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JAKOBYOVÁ, Barbora – NIŽŇANSKÝ, Eduard. Dejiny židovskej komunity v Dolnom Kubíne [A History of The Jewish Community in Dolný Kubín]. Bratislava: Izraelská obchodná spoločnosť na Slovensku, 2018, 240 pp. ISBN 978-80-971954-4-1
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Defended PhD theses in Bulgaria in the field of linguistics, literature, history, folklore, ethnography and art studies
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Data about scientific events in the field of the humanities in Bulgaria in the current year
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The study examines the demythologization and remythologization of the Bulgarian-Russian and Bulgarian-Soviet relations in 1989–2019 in the context of the politics of history pursued in Bulgaria. It reveals the role of myths in politics of history for creating identities by maintaining certain interpretations in view of the new geopolitical orientation of the country after the end of the Cold War. The author analyzes the accumulated Bulgarian historical literature, which includes not only academic but also journalistic and parahistorical works. She points out the public reactions, fuelled by certain interpretations of some key moments of the Bulgarian-Russian and Bulgarian-Soviet relations. These are the character of the Russo- Turkish War of 1877/78, the role of Count Ignatiev and the character of the national holiday March 3, the Bulgarian-Soviet political and economic relations, and in particular – the Stalinist repressions, the occupation regime 1944–1947, the Soviet decisions of the debt crises of the 1960s and 1970s. It is concluded that after 1989 the demythologization of the Bulgarian-Soviet and Bulgarian-Russian relations took place as a moment in the development of the Bulgarian historical science. And to a large extent, the one-sidedness that turns this demythologization into a new remythologization is due to the use of new historical interpretations as an element of memory policy to overcome the communist past and “Sovietophilia”, as well as the politics of history to overcome “Russophilia”.
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After the notorious persecution of its Khurasani protagonists, profiting from the political and ideological vacuum of the interregnum and the upsurge of the Shiite propaganda of the late 15th century, the Hurufi teaching penetrated Eastern and Central Anatolia, partly disguised under the tenets of different Batini indoctrinated groups, making these regions by the end of the century, its new stronghold. The main stage of the events became the Ottoman lands. Particularly in the years after the Ankara disaster of 1402, Asia Minor and the Balkans became a fertile soil for all unorthodox doctrines, especially those, like Hurufi one, nurturing apocalyptic or messianic expectations. Simultaneously, Persian and the Gurgani vernacular retreated before the Anatolian Turkish as its written medium. The paper concentrates on the exegetical attempts of the second generation of Fażl Allāh Astarābādī (d. 1394)’s disciples, in particular the first Turkish translations and commentaries on his seminal works.
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Pomaks, a Bulgarian speaking community based on a religious identity emerged as a result of Islamization process which occurred among the local Slavic people in the regions of Loveč, the Rhodope Mountains, Western Thrace and Macedonia during the Ottoman period in the 15th–18th centuries. It is stated in the literature that the term Pomak was first used in Bulgarian sources in 1812, in British sources in 1833 and in French sources in 1840 to identify Bulgarian speaking Muslims living in the Loveč region. In this study, after examining the process of Islamization, the terms used to define Pomaks, and appearing of the term in the international literature, based on some new and unused Ottoman sources I will show that the term Pomak used by the Ottomans earlier than previously assumed. According to my findings, the Pomak term was first used in Ottoman sources in the 17th century regarding statesmen that were of Pomak origin. But as a separate community Pomaks emerged for the first time in Ottoman sources during the 1806–1812 Russo-Ottoman War. State Chronicler Şanizade Mehmed Ataullah Efendi recorded that around 10–14.000 soldiers were recruited from among the Loveč Pomaks and also described them as a military element, in 1809. Besides, Ottoman documents reveal that during this war, the Pomaks ambushed and defeated the Russian troops entering the Balkan Mountains and played an active role in defending the Loveč region in general. However, Ottoman documents also indicate that some apostate Pomaks together with volunteer Bulgarians joined the Russian army and attacked to Loveč in 1811 January. The earliest record defining the Bulgarian speaking Muslims in the Rhodope Mountains as Pomaks in Ottoman sources, was dated 1833. In addition, after looking at the views about the origin and identity of the Pomaks among the Bulgarian intellectuals and western circles in the 1860s–1870s, I will also be examining the etymology of the term Pomak in view of the Ottoman sources which support the thesis that term Pomak come from the Bulgarian word pomagači (helpers).
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The text describes the cemeteries and tombstones in the town of Oryahovo and the nearby village of Selanovtsi. The rich plastic decoration of the traditional type of monuments has the characteristics of the Christian ritual system. In more recent times simple forms are established – plates predominate, on which various details are applied – niches for candles, vases for flowers, religious or communist signs, inscriptions, photos. According to the form and content of the tombstones, there are four time periods. The oldest are stone tombstones, which belong to the stonemakers school of the town of Vratsa and were used until the middle of the twentieth century. Simultaneously with them appear models of urban type memorial, which consists of a pedestal and a main body, a parallelepiped, crowned with a cross. Limestone or granite, applications of porcelain photographs, the appearance of sculptural figures – these differences suggest social inequalities. After the middle of the twentieth century, this type of monument was lost, with the appearance of simple slabs, cast from cement, which included the style of the communist regime in Bulgaria at that time.
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The purpose of the following text is to show the local variant of after funeral custom “Fii marturia”, which was realized in the village of Harletz in the region of Vratza during the second half of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty first century. The accent is on the algorithm of the custom which was discussed in two directions – outside – the stories of the local Harletz citizens and inside – the childhood memories of the author. In this research, the geographical, culture and historical, lingual and demographic sides of this occurrence are well shown and discussed. Ethnological analysis of the Hurletz’s version of this custom can also be found in this work.
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In our modern reality, one of the constantly relevant topics that excites the researchers, the teachers and the general public, is the content of the textbooks especially those on social and humanitarian subjects. The present study focuses on the analysis of a textbook from the beginning of 20th century – “Pictures from the general geography” of the Croatian Ivan Hoic. This work is characterized by a humanistic approach to the issue of otherness and the other. Hoic’ s work presents areal presentation of a foreign culture as a mandatory element of educational process. The view of Bulgarians presented by Hoic creates conditions for our self-knowledge even in the reality of the 21st century.
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Planned as an expedition to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims, the Fourth Crusade became a crushing weapon, destroying Byzantium and changing the fate of the Balkans. Its leader marquis Boniface of Montferrat was one of the people, who had the greatest influence in directing the pilgrims to Constantinople. Fulfilling his vassal duty to Philip of Swabia and pursuing his ambition to restore the lands and authority of his brothers in Byzantium, he set out for the East. A brave knight, an influential seigneur, an experienced military leader, but an unscrupulous and a cruel politician, he lost the “battle” for the imperial crown of Constantinople, but won Thessaloniki. There he set the beginning of a new crusader state, which covered the lands from the Rhodope Mountains to the Peloponnese peninsula. However, his eastern adventure ended tragically. Underestimating the force and the abilities of the Bulgarians, he lost his life in battle against them.
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The importance of the Bulgarian woman in the public space from the Renaissance to nowadays is presented in the article. The woman was restricted to participate actively in the Christian world and school life during the Renaissance. She received equal rights to men in the public sphere only after 1944. The socialistic development in Bulgaria during the period from 1944 to 1989 had a great significance to the enlightenment of the whole Bulgarian nation, which also provided an unrestricted access of the women to the educational system. The development of the Bulgarian education has been marked by reverse process after the democratic changes. The „total crisis“ of the Bulgarian society leads to a significant shortage in the educational system. In comparison to the previous socialist period, lower indicators in overall population literacy can been observed. Gender inequalities in education are being fairly reduced. Bulgarian women have gradually conquered school environment and are being engaged in educational causes more often compared to men. However, in the contemporary Bulgarian society, the right to education continues to be a challenge in respect of various social groups.
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The article analyses an Athonite poetical text which describes a conflict between the monasteries of Zographou and Chilandar over landed property situated inside the Holy Mountain. It refers to no place names, but pays special attention to the visit of a nameless Ottoman governor of Thessalonica, accompanied by the consuls of France, Russia and Austria, to Mount Athos. His intention was to solve the difference and to reconcile the two monasteries, but his efforts failed. He then granted a special document (ilam) to Zographou, and met an unnamed ex-patriarch of Constantinople in the monastery of Espigmenou. The authorized representatives of Zographou and Chilandar, Dositheos and Onouphrios, travelled to Constantinople in order to present the case to the sultan’s court, but during their stay in Istanbul cholera struck the city and the final decision was postponed until the end of the epidemy. Three Greek and two Turkish documents make it clear that Zographou and Chilandar were claiming the terrain of Giovantza on the northwest coast of Mount Athos as well as that the conflict was rather important for the two monasteries.
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The reconstruction of family relations and of their impact on the socioeconomic activities of Wallachian merchants in the 18th and early 19th centuries is a rewarding, yet difficult, task. The difficulty results from two main factors: one is that the majority of the available primary sources have an arid, patrimonial nature, and two, the type of documents that might offer more social detail, i.e. family correspondence and chronicles, diaries, etc., are not as numerous as the historian would wish. The author of the present study therefore decided to supplement this uneven documentary base with another type of material: the last wills and testaments of individuals from this socio-professional group. It is from the examination of a documentary corpus of around 100 such texts that the author has attempted to flesh out relations between spouses as well as those between parents and their descendants. A secondary objective of this approach was to identify possible strategies used by merchants in the period under study to ensure continuity in their trade and the ‘security’ of family estates. Despite the nature of the documents, which did not have much scope for affective display, testaments often reveal feelings of love, respect, and loyalty – or a lack thereof – among family members. The fact that most testators usually named close kin (a spouse, surviving children, and siblings) as executors and main beneficiaries of their estates shows the crucial importance of family alliances, affective ties, and solidarities in the longer-term economic survival of family groups.
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