This essay examines a copy of the Qur’ān from India, now in the India Office Collections at the British Library. The manuscript, registered as IO Loth 4, belongs to the reasonably large group of... Show moreThis essay examines a copy of the Qur’ān from India, now in the India Office Collections at the British Library. The manuscript, registered as IO Loth 4, belongs to the reasonably large group of early Qur’āns that date to the eighth and ninth centuries CE. While some of these manuscripts have charted histories, what is not widely known is that early Qur’āns also made their way to India. There they have their own special histories, meanings and associations. In attempt to address the long ‘after-life’ of these manuscripts, this paper will examine a single example that arrived in India in the Mughal period and was eventually presented to the Library of the East India House by Lord Dalhousie in 1853. While not the earliest of the Qur’āns brought to India, it nonetheless dates to the circa ninth century CE, making it older than any surviving manuscripts in Sanskrit or Prakrit in India proper. Show less
The Skandapurāṇa is one of the many textual sources that narrates Viṣṇu’s manifestation myths. It tells the stories of Narasiṃha (Man-Lion), Varāha (Boar) and Vāmana (Dwarf) in its own distinctive... Show moreThe Skandapurāṇa is one of the many textual sources that narrates Viṣṇu’s manifestation myths. It tells the stories of Narasiṃha (Man-Lion), Varāha (Boar) and Vāmana (Dwarf) in its own distinctive way. The greatest innovation is the addition of thus far unprecedented sequels to the stories. Whereas Śiva played a minor role, or no role at all, in the narratives as they were known at the time of composition of the Skandapurāṇa, he becomes indispensable in the “afterlife episodes” of the manifestation myths. Each afterlife episode follows the same structure, in which Viṣṇu is unable or unwilling to give up his manifested form. He is liberated from it by Śiva, who subsequently grants Viṣṇu a boon as a reward for his deeds and devotion to Śiva. From a Śaiva perspective, the boons become grander each narrative: first, Viṣṇu receives the important cosmic task in the Śaiva universe of destroying the gods’ enemies, then he formally joins the Pāśupata Śaiva community by performing the Pāśupata observance, and finally, he reaches union with Śiva, i.e., liberation from the continuous cycle of rebirth, by performing another Pāśupata observance. By introducing “the principle of end weight”, I will argue that this radical, new identity of Viṣṇu is expressed at a strategic place in the narrative, viz. at the very end, which is the part that is remembered most vividly. Show less
In late 2019, the Dutch Expert Centre Worldview and Religion in Secondary Education (Expertisecentrum Levensbeschouwing en Religie in het Voortgezet Onderwijs; LERVO) tasked a group of teachers and... Show moreIn late 2019, the Dutch Expert Centre Worldview and Religion in Secondary Education (Expertisecentrum Levensbeschouwing en Religie in het Voortgezet Onderwijs; LERVO) tasked a group of teachers and teacher trainers to work out a national curriculum for the subject area ‘worldview and religion’ (levensbeschouwing en religie). In this article, I outline the progress made so far. In the first section of the article, I discuss the general educational vision of LERVO that we have developed in dialogue with Gert Biesta’s theoretical pedagogy, Wolfgang Klafki’s theory of Bildung, and Fred Janssen’s ‘perspectives approach’ (perspectiefgerichte benadering). The second part of the article presents a new framework for the national curriculum, consisting of nine perspectives on worldview and religion (e.g., the meaning-making and phenomenological perspectives), and three additional learning lines focused, respectively, on dimensions of worldviews and religions, important traditions, and societal challenges. Show less
This dissertation examines the continued, yet hitherto overlooked, engagement of the Greek community in Egypt from the period after the en masse departure of most of its members (1962), until the... Show moreThis dissertation examines the continued, yet hitherto overlooked, engagement of the Greek community in Egypt from the period after the en masse departure of most of its members (1962), until the implementation of the infitāh policies in 1976 by Anwar Sadat. Beyond Departure: The Greeks in Egypt, 1962-1976 explores the Greeks’ multiple personal, local and institutional histories that make up the Greek presence in history after 1962. It reveales the diversity of Greek experiences based on geographical, socioeconomic and individual context. It analyzes the motivations and strategies they employed to respond to the economic and social changes in Egyptian society, such as the end of the Capitulations, WWI and WWII, the formation of the post-colonial state, and the 1961 Nationalization laws, among others, and the relations these events formed between Egyptian nationals and non nationals and the Egyptian state. It also explores how Greeks negotiated their presence, identity and feelings of belonging, in mind and practice, as a diaspora with a transnational agency. Show less
The Quranic text today is recited in ten canonical reading traditions with two distinct canonical transmissions each. These reading traditions are distinct in their phonological and morphological... Show moreThe Quranic text today is recited in ten canonical reading traditions with two distinct canonical transmissions each. These reading traditions are distinct in their phonological and morphological details, as well as the interpretation of the ambiguous consonantal text. However, they all have in common that they adhere to the consonantal skeleton of the standard Quran text. Despite this adherence, on rare occasions readers do deviate from this standard text. This paper examines those cases, and explores the reasons why the canonical readers felt licensed to do so. Especially ʾAbū ʿAmr was prone to deviate from the consonantal text in cases of perceived grammatical issues. Moreover, the readers occasionally deviated from their regional consonantal text when other regional codices had another form. Finally, readers deviated from the consonantal text, in cases where the text came in conflict with the pausal spelling principle. Show less
