Documentary Value Research Articles

The Origins of Reinforced Concrete Interventions to Historic Structures in Turkey

ABSTRACT Reinforced concrete interventions have been a critical issue for restorations in the field of conservation since the early twentieth century. Until the twenty-first century, cement-containing interventions could be seen in almost all restorations in Turkey. There are even examples of monumental buildings whose structural systems have been converted to reinforced concrete. However, in more recent years in Turkey, reconstructions with echoes of stylistic unity began to emerge, with less of a focus on preservation and without consideration of the documentary value of the reinforced concrete used in the strengthening interventions of the twentieth century. From a structural viewpoint, it is necessary to assess whether mixed structures of reinforced concrete and masonry work well. From a conservation viewpoint, despite negative perceptions of reinforced concrete, these historic interventions have avoided confusion or falsification where the precise original nature of the structure is unknown. With these remarks in mind, this study describes the origins of reinforced concrete interventions in conservation in Turkey. It provides a general framework of the concept of interventions for strengthening and preservation at the intersection of reinforced concrete, earthquakes, codes, and conservation theories by tracking experiences with reinforced concrete from the Ottoman Empire to the early years of the Republic of Turkey.

The long life of St. Peter’s mother

This paper intendes to analyse the presence of the ATU 804 type tale in different countries of the western Mediterranean, starting with Spain, to then focus on the Italian variants, especially those that appear in a series of unpublished sound recordings of great documentary value. The objectives are: through different variants and versions, to study which are the most frequent and stable characteristics in a peculiar protagonist; to establish which other types of tales are usually combined with ATU 804 and to suggest some reasons why the great majority of the people who tell this story are women.

Defending the Candid Gaze: Theory, the Archive, and Depolicing Street Photography

Abstract Since practically the dawn of photography, there have been concerns over street photography’s invasive and potentially exploitive nature, from late nineteenth-century tropes of pests and “sneaky characters” trailing women in public parks to more recent panics over “camera fiends” and even state security warnings of the need to be vigilant of photographers potentially casing infrastructure for terrorist attacks. This article argues, using potted history and critical theory, that such straw-man arguments distract from the real dangers that the policing and curtailment of public photography pose, characteristic, as they are, of authoritarian regimes where control over taking and circulating images is an integral part of oppressive state and corporate apparatuses. Street photography’s implicit role in the construction of an archive of aesthetic and documentary value can be understood as a type of resistance to such threatened microfascisms.

A Study on English-to-Chinese Translation Strategies of Country Driving from the Perspective of Newmark’s Translation

Country Driving is one of the China trilogy by American writer Peter Hessler. Based on what he saw and heard in his driving around mainland China, he presents with concise language and rich cultural connotations. Its simplified Chinese version was translated by the translator Li Xueshun. Since its publication, it has been well-received by the majority of readers, which proves its literary and documentary value. Country Driving is a typical non-fiction literature work. Based on Newmark’s theory, this paper will analyze the Chinese translation version of Country Driving under the guidance of communicative translation and semantic translation in terms of language structure, rhetoric, culture-loaded words, and special language forms. It is hoped that this paper will enrich the research on the translation of non-fiction Chinese translation literary works and provide some references for future translation practice of documentary literature from the perspective of Newmark’s translation theory.

The location of Tartessos: a fresh case for the reliability of Avienus’ Ora Maritima

Recent geomorphological, paleoenvironmental, and chronological evidence allows for a reconstruction of the coasts of southwest Iberia during the first millennium BCE that accords with descriptions of the region offered by authors of antiquity, most notably the description by the fourth-century CE Roman writer R. F. Avienus in his poem Ora Maritima. This poem contains information that appears to date from the sixth century BCE regarding, for instance, the pre-Roman polity of Tartessos. The reliability of this work as a historical source has been questioned for decades. Critics argue that the information is pertinent to our understanding of the literary, rather than historiographical, context of the Late Roman Empire. However, philological as well as historical analyses reveal no clear cause to doubt the documentary value of the Ora Maritima. Furthermore, geomorphological research makes it possible to identify most place-names in the poem; for example, the city embraced by the river Tartessos, apparently the political and trade center of the realm, may likely have stood on the present-day spit of La Algaida, which was an isle in the first millennium BCE. While this hypothesis has been advanced elsewhere, this article offers an entirely new set of evidences to support it.1

Edward S. Curtis and the Complex Legacy of The North American Indian Project

In 1907 Edward S. Curtis published the first volume of The North American Indian – the 20-volume series which was his life achievement, completed in 1930. During thirty years he took probably about 40,000 photographs of Native Americans belonging to various tribes. These included both portraits and depictions of everyday life of the peoples his generation believed were vanishing. During the field work he also collected textual material documenting the tribes’ histories, legends, rituals as well as biographies of individual people. The project, in its immensity, exhausted the resources and did bring Curtis the recognition he hoped for. His works were rediscovered in 1972 and since then photographs have been either criticised for being staged and not depicting the Native tribes’ life as it really was, or appreciated both for their aesthetic quality and documentary value. The article provides an overview of the project, discusses the controversies surrounding it and its significance from today’s perspective. It also refers to the legacy of Curtis’s work and the way contemporary artists remain in a dialogue with it.

Risk Management and Preventive Conservation of Cultural Heritage: The Case of Karaman Hatuniye Madrasa and Karaman City Museum

Various methodologies have been developed to determine the risks of cultural properties that have been exposed to various risks since their construction and to make proposals for their preventive conservation. This study aims to protect the cultural, architectural, historical, and documentary values of historic buildings by identifying their threats and potential risks for risk management and preventive conservation studies and determining their risk levels considering the degree of vulnerability and frequency of occurrence in order to ensure their sustainability. Karaman Hatuniye Madrasa and Karaman City Museum were selected as case studies for cultural heritage risk management. The following standards were used to determine risk levels: the RE-ORG method for museum storage facilities, ICRROM’s (2016) “Guide to Risk Management of Cultural Heritage” and ISO 31000 (2018) for risk analysis, and UNI EN 16096 (2012) standard for current condition assessment, risk priority, urgency class, and recommendation classification. The hazards and potential risks were identified and classified through field observations, literature review, archival research, oral interviews, and data from national (AFAD) and international (EM-DAT) databases. The results showed that Karaman Museum has a medium risk level and RE-ORG is required in the building and collections only, on the other hand, Hatuniye Madrasa has a high-risk level. In particular, abandonment/underuse and faulty restoration works are the main factors that increase the risk level. The study is important for the protection and conservation of Hatuniye Madrasa and Karaman Museum and their collections through risk management and preventive conservation measures and is an example of systematic assessment of risks in cultural properties.

The digitally manipulated family photograph: MyHeritage’s ‘Deep Nostalgia’, and the extended temporality of the photographic image

This article examines how the digitally manipulated family photograph functions as a means of understanding the temporal instability of the use and interpretations of photographic images. It begins by taking a close look at scholarly debates on how ‘credible’ the documentary value of a still photograph is, as well as how it is able to emotionally resonate with spectators. From this discussion, it becomes important to look at a key example of how an image can produce an emotional effect on a viewer; in this case, photographs of individuals’ deceased family members. While exploring how this allows the spectator to reconnect with their relatives, it is also crucial to acknowledge that readings of images like these are often determined by reductive interpretations of their stillness. As the consideration of photographs as ‘documents’ has been contested for an extensive amount of time, it is illuminating to turn to the properties of digital photography by inspecting the photo manipulation feature ‘Deep Nostalgia’ on the MyHeritage app that circulated around TikTok in 2021. I look at a YouTube compilation of people reacting to seeing photographs of their family manipulated in a way that gives the impression that they are moving and emoting, alongside discussions about this in recent pop culture articles. By taking a Barthesian reading of the extended temporality of these family photographs, it is important to recognise that the connection between the subject and the image is severed both iconically and indexically from its original context. However, by understanding this photographic image in the context of being digital it must be understood differently. I will therefore use the MyHeritage phenomenon as a means of arguing that the digital image is not inferior to the ‘realism’ of analogue photography and must, instead, be read in relation to the history of technological change.

Marin Bălan (coord.), Filosofie, Educație, Distanță. Lucrările conferinței naționale online de filosofia educației

The philosophical and didactic-pedagogical value of this volume is doubled by its documentary value, referring to the continuity of the education process through online education (despite the disadvantages regarding the reduction of direct socialization and the negative effects of excessive digitization on the intellect), given that the Covid-19 pandemic forced the closure of schools and universities.

Analysis of causes of damage to masonry walls in the historic barrack No. B-115 in the former KL Auschwitz II – Birkenau camp

The brick barracks in the former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination camp KL Auschwitz II-Birkenau hold historical importance and are protected by law through their inclusion in the register of historical monuments. They are also inscribed on the World Heritage List. One of these barracks is known as B-115. It was originally constructed as a temporary building during the autumn and winter of 1941 and 1942. The materials used for its construction were obtained from dismantled houses in nearby villages. The walls of barrack B-115 have sustained damage in several areas. The exterior walls have experienced corrosion due to exposure to environmental factors. Inside the barrack, there are cracks and areas where the walls are breaking apart. The most severe damage is seen in the gable walls, which have become deformed and detached from the lateral walls. Additionally, there are extensive damages in the connections between the lateral walls and external longitudinal walls. The partition walls have also cracked, and concentrated forces have caused further cracks in certain areas. By analysing the documented types of damage and their causes, the repair plans aim to address and eliminate the identified sources of damage. The renovation is designed to minimize intervention in the historical layers of the barrack while preserving its documentary value. It will also ensure that visitors have safe access to the site.

Un racconto fotografico (parziale) degli allestimenti della Galleria degli Uffizi nel secondo dopoguerra

A selection of photographs of the Uffizi’s renewals and displays, taken mainly before and after World War II, represent the core of the visual essay. The images belong to four distinctive photographic documentations of the gallery, commissioned in order to record the exhibition designs each time they were dismantled and renewed. The photographs were shot by the photographers of the Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi (1904-on going). The ones reproduced here are held in the central photo archive of the former Direzione Generale Antichità e Belle Arti. Their documentary value lies in both the image and its recto, where information such as the inventory number of the photography was printed. Many other traces of their afterlife can be found in the many notes, dates and comments which proved to be strategic in dating, even “to the month”, the renewal of the spaces and the arrangement of the pictures. The images are ordered in three discursive sections that link the on-going renewal of the Galleria in these decades to the contemporary critical debate on museum arrangements.

A Bibliophile in Shandong Province in the Republic of China Zhuang Enze and His Handwritten Copy of Shang Han Lun Xuan Zhu(Annotation of Treatise on Febrile Diseases)

Shang Han Lun Xuan Zhu(«»,Annotation of Treatise on Febrile Diseases) is a representative work of Zang Yingzhan, a famous physician in Zhucheng of Shandong who was as famous as Huang Yuanyu during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty.The book was not published, but has been preserved only in manuscripts, of which 5 copies are now preserved.By comparing the five manuscripts seen, it is found that the Zhuang Enze version is unique in the existing version of this book, exquisite and generous, beautifully copied, with important documentary value. Zhuang Enze adopts the theories of various schools, supplements prescriptions, analyze medical theory with his unique insights.The reason may be related to his family's practice of medicine for generations, its philosophy of loving reading, copying books, and collecting books, and also related to its protection of local and state documents and the dissemination of lost culture.

History and Literature in the Historical Novels of Ksaver Šandor Gjalski

The paper begins by asserting that the historical novels of Ksaver Šandor Gjalski have received special treatment in Croatian literary historiography, which tends to ascribe to them a more a documentary and historiographic rather than literary value. This paper will analyse the Romantic, realist and modernist features of Gjalski’s historical novels Osvit. Slike iz tridesetih godina (Dawn. Pictures from the [18]30s) (1892) and Za materinsku riječ. Slike iz četrdeset osme godine (For the Maternal Word. Pictures from [18]48) (1906). In the light of theories of histories as stories (narratives), this paper will indicate that their so-called documentary value isattributable to literary strategies that are used to interpret the past they represent in a specific way, and not to record what is assumed to be the authentic past.

Из фондов Музея антропологии МГУ. Фотографии народов Северного Кавказа в экспозиции Антропологической выставки 1879 года: карачаевцы

Introduction. This publication is the second in a series of articles devoted to the description of the collection of photographs of representatives of the peoples of the Kuban region, and is devoted to the study of a part of the collection, including photographs of Karachays. Materials and methods. The basis of the work was a collection of photographs collected by E.D. Felitsyn (1848-1903), presented by him at the Anthropological Exhibition of 1879 in Moscow and kept in the funds of Anuchin Scientific Research Institute and the Museum of Anthropology of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Results and discussion. Photographs of the Karachays of the Batalpashinsky district (now the village of Batalpashinsky - the city of Cherkessk) are described and analyzed. Of these: two photographs of children (8 years old), four photographs of men (19, 37, 70 и 72 years old) and one photograph of a woman (57 years old). The authorship of the studied images has been established. All of them belong to the Russian photographer, the owner of one of the very first photo workshops in Tiflis, Vladimir Barkanov (1826-1892). A description is given of one of the famous dynasties of Karachay - the Krymshamkhalov princes, whose representative is depicted in the picture of the studied photo collection. A summary of literary anthropological information about the Karachavians of this period is presented. Conclusion. The presented materials are unique, have scientific, historical and documentary value and significance, allowing to determine the authenticity of the person depicted in the photo, and its dynasty, as well as to obtain a lot of information about the typical realities of the depicted era, in particular, the features of his life, costumes, customs, environment habitats, as well as the implementation of a comparative anthropological and historical and cultural analysis. @ 2023. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

Els llibres de viatges en la crítica de Domènec Guansé


 
 
 This paper analyzes Domènec Guansé’s critical attention to travel literature in Catalan newspapers, which experiences a major revival from middle 1920’s to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The introduction of that genre in Catalan literature is part of a wider context encouraging all ways of cultural modernity, such as magazines or non-fiction books. Guansé looks in detail at the most outstanding works by Nicolau M. Rubió i Tudurí, Enric Blanco and specially Aurora Bertrana. Her Paradisos oceànics is a milestone in travel books, both for its quality and documentary value and for non-literary issues: primarily the writer’s female condition (paradigm of the new cultural role that women have to play) and the cosmopolitanism that it adds to literary circles.
 
 

Wild Songs, Sweet Songs: The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord

Part of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature at Harvard University (MPCOL) is the corpus of Albanian epic recordings, which consists of both audio recordings and texts. The audio recordings include 70 items recorded on aluminum discs by Milman Parry during 1934 and 1935 in the Balkans, consisting of songs and text recited in the Albanian language along with the conversations and recitations in South Slavic languages. The textual materials include 13 notebooks containing more than 22,000 verses of songs, dictated by 38 singers and collected by Albert Lord in various areas of Northern Albania in 1937. The first 10 notebooks were compiled during Lord's travel and the last three collected at Lord's request by two local collaborators. Although MPCOL has labeled the 13 notebooks “Heroic Ballads and Folksongs from Albania,” only Lord's recordings are from his visits in Albania and direct meetings with Albanian singers. Parry's Albanian recordings are from Bosnian singers who sung in two languages, Serbo-Croatian and Albanian, although he planned but never managed to go to Albania.Lord wrote about these recordings in Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs (1954), noting that he intended to publish the Albanian recordings in another volume, which he never completed. Although scholars have had direct access in the MPCOL to the Albanian materials, the materials remained unpublished until Nicola Scaldaferri, David Elmer, Zymer Neziri, and John Kolsti met at an annual international seminar on Albanian culture and language in Prishtina, Kosovo, in 2003, and then continued their work with other meetings in the United States and Kosovo, with support from the University of Calabria and the University of Milan in Italy. Their work culminated in this volume published under the auspices of Nicola Scaldaferri, with additional contributions by Victor A. Friedman, John Kolsti, and Zymer U. Neziri. According to Scaldaferri, the reasons for the publication's delay are various, but are largely due to complex and well-known political events in the Balkans, which resulted in some significant barriers to communication.Why did they title the book Wild Songs, Sweet Songs? Local folk singers refer to the cyclic rhapsodies and heroic songs as kânge t'egra (wild songs), and to love songs as kânge të buta (soft or gentle songs). Both categories of songs characterize this volume's subject matter. The book's first part comprises essays by the aforementioned scholars, which provide very relevant but also analytical data for the methods of recording used by Lord and Parry; skills of the epic singers who sang successfully in two languages; the content and context related to the singers that Lord met; the texts, music, and performances of these recordings; and the admirative mood (used to express surprise or disbelief) of Albanian epic poetry, which makes this genre so distinctive and literally untranslatable in the Balkan context. This section opens many windows to enlighten cultural and professional issues on Albanian epics that folklorists have lacked for comparative studies on Balkan epics.The book's second part is a catalog that lists the Albanian recordings collected by Parry and Lord. Albanian recordings in the Milman Parry Collection are on aluminum discs as well as on wire spools and are listed with the PN prefix. The 13 notebooks in the Albert B. Lord Collection of Epics from Northern Albania are listed with the LN prefix. Because it contains detailed notes for each recording, the book's catalog is invaluable for researchers working with these materials.The book's most important and most voluminous part is the anthology, which brings together the best Albanian materials from the Epic Collections of Parry and Lord for the first time in one volume. The anthology presents the text songs—in the original Albanian and translated into English—of 12 recordings, five by Milman Parry and seven by Albert Lord. There are also two original texts sung in Albanian: one by Salih Ugljanin from 1934 and one by Fatima Biberović (originally from Prizren, Kosovo), which represents the phenomenon of female singers to whom Parry and Lord paid special attention. Another part of the anthology is the “Song of Sirotin Ali,” which Lord collected in 1937 as the longest Albanian epic text from oral tradition transcribed and known to scholarship. Dictated to Lord by Adem Brahimi, it has 2,165 verses. Also part of the volumes are appendices with photos, letters, manuscripts, and maps from Lord's archive, which add documentary value to this volume.With many of its materials published for the first time, Wild Songs, Sweet Songs: The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord offers opportunities for both Albanian and international scholars to compare and observe the differences and peculiarities of the Albanian oral epic—opportunities that were not available for nearly a century.

Motherfield by Julia Cimafiejeva

Reviewed by: Motherfield by Julia Cimafiejeva Andrew Singer JULIA CIMAFIEJEVA Motherfield Trans. Valzhyna Mort & Hanif Abdurraqib. Dallas. Phoneme Media. 2022. 128 pages. OUR SOCIOPOLITICAL WORLD is hemorrhaging; when an adroit poetic spirit on the front line documents it with such candor, rigor, and talent, we are best served by paying attention. Belarusian poet Julia Cimafiejeva's first collection in English, Motherfield, begins with a "protest diary"—a prose section written originally in English documenting the lead-up to, and the especially shocking aftermath of, the 2020 presidential election in Belarus, day by day. The grounded tone and assiduous, cumulative detail of these selected diary entries inform their expressive power. Reading them, we can apprehend a "normal" sensibility and society thrust into rupture and extreme abuse. Besides a reader's sheer gratitude for this unflinching chronicle of state psychosis played out on a daily, personal level, one haunting implication communicated by its tone of familiarity is that such a rupture could really happen anywhere—even "here." Beyond its documentary value, this is perhaps its main service. Here's an excerpt from March 11, 2021: Raman was murdered because we came outside to ask the masked strangers why they were cutting off white-and-red ribbons that decorated the fence. Because of the ribbons he was tortured in the car on the way to the police station, then his maimed body was thrown on the porch, and the police officer called the ambulance to take him to the hospital where he got into coma and died. // We were aghast. Anyone could have been in Raman's place. Anyone who would defend the neighbourhood where he or she lives. The middle section of this volume is a selection of poems presented bilingually, side by side in Belarusian and English translation. Here, disenfranchisement is given poetic voice, where, in stark and useful contrast to the diary, it is a visceral tone of horror at what the poet has been experiencing that predominates—and is sustained. This facility seems baked into the poet's DNA—as, we are told, she "was born in an area of rural Belarus that became a Chernobyl zone when she was a child." Many of these poems flow quickly in relatively short, irregular lines down the page, suitable for transmitting emotional essences. Here we have core reactions and reflections—to the state, relationships, the prevailing social order, and the complex nature of family ties, as in the poem "Umbilical": … frightened, you hid / in the swamp of ice / under the weight of wet braids // my name is a mirror / of your name / green seeds of my eyes / grew out of yours // but I / sold / your inheritance / for a dry // crumb of freedom / I cut // long and thick / umbilical hair // I thought I unburdened / myself // but even invisible / the braid grows / with memory // we spent three years together / and then headed out / into two opposite directions / you under the earth / and me onto the earth // Two cold coins on your eyelids / the green lace of pine paws … A ceaseless inventiveness carries this selection of poems inexorably forward, as in the startling poem "MSCRRDG": "… was supposed / to be what / tadpo- / poppy / something m- / uuuuuuuugh / than // hmm … embryoo / bry / breathe / still young / you will have / more // what?" The poet eventually chooses exile in Vienna, and so the poems also reference the complex of guilt and necessity engendered by this choice. In a final part, in original English, "My European Poem" gives a largely more prosaic account, sometimes anthemic and lined poetically, of the complicated yet secure place the poet has arrived to: … When I tell it in English, / I want to pretend that I am you, / That I don't have that painful experience / Of constant protesting and constant falling, / That nasty feeling of frustration and dismay. / I want to pretend that I have a hope, / Because when I tell it in Belarusian / I realize, we all realize, there is none. To be translated into English by another powerful expatriate Belarusian poet, Valzhyna Mort, together with accomplished American poet Hanif Abdurraqib, gives this book its uniquely pitched voice in English, at once recognizable yet crossing irreversibly a raw societal edge many of us may...

Review: Giuliano da Sangallo and the Ruins of Rome

Review: <i>Giuliano da Sangallo and the Ruins of Rome</i>

India's epidemics in theRiḥlaof Ibn Baṭṭūṭa: plague, cholera or lexical muddle?

AbstractThe famous Moroccan traveller Muḥammad b. Baṭṭūṭa, who left Tangier in 1325, claims to have made a journey that took him across most of the then Islamicate world. The country in which he recounts having stayed the longest was India, where he says he remained from 1333 to 1341/1342, mostly in the Islamic Sultanate of Delhi. A long section of hisRiḥlais dedicated to the sub-continent and modern historians of this region ascribe to it an important documentary value, although it has been argued that Ibn Baṭṭūṭa may have borrowed – not to imply copied – information from other sources in other parts of the work. As concerns India, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa speaks of two epidemics and one deadly disease that occurred in 1334–5 and 1344. Some scholars have referred to them as cholera, while others have suggested it was the plague – thus supporting the hypothesis that the medieval plague pandemic had struck India before reaching the Middle East. How did this confusion arise? What exactly does Ibn Baṭṭūṭa'sRiḥlarelate? Do Indo-Persian sources confirm these epidemics? Do they and/or Ibn Baṭṭūṭa'sRiḥlaallow us to discount the presence of the Medieval Plague in India, or rather do they assert it?In order to answer these questions, this paper analyses the information on the Indian epidemics in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa'sRiḥlaand compares the text with its translations in the principal European languages and with Indo-Persian chronicles. These analyses reveal something of a lexical muddle which, in my opinion, has contributed to some errors and misunderstandings regarding the diseases in question. But another question arises: is it possible to read the information provided by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and the Indian chronicles in a consilient way, that is, taking into account not only the analysis of written documents, but also the recent and current findings in genetics of plague, and in particular on the Black Death? Finally, an attempt is made to answer a question that has to be asked, particularly in light of the criticism often levelled at Ibn Baṭṭūṭa. Considering that in one of these events he claims to have witnessed the epidemic, is there any reason to suppose that he did not? Regarding the other two events that he did not claim to witness firsthand, is there any cause to doubt his claims?

The Genesis of Miracle Stories in Jihad

Abstract Stories of miracles, or karamat, are ubiquitous and influential in jihad. Yet, they remain poorly understood. Current treatments are limited to descriptions of reports in individual conflicts. None have systematically studied their genesis: from whom, and where do they originate? Some, to be sure, imply origins—especially in deception. But they have done so based on impressions, and not systematic investigation. However, the question is of considerable interest and warrants closer study. Examining it would not only illuminate an understudied aspect of the movements in question but also advance scholarship on religion on the battlefield, a budding field of inquiry. This article thus traces the genesis of official and semiofficial reports of karamat, drawing on a wide range of evidence, including hundreds of reports culled from books, magazines, and video and audio recordings from multiple groups and individuals spanning decades, and interviews. The results point to origins in experience, misrepresentation, rumor, and tradition. The findings advance our understanding of karamat, and the documentary value of reports of them. More generally, they sensitize us to the significance of elusive phenomena seldom studied in the conflict literature: religious experience, propaganda about religious experience, rumor about religious experience, and folklore about religious experience.