2025.4

This article examines the diplomatic activities of the English nobleman Anthony Shirley (c. 1565–1635) in Iran. It analyzes his negotiations with Shah Abbas I (r. 1588–1629) of the Safavid dynasty and his subsequent stay at the Shah’s court. Plans for creating an anti-Ottoman coalition and establishing bilateral economic ties are presented. An analysis is provided of how Shirley contributed to shaping the image of Persia in Renaissance Europe.

The present article is focused on the Interregnum of 1727–1757 in Morocco — a controversial and turbulent period that followed the death of Moulay Ismail (1672–1727). This ruler who was the third sultan of the Alawi dynasty (1631–present time), consolidated the power and laid the foundations of the precolonial Moroccan state. He adopted a policy of strict centralisation towards the Berber-speaking tribes of the Atlas Mountains who always tried to maintain their independence from the state. The incursion of these tribes into the Atlantic plains had traditionally played a disruptive role for social, economic and political life in Morocco, and Ismail was able to stop this process. However, after his death a struggle for power began between his numerous descendants, and the political and economic crisis was followed by a new wave of tribal resistance. The author concludes that the crisis of the Interregnum could be seen as an inversion of the strict tribal policy pursued by Moulay Ismail. Based on the Moroccan annals and city chronicles, the paper analyses different approaches of Alawi sultans to the resolution of the crisis during this period. Special attention is paid to the role of Moulay Abdallah, who was able to find the way out of the crisis. The comparative analysis of the Moroccan chronicles shows that the solution laid not in the fight against Berber tribes, but in the search for compromises between them and the throne. Moulay Abdallah’s strategy in dealing with the tribes established a new policy of Moroccan rulers in the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries, which meant a greater use of arbitration and reliance on different tribal forces.

Based on the study of the original memoir source “My Biography” by A. Mostoufi, verified by the testimonies of foreign observers, the article examines one of the minor social groups of Iran’s urban population in the second half of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century. As an integral part of the Iranian city, this group is often viewed by researchers as amorphous and marginal, lacking stable characteristics that would define its homogeneity and permanence, which is also reflected in the contradictory meanings of the lexeme luti. Having analyzed the features of luti as a distinct group actor with its own moral, behavioral, and professional characteristics, the authors conclude that its officially low social status directly contradicts the significance it possessed in the socio-cultural life of the urban community. A wide range of role functions secured this group social prestige in the eyes of both the local patriciate and the democratic part of the urban population.

The article is devoted to the study of the religious communities of Jerusalem — Christians and Jews — in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, against the background of the Napoleonic expedition to the Middle East. Jerusalem, despite its relatively small population (about 12,000 people) and limited political importance in the Ottoman Empire, had a special status as a holy city of three world religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Christians and Jews in Jerusalem formed significant communities closely linked to the life of the Muslim majority, which created a complex system of religious symbiosis. During the years of the French invasion of the Middle East (1798–1801), the attitude of local authorities towards minorities was characterized by wariness and variability, including arrests, searches and the temporary detention of a large number of Christians in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Jewish community showed demonstrative loyalty to the Ottoman government and even helped to strengthen the defenses. Napoleon considered taking Jerusalem, hoping to gain the support of local Christians. However, due to tactical reasons, the capture did not take place, and the city maintained the status quo. The expedition exacerbated confessional contradictions, intensified the struggle for Holy Places and laid the foundations for further escalation of tension in interreligious relations. The Ottoman authorities sought to maintain control by charging large taxes and bribes from religious communities, while maintaining relative stability and preventing internal conflicts. The article reflects the complex balance of interests between various Christian denominations, the Jewish community and the Muslim authorities, as well as the reaction of Jerusalem residents to foreign military intervention in the lands of Palestine.

The article examines a historical retrospective of the administrative, cultural, and intellectual relationship between the post-Almohad dynasties of the Maghreb (the Marinids, Abdalwadids, and Hafsids) and the traditional Muslim educational institutions of North Africa. The reasons and characteristic features of the processes of reproduction of religious scholarship in the Maghreb are investigated in the light of the military and political events that accompanied the expansion of the Almohad state. The historical and cultural background of cooperation and rivalry between the major universities of the region and the Sultan’s/Emir’s court is shown. The author traces the dynamics of the geography of “sacred knowledge” in North Africa and proves that it correlates with the financial and economic activity of the states that arose on the ruins of the Almohad political project. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the multifaceted activities of madrasahs, which served as leading urban learning centers, had significant libraries and had highly professional teachers of Islamic spiritual disciplines. Tribal and intellectual ties between the military and political elite of the Maghreb and the teaching staff of new educational institutions have been studied.

The article examines the specific administrative model that developed in Ottoman Egypt in the second half of the 18th century, and the role of the local elite in the formation of the system of power. This study focuses on the influence of the Mamluk Sultanate on the ideas of regional leaders of predominantly Mamluk origin concerning the ideal structure of the state. These leaders regarded the Mamluk Sultanate as a model of the ‘golden age’ of Egyptian statehood. This study explores the repercussions of the deviation from the conventional tenets of the Mamluk corporation, which is characterized by an escalation in the competitive dynamics among the military-administrative elite of Egyptian society. The principal conclusion of the study is that the organizational structure of Mamluk society, which took shape in Ottoman Egypt in the latter half of the 18th century and was based on meritocratic principles of elite recruitment, due to its inherent contradictions, initially laid the foundation for stable stereotypes of behavior among the ruling authorities. These contradictions gave rise to conflicts among them. Despite the crisis of the Ottoman system of provincial administration, the leaders of the ruling ‘houses’ (‘beyts’) of the neo-Mamluk type were unable to propose a new political model of development and finally break away from dependency on the Ottoman metropolis, thus failing to put their ideas about the ideal state into practice.

The article examines the conflictual relations between the Druze community, historically inhabiting Jabal al-Duruz, a mountainous region in southern Syria, and the Ottoman authorities during the period of large-scale reforms in the Ottoman Empire, that is, during the Tanzimat (1839–1876) and the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876–1909). The ethno-confessional specificity of the population of Jabal al-Duruz, which has persisted to the present day, largely shaped the sociopolitical situation in the Hauran region, of which Jabal al-Duruz formed a part, south of Damascus. This makes it possible to place the military conflicts and political arrangements between the Ottoman provincial administration in Syria and the Druze community of Hauran within a broader context of the changing historical destinies of inward-looking and compactly settled ethno-confessional communities during state-led modernization. Drawing on archival materials from Russian consular reports and other primary sources, the study traces the logic and dynamics of Ottoman attempts to incorporate Jabal al-Duruz into the empire-wide reformed system of administrative and territorial governance. It also identifies the factors that helped preserve the Druze community’s confessional and social insularity and its readiness to offer armed resistance to external encroachments on traditional self-government.

This work is a historical analysis of the references to Sasanids and Arabs in Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius’ 14th poem, a panegyric to Constantine the Great, composed in the mid-320-es. The mention of the Parthian putting aside his arrows is a reference to the end of the war against Sasanid king Shāhpūhr II, waged in 324–325. The same war seems to be behind Optatianus’ words on the Mede rushing to a ‘love contest’ by which exchange of gifts, a standard diplomatic practice and a sui generis competition in courtesy, is probably meant. So, Optatianus appears to mean that the Sasanid king began negotiations and sent an embassy with gifts. The statement that Persians wish to recognize Constantine as their sovereign and give him their royal power and possessions is ambiguous. Optatianus may refer to Hurmuzd, a Sasanid prince who fled to the Romans and became a general at their service. Alternatively, Optatianus may reproduce the then existing belief that following the war of 324–25 king Shāhpūhr became a tributary of Rome. A reference to Arabs seems to be connected to the Roman rulers’ policy to attract Arabic tribes of border regions, especially those on the Euphrates, and use those tribes in their struggle against the Sasanids.

Using the example of Alaouite Morocco and the Egyptian province of the Ottoman Empire, the authors discuss the historical retrospective of the political and ideological interrelationship between the ruling circles of the Arab lands and the influential clans of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (sharifs), who lived in North Africa since the early Middle Ages. The reasons for the political alliances between the Alaouite dynasty and the provincial sharifian families are explained, as well as the factors behind the sharifs’ participation in the political life of Ottoman Egypt. The ecological, political, and socio-cultural grounds for the long-term preservation of peripheral land-use patterns in these countries are considered. The authors turn to the study of the functioning of pious endowments (waqfs), land grants (azibs), and tax-farming holdings (iltizams) provided in favor of the sharifs. The historical and cultural prerequisites for the transformation of waqfs, azib lands, and iltizams into private property are clarified. Special attention is paid to the legal status of users of azibs and iltizams and to the political status of residents of lands granted as azibs.

This article analyzes the structure of original folklore texts (folktales) from several small, unwritten ethnic groups in the southeastern regions of Tanzania in terms of their lexical and stylistic features. These texts are introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time. Particular attention is given to folktales in the Vidunda, Luguru, Ngindo, and Ndonde languages, which were transcribed using native-speaking informants. Various lexical and stylistic devices that give a certain emotional and expressive coloring and markedness to narratives are examined, such as reduplication, the use of ideophonic vocabulary, and interjections.

This article aims to study the composition of modern Persian ghazals on the material of selected poems by Simin Behbahani, a master of this genre in Iran, who is rightfully recognized as “Mistress of the Modern Ghazal” (“Bānu-ye qazal-e mo‘aser”). The ghazal is the dominant form in Simin’s work. She has written more than six hundred poems in this form. Simin Behbahani not only demonstrates continuity with Persian classical poetry in her choice of imagery and poetic syntax, but also “modernizes” the ghazal with her own “invented motifs” (“ma‘āni-ye exterā‘”), which have no equivalents in classical literature. The changes that Simin introduced to the traditional form of the ghazal also affect the formal aspect — composition of the text. The classical Persian ghazal tends to be divided into two categories according to the nature of the connection between the bayts, which are referred to as mosalsal (“linear”) or parākande (“disparate”). Most of Simin’s ghazals belong to the first type and are characterized by a unity of theme and figurative-semantic structure. In her ghazals, Simin often prefers various variants of ring composition. There are few examples of this type of composition in the ghazals of the classical period. The purpose of this work is to use selected representative examples to show how Simin Behbahani develops this compositional model. This will allow us to take the first step in the theoretical understanding of the poetics of the modern ghazal (qazal-e mo‘aser) as the changes that have occurred in it at the current stage have not yet been studied properly. Using the example of three different texts, it is shown that, by working with the original methods of constructing a ghazal, Simin Behbahani as a poet who worked in the era of the individual creative type of artistic consciousness chooses a preferred compositional method for unfolding the lyrical situation in each poem.

The article is devoted to the study of a possible genre classification of Sanskrit one-stanza poetry, using Bhartṛhari’s Śatakatrayam (3rd–4th centuries AD) and Vidyākara’s Subhāṣitaratnakośa (11th century AD) as examples. The existing division only by the genres of anthologies (śataka and kośa) seems too general. The article shows that several distinct genres can be identified among the poems ncluded in the anthologies, including blessings (nandī), panegyrics (praśasti), didactic maxims in their various forms (ascetic and urban didactics), compliments to a beauty (cāṭu), poems about canonical love situations, and seasonal landscape lyrics. Thematic and, where possible, structural and stylistic features of these genres are briefly described. A connection is established between the composition of blessing stanzas and the archaic ritual riddle (brahmodya). Features of developed literary panegyric poetry are demonstrated in single-stanza verses praising kings or allegorically censuring them. The question is raised about the connection between panegyric and love poetry of small forms and the court poem mahākāvya due to the commonality of style and imagery. Prospects for comparing minor genres with larger genres of Sanskrit literature are outlined.

Foreign direct investment has remained an important factor in the economic development of the Republic of Turkey for most of its history. This phenomenon has been evaluated in terms of the dynamics of FDI inflows, as well as their geographical and sectoral structure. In this article, we examine the relevance of foreign participation in the capital of the largest manufacturing companies in Turkey, which make up the list of the top 500 companies according to the Istanbul Chamber of Industry. We analyze both the scale of foreign investors’ presence in the capital of leading companies and their sectoral preferences, including from the perspective of the technological complexity of the most popular industries, as well as the main obstacles to expanding foreign presence in the most technologically advanced sectors.