Ethiopia and Europe’s Christian Connections

Posted on by Thomas Manuel

by Thomas Manuel

In 1320, Giovanni Mauro da Carignano, the rector of a church in Genoa, made a map of the Mediterranean world that marked near the Nile Valley a land called Terra Abaise inhabited by “Christiani Nigri”. Terra Abaise or Abyssinia was apparently inhabited by black Christians. How did Carignano know this? Apparently, he met them. A 15th century text says that in 1306, a group of 30 ambassadors from Abyssinia travelled to Italy to meet the Pope Clement V and talk diplomacy. The historian Matteo Salvadore writes that if this group is accepted as an embassy, they would be “the first recorded African embassy to a European sovereign.”

Abyssinian King Yagbea-Sion and his forces (left) battling the Sultan of Adal and his troops (Le Livre des Merveilles, 15th century)

This was the first of a series of attempts by the Ethiopian empire to make contact with the Christian nations of Europe based on their common religious identity. While it is of little moral solace that those ages were more divided based on religion than race, Salvadore makes a great case for the Ethiopians being welcomed as Christian allies without any derogatory assertions around their colour or allegations of barbarism.

In 1402, another group of Ethiopians showed up in Venice. This group was led by an Italian who had travelled to Ethiopia as a trader but had there been commissioned by the Ethiopian negus or emperor Dawit 1 to lead a diplomatic mission back to Italy. The main aim of the mission seemed to be religious. They came back with chalices, crosses, holy relics and other sacred objects. It also seems to be the case that, as a result of this mission, a fragment of the True Cross (the one that Jesus died on) was sent to Ethiopia by the Doge of Venice. But along with these pious requests were also more pragmatic ones – requests for artisans and technologies to help aid in the expansion and development of the empire. Read more »

Fortress Europe

Posted on by Katrin Trüstedt

by Katrin Trüstedt

Political debates in Europe these days seem to have only one subject. At one point or another they all turn to the issue of migration, Islam, and a danger to “the West”, which are presented as essentially synonymous. Germany’s political future seems currently to hang in the balance over the so-called “migration master plan” by German secretary of the interior Horst Seehofer. The polemical campaign of the CSU to win back voters from right wing parties threatens to blow up the German government and thereby endangers the future of Europe. In a time when it is increasingly difficult to deny the immense scale of suffering both in the places from which a majority of the refugees escape to Europe, and in the border areas they find themselves in, the construct of a “Fortress Europe” is being strengthened not only by physical and political, but also by rhetorical barriers. Returning to stereotypes of foreign invasions overrunning a weakened West, mainstream debates are drawing on old images already used in anti-Semitic propaganda of the early 20thcentury.

Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, which recently re-entered the German discourse in form of a movie adaptation, seems to offer the apt allegory for the current phantasma. Perhaps its biggest accomplishment lies in foregrounding the strong but mostly implicit connection of this type of xenophobia with issues of gender and sexuality. The weakened West is depicted here in terms of the decline of the male, bored, and sexually frustrated protagonist who shows uncanny features of an Incel, and to whom the Islamic Other taking over France seems to offer a model for a renewed masculinity putatively under attack in post-feminism Europe. Ultimately, the only solution for the protagonist is a submission to the spreading Islam in order to restore patriarchy and repair his unsettled and offended masculinity with the vision of underage virgins. In all its absurdity, the novel points to an implicit thread of the new right wing discourses presently targeting Islam as the privileged enemy: that of a threatened masculinity. Informed by images of young Islamic men overrunning a decadent West unable to protect itself, the European discourse on refugees is deeply gendered and sexualized. Read more »

Monday Poem

Posted on by Jim Culleny

“…shimmering through the leaves and out beyond the black lines
of her neighbors’ chimney pots were the stars, beacons whose light
left them long before there were eyes on this planet to receive it…”
…………………………………………….. — archeologist Jacquetta Hawkes

milky way

Tripping on Curbs

we who live in deep space and trip
on curbs looking up at stars bound in a mesh
of interstices of lightyears through which
seas of breath and blood pass,
in which muscles are bound by mystic ligaments
to armatures of bone . . .
we’re always mystified by what seems a
phenomenal disconnect,
mindsparks shine here and there,
filaments of personal matter,
electric turns of tissue and dreams,
tiny conscious blips to which
oldest light comes, goes, scatters
and everything is it.
so it may not matter
if shimmering it
will or will not
shatter
.

Jim Culleny
11/04/16

A Poem About Breathing

Posted on by Amanda Beth Peery

by Amanda Beth Peery

In a tight skirt her breath is bounded
by zippered cloth–
sometimes ugly, Ms Green’s thoughts
flit like light on a wall through rain
and through the apple tree swaying
beyond tied curtains.
Sometimes ugly, her thoughts
pick shallowly at ideas all day
give endless minor critiques
in tiny handwriting.
What about the high ceilinged library
where she paused over the majesty of philosophy
pondered labyrinths
created myths from coins and lamps
and considered the nature of night
and the way the smallest animals breathe
burrowed into the hills.

 

Ms Green’s ribs
expand a little,
her soft lungs fill
partially, she feels the world
come in softly
as she inhales a breeze.

Monday, June 11, 2018

Style Guides

Posted on by Gabrielle Durham

by Gabrielle C. Durham

“In receiving this award, I thank my parents, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mr. T.”

This is my twist on the importance of the serial or Oxford comma, the comma that should follow “Gabor” and precede “and.” I was indoctrinated at a young age, which as we know is the best time for a spongy brain to take in nebulous rules that will dictate the rest of one’s life. The catechist was grammar and its incumbent style guide. Style guides rule the world. They frame the content you read, no matter if you notice it. You probably only become aware of it if the framing is inadequate or a convention is broken.

In a just and decent world, everyone would use the Chicago Manual of Style. That august association does not give me any money, but I would give (and have given) them some for the joy and clarity that publication and its website have bestowed upon me. If you’re looking for some syntactic comedy, check out their reader comments. It’s not a Chris Rock special on premium cable, but you might have a titter.

Chicago has everything. If you cannot find an answer in Chicago, either you did not phrase it correctly or it is not worth asking. Even a worthless question, the magnanimous souls at CMS will find a way to answer and give solace to the asker’s weary mind. Read more »

Perceptions

Posted on by Sughra Raza

Siamak Filizadeh. Anis al-Dawla, 2014.

Photograph.

Current show at LACMA In The Field of Empty Days.

” … In the Fields of Empty Days explores the continuous and inescapable presence of the past in Iranian society. This notion is revealed in art and literature in which ancient kings and heroes are used in later contexts as paradigms of virtue or as objects of derision, while long-gone Shi‘ite saints are evoked as champions of the poor and the oppressed. Beginning in the 14th century, illustrated versions of the Shahnama or Book of Kings, the national epic, recast Iran’s pre-Islamic kings and heroes as contemporary Islamic rulers and were used to justify and legitimize the ruling elite. Iran’s adoption of Shi‘ite Islam in the early 16th century also helped to fix the past irrevocably in the present through the cycle of remembrance of the martyrdom of Shi‘ite Imams. Both of these strands—olden kings and heroes, and martyred Imams—carry forward, even sometimes overlap, in contemporary Iranian art, rendered anachronistically as a form of often barely disguised social commentary.”

More here, and here.

Science and faith in a ceremonial cave

Posted on by Ashutosh Jogalekar

by Ashutosh Jogalekar

A Remains of multistory dwelling built into volcanic tuff wall. Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico

The hour was late, but it was still hot. Frijoles Canyon loomed to my right, showcasing its surfeit of stratigraphic tuff and igneous ash layerings and ponderosa pines. I was about a hundred and fifty feet up on the mountain face in a reconstructed cave with a ceremonial kiva or well. The cave was accessible by climbing a series of narrow steps and four ladders inclined against the steep rocks: not recommended for those with a fear of heights. On this particular day I was alone there; it was a hot weekend, and not too many hikers and tourists had scattered themselves around Bandelier National Park where the cave’s located.

It’s tough not to fall in love with the American Southwest. There is no other part of the United States which combines so uniquely and generously Native American, Spanish and Anglo-American culture with spectacular desert and mountain expanses as far out as the eye can see. Our trip had started with the Grand Canyon, whose first display of infinite recesses and a blaze of colors is sufficient to stop almost any conversation for a few seconds. It had then continued through Indian reservations spread across three states – albeit still crammed into nooks and crannies relative to their original seemingly limitless expanse – which took us through the incredible towering structures of Monument Valley to New Mexico. Read more »

Poem

Posted on by Rafiq Kathwari

Blowing Her Lungs Out into a Clay Oven

Mother leans
against the island
in the nanosecond kitchen
at Farouk’s home
in New Rochelle,
marveling
at a Miracle Icemaker
as half-moons
tumble
into a glass bowl.
She spins

a Lazy Susan
with glee,
clicks the fire
fountains on & off.
“Atomic food
makes stomachs ache,”
she warns,
alarming
the microwave.
“I remember,”

she says,
“squatting
in front
of a clay oven
blowing
my lungs
into a slim steel pipe
to light a fire,
my smoke-singed eyes,
your father’s anger—
She pulls out

an empty tray
from the oven,
whispers,
“For 50 years
I created
a home
only to see
your father’s
new wife
inherit
it.”

by Rafiq Kathwari / @brownpundit

Voting in the Heartland

Posted on by Carol A Westbrook

by Carol Westbrook

I live in a flyover state, Indiana, USA. You know, one of those states that you fly over but you don’t stop in, as you travel East Coast to West Coast or the post-industrial Midwest. You know, the vast prairies where no one important lives, mostly rural and small town. Where the people are mostly white, socially conservative highly religious and staunchly Republicans. Where there are too few people to influence national politics. You know, the ones who put Donald Trump in office.

This May, I was the Election Inspector for the primaries in our precinct, Pine 2, of Porter County, Indiana. Porter County is not exactly flyover country–we’re more of a hybrid flyover/northern city. We are tucked into the northwest corner of Indiana, a region filled with heavy industry and a few large cities on the shores of Lake Michigan. Our population, 166,000, is only 3% that of Chicago, and is 93% white.

Pine 2 is only 60 miles from Chicago and is filling with Chicago expatriates seeking lower property and sales tax, cheaper houses, or wooded country retreats an easy hour commute to Chicago. Pine 2 itself has no industry, but it includes my little town of Beverly Shores, which houses a high proportion of artists, intellectuals, Chicago commuters and retired University of Chicago professors. Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one. The other 132 precincts of Porter County, though, are truly flyover country. Forty percent is farmland; it is is dotted with small towns and small industry. It is socially and politically conservative, strongly religious, and staunchly Republican. Read more »

Goethe Was A Reincarnated Chinese Monk

Posted on by Max Sirak

by Max Sirak

Long before it ever even occurred to me to be a writer, I accidentally adopted the quirks and habits of one…

If one sits in my dining room, they can see it. There is literal writing on my wall. What once stood empty, with its deep red paint, is now plastered with Post-Its. My dining room features a Word-of-the-day wall. It took over five years to complete and started as many things do, by chance, during a drunken game of Scrabble.

Word-of-the-day-wall aside, there’s another writerly habit this column pertains to.

I can’t honestly tell you when I started my notes. Soon after college is all I’ve really got. Many moons ago I began highlighting passages in everything I read and typing them up. It’s a labor of love born in hopes of retention.

I learned at university that if I wanted to commit something to memory I needed to do more than simply read it. Remembering, for me, requires an action element. So, in the name of not forgetting everything I was learning from books, I started my notes.

Weighing in at damn near three-quarters of a million words, over 1,500 pages, and spanning 200 different entries, my notes are the closest thing to a life’s work I’ve got. Read more »

Poem

Posted on by Christopher Bacas

Subway Haiku

Five times doors open
And five times they quickly shut
The Speaker crackles

Crossroads of the world
Four languages on my bench
Train to JFK

Many tired folks,
Long hours and they can’t rest yet,
“start spreadin’ the news”

Every type of eyes:
Closed, squinting, staring, empty,
Downcast, roving, hard

Dude: Yankees’ cap,
Whitest sneakers known to man,
Brand names head to toe

“No way” says a kid,
Mom grabs his DS away,
He stares silently.

Man wears a kuf,
On his neck: Star of David,
Eating some pork rinds

Man in uniform,
Knows how important he is,
And now you do, too

Women gently sleep,
The train lurches to a stop,
They ain’t sleeping now. Read more »

Monday, June 4, 2018

Qanat (Part I)

Posted on by Carl Pierer

by Carl Pierer

Yazd, one of the big three Tourist destinations in central Iran, has a rather challenging climate. With summer temperatures often exceeding 40C and hardly any precipitation at all (49 mm per year), water is a major concern. The city is rightfully famous for its wind towers (بادگیر) and qanats (قنات). While the former were and sometimes still are used for cooling houses, water reservoirs or storage rooms, the latter used to provide the city with water. Walking through the city, located in this rather inhospitable environment, one is constantly reminded that question of water dominates many aspects of life: from the garden and parks to agriculture and industry, from housing location to food storage and cooling. For many of these, the ingenious use of qanats provided an answer.

Diagram of a Qanat [2]
A qanat is an underground aqueduct, which uses gravity to direct water from a well or aquifer to the surface. In distinction from wells, this feat of engineering allows to transport water over great distances to places where it might be difficult to access. Moreover, because the channels run underground, there is not too much loss through evaporation or danger of pollution. The first qanats are thought to have been constructed in today’s Iran, sometime between the 10th and 8th centuries BCE. [1] The concept was so successful that it spread far: initially spreading beyond the core area of the Iranian plateau with the expansion of the Persian Empire in the Achaemenid period (5th – 3rd century BCE), the technology spread eastwards to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and to the Indus river; westwards to the Levant and the Mediterranean shore, and south to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In a second wave, the technology spread with Islam to Cyprus, and across North Africa to Spain and the Canary Islands. [2] There are even qanats found in Japan [3]  and in Latin America, in Mexico, Peru, and Chile, which appear to pre-date the Spanish invasion, thus becoming “(…) an additional item in the continuing pre-Columbian trans-Pacific diffusion controversy”. [2]

Writing in 1968, Paul English [2] states that in Iran alone 15 million acres (roughly 6 million hectares, or 60.000 km2) of cultivated land are watered by 37.500 qanats. This, at the time, corresponded to between one-third and a half of the total cultivated land. Historically, they provided up to ¾ of the water used in Iran. [1] Being such an important feature of Iranian cities, it is worth looking at some of their technical details. Read more »

Monday, May 28, 2018

Sam Harris’s error and how not to argue about cultural relativism

Posted on by Dave Maier

by Dave Maier

Photo credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times

So Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and a number of other brash rebels daring to challenge the stifling intellectual status quo, in which one is not allowed to criticize anyone from other cultures, because multiculturalism or Marxism or something, are part of, I am not making this up, the Intellectual Dark Web. Fine, whatever. It’s not that there’s no such thing as lefty orthodoxy, obviously, especially on campus, but these best-selling authors look pretty petty presenting themselves as somehow being silenced.

Anyway, that’s not what I want to talk about. In the New York Times piece telling us about all this, I ran across the following exchange:

After [Harris’s] talk, in which he disparaged the Taliban, a biologist who would go on to serve on President Barack Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues approached him. “I remember she said: ‘That’s just your opinion. How can you say that forcing women to wear burqas is wrong?’ But to me it’s just obvious that forcing women to live their lives inside bags is wrong. I gave her another example: What if we found a culture that was ritually blinding every third child? And she actually said, ‘It would depend on why they were doing it.’” His jaw, he said, “actually fell open.”

It’s not unprecedented, or even unusual, that Harris should commit a philosophy fail. But in detaching ourselves from error, we have to be careful about where we end up. It’s not even clear, for example, that his point in the context is threatened by his futile sally. So I’ll be defending him as much as diagnosing his (all too common) error. Maybe I should be on the IDW too. Help, I’m being silenced!

Okay, enough japery for now. What did Harris do wrong here, and why may his main point survive the stumble? Read more »

The Graduate Schools His Father

Posted on by Michael Liss

by Michael Liss

Celebrate with me. 

May is graduation month, and my children are among the graduates.  My son marched two weeks ago for his Masters, and, if you are reading this on Memorial Day, it might be at the very same time I watch my daughter receive her Bachelor of Music. Go get ‘em, kids.  

Perhaps your joy need not be vicarious—you have your own family skittering across the podium. One of the special pleasures of this time of year is that so many of your friends and relations are also submerged in a sea of caps and gowns, blurry pictures, hugs, and the dreaded Elgar Pomp and Circumstance Earworm. They announce themselves with each vibration from your iPhone, a kaleidoscope of happy, and occasionally goofy, images. Can we all stipulate that the whole outfit looks a bit silly?

Graduation also reminds you that time passes (way too fast). Your kids’ time, and your time. You’ve changed, just as has the five-year old who came bouncing out of her room, a huge grin on her face, ready for the first day of Kindergarten. You are a little older (just a little) and a little more “robust,” and your times in the Road Runners races are “moving” in the wrong direction.  

It doesn’t matter.  There are your children, not looking little at all, promising you a peculiar type of immortality. They are going to go do things, great things, going to change the world. They are the discoverers, the communicators, the creators. They will wash away any imperfections you’ve left and build things bigger and better. They really are the future.

You’ve celebrated with me. Now, indulge me. Read more »