Отношения и взаимодействия между Асирия и Новохетските царства в епохата на Ашурназирпал II

Author(s): Zozan Tarhan / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 23/2018

The present paper aims at research of relations between Assyria during the reign of Ashurnasirpal II and three Neo-Hittite kingdoms – Carchemish, Patina and Kummuhu, situated in North-western Syria and neighbouring parts of Turkey. The first part of the study is dedicated to the political events in the relations, marked by the campaigns of the Assyrian ruler in the first half of IX century BCE. The analysis here is based mainly on written sources – Assyrian royal inscriptions, which describe events in terms of campaigns, subjugation and tributes, received from Neo-Hittite kings. The second part of the study is dedicated to the cultural interaction between Assyria and the three kingdoms mentioned above, as result of their subjugation. Here the analysis is based on artifacts, mainly stone slabs with reliefs and some cylinder seals. Some new observations on the chronology of the monuments and their scenes are added, as also some new conclusions on the direction of influence in some artifacts and their elements. The question about the role of Assyria in the process of cultural interaction is especially discussed in the light of new observations. It is concluded, that the cultural interaction in this period is a bilateral process with long-term consequences in the art and politics.

Floarea cu cinci petale

Author(s): Anca Mihaela COŞA / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2018

The five petal flower is not a simple decoration. It's an important heraldry. Looking at the old seal of Câmpulung, which, together with the seals of the cities of Baia (14th century) and Roman (15th century), are the only ones with a legend in Latin, we draw attention to a repetition - the presence of two times of the star and the semilune. The star and the crescent also appear on the coat of arms of Moldova. Next to these flowers with five petals. In order to find the meaning of the symbol, there are presented old and new examples of rosettes or flowers with five petals, respectively ten petals, if they are double lobes. The study looks at elements of architecture, urbanism and landscaping in setting up the whole area of Campulung with the two towers on which these flowers appear in stone sculptures, that of Negru Voda, the highest medieval center in Wallachia and SfGheorghe church potters. The location of these towers, taking into account the distances and landslides, reveals advanced astronomy knowledge. This type of construction and the tectonic discharge of the system, using semisferic arches and domes, leaving ample, free-at-ground ground voids, forming the triumph arcs, shows the personality of the imported rulers who ordered them. In the 14th century Câmpulung was the capital of Wallachia where, in 1352, it passed to the eternal, the Great Basarab I the Founder.

Corruption as day-to-day routine

Author(s): Momchil Metodiev / Language(s): English Issue: 45-46/2018

RABBI JOSEPH KARO AS THE FOUNDER OF THE FIRST KABBALISTIC CIRCLE IN SALONICA

Author(s): Mor Altshuler / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2018

The article describes the establishing of the first circle of Kabbalists in Salonica by two scholars who later laid the foundations of The Golden Age of Safed: R. Joseph Karo, whose Shulchan Aruch became the authoritative codification of Jewish law; and his companion, kabbalist and poet R. Solomon Halevi Elkabetz. While performing a mystical ceremony on the nights of Shevuot (Pentecost) of 1533, a prophetic voice was heard through R. J. Karo’s throat and mouth. The voice urged the companions to ascend immediately to the Land of Israel in order to redeem the Assembly of Israel and be redeemed from exile.Special weight is given to the messianic enthusiasm of the circle, and to their interpretation of the triumphs of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent over the Christian coalition led by Emperor Charles V as an omen to the fall of the satanic realm of “Edom” and as an encouraging step towards redemption.

WINDS OF CHANGE: URBAN AND ARCHITECTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF SALONICA COMMERCIAL CENTRE 1863 – 1903

Author(s): Ceylan Irem Gençer / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2018

As a cosmopolitan port city imbued with various cultures in the Levant, Salonica took its share from the modernization efforts triggered with Tanzimat Period. By mid-nineteenth century, Salonica’s embankment and customs facilities were limited and the transport of goods was problematic due to limited access. Meanwhile, burgeoning trade activities as a result of Ottoman treaties granting special privileges to foreign tradesmen necessitated a comprehensive reorganization of the harbour area.This paper aims to study the urban and architectural transformation of the commercial centre of the city, with a special focus on the re-organization of the sea shore supported with new findings from the Ottoman archives. After its completion in 1882, Salonica Quay became the most prestigious area of the city, lined with buildings which represented the transforming socio-economic life. The urban transformation emerging from the quay area also reflected on the traditional commercial centre concentrating around Frank Street, where new types of commercial buildings started to appear.

BEYOND THE “VALLEY OF TEARS”: REASSESSING THE NARRATIVE OF DECLINE IN SALONICAN JEWISH HISTORIOGRAPHY

Author(s): Devin E. Naar / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2018

Scholars have relied upon diverse methodologies and sources to produce a new corpus of studies about Salonica’s Jews that explores the impact of the end of the Ottoman Empire and the consolidation of the Greek nation-state. Much of the newer scholarship, however, reinforces the perception that Salonica’s Jews experienced a period of “decline” after the city’s incorporation into the Greek state (1912 – 1913) that culminated in their deportation to Auschwitz (1943). This study investigates why such a lachrymose and teleological interpretation of Salonican Jewish history persists today. By reference to new sources and a different interpretive lens, this article also challenges conventional wisdom concerning key turning points in the narrative of the city’s Jews: a major fire (1917), a compulsory Sunday closing law (1924), and the first major act of anti-Jewish violence (1931). The article thus offers a new approach to assessing the encounters between the multiplicities of Jews in Salonica and the Greek state.

ВЪТРЕШНИТЕ ПРОТИВОРЕЧИЯ НА ТУРСКАТА МОДЕРНИЗАЦИЯ

Author(s): Kalina Peeva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2018

This article is dedicated to the modernization in the Republic of Turkey that took place from its establishment in 1923 until the end of the 20th century. It analyzes Mustafa Kemal’s approach to modernization, which has imposed a radical separation with traditional Islamic values and Ottoman tradition. Despite the quick enactment of a European legislation and the restructuring of the country to a European model, the change in Turkish people’s identity has not been without difficulty. Alongside the introduction of a multiparty political system, the traditional Islamic values have made their way into the political scene, and shortly thereafter the Turkish army begins to intervene directly in political life as a guardian of the secular nature of the state, but at the same time undermines its democratic foundations. The movement toward a liberal political life during T. Özal’s administration has irreversibly shifted the direction of Kemalist Turkey’s development. The necessity of the merging of Islamic cultural identity with European values has sparked a public debate, marked by an uneven advancement, testing the country’s worldly stature.

Prism: Understanding Non-Sites of Memory

Author(s): Roma Sendyka / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

The text refers to “memory non-sites” scattered around Poland: empty plots of land, its past known only to locals. These are former concentration camps, mass graves, or kirkuts. History becomes a hypostasis here where palimpsest seems insufficient to describe their complicated nature. Detritus is also not an accurate notion. Recent developments in history may allow to see them as geological structures. Plaszow concentration camp will be a case study example. The author offers a metaphor borrowed from geology to describe its singularity: a prism. With this term she tries to analyse the nature of non-memory places as “refuse dumps” of “tectonic” forces of nature, history, politics, etc.

EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL POLICIES IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIA AND THE MINORITIES

Author(s): Aneta Mihaylova / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

The collapse of communism in Romania in 1989 has left its imprint also on the minority policies. The article tries to outline the factors that influenced the minority policies of the Romanian governments and their development over the past quarter of a century, while laying a major focus on education and the use of the mother tongue. The Romanian legislation in these fields in the post-communist period gives good grounds to conclude that there has been a considerable progress towards the extension of minority rights. A major role for that has played the need to harmonize the Romanian legislation with the European rules and directives. A significant factor for the change was also the active policy of the UDMR, which firmly defended the rights of the Hungarian minority. At the same time, it should be noted that while making numerous concessions, the Romanian government had made it clear that these concessions could only be made within certain limits.

TUDJMAN AND CROATIA’S DISTANCING FROM EUROPE

Author(s): Irina Ognyanova-Krivoshieva / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

On 1 July 2013 Croatia became part of the European Union, but that happened nine years after Slovenia. The Croatian nationalism, flourishing in the 1990s was hostile to the very idea of united Europe. In 1991 – 1992 when a great part of the Croatian territory was under Serbian control, the Western countries supported and recognized the new state. But this positive image quickly changed after its participation in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and especially after the military operation “Storm” in 1995, when around 300,000 Serbs were forced to leave the country. As a result, European politicians did not invite Croatia in 1997 to start negotiations for accession to the EU. In late 1990s the country was in complete international isolation. Tudjman was against every initiative for regional or European cooperation. Building its own independent state Croats were very suspicious to all mega-national projects and initiatives.

RESISTANCE THROUGH SOUVLA AND KREMALA – PERFORMATIVE ACTS AND ACTIONS IN A PROTEST IN CYPRUS 2013

Author(s): Mike Hajimichael / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

This article explores an actual and online street protest which unfolded over a series of weeks in the Spring of 2013 when Cyprus experienced an economic crisis following the ‘bailout’-‘haircut of March 2013. In an effort to contextualize and explore the performative aspects of these events the author links this to art and protest as an expression of alternativeness and an avant-garde spirit embodying resonances of 1960’s and 1970’s art and protest as performative happenings. It is argued, unlike other similar contemporary contexts of economic crisis in the EU, such as Greece, Portugal and Spain, protests in Cyprus may not have been so massively populated but the spirit of performative art was expressed in innovative ways, as documented and shared through social media as an alternative platform of expression, which ultimately fills a void that exists in the contemporary Cypriot political landscape.

BEYOND BLOOD AND HONEY: RE-IMAGINING THE BALKANS THROUGH TRAVELLING EXHIBITIONS

Author(s): Maria-Alina Asavei / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

From 2002 to 2015 a considerable number of large-scale, geopolitical bannered exhibitions have been dedicated to the ‘the Balkans.’ This article aims to analyze and compare two types of regional, large scale exhibitions from/on the Balkans: contemporary art exhibitions and interpretative (dedicated to historical and ethnographic themes) exhibitions. The pervasiveness of the stereotypical visual representations of ‘the Balkans’ – called by the Bulgarian artist Luchezar Boyadjiev the ‘Balkan blue’ – as a region of everlasting conflicts and binary oppositions coincides with the birth of contemporary Balkan art. By attempting to overcome the stereotypical images of the Balkans (‘the Balkan ethos’) still prevalent in our days, the travelling exhibition ‘Imagining the Balkans: Identities and Memory in the Long 19th Century’ – opened in Ljubljana (Slovenia) at the National Museum of Slovenia, in April 2013 and then displayed in other national museums of history from the Balkan region – endeavors to place national histories in a perspective where they interact.

Окружной центр Вэньшань (КНР): историко-этнографическое описание

Author(s): Alexey A. Zakurdaev / Language(s): Russian Issue: 6/2018

This article is devoted to the historical and ethnographic description of the city of Wenshan — the administrative center of the Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. This city, unattractive from the point of view of tourism, has an important historical and cultural content, encoded in its name, and associated with the fate of many non-Han peoples inhabiting it, and with the dramatic history of the national policy of Chinese power in different dynastic periods. The author attempted to reveal this content and to introduce ethnographic and historical plots into the Russian science, to help the reader better understand the ethno-social processes that took place in the past of this city and the country as a whole. Special attention is paid to such political institutions as Tu si and Liu Guan. They are the systems of indirect and direct administration, which represented the confrontation, the periodic dominance of the manifestations of the local and the central authorities, which determined the form of management of peripheral territories, which is now used in China. The example of Wenshan, which appeared as a reaction to the conflict between Tu si and Liu Guan, gives us the opportunity to see the high price and value of peace in the history of the Chinese multiethnic society.

Принос към изследванията на салафизма

Author(s): Yordan Peev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2018

Book Review

Иван Тютюнджиев. История на българския народ ХV–XVII в. Велико Търново, Издателство „Ровита“, 2017. 840 с.

Author(s): Stefka Parveva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2018

Book Review

Мила Маева. Българските емигранти в Англия – минало и съвременност. София: Парадигма, 2017

Author(s): Valentina Ganeva-Raycheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2018

Book review

Rhesos of Thrace: The Transfer of Hero’s Bones. Its Political Implications and the Making of “History” in the Greek Polis

Author(s): Tsvete Lazova / Language(s): English Issue: 16/2006

Palaeo-Balkan Elements in Romanian and Southeast European Anthroponymy

Author(s): Adrian Poruciuc / Language(s): English Issue: 16/2006

Thracian Names Written Through Greek and Latin Letters: a Philological Approach

Author(s): Mirena Slavova / Language(s): English Issue: 16/2006

Orphica Magica I

Author(s): Alexander Fol / Language(s): English,Greek, Ancient (to 1453) Issue: 17/2007