Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Retelling Mecca: Shifting Narratives Of Sacred Spaces In Volga-Ural Muslim Hajj Accounts, 1699–1945, Danielle Ross

History Faculty Publications

This article examines how Volga-Ural Muslims narrated their encounters with the sacred spaces visited during the hajj. It examines nine accounts hajj composed from the 1690s to the 1940s, to consider how changes in international politics, Russia’s domestic politics, and the culture of Islamic learning within the Volga-Ural Muslim community led to writers to revise narratives of why the sacred spaces of Mecca were sacred, how best to experience the power of these sacred spaces, and how these sacred spaces fit into the local culture of Volga-Ural Islam under Russian and Soviet rule.

'Not Cruelty But Piety': Circumscribing European Crusading Violence, Susanna A. Throop

History Faculty Publications

Was there such a thing as “crusading violence”? Traditionally the crusading movement has been sharply distinguished from other forms of Christian violence motivated, or at least justified, by religion. However, we have increasingly come to recognize the difficulties of drawing clear-cut boundaries between crusading and other aspects of western European culture in the Middle Ages. This chapter assesses the ways in which crusader violence was like and unlike other forms of medieval Christian violence.

Psikopatlar, Frengililer, Veremliler, Ve Mâderzâd Caniler: Osmanli’Dan Cumhuriyet Türkiye’Sine Dejenerasyon Korkusu, Yucel Yanikdag

History Faculty Publications

19I9'da İfham gazetesinde çıkan bir yazısımda, Ömer Seyfettin kendi­sine eski Dahiliye Nazırı Adil Bey tarafindan gönderilen bir mektuptan alımtı yapar. Mektubun burada bizi ilgilendiren kısmı "Türkiye'dc dört milyon Türk vardıf, diyorlar. Bu dört milyondan iki buçuk milyonu geçen muharebede öldü. Geriye kala kala bir buçuk milyon kaldı. Bu bir buçuk milyonunun da dejenere olduğunu muhterem alim, Filozof Rıza Tevfik'le Selim Sırrı Bey müşterek bir makalelerinde vazıhan ispat ettiler," der. Verilen toplam rakamdaki sorun bir yana, nüfusun deje­nere veya tereddi olma konusu ilk defa gündeme gelmiyordu. Ağustos 1915'de psikiyatr Mazhar Osman "Türklerin" mütereddi olup olma­dığına yanıt vermeye çalıştı. O tarihte Osmanlı …

Writing Regionalism Into The History Of Modernization: A Review Of Nathan Citino’S Envisioning The Arab Future (Book Review), Nicole Sackley

History Faculty Publications

In 1900, Methodist minister and Chautauqua movement leader Jess Lyman Hurlbut published a guide to the Holy Land featuring “one hundred stereographed places in Palestine.” A proselytizer for ‘Biblical history,’ Hurlbut imagined the popular nineteenth-century technology of the handheld stereoscope to possess “magical…power to give us a vivid realization of the actuality of the Biblical narrative.” Its illusion of three-dimensional depth through two juxtaposed photographs would enable Americans at home to “stand…in the very presence of Palestine” and “think [themselves] into those far-away lands.” Through stereoscopes and accompanying guides, Hulbert and other turn-of-the-twentieth-century Western travelers attempted to construct a …

Review: 'Recasting The Region: Language, Culture And Islam In Colonial Bengal', Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

The origins and growth of Bengali Muslim identity have been the center of several studies till date. Most have concentrated on the politics of Muslim separatism in the 1930s with the politicization of the eastern Bengal’s peasantry and subsequent support for the Pakistan Movement. Neilesh Bose, in his Recasting the Region: Language Culture and Islam in Colonial Bengal shifts focus from politics to the Bengali literary sphere where Bengali Muslim intellectuals created a particular regional identity distinct from both mainstream Urdu Muslim and Hindu Bengali culture. This particular Bengali Muslim identity, Bose argues, was produced and established through writings of …

Review: 'Hindu Muslim Riots', Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

Communal violence in India, especially between Hindus and Muslims, have for long been the center of scholarly research. From the 1990s, historians, and anthropologists have innovatively analyzed colonial and Partition related riots to understand why and how they happened and the contextual development of communal identities. Political scientists have put forth thought-provoking paradigms of urban communal rioting in the wake of the Hindu Muslim riots of 1992 and 2002. All, it would seem, owe an intellectual debt to sociologist Richard Lambert’s much-cited dissertation of 1951, now published six decades later. Given that the publication is mostly an unchanged version of …

Paper Rights: The Emergence Of Documentary Identities In Post-Colonial India, 1950–67, Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

This essay contextualises the emergence of a document regime which regulated routine travel through the deployment of the India–Pakistan Passport and Visa Scheme in 1952. It suggests that such travel documents were useful for the new Indian state to delineate citizenship and the nationality of migrants and individual travellers from Pakistan. The bureaucratic and legal mediations under the Scheme helped the Indian state to frame itself before its new citizens as the sole certifier of some of their rights as Indians. In contrast, applicants for these documents viewed them as utilitarian, meant to facilitate their travel across the new borders. …

Passion And Conflict: Medieval Islamic Views Of The West, Karen C. Pinto

History Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the representation of al-Andalus and North Africa in medieval Islamic maps from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. In contrast to other maps of the Mediterranean, which display a veneer of harmony and balance, the image of the Maghrib is by deliberate design one of conflict and confusion; of love and hate; of male vs. female; of desire vs rejection. This paper interprets and explains the reasons behind the unusual depiction of Andalus and the Maghrib by medieval Islamic cartographers. In addition, this article develops a new methodology of interpreting medieval Islamic maps employing a deconstruction of …

Partitioned Lives: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens In India And Pakistan, 1947-65, Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

Partitioned States offers new perspective in the histories of Partition and its aftermath by connecting it to the long, drawn out and skewed formation of new national entities: India and East Pakistan. The book focuses on the Bengal Partition and locates its narrative within the intersection of long term cross border movement, chronic small-scale violence, the emergence of a document regime, and biased national refugee policies, all of which contributed to the formation of national citizenships in India and East Pakistan.

This book argues that minorities -- Hindus in East Pakistan, Muslims in eastern India -- and the discourse over …

Searchin’ His Eyes, Lookin’ For Traces: Piri Reis’ World Map Of 1513 & Its Islamic Iconographic Connections (A Reading Through Bagdat 334 And Proust), Karen C. Pinto

History Faculty Publications

The remnant of the 1513 world map of the Ottoman corsair (and later admiral) Muhiddin Piri, a.k.a. Piri Reis, with its focus on the Atlantic and the New World can be ranked as one of the most famous and controversial maps in the annals of the history of cartography. Following its discovery at Topkapi Palace in 1929, this early modern Ottoman map has raised baffling questions regarding its fons et origo. Some scholars posited ancient sea kings or aliens from outer space as the original creators; while the influence of Columbus’ own map and early Renaissance cartographers tantalized others. One …

Breaking The Khaldunian Cycle? The Rise Of Sharifianism As The Basis For Political Legitimacy In Early Modern Morocco, Stephen Cory

History Faculty Publications

This paper argues that the sharifian Sa'di and 'Alawi dynasties ended the Khaldunian Cycle within Morocco through their development of a political creed based upon sharifianism (the idea that Islamic leadership should be held by descendants of the Prophet Muhammad). Within the context of a growing European threat, the Sa'dis created a doctrine that was both new and distinctly Moroccan while alleging it held a universal application deriving from the time of the Prophet. Thus they institutionalised a sense of 'asabiyah in a way that preceding dynasties could not, which later enabled the 'Alawis to exceed Ibn Khaldun's predicted dynastic …

Vengeance And The Crusades, Susanna A. Throop

History Faculty Publications

This article demonstrates that the popularity of the idea of crusading as vengeance was not limited to the laity, and, instead of fading away after 1099, the ideology grew more widespread as the twelfth century progressed. The primary aim here is to present the evidence alongside preliminary analysis, reserving further, more detailed interpretation for future publications.

The Tear That Does Not Mend: A Review Of 'Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India And Independence', Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

Academic attention on Indian Independence and Partition has hitherto been focused mainly on the political and the "sheer teleology to the climax in August 1947 when British power was formally transferred." Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence, in the view of its editors as well as its contributors, is an attempt to examine other developments, no less momentous, during this period. The book, which is a collection of 12 essays by different authors dealing with various aspects of the Partition of 1947, attempts, as the title suggests, to document the "trauma" and find the "continuities" following "freedom."

(Review) Meccan Trade And The Rise Of Islam, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

Review of Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. By Patricia Crone. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. viii, 300 pp. $32.50.