{"title":"Of Hypocrites, Whores, and Holy Animal Bones. Polemical Comparisons and the Invective Mode in Early Reformation Disputes","authors":"A. Kästner","doi":"10.46586/er.11.2022.9847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.11.2022.9847","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to illustrate how a pervasively invective mode of communication was pivotal for early Reformation disputes. For this purpose, it explores, first, specific techniques of polemical comparison used in invective communication. Second, it analyses the relation between a broader transregional public discourse and debates at the local level. Some of the sources examined in this article, for instance a handwritten pasquinade whose anonymous author fiercely criticized a Franciscan preacher, as well as a creatively adapted letter of indulgence, are new to Reformation research. The objective here is to outline decisive and entangled aspects of (semi-)public communication between 1520 and 1524. In order to do so, I focus on the beginning of early Reformation conflicts, their ongoing volatility, and their performative zenith, along the border of two of the most important German territories at the time—the Ernestine Electorate and the Albertine Duchy of Saxony.","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"386 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80766333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dreaming, Temporality in Diasporic Space, and Religious Reflections among Kabyle Immigrant Converts in France","authors":"S. Rasmussen","doi":"10.46586/er.13.2022.9809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.13.2022.9809","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores diasporic experiences and reflections on religious conversion through analyzing visitational, predictive/generative, and inspirational dreams recalled and related by Kabyle immigrant converts in France, which prompted their earlier conversion from Islam in their home region of Kabylie in Algeria, North Africa, prior to their migration to France. There is an approach to dreaming as both self-psychoanalysis and social practice in which visions in visitational dreams illuminate complex cultural identity and belonging in contexts of believed soul travel in dream time and transcultural migration over space. Useful in this analysis is Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, referring to how configurations of time and space are represented in language—in the present case, dreams—analyzed here in terms of how converts’ dreaming, cultural theories of dreams, and dream-sharing construct ambiguous, changing, and ambivalent meanings of conversion in bringing together, but also highlighting contrasts between, cultural and religious distances over time and space. Pre- and post-conversion disruptions emerge in dreams that reveal both religious change and cultural continuity in ways these diasporic converts forge new meanings of identity and belonging as they cope with remembered political violence in Algeria and ongoing economic precarity, political discrimination, and social ambiguity in France. More broadly, an approach inspired by a Bakhtinian (1981) “chronotopic” metaphor hopefully opens up rich perspectives in the study of diasporic spaces and entangled religions in contexts of both conjunctions and disjunctions between dreaming and waking lifeworlds of contradictions and dilemmas over time.","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86517800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Christians, Jews, and Magic in the Sasanian Realm: Between Confrontation and Cooperation","authors":"Sergey Minov","doi":"10.46586/er.13.2022.9873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.13.2022.9873","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This essay focuses on one particular aspect of Jewish-Christian relations during the Sasanian period, namely various types of interaction between the two religious groups in the domain of magic. For that purpose, two distinctive bodies of textual evidence are examined: hagiographical literature produced by Syriac Christians, and Aramaic magic bowls, Jewish as well as Christian. Illuminating and complementing each other, the two corpora shed light on the dual dynamics of competition and cooperation between Jews and Christians in the field of popular religion. \u0000","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84942838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rabbanite Views and Rabbinic Literature in Judeo-Persian Karaite Exegesis","authors":"Ofir Haim","doi":"10.46586/er.13.2022.9871","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.13.2022.9871","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article discusses the outlook of Judeo-Persian Karaite authors on Rabbanite law and rabbinic literature based on an exegetical corpus written in Early Judeo-Persian from the eleventh century, which mostly remains in manuscript form. A close examination of this corpus demonstrates the authors’ complex attitude towards their contemporary Rabbanites and early Jewish literature. By relying on the teachings of the Karaite community of Jerusalem (the “Mourners of Zion”), the corpus’ authors criticize certain Rabbanite views and concepts, while still accepting other parts of the rabbinic tradition which did not challenge their ideology. In so doing, the authors establish themselves as part of the Karaite exegetical tradition, and, more broadly, of the Jewish intellectual world.\u0000","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80744421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Enemy, the Demon, Lucifer: Jesuits Coming to Terms with the Devil in Sixteenth-Century Japan","authors":"Tobias Winnerling","doi":"10.46586/er.13.2022.9804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.13.2022.9804","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on how Jesuit missionaries to Japan during the sixteenth century recurred on notions of the devil as their primary enemy. They took these notions from contemporary late medieval and early modern Catholic demonology and configured them according to local circumstances, reconfiguring the concept of the devil to make sense of their environments. Similar developments as in Japan took place in the contemporary Jesuit mission fields of South America, but yielded slightly different results. As different ways to conceptually reframe the devil were directly connected to the question of his presence in the everyday world – was he a transcendent or an imminent force of evil, and how did he manifest himself and make use of his respective attributes? – this research is guided by the analytical concepts of transcendence and immanence.","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85321608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shiʿi Theology and Polemics between Iran and India: The Case of Saiyed Nūrollāh Šūštarī (d. 1019/1610)","authors":"Sajjad H. Rizvi","doi":"10.46586/er.13.2022.9808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.13.2022.9808","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Connected intellectual history is one of the modes in which we can consider the ways in which ideas, theologies and even polemical exchanges travel between different geographical and political milieux. In this case study, I examine the theology and polemics of Saiyed Nūrollāh Šūštarī between his birth and intellectual formation in eastern Iran and his career and eventual death at the Mughal court. I indicate how his polemical works played a role in transmitting theological ideas and debates from the Iranian milieu to Indian scholarly circles, and how the fluctuating fortunes and reception of his work followed the political shifts and patronage at court.\u0000","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79600139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Avicenna’s Šifāʾ from Safavid Iran to the Mughal Empire: On Ms. Rampur Raza Library 3476","authors":"A. Bertolacci, Gholamreza Dadkhah","doi":"10.46586/er.13.2022.9638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.13.2022.9638","url":null,"abstract":"The paper aims at providing a comprehensive description of the manuscript Rampur, Rampur Raza Library 3476 (ḥikma 112), which contains three of the four main parts of Avicenna’s philosophical magnum opus, the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (the Book of the Cure or: of the Healing). This manuscript documents important developments in the history of Arabic-Islamic philosophy. First, it attests a precise intellectual genealogy within the influential Daštakī family from Shiraz, several exponents of which can be identified as successive owners of this manuscript at the turn of the ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries, among whom one should mention Ṣadr al-Dīn Moḥammad Daštakī Šīrāzī (d. 903/1498), the founder of the so-called “Šīrāzī school” of philosophy; Ġeyās̱ al-Dīn Manṣūr Daštakī Šīrāzī (d. 948/1542), son of the preceding and author of the first extant commentary on the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things, or Metaphysics) of the Šifāʾ in Arabic presently known; and Fatḥollāh Šīrāzī (d. 997/1589), a student and possibly also a relative of Ġeyās̱ al-Dīn Manṣūr Daštakī Šīrāzī, one of the main advocates and promoters of rationalism in India. Second, copied in 718/1318, the manuscript at hand highlights a crucial phase of the transmission of Avicenna’s Šifāʾ, at the pivotal juncture between the most ancient phase of dissemination of the work (fifth to seventh/eleventh to thirteenth centuries) and the later period of its manuscript production (ninth to fourteenth/fifteenth to twentieth centuries). Third, it offers a concrete and insightful specimen of the intellectual exchanges between the Safavid (1502–1736) and the Mughal (1530–1707) empires in the seminal and formative phase of cultural life in Iran and India in the tenth/sixteenth century, in an itinerary that from Shiraz, the place of origin of the Daštakī family, goes eastward in the direction of the Mughal court of Akbar I (r. 963–1014/1556–1605) until it reaches the Raza Library of Rampur at some point.","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79231731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the Dreyfus Affair to Zionism in Palestine: Rashid Riḍā’s Views of Jews in Relation to the ‘Christian’ Colonial West","authors":"U. Ryad","doi":"10.46586/er.11.2022.9762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.11.2022.9762","url":null,"abstract":"The ideas of the well-known reformist Sheikh Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (1865-1935) in his journal Al-Manār (Lighthouse, 1898-1935) still inspire many academic researchers who are interested in the study of the Muslim world in the first decades of the twentieth century. As one of the most influential advocates of Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism, Riḍā’s critiques of Zionism and Jewish expansion in Palestine were part of his anti-colonial activities against the ‘Christian’ west. The article discusses how Riḍā was frustrated that European powers let down the Arabs by supporting the Jews in establishing their homeland at the cost of the rights of its indigenous habitants. We shall argue that Riḍā’s harsh views of Zionism should be understood as a mixture of religious rhetoric, nationalist ambitions, resistance to Turkish policies, and political frustration with Europe’s ‘unjust’ colonial policies and special political privileges given to the Jews in Palestine. In the early years of the twentieth century, Riḍā anticipated the progress of the Jews in establishing a nation of their own in Palestine, but his concerns grew after the British Mandate in 1922. The article looks at how Riḍā, in his confrontations with Zionism and Judaism, combined these debates with other ideas on freemasonry, the authority of the Church, the crusades, and the role of Jesuits in curbing the asserted increasing Jewish power in Europe. The article highlights how Riḍā’s Islamic national outlook against the Jews and Zionists in Palestine bears the character of religious and political ferment against the ‘Christian’ west.","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"32 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72368783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Expulsion and Forced Conversion of the Jews of Isfahan: A Comparison between Arak‘el Dawrižec‘i’s Girk‘ patmuteanc‘ and Bābā’ī ben Loṭf’s Ketāb-e anūsī","authors":"P. Lucca","doi":"10.46586/er.13.2022.9793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.13.2022.9793","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article deals with the persecution and expulsion of the Jews of Isfahan that took place under Shah ‘Abbās II in the years 1656–1662. The events, which occurred at Grand Vizier Moḥammad Beg’s instigation, are told of in a number of contemporary sources, the most important of them being Bābā’ī ben Loṭf’s Ketāb-e anūsī (in Judeo-Persian) and Arak‘el Davrižec‘i’s Girk‘ patmuteanc‘ (in Armenian). The article tries to find a rationale for the differences found between these two accounts, focusing on how the two authors report the murder of a Jewish informer to the Grand Vizier that was perpetrated by other Jews. By analysing how they fashion a different narrative drawing on the same events, the article proposes that their opposite attitudes towards the murderers come from their different intent and approach in writing their works. Bābā’ī’s account follows in the wake of the traditional biblical paradigm of sin and punishment, thus showing less sympathy for the plight of the Jews than one could expect, as from the author’s perspective their suffering was supposedly brought on them by their own sins. On the other hand, Aṙak‘el’s more empathic representation of the Jews and their tribulations could be understood in the light of his own concern about his coreligionists being tempted to convert to Islam for material benefit or economic convenience. This is the reason why Aṙak‘el stresses how the Jews held to their faith and were not lured by the money and gifts the Persians offered them to turn to Islam. He fashions the chapter he devoted to the history of the Jews of Isfahan as a moral tale, complete with a hero and a villain and enhanced with some Jewish flavour details, to show his fellow Armenians how they, too, should resist the allurement of conversion. \u0000","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79108632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Masks, Mosques and Lockdowns: Islamic Organisations Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany","authors":"Arndt Emmerich","doi":"10.46586/er.12.2021.8900","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46586/er.12.2021.8900","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article investigates COVID-19 related responses by Islamic associations and local mosques based on fieldwork in the German state of Lower Saxony. The inquiry focuses on the time prior to the first lockdown, during mosque closures, and around the opening phase, covering the months between February 2020 and November 2020. Drawing on organisational sociology, Islamic studies, and research on pandemics, the article contributes to the debate on the contested nature of Islamic representation and the institutionalisation of Islam in Germany by analysing internal and relational dynamics, different and converging strategies, external challenges, and cooperation by Islamic authorities during the first COVID-19 wave. By taking into account Germany’s multilevel political system including the national, state, and municipal level as well as transnational dimensions, the analysis integrates external expectations on Islamic organisations and local mosques and internal discussions within these institutions to relate their responses and navigation to the contested representations of Islamic organisations in public discourse as well as to the current debate on Islam in Germany.\u0000","PeriodicalId":36421,"journal":{"name":"Entangled Religions","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87159001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}