There is a new blog on Yemen: Bab al-Yemen: Das Tor zum Yemen; this is created by Marie-Christine Heinze, who is a graduate student at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology. Marie-Christine is working on her Ph. D. about the “Social Life of Weapons in Yemen,” including the famous Yemeni jambiyya. In her new blog she has posted a review of a recent book privately published by Stephen Gracie entitled Jambiya: Daggers from the Ancient Souqs of Yemen.
Illuminated Verses explores some of the rich and varied poetic traditions of the Islamic world. For a schedule of panels, click here (and scroll to bottom to download pdf of program).
Here is the program for Saturday, May 17, 2011:
Detailed Schedule
•9:00-9:15am
Welcome by Poets House Executive Director Lee Briccetti and City Lore Executive Director Steve Zeitlin
•9:20-9:55am
Illuminated Verses: the Poetries of the Islamic World
An opening panel setting up large questions and contexts with Reza Aslan and Michael Sells.
•10: 00-11:00am
Origins and Orality: the Poetry of the Arabian Peninsula
An examination of the poetries of the Arabian Peninsula from the Golden Age to contemporary oral tribal poetry. With anthropologists Najwa Adra and Steve Caton and literary scholar Suzanne Stetkevych. Continue reading Illuminated Verses: The Poetries of the Islamic World
[The following is an excerpt from a recent article published by contributor el-Sayed el-Aswad, entitled “Symbolic Transformations of the Seen and the Unseen in the Egyptian Imagination” in ANTHROPOS, 105:441–453, 2010.]
The study has shown that the world is constructed by Egyptian worldview and imagination as a place of seen and unseen dimensions. These dimensions necessitate two kinds of knowledge. One is related to the knowledge of everyday observation, the other to the knowledge of hidden reality, religious or otherwise. Taken in their totality, as far as they indicate psychological, social, and spiritual realities, dreams necessitate the two kinds of knowledge. Dream visions or dreams belong to the unknown or unseen sphere and assert the effectiveness of that sphere in the reconstruction of people’s everyday reality. Dreams serve as lenses through which individuals see or glimpse the hidden or unseen aspects of the world.
Put differently, dream experiences are open to possible interpretations generating possible worlds. Dream phenomena and related notions of spirituality and unseen realities are not dealt with here within the oppositions between tradition versus modernity, common sense reality versus dream reality, or belief versus science because such oppositions do not exist in Egyptian multidimensional worldviews, visible and invisible, in which there is always intermediate realm or barzakh connecting them. Continue reading Dreams in Egypt
by el-Sayed el-Aswad, United Arab Emirates University
The word “Breadom†is not a spelling mistake; rather it is a combination of the words “bread†and “freedom†indicating, respectively, the “body†and “soul†of the Mother of the World (umm ad-duniya, Egypt), which is currently being affected by a novel form of revolt. In the bread uprising of January 18-19, 1977, falsely depicted by Sadat as “the uprising of thieves†(intifada haramiyya), Egyptians, especially the poor, were interested in securing the ‘bread of their livelihood’ (luqmat al-‘aysh), while in the revolt beginning on January 25th, 2011, they showed profound interest in both bread and freedom. The Arabic word “‘aysh†means both “bread†and “life or living.†These two inseparable meanings have made the phrase “‘aysh al-huriyya†(life of freedom) the best iconic gift crafted, engraved and offered, through victorious young Egyptians of victorious Cairo (al-Qahira), in the Freedom Square (Tahrir Square) opening a new chapter of Egyptian (Arab) history.
It is not surprising to hear people in Tahrir Square, directing their chanting to the government and its businessmen, shout forcefully, “thieves, thieves, thieves†(haramiyya). Also, there was a phrase written in huge letters on the ground of Tahrir Square that says “catch a thief†(imsik haramy). Such phrases resonate and reverberate in the Egyptian folk saying, “its guard is its thiefâ€, (hamiha haramiha), with reference to a plundering and deceitful governor. Continue reading Breadom
Grand Mosque in Bahrain
Tabsir contributor El-Sayed el-Aswad recently published an article entitled “The Perceptibility of the Invisible Cosmology: Religious Rituals and Embodied Spirituality among the Bahraini Shi’a” in Anthropology of the Middle East, Volume 5, Number 2, Winter 2010 , pp. 59-76. The article is available to subscribers of the journal or for purchase. The abstract is cited here:
This article analyses the relationship between the seen and the unseen in the cosmology and practices of Bahraini Shi’a. Rather than contrasting the visible and the invisible, the study delineates the hierarchical relations between them, within a whole or cosmology, as reflected in various discursive and non-discursive actions that are supported by the religious beliefs of Bahraini Shi’a. Issues of the Hidden Imam, concealment, dissimulation and other unseen dimensions of the cosmos are discussed. The article finds that the Shi’a construct the invisible in their social world by using visible ways of creatively enacting their hidden thoughts and beliefs, as represented in their religious discourses, rituals and body symbolism. Their belief in a divine higher power provides a source of emotional, spiritual and socio-political empowerment.
In a recent post on Yemeni cooking the steps for making barley bread were illustrated. One of the staple dishes of the Yemeni highlands, and one that I enjoyed while living in a rural setting in al-Ahjur in the late 1970s, is the sorghum porridge called ‘asîd. The recipe is above and the steps illustrated below. Sorghum flour is available in the United States, most easily at Indian food stores, but also on the Internet. Continue reading What’s Cooking in Yemen 2
Building southern Sudan through promotion of our history and culture
Dr. Jok Madut Jok, New Sudan Vision, October 15, 2010
(New York) – To be a nation means having a citizenry that takes pride in citizenship in “South Sudan†first and in tribal citizenship second. Such a nation can no longer assume that shared interests alone will continue to unite us. So far, our struggle to wrestle our freedom from the grips of the Khartoum-based successive governments has been the most unifying force for South Sudan. Now that this struggle has seen some success, what will unite us is the desire to build a strong nation together, and such a nation will need a shared identity. Such a shared identity will need to be harnessed, it needs to be politically constructed, and it is our task to forge it.
To this end, I envision my task as undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage as joining a collective effort with the minister, the staff of the ministry and other branches of GOSS to set a policy for constructing our nation’s identity.
A solution begins with the correct identification of the nature of the problem. The most significant enemy of South Sudan’s cohesion, national loyalty and the citizens’ pride in their nation will be a growing sense of exclusion from the national platform, media, government programs and access to services. Any citizen who will feel excluded will never develop that important sense of pride in his/her nation. A starting point to addressing the feeling of exclusion is to state the obvious, that South Sudan belongs to all South Sudanese; it does not belong to any ethnic, religious or political group. Continue reading Building Southern Sudan
In yesterday’s post the cover of a recent book published in Yemen was featured. This book is a pictorial introduction to the art of traditional cooking in rural Yemen. It was published in 2008 by the Center for Heritage of Sanaa University. The picture on yesterday’s cover was of a Yemeni woman preparing to bake bread. The steps above illustrate the preparation and baking of round barley bread, known as malûj in Yemen’s central highlands. The bread dough is formed into a ball and then stretched out with a makhbaza (see below) to a flat found shape that can be patted to the sides of the tannûr oven. The taste is hard to describe, since it is almost impossible to find pure barley bread in America. It is a hard, crisp bread and tough to break apart, but goes well with a variety of traditional stews.
to be continued