I’m a bit reluctant to post an iteration of this weekly update and compendium of musings and gleanings only because I feel I have relatively little to report as it were; this has been a generally unpleasant week to be entirely honest, between attention to the news—particularly bleak in many respects—and the combination here at home of our son having a cold most of the week and truly awful temperatures outside. That said, I’ve a few thoughts to share, an announcements of possible interest, some wonderful musical finds, and a set of musings on the nature of 19th century globalizing culture.
First, an announcement that might be of interest to some of my readers: my Doktorvater Ahmet Karamustafa, a scholar of among other things medieval sufism, and I are planning a reading group this fall that will focus on ‘big history’ and deep time and will probably consist of some readings explicitly of a historical tenor but also things less so and more in the paleontological, archeological, and other veins. Our first entry will probably be the recent volume Big Ideas: A Guide to the History of Everything, to give you an idea of the sort of work we might be tackling (no small part of our interest is in figuring out ways to incorporate the lineaments and methodologies associated with the study of deep time in our own teaching). To see a work-in-progress list of possible readings, navigate to the working document here. While we’re planning on meeting either on our campus or somewhere nearby, if you’re interested and would like to participate but are physically remote let me know anyway and I’m sure we can include you virtually.
Like I suppose a great many other people I have been once again thinking at more length than I’d have preferred about covid and the permutations of the virus evolutionarily as well as the social and other permutations of human responses to covid. It had been an immense pleasure earlier in the summer returning to what was effectively full normalcy, a few indications of the virus still remaining here and there—a stance that I still think was largely warranted at the time given that the likely combination of vaccination with the immunity of recovered individuals had both reduced overall case numbers dramatically and more importantly dramatically reduced serious effects. The now-infamous Delta variant is troubling for a number of reasons, though, to be concise, my concern now on a personal level at least is not primarily over a risk of bad outcomes—it’s important to stress that vaccination remains an incredibly potent defense against this variant as much as the previously dominant ones—as much as over what the continued spread of the virus at very high rates among unvaccinated people and, it seems, to a lesser degree among vaccinated people (though, perhaps, to a rather greater degree than had seemed possible) might mean for the disease’s evolutionary trajectory. I don’t think it’s good, but I’m hoping I’m overestimating the dangers we might now be facing. Generally my bursts of optimism vis-a-vis covid have proven illusionary while my more pessimistic readings have borne out over time, but there’s always the chance this time will prove different. Let’s hope so.
On a somewhat related note, one thing I have noticed more in recent days about the dynamics of the covid narrative, if you will, is a frustrating and quite dangerous dynamic whereby both warranted skepticism but even more significantly wild and wooly theories and outright deception (deliberate or otherwise, it’s often impossible and perhaps meaningless to distinguish) drive deformations in especially the public communications and visible deliberations of scientific institutions and public-facing agencies and bodies, leading to poor information-sharing at worst, closing off of relevant and vital routes of research at worst, among the many deliterious political, social, and cultural effects this dynamic takes. There are many vectors of blame, and the problem is no doubt endemic to modernity (if not before), but the strange information environments of the digital age are surely major contributors. But down that path lie many rabbits, as it were…
For our material culture interlude this week, I’ve chosen two objects connected really only by their use of Arabic script in interesting ways and their portability as objects, both in literal terms and in terms of the quite global movements they entail. The first is a truly spectacular ‘talismanic’ scroll of perhaps fourteenth century origin, copied by one Ḥusayn Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī al-Khurāsānī and now in the holdings of the University of Michigan’s Special Collections Library, Isl. Ms. 220 (and I owe my knowledge of this fabulous piece to the curator of U of M’s Islamic Manuscripts Collection, Evyn Kropf, much thanks!). Here is one excerpt:
and a second:
The content is what we might call both devotional and talismanic or prophylactic, the line between the two often being quite unclear and heuristic. Qur’anic and hadith material is mixed in with pious invocations and prayers, in a wide array of script styles and layout approaches, perhaps most strikingly with floral designs composed of tiny writing. The ‘Kufic’ script has a deliberately archacizing flair to it, reaching back to the foundational years of Islam. Not visible in the above selections is a prefatory section added in an Ottoman hand in perhaps the 18th or 19th century, indicating this scroll’s continued ‘vitality’ and value, carrying through space and time as a powerful and important object.
There is a great deal more that could be said of this piece, to be sure, but I will leave it at that, perhaps for a future revisit!
Our second example is much more recent (and will be familiar to anyone who follows my on Twitter as I recently posted it!): a 19th century earthenware ceramic plate made by the British firm Copeland & Co. for the retailer George Houghton of London, presumably for export to Islamicate markets (though where precisely I do not know); most curiously the script seems to be of Ṣīnī (the Arabic script typically used by many Sino-Muslim communities) inspiration (V&A C.50-1982):
The inscriptions read: 'God is one, He has no partner; Muhammad is the messenger of God; verily you are victorious'; at top and bottom 'No god but God'; in the corners clockwise 'Ya Abu Bakr, Ya 'Uthman, Ya 'Ali, Ya 'Umar.' As I noted in my short Twitter thread, there are a lot of questions one could raise about this piece—what did the makers use as an exemplar? My guess is something devotional, surely of Sino-Muslim origin (which raises the question of its route to London), as the various parts actually make sense together and would not be out of place in the above talsimanic scroll or in a devotional work or something like an Ottoman hilye. Why the use of Ṣīnī script, hardly an obvious choice one would think? I don’t know, though I wonder what the intended market was and if not in China then what the likely reception would have been? Would this have been received as a devotional or even prophylactic item, would the presumably Muslim owner have interpreted it simply as a nice plate, a symbol of ability to consume emergent capitalist products, or as a devotional object of some sort? Would its English origin have mattered?
Certainly there are many routes of movement and circulation entailed within this piece, some clear enough, others quite mysterious and perhaps beyond view now. And of course as with any digitized piece of art or material artefact we ourselves in the digital space contribute to the object’s meaning and use, the cycle continuing, if not indefinitely then certainly for a long time and over diverse and strange spaces.
In lieu of a discussion of books this week, I have two albums, both re-issued by the wonderful Baltimore-based Canary Records, which are pretty recent releases though more to the point new to me, both wonderful snapshots into important cultural dynamics of the modern Middle East and the dynamics of modernity, its interplays never entirely predictable. The first is an album of Antiochian Orthodox chant—in Arabic—by the Syrian-American Archbishop Samuel David; navigate to the below page to read quite a bit on his fascinating life:
The second is an aural snapshot of Ottoman Constantinople before the First World War—it is really quite incredible that we can listen to voices and instruments being played from a period now entirely outside of living human memory. The music is quite lovely and Ian Nagoski has done a nice job of restoring the material given its age:
Finally, two lovely poems from the late Ming Dynasty, by the author and sometime offical Qian Qianyi (d. 1664), translated by Jonathan Chaves:
‘In Lamplight, Watching My Wife Preparing a Flower Arrangement—Playfully Inscribing Four Poems’
i.
Narcissus and chrysanthemum—
lovely shapes together;
she places them in a porcelain vase,
two or three of each.
Bending low beside the little window
in flickering lamplight shadows,
my jade one has risen from her sick bed,
braving the cold air.
ii.
Clusters of cold-weather blossoms,
standing quietly:
each branch weighted with mottled beauty now.
I think of consulting you for tips on flower arrangement—
but here they are before my eyes, in lamplight,
against a white wall.
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