Articles

This article describes the possibility of distinguishing the genre of the anecdote in Manden oral tradition and the specificity of the texts associated with the anecdote in bamana. In bamana and Maninka languages there is no special term for anecdotes, most often the words “joke” or “funny story” are used. The significance of bamana “funny stories” is in fact that the anecdote genre’s formation is taking place before our eyes. But so far, among these stories one can find full-fledged anecdotes as well as a large number of simple stories, from the point of view of the logic of their constructing, related to tales about animals or fools. First and foremost, such qualities as stupidity, laziness, cowardice, greed, and desire to gain one’s own profit are ridiculed. There are anecdotes that correspond to a visual-figurative type of thinking. They are based on comic situations, and represent the examples of stupidity, confusion, mistakes. Other anecdotes correspond to a verbal-logical type of thinking, the stories based on language errors, misreading, homonymy, etc.; as well as those that are based on various inconsistencies in the logic of action, on resourcefulness and wit and require the use of more complex logical chains, associations, concepts, etc. by the listener.

The article discusses the dispute over sharing the waters of the Teesta River between India and Bangladesh. It reviews efforts to establish rules for water use since 1972, the role of West Bengal political elites, and obstacles to a settlement after the change of government in India in 2014.

The article examines the ethnocultural, linguocultural and semantic properties of Chinese phraseological units with zoomorphic components. It identifies and systematizes these units and considers the role of zoomorphic components in their meaning.

The article compares the Russian spatial preposition “na” with the Chinese frame construction “在……上”, examining their prototypical meanings, image schemas, extended meanings and syntactic functions.

The article analyzes the film of the German film director Wim Wenders “Tokyo-ga” from the point of “questioning identity” of a Western man which was proposed by the French philosopher Y. Kristeva. The film shows the meanings and images opened to Wim Wenders as a result of a dialogue with the spiritual heritage of the Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu.

The article studies the formation of pilgrimage routes used by Muslims of the Russian Empire to reach the Islamic holy sites in Arabia. It compares traditional and less-used Hajj routes and examines the authorities’ role in organising travel, preventing disease, issuing passports and choosing safer routes.

The article examines the influence of relations with India on Pakistan’s 2018 election campaign. It compares the programs of major political parties, their portrayals of India and the prospects for implementing the proposals of the winning party.

The article examines the concept of fate in Chinese, its cultural and historical development, and its conceptual, value-related and figurative features in the Chinese linguistic worldview.

This article deals with an episode of the early mediaeval empires’ struggle for domination over Arabia, namely, an attempt of direct intervention which the Sasanids undertook in the middle of the 6th century with the help of Abū-l-Ǧabr, a prince from the South Arabic (Qaḥṭānite) tribal confederation, who had fled to them. Abū-l-Ǧabr’s initiative arose out of an internal struggle which broke among the Kindites after those of them who had advanced to the North-East of Arabia in the process of the conquests of the 5th and early 6th centuries were defeated by Sasanids and Laḫmids and retreated to Hadramawt. This period of the Kindites’ history is insufficiently explored, especially as compared to earlier times. This article presents an attempt to reconstruct the course and chronology of those events. For the Sasanids, Abū-l-Ǧabr’s initiative was a chance to set foot in Southern Arabia, especially valuable after the intensification of their struggle with Abraha, the Abissinian ruler of Yemen, in the middle of the 6th century.

Based on a travel treatise by the Damascus Sufi ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, the article examines travel in search of knowledge in the cultural and intellectual life of late-17th-century Bilad al-Sham. It explores pilgrimage routes, cultural centres, scholarly contacts and cultural exchange.

The article examines the spread of Jama’ah Tabligh in Southeast Asia since the 1960s, focusing on its missionary activity in Malaysia, Indonesia and southern Thailand and on the movement’s adaptation to local religious practices and Muslim communities.

The article examines the erosion of noun class agreement in Bantu languages, including reduction of class inventories, unification of plural markers and a shift toward semantic agreement based on animacy.

In this paper we attempt to reconstruct the evolution of ideas in the studies of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian Orientalists about the Republic of Tripolitania, which existed on the territory of the modern State of Libya in 1918–1923. Based on the analysis of historiographic materials, we identified the main stages in the development of research in this area, as well as problematic issues and approaches to their comprehension. Specific examples show how changes in the sociopolitical context in the Russia and Libya, as well as the dynamics of interstate relations, influenced the transformation of ideas about the Tripolitan Republic and its role in the history of Libya in the 20th century.

The article examines contact between Western and Far Eastern civilizations in the early modern period. European printing houses in Siam and Vietnam introduced new printing techniques and books in the Latin alphabet. It also discusses the role of Catholic missionaries in establishing these presses and promoting Christianity in the region.

Drawing on travel accounts by Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi and Muhammad Kibrit, the article compares two seventeenth-century Muslim pilgrims’ experiences in Ottoman Cairo and their contacts with its religious and intellectual circles.