Atanas Shinikov

Scholarly observations have seemingly outlined the extreme diversity of Muslim educational institutions during the Abbasid caliphate (750–1258). A need to develop and sustain a consistent typology of educational institutions is clearly in place. The present paper examines the most authoritative systematization attempt undertaken by George Makdisi (d. 2002). The analysis of the suggested typology reveals certain incoherence of the terminological framework, as well as necessitates maintenance of consistent criteria to distinguish among the various institutions. Thus ultimately, the Muslim religious educational landscape can be reduced to the basic forms of the scholarly circles (majalis-halaqat), as well as the religious school (madrasa).

Full article to be found in the link: http://manas.bg/bg/issue_4/religious-educational-institutions-under-abbasids-problems-typology

Printed version can be found in the attached article.

A look into Sunni educational and religious sources poses the question on how the relation (ṣuḥba) between a master and a disciple is institutionalized. Arguably, disciplining punishment (ʾadab, ta’dīb, ḍarb) appears as a mechanism to formalize it. Flogging can be considered a permissible method to enforce legitimate behavioral patterns, being perceived as linked to divinely sanctioned concepts of authority and its delegation. This notion is tested by an inquiry into a thread of mainstream texts, among which are the Qurʾān, the ḥadīṯ texts, the late tafāsīr of al-Ṭabarī (d. 923) and Ibn Kaṯīr (d. 1373), ḥadīṯ commentaries by al-Nawawī (d. 1278) and ʾĀbādī (d. 1329), works on knowledge by Miskawayh (d. 1030) and al-Ġazālī (d. 1111), pieces of ʾadab by al-Ǧāḥiẓ (d. 869–70) referred to by Ibn al-Ǧawzī (d. 1201), Ibn Qayyim al-Ǧawzīya(d. 1350), and finally, the ‘Prolegomena’ of Ibn Ḫaldūn (d. 1406). Main emphasis has been laid upon key educational treatises as the ones authored by Ibn Saḥnūn (d. 870) and al-Qābisī (d.1012).

A review of the Ṣiḥāḥ corpus of prophetic traditions reveals multiple accounts on the application of perfume. Here the social role perfume and cosmetics could assume in Muslim worldview is examined through a closer look at the specific case of the prophetic saffron prohibition for men, expounded upon in the authoritative Fatḥ al‑Bārī bi‑Šarḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al‑Buḫārī commentary of Ibn Ḥaǧar al‑ʿAsqalānī (d. 1449). Prohibition of saffron usage by men is put in the light of a historically established interpretative and linguistic tradition supported by drawing on a solid body of previous sources, mainly within the Šāfiʿīte maḏhab. In case we need to build a hierarchy of sensory perceptions in order to decode the cultural role of saffron, it is difficult to say whether the olfactory or the visual element prevails. Yet, both saffron smell and colour can be perceived as pointing to a meaning beyond themselves. A saffron ban imposed in such a manner is made reasonable only within the discourses of legally charged ḥadīṯ interpretation; it is here where aspects of smell and sight play a significatory role with regards to cultural practices and occupy a transcendentally substantiated position.

Predilections for classification of sciences in Muslim civilization tend to be seen as rooted in the classical antiquity heritage, as Franz Rosenthal goes. Yet the Sunni mainstream produced classifications significantly differing from the Greek antiquity ones, such as the one of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) in his influential “Revival of Religious Sciences” (Ihyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn). Proceeding out of a Muslim concept of knowledge (‘ilm), as differing from the Greek ἐπιστήμη, each of the “branches of knowledge” (‘ulūm) acquires value according to its ability to lead Muslims to the rewards of the afterlife (ākhira). The primary division outlines two large categories: duties incumbent upon individual Muslims (farḍ ‘ayn), and “collective duties” (farḍ kifāya) upon the Muslim community. Al-Ghazali does not build a comprehensive framework of sciences, as some indicative and value charged disproportions are observed: sciences like mathematics and medicine find little place. “Speculative theology” (kalām) and philosophy (falsafa) are subordinate, with philosophy not given a status of a separate “science”. Among the highest of sciences formally stands the “science of the unveiling” (mukāshafa) and the esoteric (bāṭin), described in terms reminding of the Sufi tradition. Yet what emerges as immediate importance for this world (dunyā), as means for preparation for the afterlife, is Muslim law (fiqh) which has for its subject the external (ẓāhir) dimensions of the life of the umma that can be observed and regulated. Thus we cannot say that the purpose of this classification is the provision of the educational field with a ready-made curriculum. Yet, on the basis of the text of the Ihyā’ we can infer that it provided a framework for a Sunni value positioning of the subjects that could outline the focus areas within the Sunni educational institutions of the Abbasid 11th century, with fiqh occupying a pivotal role.

The primary objective of this paper is to delineate perceptions of foolishness within the late Abbasid caliphate as found in the „Stories of Fools“ of the Sunni theologian Abu al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1200). Foolishness has been positioned against other key terms and their relations to stupidity, namely „intellect“, „madness“ and „instinct“. Thus we find that it was not perceived as an isolated phenomenon to serve the purposes of amusement, but has rather been made dependent on the above mentioned three concepts. Facing a multiplicity of argumentation sources, ranging from traditions of antiquity to traditional Muslim authorities, we are presented with a peculiar καλοκαγαθία whereby little, yet some, space has been allocated to personal ability to achieve it.

The book is authored by Marco Schöller, a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Münster. Interestingly, an author from my field proper has ventured into the sensitive entanglements of the Balkans in the late Ottoman Empire. I know the usual formal objection that I’ve seen immediately raised: “probably he is not a specialist, and even worse, an outsider”. Well, guys, let’s not rob people of their interests, and stay humble in our claims. If we had insisted upon this principle, we’d never had “Alice in Wonderland”; you possibly would have never heard about the mathematician Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Caroll. You’d never have heard about the philosopher Averroes, as the legal proceedings of the Muslim qadi of al-Andalus Ibn Rushd would have been too obscure for you. Let’s leave the benefit of freedom of authorship and research, no matter how offensive it might seem to us in the ivory tower of (self-)ascribed credentials of expertise, and let rational argument speak for itself.

But the background of an Oriental studies scholar, as the author himself admits (p. 8), is very much evident in the introduction of the book. The chief subject of it has been stated from the very start, namely, “what Western and Central Europeans did, saw and experienced in nineteenth-century Bulgaria” (p. 7). One would expect that the larger notion of Orientalism naturally is being brought forth. Edward Said, controversial as he might have proven to be, is just the starting point that cannot be omitted; the perspective then narrows down to the “Balkanism” of Maria Todorova. In the very start of the book we encounter also some of the key problems raised: can we speak about general concept of “Balkans” (pp. 17-20), how have perceptions of Bulgaria changed before and after 1878-1885 with the emergence of the Bulgarian national state, moving from being “the other Turkey” to “the other Europe”. The whole book also appears conceived as a indirect dialogue, albeit a controversial one at times, with the towering figure of Felix Kanitz (in my eyes already mapped as a “Bilbo-crossing-the-Balkan-Mount-Doom”), with his self-flattering attitude of being an Indiana Jones of the Balkans. Obviously not, as much as it appears, this land has not been “unknown” even before he “discovered it”. [...]

Muslim perceptions on Arabic calligraphy can be reconstructed on the basis of an extreme multitude of sources. History of Arabic penmanship has been marked by milestone works such as the ones ascribed to Ibn Qutayba (d. 885), Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Suli (d. 946), Ibn Nadim (d. 998), Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (d. 1023), al-Muizz Ibn Badis (d. 1062), Shams al-Din al-Ziftawi (d. circa 1403), Zayn al-Din al-Athari (d. 1425), Ibn al-Sa’igh (d. 1441) and Muhammad al-Tibi (16th century).
Yet what clearly emerges as a challenge in this scholarly field is that translations of original sources from Arabic are anything but sufficient.  This is equally valid for the Subh al-A‘sha of Ahmad al-Qalqashandi (d. 1418). Although al-Qalqashandi’s text is probably the most voluminous text composed on Arabic calligraphy ever, this Egyptian author has remained outside the scope of translators’ attention.
The gap is at least partially mitigated by the present translation of an excerpt of al-Qalqashandi’s work into Bulgarian, which covers significant aspects of calligraphy theory and practice, such as “virtues of calligraphy”, its “essence”, the origin of writing, inevitably related to accounts of creation and origin of man, parallels between written and spoken word, the origin of the Arabic alphabet, its order and genealogy of calligraphic authority until the time of  the author; and finally, the detailed characteristics of the Arabic letters, their distinct shapes and essential graphic components. The translation is based on the Cairo edition of al-Qalqashandi’s text published in 1914–1922. It is introduced through an opening chapter by the translator which positions Subh al-A‘sha within a larger historical and conceptual framework.

The article explores a definition of ‘graffiti’ through the layers of low and high culture in Bulgaria, and ways of representation of Arabs, refugees and Islam in Sofia street art. Brassaï and Banksy are mentioned as differing ways to treat street art. Graffiti of Ben Laden, allusions to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, anti-refugee slogans and Arabic inscriptions are brought into the light to make sure that an essential part of graffiti is their marginal nature, lurking in the corners of a Balkan city such as Sofia.

Link to the full article and photos in Bulgarian here: https://goo.gl/Tf9kqS

Turns out that the first complete translation of the Qur’an into the Bulgarian language - lying on my desk now - was done by Protestant missionaries. My edition of it under the title of “The Qur’an: i.e. the Guidance and the Criterion” has an introduction by Ernst Max Hoppe, and then an opening by Max Henning. Max Hoppe was a German Protestant missionary dedicated to mission among the Muslims in Bulgaria and the Balkans, who arrived in Bulgaria in 1922, while Max Henning was a German Orientalist who published his translation of the Qur’an into German in 1902. 
We know the example of the Catholic translations of Scripture and liturgical texts to Arabic for the purposes of Middle Eastern Catholic communities. We know the example of the translations of the Bible into Arabic, such as the one of Cornelius van Dyck in the 19th century, targeting both Christians and Muslims alike, in Lebanon. We know that the first translation of the Qur’an of Robert Ketenensis into Latin was done in order to enable Christian theologians with the means to refute it.
Yet here the motivation behind the translation appears marked by the spirit of the Enlightenment and Protestant usage of reason. The logic behind it seems to have been taking a walk around: as long as Bulgarian Pomaks seemed not knowledgeable of the very religious text they seemed to profess, a missionary would need to bring it to them, only to build a fundament for comparison with the Bible. That is the first time I encounter a translation of a religious text foreign to Christianity [the Qur’an] to provide it to its own adherents [the Bulgarian Muslims], in order to have it there for the sake of the comparison to the Gospel; and then showing the supremacy of the latter over the first. The underlying implication seems to be one that relies that as long as we educate Muslims on the basics of their own faith, we’d be able to show the excellence of our own one over theirs.
See, how lovable a discipline history can be, with all its divine providential caveats and turns, linking a 7th century Muslim Scripture to a great intellectual  tradition of the West, and then bouncing back through it to the backyard of Europe to a country like Bulgaria. Such an interesting Protestant story to touch upon Bulgarian nationalism, and Bulgarian Muslims, isn’t it?

You can read full article in the link:
http://inscriber.org/a-protestant-translation-of-the-quran-to-bulgarian-from-the-1930s/

One can hardly imagine a more demonized creature in Islam than the pig (khanzir). It is as if the Qur’anic text doomed it a priori, without even leaving some room for rehabilitation, forever forcing in into the trenches of a formally marginalized cultural and religious space, with the domain of the culinary logically to follow. And yet, it’s precisely the unambiguity of its image and normatively imposed enduring ill fate, that fly in our face the inevitable question. If a swine remains one of the arch-villains of a proper Islamic ethos, how can its existence be justified, and what expressions this possible justification might take? In other words, how can the religious prescription to avoid it, be reconciled with its origin as one of the creatures of Allah, who is to be served as the ‘Creator of everything’, and ‘Guardian of everything’, as the Qur’an (6:102) puts it? What spaces can the poor creature be found to inhabit, placed there by the Islamic authors? One of the telling attempts to find its ontological niche in the cosmological grand design, and to squeeze it somewhere within a universal order, just as divine, as the condemnation itself, are the ones undertaken by al-Qazwini (ca. 1203-1283). His mirabilia under the title “Wonders of creatures” [or ‘creation”, in some translations, ‘Aja’ib al-Makhluqat], has remained for centuries one of the most authoritative cosmological works within the Muslim majority lands.
And once we place the swine outside of the religious domain of Muslims, we find out that al-Qazwini allocates some curious qualities to it. A description of the detestable creature, as it appears by al-Qazwini, has been made available to the public, as well as 12 samples of swine illustrations from manuscripts of his mirabilia.

You can read full article in the link:
http://inscriber.org/lurking-in-the-margins-of-creation-pigs-in-al-qazwinis-d-1283-wonders-of-creation/

The short paper explores the relation between an Islamic norm and the context of its application, as embodied in the fatwa genre. We need to proceed out of the understanding that the modern Western ideas of a religious domain that necessarily separates between the layers of the religious and the political, the theological and the ethical, the practical and the spiritual, need to be revised. In the framework of Islamic branches of knowledge, outlined and prioritized with the Shariah standing in the center, as regulating the life of the ‘umma, the question of whether one can release gas during prayer might appear of on a comparable equal spiritual standing, as the question on the logical grounds of a Muslim monotheism (tawhid).  Translation of 5 fatwas issues by authoritative theologians such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi or Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid has been used in support of the argument, as the areas they cover are on the Shariah regulation of low-alcohol beer, on the legitimate way to perform prayer (salat) for prisoners, on gender equality as classified “among the traditions of the infidels”, on theft of bodily parts during surgery, and on the regulation of releasing air during prayer.

You can read full article in the link:
https://goo.gl/kBBwtV