it is argued that the intended use of such texts as a standard of critique largely failed due to a fundamental misconceptualization ...
Anglo-Iranian Relations since 1800
With contributions from renowned experts in the field, this book provides an excellent background to the history of Anglo-Iranian relations. Focusing on the political and economic relationship of Britain and issues of strategic sensitivity, the book also illuminates British relations with society and the state and describes the interaction between various representatives and agents of both countries. Anglo-Iranian relations have had a long and complex history, characterized on the one hand by mistrust and intrusion and on the other by mutual exchange and understanding. This book explores the intriguing history of this interactive relationship since 1800, looking at it from a variety of perspectives. Drawing on previously unavailable documents in English and Persian, the book argues that Iran in the nineteenth century had a national state, which strongly defended the national interests.
Imperial Ends
Despite their historical importance, empires have received scant attention from social scientists. Now, Alexander J. Motyl examines the structure, dynamics, and continuing relevance of empire—and asks, "Why do empires decline? Why do some empires collapse? And why do some collapsed empires revive?" Rejecting choice-centered theories of imperial decline, Motyl maintains that the very structure of empires promotes decay and that decay in turn facilitates the progressive loss of territory. Although most major empires have in fact declined in this manner, some, such as the Soviet Union, have collapsed suddenly and comprehensively. Motyl explains how and why collapse occurs, why such an outcome...
Crime and Punishment in Istanbul
This vividly detailed revisionist history exposes the underworld of the largest metropolis of the early modern Mediterranean and through it the entire fabric of a complex, multicultural society. Fariba Zarinebaf maps the history of crime and punishment in Istanbul over more than one hundred years, considering transgressions such as riots, prostitution, theft, and murder and at the same time tracing how the state controlled and punished its unruly population. Taking us through the city's streets, workshops, and houses, she gives voice to ordinary people—the man accused of stealing, the woman accused of prostitution, and the vagabond expelled from the city. She finds that Istanbul in this period remains mischaracterized—in part by the sensational and exotic accounts of European travelers who portrayed it as the embodiment of Ottoman decline, rife with decadence, sin, and disease. Linking the history of crime and punishment to the dramatic political, economic, and social transformations that occurred in the eighteenth century, Zarinebaf finds in fact that Istanbul had much more in common with other emerging modern cities in Europe, and even in America.
Handbook of Qurʾānic Hermeneutics
The fourth volume of the groundbreaking Handbook of Qurʾānic Hermeneutics comprises 29 chapters dealing with the hermeneutical approach to the Qurʾān by Muslim authors of the 19th and 20th centuries. These authors had to deal with the changes and influences of modernity on Muslim society. Scientific progress and related developments in the natural sciences and humanities posed new questions and challenges to the traditional interpretation of the Qurʾān. The confrontation with the colonial period also shaped the way of thinking of some of these authors and their hermeneutical work. This led them to a search for identity and a reassessment of their own traditions and beliefs. Authors in ...
