2024.3

The article, based on Palestinian and British sources, reconstructs the journey of the ideologist and propagandist of Palestine’s national movement’s radicalization — shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam (1882–1935), one of the inspirers of the Great Arab revolt of 1936–1939. ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam was the person behind the formation of underground cells of political organizations that became the mainstay of the Great Arab revolt, the most famous of which was the paramilitary group “Black Hand” created in 1930. Despite active confrontation with the British military administration and Jewish settlers, ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam and the “Black Hand” failed to achieve the independence of Palestine, but al-Qassam’s person and his activities served as a source of inspiration for the Palestinian people in their struggle for independence, and the very name of shaykh al-Qassam has become a household name for modern paramilitary structures of the Palestinian resistance.

The article considers the reign of the first emperor of the Western Han — Liu Bang, better known as Han Gao-tzu (202–195 BC). Based on the results of the study of the chronicle of the reign, preserved in the main source on the history of the period — Han shu (“History of Han” I century.) we considered the activities of the bearer of supreme power in the sphere of state administration as part of the 1 Автор благодарит своего научного руководителя к.и.н. М.Ю. Ульянова за помощь и поддержку в подготовке данной статьи. political process on the basis of the fact that the chronicle of the reign preserves all the most important actions of the emperor.

This article is a continuation of the study initiated in the article ‘The Persian Story of Shīr Farrokhzādān and the Forced Migration of the Arabs from Misikhē (al-Anbār) under Sasanid King Shapur I (240–271)’. A close examination of the story of Shīr Farrokhzādān within the historical context allows to make the following observations and conclusions. The migration of the Arabs from the region of Misikhē was the result of their struggle against the Sasanids, who won and built a fortress at Misikhē. King Shapur I considered those Arabs to be dangerous, and so, he parted them and settled them in different places under the power of his governors or, perhaps, Arabic ruler Djadhīma who is described in some sources as a vassal of the Sasanids. Those events took place before the enthronement of Shapur I, during the Sasanids’ initial expansion in the Euphrates region (225 to 240). The Sasanids’ strategic aim appears to have initially consisted in ensuring the security of their new capital, Wēh-Ardashīr, against attacks of hostile Arabic tribes rather than in establishing a barrier on the Romans’ way. However, after firmly setting foot in the Euphrates region the Sasanids used the way up the Euphrates’ course, to attack Roman possessions, in particular in campaigns involving the taking of Dura-Europos (239) and Antioch (241).

The head of all secret services of the Chinese Communist Party, Kang Sheng (1898–1975), served as the deputy head of the CCP delegation to the Comintern and as a member of the Presidium of the Comintern Executive Committee (ECCI) from 1933 to 1937. However, until recently, little was known about his life in the Soviet Union, as his personal file, held at the Russian State Archive of Recent History (RGANI), was not accessible to researchers. Only now has it become possible to introduce readers to documents from this file, shedding light on Kang Sheng’s political and organizational activities during that period. The presented information is complemented by materials from the personal file of Kang Sheng’s wife, Cao Yi’ou, also housed at RGANI, as well as from a range of lesser-known collections at the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI), including the personal files of the CCP delegation head to the Comintern Wang Ming, his wife Meng Qingshu, and many other Chinese communists. All these documents indicate that Kang Sheng was not an independent figure in organizing repressions against Chinese communists working in the USSR. The leading role in such activities was undoubtedly played by Wang Ming, while Kang mostly served as his subordinate.

The article deals with the peculiarities of quoting proverbs and aphorisms by Turkish President R.T. Erdogan in his speeches. The questions of their transformation, methods of introduction and connection to current circumstances, expressive-emotional and stylistic coloring, as well as the evaluative aspect and its author’s development in the context are raised. The speaker introduces a proverb into his speech with the help of introductory phrases and words that act as markers, which can break it in the case of a two-part structure, frame it, and be used in double and triple repetition. Stylistically, most of the quoted proverbs are neutral in color; to achieve maximum expressiveness of the statement, the speaker uses emotional proverbs belonging to the conversational style of speech, often with a zoonymic component. The President rarely transforms the idiom; its recognition is important to him; moreover, he does not use the most common of them, this gives his speeches originality and emphasizes the originality of the author’s style. The most used method of transformation is the omission of elements that do not change the semantics of the expression, or the replacement of a word with a synonym, in rare cases, a compositional transformation consisting of rearrangement of parts. Sometimes the speaker, relying on the imagery of an idiom, paraphrases and interprets it in the current context, or, changing only its grammatical-syntactic structure, inserts it into his speech. R.T. Erdogan uses idioms with both positive and negative evaluative components. Often he expresses his thought by using the stylistic device of antithesis, starting from the negative assessment contained in the idiom, he comes to a positive conclusion, less often — vice versa. To enhance the expressiveness and persuasiveness of his speech, the speaker sometimes indicates a personal attitude towards what is being quoted, connecting it with the circumstances of his private life. In some cases, there is an obvious pragmatic connection between the idiom and the topic, geography, or specific occasion for delivering the speech.

The article is devoted to the analysis of modal constructions with infinitives in -(i)tuṃ in Pali, which is a representative of the early-middle stage of Indo-Aryan. Pali is predominantly known as the classical language of the religious and philosophical canon of «Theravada» Buddhism. As the most frequent suffix in Pali, -(i)tuṃ (historically, an indicator of a verbal noun frozen in the accusative) was also the most productive way of generating infinitives in classical Sanskrit (but the least productive in Vedic). Upon analyzing the Pali jatakas (fables about the Buddha’s earthly reincarnations) the author has identified a limited set of stable semo-syntactic contexts in which infinitives in -(i)tum occurred most frequently. The constructions discovered were analyzed and systematized throughout the prism of the functional-semantic field of modality.

The paper attempts to analyze the ways of typological evolution of four Western New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages: Hindi-Urdu, Rajasthani, Punjabi and Gujarati. In the majority of Western NIA languages the consistent ergative strategy typical for the beginning of its development later gave way to the neutral, then — to the contrastive one, which was replaced in some paradigms by the accusative system of case marking. Multidirectional processes of morphosyntactic evolution were observed at the beginning of the New Indian period. Later the changes in coding strategies as well as the changes in rules of verbal agreement became predominantly unidirectional. In certain languages, the ergative construction maintained the gendernumber agreement with the marked direct object, in others the marked direct object blocked verbal agreement. Split ergativity, characteristic of the initial period of Indo- Aryan syntactic structure, has been preserved in most Western New Indo-Aryan languages (NIA). The only exception is Dakhini where the ergative case marking got initially extended to the entire system of aspectual and tense forms, later the system returned to the nominative-accusative type. Typical for ergative systems free elision of the ergative agent got established in Apabhramsha in the beginning of the NIA period (14–15 centuries), but practically does not appear in modern languages. Co-referential omissions of ergative type were observed in Middle Indo-Aryan and in Early NIA periods, in modern NIA languages they are ungrammatical. So, with the exception of minor deviations, the evolution of the morphosyntactic systems of Western NIA languages shows a unidirectional movement towards decrease in the ergative morphology and syntax.

The article is devoted to the narrative features of the short story Flock of Brown Birds (Hese Niaoqun, 1988) by the modern Chinese writer Ge Fei (born 1964), one of the key figures of the Chinese avant-garde literature of the late 20th century (xianfeng wenxue). The article provides an analysis of the narrative structure, composition and character system of the story. Main focus is on the elements of metafiction in the story, including addressing the topic of the fictional process, bringing the image of the narrator closer to the figure of the author, commenting on the process of creating a literary work (exposing the technique). For Ge Fei, reality is the text, and fictional process is an attempt to establish a connection with the elusive reality. In addition, the article also focuses on the fragmentation of the narrative, the use of an unreliable narrator, the non-linearity of the plot and the presence of gaps that invite the reader to participate in the creation of a literary work. Due to the identified features, Ge Fei’s fiction can be classified as the example of Chinese postmodern literature.

The underlying thesis of this article is related to the assertion that Confucianism, the oldest philosophical school in China, which emerged in 551–479 B.C., has influenced and still influences the social and spiritual life of the country, particularly its literature, for centuries. The authors examine in detail how the main Confucian paradigms of ‘Ren’, ‘Li’, and ‘Zhong yong’ are refracted in Chinese literature of the past and present centuries. A brief interpretation of these paradigms is given. Particular attention is paid to the fact that the postulates of this doctrine are flexible, which makes it possible to draw from it various inferences necessary for a certain historical stage and for literary writers to follow the prescriptions of these inferences.

The article studies two key novels by the Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate (1988) Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006), The Cairo Trilogy (1956–1957) and Children of Our Alley (1959), through the prism of the Muslim allusions embedded in them. They play major role in the allegorical work Children of Our Alley which is stylized as a sira (“folk novel”) and shows the life of many generations of Gabalawi’s descendants. In The Trilogy, the symbolism is hidden, but the comparison between it and the next novel of Mahfouz through the lens of Muslim allusions, primarily in names, made it possible to reveal the symbolic meaning of the novel and establish a common philosophy underlying the two works. The main source is the Qur‘an; the authors also turned to texts of classical Islamic studies and early Islamic history. Relevance: 1) drawing attention to the Cairo Trilogy, famous in Arab countries, but not translated into Russian; 2) popularizing the method of analyzing religious connotations, which is rarely used in literary studies, but is productive for understanding and translating the literature of Muslim countries in which religion plays a large social role. Conclusions: both novels present an allegory of the history of mankind which is going through radical changes in modern times. At the beginning, they show a traditional world where religion is associated with vital energy (in the first two issues of the Trilogy, the Islamic aspect of names is associated with success in society and large offspring; in Children of Our Alley, the names allowed to connect the main characters with the prophets of Islam). During the course of the plot, the order in the world of the novels is disrupted. At the end of them, the father leaves the world (in both novels, the patriarch is an allegory of God); Muslim references in names and the religious piety of the characters cease to be a defense against chaos. Religion is being replaced by scientific point of view (Kamal in the Trilogy and ‘Arafa in Children of Our Alley; their names do not have Islamic connotations). Science which is free from religious rules is not able to resist immorality and the depletion of the human race. The author’s view of the new era is pessimistic: the old model of the world is destroyed, and the new one is corrupted.

The article examines Turkey’s strategic efforts to enhance its economic engagement with Africa, focusing on key initiatives such as the 2003 Strategy for the Development of Economic Relations with Africa and the Turkey-Africa Summits. These efforts have played a pivotal role in expanding trade relations, particularly evident in the post-2002 period, which witnessed a sharp rise in Turkish exports to African markets. Furthermore, Turkey’s development assistance programs have emerged as a central tool for bolstering its economic footprint on the continent. Overall, the article underscores Turkey’s evolving position as a prominent actor in Africa, characterized by growing trade, investment, and multifaceted political and humanitarian involvement.

Yulia Markovna Alikhanova (17.06.1936 — 05.01.2024), who had worked over half a century at the Department of Indian Philology of IAAS MSU, an outstanding Sanskritologist, scholar of literature studies and master of literary translation, teacher of many generations of philologists at IAAS, author of lecture courses on literature and poetics of Ancient India, as well as basic theory of literary studies, — has passed away.