Historiographical Narrative Research Articles

NEW MINTNAME “GEORGIA” (“JURZĀN”): RESEARCHING THE HISTORY OF GEORGIA AND THE ‘ABBĀSID NORTH IN THE 8TH-9TH CENTURIES

NEW MINTNAME “GEORGIA” (“JURZĀN”): RESEARCHING THE HISTORY OF GEORGIA AND THE ‘ABBĀSID NORTH IN THE 8TH-9TH CENTURIES

Medicine, God, and the Unseen in Eleventh/Seventeenth-Century Morocco

Abstract In the late seventeenth century, the head of the Salihiyya Sufi lodge in the far south of Morocco, Abu al-ʿAbbas Sidi Ahmad al-Salihi al-Dar‘i (d. 1144/1731), wrote a poem of over a thousand lines on medicine, a long composition that went on to enjoy great popularity. The Worthy Gift of Medicine (al-Hadiya al-maqbula fi l-tibb) drew on a wide range of sources, including the Arab-Galenic tradition and Prophetic medicine, and in the fashion of the time, al-Salihi wrote a long commentary to fully explain it. Al-Salihi’s medical writings thus provide a productive entry point into the nature of medical writing and practice in early modern Morocco, as well as the historiographical narratives that have structured the ways in which they have been studied.

„Pozycja prawie idealna”. Związek Polskich Artystów Plastyków wobec przemian politycznych, kryzysu gospodarczego i napięć środowiskowych w latach 1980–1981

This paper examines the participation of the Polish Artists' Union in the complex transformation of communist Poland in 1980–1981 . It is one of the most mythologized phenomena in Polish art history. The main approach to this period assumes that before the of “Solidarity” movement uprising, the Polish Artists' Union was totally dependent on the communist authorities. Then, after August 1980, the Union was to become idealistic, anti-communist organization. The following paper recognizes this kind of historiographical narrative as an example of the 'totalitarian model'. It is a model based on a simple, binary vision of the communist system as a field of permanent struggle between “innocent” society and “oppressive”, omnipotent authorities. The analysis presented here uses the perspective of social history (Sheila Fitzpatrick et al.). From this perspective, communism is viewed as a complex tangle of active, causative social actors (groups and individuals), who could be politically engaged, but may not be. One of those actors was the Polish Artists' Union. Based on various kinds of sources, I show how the Union tried to take the optimal political position after August 1980. To examine this issue I use two types of political mentality, which dominated in those days in the Party, in “Solidarity”, and also in the Union. One is termed “fundamental”, and treats politics in terms of morality, dignity, and so on. The other is called “pragmatic”, and is focused on institutional games, while also allowing compromises or concessions. To track the dynamics of how the Union functioned from August 1980 until martial law was declared (in December 1981), I introduce a division into three phases of the Solidarity revolution: September-December 1980, January-July 1981, and September-December 1981. An analysis of the Union's documents, art magazines, and Party's documents (both official and internal), shows that after the first phase, the Polish Artists' Union was ready to join the new configuration of power, based on Solidarity and the Polish United Workers' Party agreement. According to David Ost's theory, I define this project as a “neo-corporatist” model of the state socialism in the art system.
 

McTague, John. Things That Didn’t Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678–1743.

McTague, John. <i>Things That Didn’t Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678–1743</i>.

Lend-Lease in the Structure of Soviet-American Relations

The purpose of the article is to try to objectively establish the role of Lend-Lease in providing military and economic assistance to the Soviet Union and to clarify the settlement issue under this program. The problem of receipt and further use of military equipment, facilities, raw materials, etc., especially during the post-war confrontation and the Cold War, was at the epicenter of various assessments of this assistance in the victory over the Third Reich and its allies. Regulation issues of returning of equipment and the repayment of loans under the Soviet Union's post-World War II program also requires objective coverage. The research methodology is based on the use of general scientific principles: historicism, scientificity, verification and a systematic approach in the analysis of historical processes under consideration. Such special historical methods as problematic-chronological, comparative-historical, descriptive, historical-systemic proved to be effective, which created the necessary conditions for unprejudiced coverage of the tasks. The scientific novelty of the research is that an attempt was made to comprehensively analyze historiographical narratives to comprehensively develop the theme of the role of Lend-Lease and debt payment under this aid program, which the totalitarian model tried to distort. Researchers tried to analyze the theoretical aspects and provided material on the formation of the Soviet Union's reputation of «invincibility», as well as covered the changing of historical stereotypes. Conclusions. The analysis of the historiographical and source base of the research problem showed how contradictory were the fundamental differences in positions and judgments about the role of Lend-Lease for the Soviet Union, which became the springboard from which the liberation of Europe began. The victory was achieved by joint efforts, and therefore it is essential to give a true and objective assessment of the events of that time. In the post-war period onset of a new conflict and the formation of a bipolar world between the USSR and the USA, funds and unused machinery and equipment were not fully returned to the States, as provided for in the aid program due to the Soviet Union's constant bidding and payment disruptions.

Power and the Reproduction of History: Twentieth-Century Histories of Abortion in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Abstract This essay explores issues of identity and power in twentieth-century scholarship on abortion in the ancient Mediterranean world. I consider how two scholars, John T. Noonan, Jr. and Beverly Wildung Harrison, approach the same ancient Christian sources from different theoretical frameworks: narrative historiography and feminist liberation ethics, respectively. While Noonan’s historical narrative on ancient Christian opposition to abortion demonstrates the “moral supremacy” of Christianity, Harrison’s historical counternarrative reads the ancient sources as borne out of the “sex-negativism” of a minority of ancient Christians. In this analysis I focus on the ways in which the production of history manufactures power by means of authority and legitimacy, particularly for each scholar’s own religious identity and views on the morality of abortion in America. In conclusion, I consider the interests of the respective authors in the production of these histories.

Framing of Identity and Personal History through Multiperspective Narratives in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin

: Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (2000) is an engagement in layers of shifting identities and their eventual unravelling. The novel is dominated by the character and voice of Iris Chase, an octogenarian who slowly and fumblingly presents to the reader the fragmented and complex personal history of her family. The novel becomes an exercise in historiography through Iris’s visitations to her and her sister Laura’s youth in order to explain their tenuous relationship which is achieved through three parallel sources: Iris’s own attempts at a memoir, journalistic documents and letters from the past, and excerpts from an infamous novel published forty years previously. My paper will explore the three narrative structures present in the novel, and attempt to understand the questions of authorship and writing, and their importance in building a historiographic narrative. It will try to examine the ways in which retrospective interventions into public history helps to counter and create identities which were hitherto repressed under social decorum. This paper will borrow from Linda Hutcheon’s writings of the postmodern metanarratives in order to compose a lucid understanding of what alternative historiography in literature can achieve, keeping at the centre Atwood’s novel.

Notes on rehabilitating “magic” in the study of early Christian literature

AbstractThis article offers an introduction to the study of magic in early Christian literature. In the first part of the article, I discuss the types of evidence scholars of early Christian texts often use to “reconstruct” ancient magic, as well as the methodological problems associated with these scholarly reconstructions. In the second part, I argue for the rehabilitating “magic” as a critical category in the study of early Christian literature despite the problems outlined throughout this article. Ultimately, I claim that the modern conceptual baggage associated with magic has resistive potential in undermining dominant historiographical narratives of how Christianity developed as something wholly distinct from magic.

So Close and Yet Often so Far Away: The History of India as Told by Historians in Iran Around 1500

ABSTRACT Khvandamir’s general history Habib al-Siyar (Beloved of Careers), one of the major historiographical narratives of the Persianate world, was composed for the founder of the Safavid dynasty in Iran, Shah Ismaʿil, in the 1520s. Some years later, the author ideologically reshaped his work at Babur’s Timurid-Mughal court in Agra. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the book was widely copied across the Islamic lands and, judging by the number of extant manuscripts (c. 600), the Habib al-Siyar might be called a premodern bestseller. Interestingly, several chapters dealing with the history of India (Hindustan) were apparently added by the author later on and have not been included in the printed editions. Based on the examination of widely scattered manuscripts, this article examines the textual transmission of these chapters. Furthermore, it explores the question of how Khvandamir integrated information about India into the main narrative and which sources he relied on in order to situate the region within an overarching narrative of Islamic history. This approach gives further insights into the precise quality and quantity of knowledge about the Indian subcontinent available in Iran around 1500, as well as into copying processes of texts in premodern times.

From Institution to Inspiration: Why the Friars Minor Became Franciscans

Medieval religious institutions, such as the papacy or the religious orders, tend to designate a saint as their founding inspiration. For the papacy, this has been St Peter; for the religious orders, saints such as St Benedict, St Dominic or St Francis. While it might appear logical to think of these inspiring founders as preceding the establishment of such institutions, in reality the latter are almost entirely responsible for the making, maintaining and circulating of the image of a founding saint. Hence it is necessary to approach historiographical narratives with great caution in which an institution is thought to be diverging from the founder's path, falling short of the founder's ideals or deliberately distorting the image of a founder to justify their evolution. If such a discrepancy between the initial ideal and later practice is observed, the central point of investigation should focus on why the hagiographical and liturgical records regarding the founding saint included elements in conflict with the institutional practice. This article will investigate the medieval evidence and the historiographical narratives pertaining to the Order of Friars Minor.

Nostalgia of a Frustrated Ottoman Subject: Reading Osman Agha of Timișoara's Memoirs as Self-Narrative

Ego-documents let us hear the voices of those who have been little heard in historiography. Such documents, especially when narrative in nature, provide insight into historical events and periods by illustrating how individuals—in correspondence with their own (in)actions, (in)decisions, and (mis)convictions as well as emotions, fears, aspirations, and frustrations—experienced and perceived these historical phenomena from a contemporary personal viewpoint. Since the revival of narrative historiography in the 1980s, partly in response to the Annales school, such documents have been increasingly recognized and employed as important historical sources. Nonetheless, the terminology for designating the generic nature and encompassing the diversity of such sources, as well as the methodology for historicizing them, remain under debate.

Unheeded history: screening savage native Americans in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds

ABSTRACT This article examines how historiographic metafiction challenges traditional narratives of history. The author argues that subverting conventions of narrating the past through irony and a plurality of truths, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) can be regarded as historiographic metafiction. Its narratives of the past challenge the traditional History, provide alternate ways of telling history and invite a more meaningful cognitive engagement with history. To explore how the Americanization of the Holocaust sheds light on American racism, the author focuses on the figure of the savage Native American in the film and examines how Native Americans are brought into play through a plot that mixes up the histories of American settlers, African-Americans, Jews, Frenchmen, Germans and Italians and how the film screens Native Americans in the sight of psychoanalytic theorist Kaja Silverman’s terms of the look, the screen, and the gaze. I argue that the screening of savage Native Americans is in a constant process of renewal and the image of Native Americans is ironic rather than simply stereotypical, which contests dominant Hollywood representations of Native Americans either as ignoble savage or noble savage and reveals unheeded history.

Dig That Lick (DTL): Analyzing Large-Scale Data for Melodic Patterns in Jazz Performances

Dig That Lick (DTL): Analyzing Large-Scale Data for Melodic Patterns in Jazz Performances

UM ESTUDO SOBRE O COTIDIANO E PROSTITUIÇÃO NO BECO DA ENERGIA, EM FEIRA DE SANTANA (BA) 1950-1960

O cotidiano das décadas de 1950-1960 da tradicional zona de prostituição da cidade de Feira de Santana (BA), o Beco da Energia, ocupa o cerne da discussão deste artigo. Objetivamos analisar a história desse espaço contrapondo as narrativas historiográficas escritas sobre o Beco a memória dos seus antigos moradores e dos demais indivíduos que o frequentavam, problematizando assim, os diferentes sentidos tecidos sobre essa zona feirense. Nosso trabalho se insere no campo da História Social da Cultura e os estudos da Memória. Como fontes utilizamos as entrevistas orais, os periódicos do Jornal Folha do Norte e os Códigos de Posturas Municipais. Para tal análise, lançamos mão dos debates teóricos feitos por historiadores e cientistas sociais.

Бобруйский рубеж обороны в конце июня 1941 года

This archaeographic publication is devoted to the study of the history of one of the many defensive battles that took place on the territory of Belarus at the end of June 1941. The article introduces into scientific circulation two documents previously unknown to researchers of the Soviet special services on the state of the 47th Rifle Corps. The commentary, based on the use of little-known documentary information, reveals the content of the traditional and new historiographic narratives about the defensive battles of the Red Army in the context of solving local problems of keeping one of the defensive lines on the Berezina River near the Belarusian city of Bobruisk by Soviet troops. The work is intended for specialists in the history of the Great Patriotic War

Kampania polska 1939 roku. Przegląd koncepcji i sposobów jej prezentacji w historiografii i edukacji historycznej XX wieku

The Polish campaign of 1939 in historiography and historical education of the 20th and 21st centuries, in selected aspects The article is part of a publication series devoted to the terminological and historiographic aspects of the Polish campaign of 1939. A completely new approach to this important event is the focus on its presence in historical education of the 20th and 21st century. The Polish Campaign of 1939 has held a special place in the historiographic narrative and school curricula alike. Its depictions – both academic and popular-scientific – have been and still remain compatible with each other. At certain times however – especially during the ideological assault of the 1950s – historical education diverged from historiography, creating an anti-German and pro-Soviet image. After 1989, the narrative of the Polish campaign of 1939 changed significantly and the “forgotten threads” were also introduced. This event still occupies a leading place in the so-called historical policy. It has also been put on a pedestal in historical education of school students, although for a period of several years in the early 21st century it was largely absent due to the limited number of topics from the recent history included in the school curriculum.

Cognitive Strategies for Overcoming Socio-Cultural Threats in Russian Historiography

The relevance of resistance to socio-cultural threats and risks is growing exponentially. The strategies of resistance to these threats reconstructed by narratologists have considerable epistemological potential not only in the context of artistic discourse, but also for historiographical reflections. The article presents the following strategies of resistance: agonal, projective, conservative, mobilizing, stoic, illuminative, using the material of different-scale historiographical narratives. It can be argued that the epistemological arsenal of humanitarian research has been enriched with an effective tool, which is used not only to describe, but also to predict the resource possibilities of resistance to socio-cultural threats and risks.

The history of Kurd. From Guti to Khorramdinians

An independent history of the Kurds has never been written because the Kurds have never owned an empire-state since the science of history emerged. Great narratives of history narrate great empires. The Kurds, who did not own the empire and the state, have been removed from classical and modern historiographical narratives or reduced as a part of others such as Iran. In pre-Islamic history, history is monopolized by King who decided what would remain in historical memory and how it happened. In Islamic times, too, historians were scribes of the royal court who had no interest in the historiography of peoples without empires. Furthermore, because the source of modern historiography was, on the one hand, classical historians, the Kurds continued to be excluded or reduced in historical narratives, and on the other hand, the central subject of modern social science is the state, and stateless Kurds have not gained the importance of research. In addition, Kurdish historians were unable to deconstruct the framework established by others to write an independent history for the Kurds. For this reason, Kurdish history remains new and unknown, and the lack of narration does not mean the absence of history itself. Many anti-Islamic and anti-Iranian political and social movements were Kurds, however, in historical narratives they are referred to as evil, Zandiq and infidel not as an ethnic group, as today, the repression and genocide of the Kurds is not done in the name of the Kurds, but in the name of terrorism, infidels, Marxism, Mountain and separatists. Kurdish history is the history of the people, not the history of aristocracy and empire. Kurdish history is written, even so not in Kurdish name, in the name of the Other.

Dugi ženski marš:radnički pokret u istoriji idejnih i društvenih sukoba

This paper analyzes basic theoretical notions of the oppression of women, class inequality, women's history, and gender history discussed in the study named Dugi ženski marš. Položaj radnica i ženski aktivizam u Hrvatskoj između dvaju svjetskih ratova authored by a croatian historian Ana Rajković (2021). What is more, the paper examines the role of these assessments in creating the historiographical narrative as a whole. The study by Ana Rajković is an innovative synthesis of various insights about women's history in both the labour and feminist movement in Yugoslavia in the interwar period. Furthermore, the study provides possibilities for (re)interpretation of these insights in the context of women's contemporary social and intellectual history. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to re-examine the theoretical and methodological differences between contemporary historiography, of which Ana Rajković is a representative, and seminal historical syntheses in Yugoslavia after the Second World War, whose main focus was also on female members of the communist movement and their activity in the interwar period.

Conversion to Islam: Competing Themes in Early Islamic Historiography by Ayman S. Ibrahim

Reviewed by: Conversion to Islam: Competing Themes in Early Islamic Historiography by Ayman S. Ibrahim Mohammad H. Faghfoory Ayman S. Ibrahim, Conversion to Islam: Competing Themes in Early Islamic Historiography Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, Table of Contents viii–ix, acknowledgments xi, Note on transliteration xiii, Conversion topoi xv, Muslim Historians under the Abbasids xvii, Glossary xix+246 pages, Primary Sources Authors 247-253, Works Cited and Index 265–291. In this thought provoking, meticulously researched, and clearly written book, Ayman Ibrahim demonstrates the interplay between history and historiography. He analyzes different aspects of conversions during the first three centuries of Islam, as represented in historiographical accounts. As such, the book contains research on conversions, not necessarily as they occurred but how Muslim historians understood and described the process of conversions. Naturally, conversion meant different thing to different people and social groups. In a long introduction, Ibrahim describes the framework of his approach where he also gives a detailed analysis of previous studies on conversion. He challenges the views of scholars who underestimate the significance of historiographical sources, and instead relied on non-historiographical sources such as biographical dictionaries, geographies, belle letters, and legal texts or addressed a specific region. The fact is that those earlier studies are unique in their own ways. If there is an issue with their approach it is not because those engaged used non-historiographical or “wrong sources” as Richard Bulliet wrote, but in their treatment of the vast world of Islam as a monolithic and homogenous region, rather than a world comprised of diverse peoples, cultures, languages, historical experiences, and ethnic or linguistic identities. To complement those studies, Ibrahim states that his book “is the first scholarly inquiry to trace, identify, and analyze conversion themes in Islamic historiography during the first three centuries of Islam.” Ibrahim regards Islamic historiography in general and that of conversions in particular as the product of the mind of the historians whose ability to record the events of their time was subject to political, religious, and social considerations. Therefore, rather than recording the events as they unfolded, historiography became “a tool devised to form the historical memory of the [End Page 88] faithful rather than as a precise sketch of the past.” As a result, narrating conversions reflects more than simply change of religion by some, but “the interaction between the historian’s agenda and the vibrant political and sectarian contexts at the time of writing.”1 In this feature lies the weakness as well as the strength of the historiographical narratives of conversion. There are some important questions to ask regarding early conversions. Who were the earliest converts to Islam and why did they convert to this new religion? What were the motivations of different people to convert? What was the role of social, political, and economic factors in conversions? How different and/or similar were conversions of people in different geographical regions? What part faith in Islamic doctrine that inspired a desire for piety among people played in the process of conversions? Ibrahim provides answers to these questions by classifying the converts into six groups in accordance with the time and circumstances of their conversion, their motivations, and the degree of sincerity or lack thereof among converts. The groups include the earliest coverts (awa’il), notables and chiefs (wujaha), those who performed a good deed after embracing Islam (hausn islam), those who accepted Islam after they were defeated in 8/629 when the Prophet conquered Mecca (tulaqa), and finally those who negotiated conversion in return for financial incentives from the Prophet (mu’allafa qulubuhum), and the People of the Book.2 These narratives enabled the community to construct a value system and develop criteria to judge the quality of the faith of the converts. Hence, as Ibrahim states, the new converts’ faith was assessed by virtue of their intentions, sincerity, deeds, material expectations, and political compromise.3 These themes can be identified in all phases of the period under investigation during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates even though the emphasis on each theme shifted from one theme to another at each phase. It is safe to assume that during the time of the Prophet and the period...