The Student Lecture Series continues on Wednesday November 13th at 6.30pm with two more fascinating talks: Shivan Mahendrarajajah (University of Cambridge) will speak on 'Balance of Power: Re-assessing the Relationship Between the Kart Dynasty of Herat and the Mystics at Turbat-i Jam, 1307 to 1381' and David Beamish (SOAS) will talk about 'Answering Back to Europe: Ottoman and North African Journalists in Paris'.
Shivan Mahendrarajah is a final-year doctoral candidate in Islamic and Persian History at the University of Cambridge and is writing a dissertation on an influential Sufi community in Persia during the Mongol and Timurid periods (ca. 1250-1500). He earned a B.B.A. in Finance (1997). After a professional career, he returned to academia, earning an M.A. in Islamic Studies at Columbia University (2007). He studied Arabic and Persian in the United States before embarking on cultural immersion, field research, and language study in Morocco, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He is from Houston, Texas.
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| Masjid-i Jama' ("Friday Mosque") in Herat, Khurasan. Copyright, Shivan Mahendrarajah, 2013. |
In summary of his talk Shivan writes:
"The Kart dynasty ruled from Herat from 1245 to 1381, when they were extinguished by Tamerlane. The ‘Sufi Shaykhs of Jam’ venerated Shaykh al-Islam Ahmad-i Jam (d. 1141), and with Mongol, Kartid, and Timurid patronage, became a wealthy and influential shrine community. This mystical community flourishes today in Jam (Iran) and Herat.
A common assessment of ‘Sufi and Sultan’ relationships is one where the Sultan is the senior partner, and the Sufi is the junior partner. The Sultan patronizes the Sufi; the Sufi offers blessings and legitimacy to the Sultan. We argue that the relationship between the Karts and the Shaykhs was one of parity. Between 1307-29, ties were warm: the two clans intermarried, the Kart malik venerated Ahmad-i Jam, and came to love the patriarch of the Jami family. Patronage flowed. The relationship cooled between 1332-70. In 1351, the Shaykhs conspired with the Chagatay Mongols to depose the Kart malik. He regained the throne, but the Jami clan was unharmed. In ca. 1380, the clan conspired with Tamerlane’s chiefs to depose another Kart malik. The Jamis’ wealth and influence soared under the Timurids."
Our second speaker, David Beamish is a third year PhD student in the History Department at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His research focuses on Ottoman and North African émigrés in Paris during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1890-1914). David is from Toronto, Canada and completed his BA in Canadian History at McGill University in Montreal. Following this a year spent working in south eastern Turkey caused a shift in his historical interests and he went on to complete an MA in Turkish Studies at SOAS and then began the PhD program. David's academic interests more broadly are intellectual history and the debates surrounding modernization and Westernization in the non-Western world.
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| Ahmed Riza |
Summarizing his talk, David writes:
"This paper will examine the Paris-based French language publishing of those Ottomans that can loosely, if imperfectly, be called ‘Young Turks’ and that of their ‘Young Algerian’ counterparts. It is my contention that these publications represented a unique category within the larger oppositional output of these groups. Both the content of these publications and their intended audience, which was in the main European, fulfilled a different but complimentary function to their Arabic and Ottoman language counterparts in Egypt, the Levant and the Maghreb. The engagement of these groups with European journalistic and intellectual culture through their French language publications was, as Erdal Kaynar writes, intended as a contribution to European politics. In this context my paper will touch on the variety of themes addressed by writers from different ethnic and religious backgrounds expressed across a multitude of print forms, but united through their participation in the intellectual milieu of Western Europe."The lectures will be followed by a question and answer session and a drinks reception, it is free and all are welcome. For more information contact info@royalasiaticsociety.org or telephone 02073884539.