2017.2

The article is focused on the role of jihad in the social and political life of Morocco in the XVII–XVIII centuries as one of the main factors of legitimacy of the Alawi dynasty (since 1631). A study of historical sources allows us to suppose that the European presence in the Moroccan lands since the XV century had a serious impact on the religious life of the Islamic Far West. Using of the ideology of jihad the sultans succeeded to gain popularity among their subjects, primarily among the traditional Islamic scholars. They also tried to justify their different political and economic outlines by needs of the holy war.

The article is based on the materials derived from the part of the unpublished treatise of the Syrian adept of Sufism ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nablusi (1641–1731) “Authentic and Graphic Description of Journey across the Greater Syria, Egypt and Hijaz” which contains the description of author’s travel through Egypt. The goal of this article is to analyze the structure of the ulama corporation, and its role and place in the Egyptian society of the 17th century. The analysis confirms that the ulama of this period can be characterized as a potent group that traditionally played a crucial role in the development of sustainable relations between the political elites and religious community.

The paper deals with the patterns of quotations in a Jewish-Italian Divination Book. The manuscript of the book belongs to the Russian State Library and derives from the Italian town of Ancona. In the 16th century, Ancona flourished as an important Mediterranean port bringing together merchants from the Ottoman Empire, Italian cities, etc. The Jewish community played a crucial role in Ancona’s commercial success due to its connections with the Jewish Sephardic communities of the Eastern Mediterranean. No wonder, the Divination book mostly bothers about commerce and money matters. However, it also expresses religious and cultural affiliation of the community. The author of the Divination Book needed Biblical and Talmudic quotations to support his forecasts by the authority of the classical texts. At the same time, these same texts put the life of Jewish merchants into the context of sacred history of Israel making the daily existence of the Ancona merchants sacred and meaningful.

The actual Russian military-political presence in Syria makes to reveal the events happened there more than two centuries ago. During the Russian-Ottoman war of 1768–1774 Russia became the first European country that invaded to the Middle East in the Modern times and even for the short time occupied the part of it: the city of Beirut. The repetition of the Russian navy’s Mediterranean expedition was preparing during the next war of 1787–1791. One of its results should be the separation of Egypt and the part of Syria from the Ottoman Empire as a result of ‘diversions’, as in the diplomatic correspondence were named the secret agreements with the separatist-minded local leaders. The approval by Catherine II of the Ottoman Empire’s partition project known as “Greek Plan”, the involvement of Crimea into Russian’s influence area and its further annexation in 1783 are laying between two those events. The presented article analyzes the chances for the Crimean scenario to be repeated in Syria if the Sweden aggression in 1788 would not thwart the prepared transfer of the Baltic navy to the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Republic of Korea is one of few countries, that have managed to accomplish a catching-up development, create competitive economics and transit into the group of high-income countries. The paper analyses factors of economic growth of the Republic of Korea. The study explores a number of components of South Korea’s economic success, due to which South Korea has managed to transit from the category of poor and underdeveloped countries into the group of developed countries and make its economy proceed to grow by the way of intensive economic growth. The paper also represents a number of economic growth’s constraints and measures taken to overcome them.

The issue of predestination of human’s fate has triggered plenty of discussions in Islam during many centuries. A number of roots are used in description of this topic in the Quran. The author pointed out three prominent roots and analysed their usage relying on commentary to the Quran written by one of the most prominent Muslim scholars – Ibn Kathir. The study resulted in finding out the most frequent root used in description of predestination, the author also gives statistics on reflection of the topic in different periods of Quran’s revelation. The author attempts to find out the reasons why not the most frequent roots were used in the name of the theme in the Islamic doctrine.

The article presents a Russian translation of the commentary on the 77th sura, “The Emissaries,” from Tafsir al-Jalalayn (“The Commentary of the Two Jalals”), one of the most popular short Qur’anic commentaries in the Muslim world. It reflects the central opinion of the Sunni tradition. The introductory remarks and explanations describe the features of this commentary, briefly analyze the sura and discuss variations in Russian translations of several ayahs arising from different interpretations in classical Muslim exegesis.