Articles

Using Reza Khan’s travel diary about his campaign in Khuzestan, the article examines how the future shah justified his claim to the Iranian throne. It analyzes the diary’s political purpose and the use of Iranian cultural tradition to construct the image of a modern ruler.

In Dagestan in the early XX century there were representatives of Muslim reformism who entered into a tough confrontation with local supporters of the traditional Shafi’i law school, mainly with the apologists of Sufism. The Sufi Sheikhs actively joined in the theological polemic with the Muslim reformers. The range of issues that caused the most heated discussion was quite traditional for the polemics between the supporters of “taclid” and “ijtihad”. This is the problem of “false sheikhs”, accusation of polytheism (shirk), mediation (tawassul), intercession (shafat), etc. The authors of this article, analyzing the course and content of this polemic, made commented translations of the most characteristic fragments from the works of the most active participants, especially of Sufi Sheikh Muhammad al-Asali.

The article discusses language contact between Swahili and other Bantu languages in Tanzania. Swahili, itself influenced by Arabic, transfers borrowed lexical elements to local languages of lower social status. Its grammatical impact is less pronounced. The study uses material collected by the authors during fieldwork in Tanzania.

Based on the journal Shura, the article examines early twentieth-century debates among Tatar Muslim intellectuals about Quranic exegesis. Some writers rejected reliance on authoritative tafsirs, while others valued them for historical context.

The article reconsiders the date of the Battle of Dhū Ḳār. Based on new evidence, it places the Arab victory over Khusraw II’s forces in the summer of 602 and refines the chronology of the Sasanian governors of al-Hira.

The survived correspondence of Vasiliy V. Bartold and Agafangel E. Krymsky contains important data about crucial changes which took place in the Oriental science in the post-revolutionary Russia. The letters of two distinguished scholars, dated before 1918, were concerned mainly with discussion of the professional issues. Anyhow, the following correspondence increasingly touched upon social and political problems and included their thoughts about methods of their resolving. The correspondence of these two eminent scholars remains a significant factor in the history of the Oriental science.

The article examines motifs of dreams and sleep in classical Persian qhazal. These motifs usually occur at the beginning or end of a poem and may shape the meaning of the whole text. It traces their transfer from love lyrics and qasida openings into qhazal, and interprets sleeplessness as a derivative counter-motif of sleep.

Using official publications of the Japanese Governor-General in Korea, the article examines colonial governance from 1910 to 1945, including policing and ideological measures adapted to changing circumstances and Korean traditions.

The article examines the Avtar Bani as the sacred text of the Sant Nirankari Mission and analyzes its semantic, performative and iconic functions in the movement’s continuing dispute with mainstream Sikhs.

Based on a series of indices and models calculated by the author, the article shows that the contemporary second major wave of globalization, substantially more extensive than the first (from the last third of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century), has had a major but contradictory impact on the economic development of advanced countries and, even more so, of developing countries. It has enabled some of the latter, including China and India, to carry out rational institutional and economic reforms and gain ground in the world economy at the expense of Western countries and Japan. However, globalization has also energized market forces and significantly aggravated economic, financial and socio-political instability around the world.

The article analyzes the ideological and political grounds for the genesis and activity of the Islamic State. The author examines the theoretical content of Islamic fundamentalism and analyzes the picture of the world that it offers its followers. The author asks what goals its supporters pursue and whether ISIS is a fundamentally new type of fundamentalist organization. The article examines the factors that allowed supporters of this organization to fight for a prolonged period against the national governments of Syria and Iraq and the forces of the international coalition of states. It explores key sources of Islamic law and cites comments by prominent theologians and scholars. The author concludes that ISIS uses Islam in a distorted form. Religious literacy is therefore an important element of any national policy to counter extremism.

The article is focused on the theological legacy of Moroccan Sultan Sidi Muhammad ben ‘Abdallah (1757–1790). The significance of his religious works is caused by the fact that since the Almohads (12th century) Sidi Muhammad was the first Moroccan sultan who consistently called for a return to the pure Islam of Prophet Muhammad. Moreover, a study of his theological heritage allows us to rethink the view of the development of Salafism in Arab-Islamic societies. For example, Russian and international researchers used to consider that Moroccan sultans had turned to Salafi ideas only after the development of the Wahhabi doctrine in Arabia. However, an analysis of the religious works of Sidi Muhammad shows that the rise of Salafi ideas in Morocco was not a result of adoption of the Wahhabi ideology which spread on the Arabian Peninsula, but formed at the stage when the Wahhabi movement was just emerging. The fundamentalist views of the Moroccan sultan were the result of internal processes that took place at that time in the Islamic Far West, and not of external influence. This conclusion broadens the limits of our perception of the renewal tendencies that emerged in the Arab-Islamic world in the second half of the 18th century.

In what follows we will try to assess the contribution of Lee Keun – the winner of the 2014 Schumpeter Prize and Professor of Seoul National University – to the theory of breakthrough economic development, based on the case of the Republic of Korea (RK).