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The article is devoted to the life and work of a Lebanese scholar and politician Muḥammad Ǧamīl Bayhum (a pupil of Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes), whose activity is little known in Western Oriental Studies. Despite his very important role in the 20th century social and political life of Lebanon and the Middle East as a whole, we will not find any mention of him in the most important studies devoted to the revival of Arab social, religious and political thought in the twentieth century. He was co-founder of the National Library of Lebanon, a member of the Lebanese Academy of Sciences, and a defender of women’s rights. This study is based primarily on Arabic sources and Bayhūm’s own works. The article covers (1) the detailed description of the life and activity of M. Bayhum and the presentation and the analysis of two most important, in my opinion, books of him: (2) "Al-Ḥalqa al-mafqūda fī tārī Al-Arab" ("The Lost Epoch in the History of the Arabs", 1950) and (3) "Al-ʿUrūba wa-aš-šuʿūbiyyāt al-ḥadīṯa" ("Arabism and Contemporary Particularisms", 1957). These books show Bayhum as a historian and political thinker. The paper ends with a "Conclusion".
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The present paper seeks to ascertain whether it was possible to learn Persian in Poland in the period between the First and the Second World War. Given the influx of Polish refugees to Iran from the early spring of 1942, this question is important not only for the history of Iranian and Persian studies in Poland, but can also grant us a deeper understanding of the condition of the refugees. The subject is analyzed on the basis of Iranian diplomatic reports from Poland discussing the teaching of Persian, especially in Warsaw; in the present work, one such document has also been edited and translated. Furthermore, documents and reports kept at the Archive of the University of Warsaw have also been among the sources used in the present research. As it turns out, the teaching of Persian in the interwar period was very limited in Poland. This was both due to internal causes, especially the shortage of academic staff fluent in Persian, and to the limited support of the Iranian establishment, even in the face of the Iranian representative’s enthusiasm for broader academic cooperation.
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The paper shows how methodology of cognitive linguistics can be used in the analysis of the most ancient Sanskrit text, the Ṛgveda (ca 13 BCE). The Ṛgveda is famous for its metaphorical language difficult to understand. The assumption on the embodiment of human cognition together with the conceptual metaphor theory and blending theory applied to the Ṛgveda facilitates its understanding and reconstruction of its consistent overall worldview.
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Sādeq Hedāyat (1903-51) was one of the first Iranian intellectuals interested in popular culture. His interest, also visible in his literary work, can partly be explained by a nationalistic dream to reach the «Arian» roots of Iranian identity and culture. The article explores the ideological concept of Hedāyat’s two early collections of folklore: "Ousāne" (1931) and "Neyrangestān" (1933), with some references to his literary works. The study reveals some paradoxes of Hedayat’s attitude towards Iran’s complex cultural heritage.
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The centuries-long neighbourhood of India and Persia resulted in mutual cultural contacts, which intensified especially during the period of Mogul rule in India, when the meeting and intermingling of the two cultures created a new quality. Scholars studying the two cultures have postulated the existence of two models of cosmopolitan culture, viz. “Sanskrit cosmopolis” and “Persian cosmopolis”. In Sanskrit literature in the pre-Muslim period, mentions of Persia and the Persians are quite rare. In Vedic literature (c. 1400-500 BC) we do not come across any. They only appear in the epics, then we occasionally find mentions in classical poetry, in drama, in narrative literature, in the Puranas, in philosophical treatises, in lexicographers. This article provides a brief overview of references to Persians and Persia in Sanskrit literature from the end of the first millennium BC to the beginning of the second millennium AD.
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Relations between China and the Middle East had its reflection in the Arabic and Persian literature of the Early Abbasid period. There are geographical and travel books in Arabic and Persian focusing on commerce, including the maritime trade and exploration of new lands and peoples. Among these books are accounts on China of Sui and Tang periods. These accounts reflect relations between the Caliphate and the Middle Kingdom as well as ties connecting the Middle East, especially Iran, to China in Late Antiquity, i.e. prior to the rise of Islam. A number of texts dealing with China and other lands of the Far East belong to Persian Epic, with the most outstanding examples of "Garšāspnāmeh" and "Kušnāmeh", both written in the 11th century.
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The poetry of Iranian poet and visual artist Taher (pen name of Mohammad Ali Taheri) from Bushehr in southern Iran is an opportunity to discover contemporary verse from this less visible and less known region in the literary section of Iranian studies. Apart from a presentation of Taher’s artistic output, the introduction includes a discussion on the subject matter of his free verse, narrative poems. They span a wide range of topics, from interconnectedness of life and the contemplation of existence to migration to the situation of the Middle East torn by oil wars. In addition to fifteen Polish translations the article comprises three English renderings with their Persian originals. The translations were part of a 2021 scholarship granted by the Old Town Culture House in Warsaw. This is a printed premier of Taher’s poetry, as it has hitherto not been published either in Iran or abroad.
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The Islamic concept of the family is a group that emerges from the unison of man and woman through a marriage contract and the children that are born of it. Children are very important in the social order. For this reason the issue of the abortion is important in this religion as well. Muslim views on it are shaped by the Muslim sacred texts: Qur’an, the Hadith, and by the opinions of religious scholars. The Quran does not directly mention intentional abortion, but there is no explicit prohibition to abort, and it depends in Islamic law on woman’s will. On the other hand, the schools of Islamic law differ in their opinions when pregnancy can be terminated.The second part of the article discusses the attitude towards abortion and contraception today, referring to the differences in the regulations of legal schools and countries.
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The problem of the future of the Imperial House returns from time to time, which is related to fears for the survival of the imperial dynasty. They result from the law in force, “The Imperial Household Act” (1947), according to which (article 1.) “the Imperial Throne shall be succeeded to by a male offspring in the male line belonging to the Imperial Lineage”. Since a woman cannot sit on the throne, today we only have three candidates, and one of them (Prince Hitachi) is already 87 years old. Official discussions on the revision of this law have been going on for a long time, the last ones ended in December 2021, but no specific decisions were made. So what's next? Will the imperial dynasty of Japan, the oldest in the world, survive?
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According to Iranian criminal law, after a court has rendered a qesās (retaliation) verdict in a murder trial, the family of a victim can demand the death penalty or can pardon the defendant and accept diyeh, a financial compensation instead. This dual nature of the Iranian legal system implies the equivalence of two radically different solutions, the possibility of retaliation (qesās), and the right to gozasht, that is, the possibility of waiver. The main objective of this study is a cultural analysis of the process that takes place between these two phenomena. The article demonstrates not only the complexity of this process, but also its socio-cultural determinants, with particular emphasis on the importance that the attachment of Iranians to the value of āberu, understood as a good name, reputation and a positive image in the eyes of other people, conditioned by the fulfillment of certain expectations in the community, plays in the course of this procedure. The primary source material used in the work includes legal documents and religious texts, case summaries, interviews with victims’ families, court officials, and community activists.
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The article discusses the images of Iran in modern Hebrew literature. From the end of the twentieth century onwards, rich and varied literary works have been written which take place in Iran, portraying the Jewish way of life and culture. The writers are mostly Jewish Iranian immigrants to Israel and their offspring. Therefore, many works of fiction are realistic with biographical components. They are centered around Jewish familial life, both in villages and in big cities, mostly in Teheran, where three-quarters of Iranian Jews lived. The article concentrates on four novels published in the twenty-first century, books that illustrate the life of Jews in Iran from the 1940s till the 1970s before the Islamic revolution. These novels share some common topics. The way of writing is very sensual; colors, smells, sights and voices are in the center of the novels. The characters are emotional and they do not hide it. They love, hate, sing and shout out loud. The power of family bonds is extremely coercive, and the social structure is conservative and patriarchal. The protagonists are proud of their tradition, which also includes Iranian culture, especially Persian poetry and language. The Hebrew prose is saturated with Persian words and idioms. An intricate common issue is Jewish-Muslim relations. The novels describe the complexity and various dimensions of the life of a tolerated but detested minority. Another shared topic is various strategies of women to survive in the ultra conservative and patriarchal community.
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Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1819-1891) is one of the best timeless American classics. In this novel, one of the main characters is Iranian and apart from that, many historical figures and bygone names of geography of Iran are mentioned throughout the story. The main objective of this study is an influence of Iran civilization and history on writer’s thoughts and statements.
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This article contributes to a broader study on the role that Sufism could play in the formation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and religious fundamentalism in contemporary Afghanistan. The author uses the Sufi concept of the chain of spiritual genealogy (silsila) to analyze the connections between the graduates of the Nur al-Madaris Faruqi madrasa founded at the beginning of the 20th century and the participants of the fundamentalist organizations later associated with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Due to the geographical location of the madrasa (Ghazni province), this analysis mainly focuses on the area of eastern Afghanistan and the period from the 1940s until 2021.
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One of the most important notions permeating the culture of Iran is the idea of sadness. Iranians themselves knowingly admit that sadness is part and parcel of the Iranian identity. The significance of sadness in the Persian culture is reflected, for instance, in the Persian language, which contains very rich vocabulary connected with sadness and its various types. This article is the next step in my research on the idea of sadness in Iranian culture. Its purpose is to identify the basic lexemes used in the Persian language to express sadness and to show one of the possible categorization of these terms, taking into account the aspect of Persian culture. The subject of the analysis are the terms: gham (m), hozn, anduh and ghosse.
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The author analyzes selected narrative threads contained in the book "Tajiks in the Mirror of History" by the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon, related to the emergence of Tajik historical memory. The starting point for the research contained in the essay are the reflections of the British philosopher and social sociologist Ernest Gellner, who believes that nationalism is not the product of nations existing for centuries, but national-building movements that created modern nation states. A specific vision and interpretation of historical events often served to create a sense of belonging to a national community. In the case of contemporary Tajikistan, this process can be seen in the book "Tajiks in the Mirror of History", which the author proves by analyzing two selected threads - the description of the earliest history of the Aryans in Central Asia and the reign of the Samanid dynasty. The themes present in President Rahmon's work have become in the 21st century one of the most important elements of Tajik historical policy. For the sake of clarity, the author has also included a short historical outline.
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This chapter deals with Muslim law and the specific branch of Muslim jurisprudence which is the study of objectives and canons of law. Objectives (maqāṣid) provide an interpretative framework in which Muslim jurists create legal norms (qawāʿid). The chapter states that objectives and canons are organically related and stresses the stability of objectives and diversity of canons. Part of canons that can be defined as universal due to the broadest and most general nature of their content have the character of moral and ethical norms rather than legal rules. Since canons are formulated by reasoning, we can speak of ethical reasoning that precedes legal reasoning.
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The article analyzes selected scenes of suicide and other actions of a (self)destructive nature in Greek myths. The basis for the reading are the mythographic works of Apollodorus and Hyginus. In the conclusions the author draws attention to the significant presence of female suicide in myth, as well as the role of violence in the functioning of the heroic family.
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In 2019–2022, the number of suicides in Poland stabilized, but there was a large increase in the number of suicides and suicide attempts among children and adolescents up to 18 years of age. Therefore, there is a need to disseminate knowledge in the field of suicidology in Poland, especially knowledge on recognizing signs of risk of suicidal behavior and knowledge on suicide prevention, including crisis intervention. Among Polish experts in the field of suicidology, there is a conviction about the need to introduce the subject “Suicidology” in the curricula of selected fields of study. This applies especially to such fields as Pedagogy, Psychology, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Journalism, but also many others. The activities of experts working on the Suicide Behavior Prevention Program for 2021–2025 give hope, which provides for training of individual professional groups in the field of suicidology knowledge.
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With life it is so – little do we remember it, and yet we always regret when we have to leave it. According to Plato, suicide is not a solution as we reject the very gift of existence, which must not be lost. What is more, after his death, a suicide almost immediately begins a new life. Jean Amèry, close in his views to existentialism, looks at this issue differently and advocates the right to voluntary death and the recognition of each failure as its justification. This stance is part of the proper discourse on suicide and euthanasia, which Henryk Elzenberg wrote about in this context. His arguments lead to the conclusion that both suicide and euthanasia are the broadest confirmation of human dignity, which consists in freeing oneself from a biological survival instinct. However, it should be recalled that no one should be encouraged to euthanasia and even more so, argue for its adoption.
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