Articles

The issue of predestination of human’s fate has triggered plenty of discussions in Islam during many centuries. A number of roots are used in description of this topic in the Quran. The author pointed out three prominent roots and analysed their usage relying on commentary to the Quran written by one of the most prominent Muslim scholars – Ibn Kathir. The study resulted in finding out the most frequent root used in description of predestination, the author also gives statistics on reflection of the topic in different periods of Quran’s revelation. The author attempts to find out the reasons why not the most frequent roots were used in the name of the theme in the Islamic doctrine.

The paper deals with the patterns of quotations in a Jewish-Italian Divination Book. The manuscript of the book belongs to the Russian State Library and derives from the Italian town of Ancona. In the 16th century, Ancona flourished as an important Mediterranean port bringing together merchants from the Ottoman Empire, Italian cities, etc. The Jewish community played a crucial role in Ancona’s commercial success due to its connections with the Jewish Sephardic communities of the Eastern Mediterranean. No wonder, the Divination book mostly bothers about commerce and money matters. However, it also expresses religious and cultural affiliation of the community. The author of the Divination Book needed Biblical and Talmudic quotations to support his forecasts by the authority of the classical texts. At the same time, these same texts put the life of Jewish merchants into the context of sacred history of Israel making the daily existence of the Ancona merchants sacred and meaningful.

Matteo Ripa (1682–1746) was an Italian missionary priest whose stay in China allowed him to witness the death of Emperor Kangxi and the Chinese rites controversy, a conflict within the Catholic Church over the meaning of traditional Chinese rituals. The conflict had severe consequences for its participants, including the Jesuit order. On returning to Italy, Ripa founded a college in Naples, the first European institution to study and teach subjects concerning the East at an academic level; it later became the Oriental University. He also wrote the memoir “Giornale”. A century after his death, Jesuit editors substantially revised the text, distorting the author’s meaning. Their widely distributed version created a lasting misconception about Ripa’s life and character. Publication of the original text now makes it possible to recover his story.

The article examines how to distinguish basic and augmented elements of the Arabic word. The phenomenon of az-ziyāda (addition of a segment) is studied through the thirteenth-century Arab grammarian Ibn Ya‘īš’s treatise “Šarḥ al-Mufaṣṣal”. The identification of augmented ḥurūf is illustrated by hamza. The main criteria are derivation, evidence from words of the same pattern, and the frequency with which a ḥarf is basic or augmented in a given position. The article also examines the hierarchy of nouns according to their ability to change morphological structure: triradical nouns rank highest, followed by quadriradical and quinqueradical nouns. Special attention is paid to initial hamza. Three types of structural defectiveness in nonverbal nouns with an initial prothetic hamza are identified: elision of the third radical; assimilation of the vowel of the second radical to that of the third; and an atypical pattern whose use is restricted to a particular context.

The article focuses on one of the most important features of Turkey’s economic development in recent decades: periodic crises of growth arising from a similar set of causes. During globalization, the sources of these crises changed. Whereas they previously had mainly external origins, domestic financial tensions and consequent macroeconomic instability also became sources. The author regards this change as a result of Turkey’s growing agency in international financial relations under conditions of financial openness, one of the main attributes of globalization.

The article is devoted to little-known aspects of the Christian-Muslim relations in the Mamluk state dealing with suppression of the Christian wine-production and wine-trade. In the 13th and 14th centuries the Muslim world affected by serious historical challenges (the Crusades and the Mongol invasion) went through a certain moral revolution. It stimulated the spirit of religious fundamentalism, implementation of the norms of the Islamic piety and the oppression of the religious minorities. During the “century of persecutions” (1260s–1360s) campaigns of religious repressions against Dhimmis repeated several times being motivated by a certain irrational rhythm of social aggression of the lower classes of the Muslim society. However in the late 14th and 15th centuries another factor of the persecutions became obvious. The “Black Death” pandemic and following waves of the epidemics of plague, natural disasters and famine caused an atmosphere of apocalyptic expectations and penitence. These sentiments led to campaigns against social vices as wine-drinking, drugs consumption and prostitution, which were supposed to be the reasons of the Divine punishment. The article analyses coincidences between the years of plague and famine and the religious persecutions of the Dhimmis, first of all suppression of the wine-trade which was strongly associated with the Christians.

This paper, which is based on a series of author’s calculations and models, analyzes current situation, trends, factors and major determinants of Least Developed Countries’ (LDCs’) economic development during the last three to four decades. It is argued that despite many acute problems that they do not cease to face, several dozens of LDCs have recently started to progress on the path of rather fast and more or less sustained economic growth. Although LDCs are still grappling with severe forms of multidimensional poverty, substantial dearth of human capital and modern infrastructure, adequate economic, social, political and legal institutions, and encounter considerable foreign economic and climatic shocks, they on average during the last decade and a half managed to have markedly increased their rates of growth of per capita GDP and human development index. It should be underscored that LDCs having benefitted from significant improvement of barter terms of foreign trade, some upgrade in government effectiveness and implementation of a series of pragmatic economic reforms, have succeeded in expanding rates of growth of agricultural and manufacturing production and exports. The level of their gross capital formation has by and large considerably risen due to significant enlargement of the share of domestic savings related to GDP, FDI inflows and workers’ remittances. It would be incorrect to overemphasize the progress achieved by approximately three dozen LDCs (as the basis of their growth remains shaky), but, nevertheless, they have demonstrated noticeable improvement in dynamics of their investment efficiency and productivity growth.

The article presents a Russian translation of the commentary on the 77th sura, “The Emissaries,” from Tafsir al-Jalalayn (“The Commentary of the Two Jalals”), one of the most popular short Qur’anic commentaries in the Muslim world. It reflects the central opinion of the Sunni tradition. The introductory remarks and explanations describe the features of this commentary, briefly analyze the sura and discuss variations in Russian translations of several ayahs arising from different interpretations in classical Muslim exegesis.

The Republic of Korea is one of few countries, that have managed to accomplish a catching-up development, create competitive economics and transit into the group of high-income countries. The paper analyses factors of economic growth of the Republic of Korea. The study explores a number of components of South Korea’s economic success, due to which South Korea has managed to transit from the category of poor and underdeveloped countries into the group of developed countries and make its economy proceed to grow by the way of intensive economic growth. The paper also represents a number of economic growth’s constraints and measures taken to overcome them.

The actual Russian military-political presence in Syria makes to reveal the events happened there more than two centuries ago. During the Russian-Ottoman war of 1768–1774 Russia became the first European country that invaded to the Middle East in the Modern times and even for the short time occupied the part of it: the city of Beirut. The repetition of the Russian navy’s Mediterranean expedition was preparing during the next war of 1787–1791. One of its results should be the separation of Egypt and the part of Syria from the Ottoman Empire as a result of ‘diversions’, as in the diplomatic correspondence were named the secret agreements with the separatist-minded local leaders. The approval by Catherine II of the Ottoman Empire’s partition project known as “Greek Plan”, the involvement of Crimea into Russian’s influence area and its further annexation in 1783 are laying between two those events. The presented article analyzes the chances for the Crimean scenario to be repeated in Syria if the Sweden aggression in 1788 would not thwart the prepared transfer of the Baltic navy to the Eastern Mediterranean.