Robert Lachmann's letters to Henry George Farmer, from the years 1923-38, provide insightful glimpses into his life and his progressive research projects. From an historical perspective, they offer critical data concerning the development of comparative musicology as it evolved in Germany during the early decades of the twentieth century. The fact that Lachmann sought contact with Farmer can be explained from their mutual, yet diverse interests in Arab music, particularly as they were then considered to be the foremost European scholars in the field. During the 1932 Cairo International Congress on Arab Music, they were selected as presidents of their respective committees.

This book presents a new model for understanding the collection of ancient kingdoms that surrounded the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea from the Cilician Plain in the west to the upper Tigris River in the east, and from Cappadocia in the north to western Syria in the south, during the Iron Age of the ancient Near East (ca. 1200 to 600 BCE). Rather than presenting them as homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like "the Aramaeans" or "the Luwians" living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. The Syro-Anatolian City-States sheds new light via an examination of a host of evidentiary sources, including archaeological site plans, settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together, these lines of evidence reveal a complex fusion of cultural traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto itself. This book is the first to specifically characterize the Iron Age city-states of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, arguing for a unified cultural formation characterized above all by diversity and mobility and that can be referred to as the "Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex."

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Turkey relentlessly persecuted any form of Kurdish dissent. This led to the radicalisation of an increasing number of Kurds, the rise of the Kurdish national movement and the PKK's insurgency against Turkey. Political activism by the Kurds or around Kurdish-related political demands continues to be viewed with deep suspicions by Turkey's political establishment and severely restricted. Despite this, the pro-Kurdish democratic movement has emerged, providing Kurds with a channel to represent themselves and articulate their demands. This book is timely contribution to the debate on the Kurds' political representation in Turkey, tracing the different forms it has taken since 1950. The book highlights how the transformations in Kurdish society have affected the types of actors involved in politics and the avenues, organisations and networks Kurds use to challenge the state. Based on survey data obtained from over 350 individuals, this is the first book to provide an in-depth analysis of Kurdish attitudes from across different segments of Kurdish society, including the elite, the business and professional classes, women and youth activists. It is an intimate portrait of how Kurds today are dealing with the challenges and difficulties of political representation.

Eighteen expert researchers have come together to provide original articles and new perspectives on transformation throughout Ottoman history, in order to honor the life's work of Metin Kunt. Kunt's work revolutionized our understanding of change in Ottoman political, social and cultural history in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This new collection focuses on the contributions of key players in these fields and includes chapters on Ottoman artisans in a changing political context, Ottoman chief scribes and the rhetorics of political survival in the 17th century, and empiricism in the Ottoman Empire. Contributors are Antonis Anastasopoulos, Iris Agmon, Tulay Artan, Karl K. Barbir, Fatih Bayram, Suraiya Faroqhi, Cornell H. Fleischer, Pal Fodor, Mehmet Kalpakli, Cemil Kocak, B. Harun Kucuk, Asli Niyazioglu, Mehmet OEz, Kaya Sahin, Derin Terzioglu, Ekin Tusalp-Atiyas, Christine Woodhead, N. Zeynep Yelce, Elizabeth A. Zachariadou.

Beholding Beauty: Sa'di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry explores the relationship between sexuality, politics, and spirituality in the lyrics of Sa'di Shirazi (d. 1292 CE), one of the most revered masters of classical Persian literature. Relying on a variety of sources, including unstudied manuscripts, Domenico Ingenito presents the so-called "inimitable smoothness" of Sa'di's lyric style as a serene yet multifaceted window into the uncanny beauty of the world, the human body, and the realm of the unseen. The book constitutes the first attempt to study Sa'di's lyric meditations on beauty in the context of the major artistic, scientific and intellectual trends of his time. By charting unexplored connections between Islamic philosophy and mysticism, obscene verses and courtly ideals of love, Ingenito approaches Sa'di's literary genius from the perspective of sacred homoeroticism and the psychology of performative lyricism in their historical context.

An intimate portrait of the postwar lives of Korean children and women Korean children and women are the forgotten population of a forgotten war. Yet during and after the Korean War, they were central to the projection of US military, cultural, and political dominance. Framed by War examines how the Korean orphan, GI baby, adoptee, birth mother, prostitute, and bride emerged at the heart of empire. Strained embodiments of war, they brought Americans into Korea and Koreans into America in ways that defined, and at times defied, US empire in the Pacific. What unfolded in Korea set the stage for US postwar power in the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. American destruction and humanitarianism, violence and care played out upon the bodies of Korean children and women. Framed by War traces the arc of intimate relations that served as these foundations. To suture a fragmented past, Susie Woo looks to US and South Korean government documents and military correspondence; US aid organization records; Korean orphanage registers; US and South Korean newspapers and magazines; and photographs, interviews, films, and performances. Integrating history with visual and cultural analysis, Woo chronicles how Americans went from knowing very little about Koreans to making them family, and how Korean children and women who did not choose war found ways to navigate its aftermath in South Korea, the United States, and spaces in between.

This volume explores social practices of framing, building and enacting community in urban-rural relations across medieval Eurasia. Introducing fresh comparative perspectives on practices and visions of community, it offers a thorough source-based examination of medieval communal life in its sociocultural complexity and diversity in Central and Southeast Europe, South Arabia and Tibet. As multi-layered social phenomena, communities constantly formed, restructured and negotiated internal allegiances, while sharing a topographic living space and joint notions of belonging. The volume challenges disciplinary paradigms and proposes an interdisciplinary set of low-threshold categories and tools for cross-cultural comparison of urban and rural communities in the Global Middle Ages. Contributors are Maaike van Berkel, Hubert Feiglstorfer, Andre Gingrich, Karoly Goda, Elisabeth Gruber, Johann Heiss, Katerina Hornickova, Eirik Hovden, Christian Jahoda, Christiane Kalantari, Odile Kommer, Fabian Kummeler, Christina Lutter, Judit Majorossy, Ermanno Orlando, and Noha Sadek.