This Black History Month, I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight the book Born Palestinian Born Black – a powerful poetry volume from Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad in the NGL’s collection.
Hammad’s poetry is deeply inspired by and speaks up for the Black Brooklyn communities within which she grew up. For example, as Kenza Oumlil states in his essay “Talking Back”: The poetry of Suheir Hammad, Hammad ‘[inscribes] Brooklyn and hip-hop language on the page in an effort to revalue its aesthetic merit as a form of orality’.[1]
Hammad also writes in the introductions to Born Palestinian Born Black explicitly of the inspiration she owes to African American poet and activist June Jordan – how, ‘The last stanza in June Jordan’s “Moving Toward Home” changed her life’[2]. One of her descriptions of her own writing process is also as ‘a new embroidery, stitched in june jordan’s dark’[3]. As Sirène Harb argues in her essay, Naming Oppressions, Representing Empowerment: June Jordan’s and Suheir Hammad’s Poetic Projects, ‘these resonances and echoes [between the two poets] originate from a shared commitment to coalition-building, solidarity, and the fight against various oppressions and injustices, which reflects the spirit and analytical project of women of color feminism.’[4]
This focus on coalition-building is apparent through Hammad’s poetry in different ways – including not only the communities she writes about, but also community-building between speaker and audience. And nowhere in the collection is this made more explicit than in we spent the fourth of July in bed, as Hammad declares ‘my sincere love for real / is for my peeps my family humanity’.[5]
It is also in this poem that Hammad rhetorically weaves together a community of victims of US violence, in Iraq, Malaysia, the Philippines, Puerto Rica, Yemen, Japan, and Palestine. This is a device that she uses throughout the book, as again and again, she connects sites of injustice. She also finds kinship in marginalisation with her African American neighbours, as in open poem to those who rather we not read… or breathe, she constructs a ‘we’ that connects ‘taino and arawak bodies’, ‘children of children exiled from homelands’, ‘descendents of immigrants’, and ‘survivors of the middle passage’ – all linked in opposition to fascism and imperialism.[6]However, Hammad does not draw one-to-one comparisons between African American and Palestinian experiences, instead presenting each side-by side, connecting them often to illustrate how the trials faced in both are the product of many of the same structural forces.
She also makes clear that these kinships are not only born of suffering. For example, manifest destiny details how Hammad and three of her friends defied the expectations of society and family to forge their own paths and find one another, ‘creating a family’.[7]
A frustrated attempt to establish this sort of connection is furthermore present in fly away. This poem tells of a ‘young brother man’ who decides to escape ‘bein high / and forced / into the back of a police car’ by joining the US Air Force, as Hammad confronts him with the ways that that organisation has inflicted trauma on ‘saigon beirut greneda’ and asking ‘what if you have to kill people’. He in turn argues that ‘he’s gotta support his moms / give up donations / for the next funeral’ and that he cannot consider these issues ‘cause he’s dealin with / a different kinda fear’. In doing so, she makes a powerful argument about how oppressive systems force the marginalised into competition with one another and for the importance of ‘revolution and peace’ and solidarity as a corrective.[8]
Indeed, I hope that this message of solidarity, enhanced rather than diminished by the acknowledgment of intense suffering worldwide, and this homage to African American communities is one that we can all take from Suheir Hammad’s work this October. I could never do full justice to all of the textures of this poetry collection, so, if anything at all that I have said here has interested you, I can only recommend that you have a look for yourself.
Bibliography
K. Andrews, K. Crenshaw, and A. Wilson, Blackness at the Intersection, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.
S. Hammad, Born Palestinian Born Black, Brooklyn NY, UpSet Press Inc., 2010.
J. Jordan, Moving Towards Home: Political Essays, London, Virago, 1989.
J. Jordan, Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan, Port Townsend, 2007.
D. Moore, ‘“Breaking language”: Performance and community in Suheir Hammad’s poetry’. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 56, no. 1, 2020, pp.110-125.
K. Oumlil, ‘“Talking Back”: The poetry of Suheir Hammad’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 13, no. 5, pp.850-859.
[1] K. Oumlil, ‘“Talking Back”: The poetry of Suheir Hammad’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 13, no. 5, p.855
[2] S. Hammad, Born Palestinian Born Black, Brooklyn NY, UpSet Press Inc., 2010, p.12: The stanza itself is also quoted on that page:
We at the NGL wanted to wish a warm welcome to everyone joining us here for the first time and also to enthusiastically welcome back our returning readers! And what better way to do that than a little introduction to the members of the Faculty for Asian and Middle Eastern Studies through their writing. We hope that this gives you some fun and interesting places to start if you are just getting to know the library, and also that, even if you have been a reader here for years you can still find some hidden gems in this collection.
Image of the book display accompanying this blog post in the issue desk area of the Nizami Ganjavi Library.
The books on the display range from language-learning essentials (like Media Persian by Dominic Brookshaw) and reading list texts (like Key Terms of the Qur’an by Nicolai Sinai) to explorations of topics from angles you might not expect. They also cover the full range of geographic areas and time periods represented by the NGL’s collections, including Korea (Jeju Language and Tales from the Edge of the Korean Peninsula by Jieun Kiaer), Iran (Early Islamic Iran edited by Edmund Herzig), Turkey (Uncoupling Language and Religion: An Exploration into the Margins of Turkish Literature by Laurent Mignon), India (Negotiating Mughal Law by Nandini Chatterjee), and more!
Indeed, one of the aspects of researching for this display and blog post that I have enjoyed the most has been seeing the repeated emphasis on connections between places, people, and texts. For example, in The History of English Loanwords in Korean, Jieun Kiaer not only examines the changing channels by which English has influenced Korean or the different ways English words become integrated, but also situates those shifts in a wider east Asian context, incorporating Japan and China, and, furthermore, illustrates how these influences are not one way. Similarly, Mohamed-Salah Omri uses the works of Tunisian author, Maḥmūd al-Mas’adī to demonstrate the complex nature of literary influence between European and Arab cultures in Nationalism, Islam and World Literature, and Imre Bangha, in Hungry Tiger discusses the profound but little-explored impact of Rabindranath Tagore’s work and travels on the Hungarian intelligentsia of the early to mid-20th century.
I think that the books featured in the display really highlight one of this faculty and this library’s greatest strengths which is the bringing together of a range of research interests to produce and discover insightful interdisciplinary ideas. I am continually impressed by both how wide-ranging the collections are here, but also how well-connected to one another. I really encourage you to explore as there wasn’t room in the display or this blog post to feature all of the faculty’s great contributions – for example, some of the books not featured are in the bibliography below – and of course there’s even more to discover beyond these works. And that’s to say nothing of the millions of books available to order from off-site storage via SOLO! I hope you enjoy your time at the AMES Faculty and NGL as much as I have and we at the NGL look forward to you visiting us in future!
Bibliography
A. Abdou, Arabic Idioms: A Corpus-Based Study, London, Routledge, 2012.
I. Bangha, Hungry Tiger: Encounters Between Hungarian and Bengali Literary Cultures, New Delhi, Sahitya Akademi, 2008.
U. Bläsing, J. Dum-Tragut, and T. M. van Lint, Armenian, Hittite, and Indo-European Studies: A Commemoration Volume for Jos J.S. Weitenberg, Leuven, Peeters, 2019.
D. Brookshaw, Media Persian, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
E. Cakir, Turkish Tutor: Grammar and Vocabulary workbook. Advanced beginner to upper intermediate
N. Chatterjee, Negotiating Mughal Law: A Family of Landlords Across Three Indian Empires Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022.
J. F. Coakley and D. Taylor, Syriac books printed at the Dominican Press, Mosul : with an appendix containing the Syriac books printed at the Chaldean Press, Mosul, Piscataway N.J., Gorgias Press, 2009.
K. Crosby, Theravada Buddhism: Continuity, Diversity and Identity, Chichester, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2014.
E. Herzig, Early Islamic Iran, London, I.B. Taurus, 2012.
R. Ismail, Rethinking Salafism: The Transnational Networks of Salafi ʻUlama in Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, New York, Oxford University Press, 2021.
L. Jabb, Oral and Literary Continuities in Modern Tibetan Literature: The Inescapable Nation, Lanham, Maryland, Lexington Books, 2015.
J. Kiaer, The History of English Loanwords in Korean, Muenchen, Lincom, 2014.
J. Kiaer, Jeju Language and Tales from the Edge of the Korean Peninsula, Muenchen, Lincom, 2014.
J. Kiaer, The old Korean poetry : grammatical analysis and translation, Muenchen, Lincom, 2014.
J. B. Lewis, Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan, London, Routledge, 2011
J. J. Lowe, Modern Linguistics in Ancient India, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024.
L. Mignon, Uncoupling Language and Religion: An Exploration into the Margins of Turkish Literature, Boston, Academic Studies Press, 2021.
A. Mokashi, Sapiens and Sthitaprajña : a comparative study in Seneca’s stoicism and the Bhagavadgīta, New Delhi, DK Printworld, 2019.
F. Morrissey, Sufism and the Scriptures: Metaphysics and Sacred History in the Thought of ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī, London, I.B. Taurus, 2021.
M. S. Omri, Nationalism, Islam and world literature : sites of confluence in the writings of Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī, London, Routledge, 2006.
T. Qutbuddin, al-Muʼayyad al-Shīrāzī and Fatimid daʿwa Poetry: A Case of Commitment in Classical Arabic Literature, Leiden, Brill, 2005.
T. Qutbuddin, Arabic Oration: Art and Function, Leiden, Brill, 2019.
E. L. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
C. Sahner, Christian Martyrs Under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Islamic World, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2018.
N. Sinai, The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
N. Sinai, Key Terms of the Qur’an: A Critical Dictionary, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2023.
M. Stausberg and Y. Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to Zoroastrianism, Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
February is LGBT+ History Month in the UK. In honour of this occasion the NGL is using our table display to showcase books from the Queer Armenian Library!
Started by J.P. Der Boghossian, the QAL aims to curate & promote literature by LGBTQIA+ authors in Armenia and the diaspora. Much of the text below comes from the Queer Armenian Library project website, which is constantly updated with more Queer Armenian literature.
J.P. Der Boghossian on founding the Queer Armenian Library
I’m not Armenian because I’m American, and I’m not American because I’m an Armenian with French citizenship. I can’t be Armenian and don’t belong in Northern Michigan because I’m Queer. So, what and who the hell am I?
The Queer Armenian Library came from a painful sense of trying to reconcile all of this. There had to be others writing about this. There had to be others wrestling with integrating their senses of identity. Initially, I was hoping to find a book or two. And slowly, I began to find more and more. And then I decided I wanted to find everything. I think scouring the internet for every book, article, and poem I could find was a way of pulling all these disparate parts of myself into a singular whole being. It wasn’t just a Queer Armenian Library that was being born; I was creating myself too. And I hope it can be the same for others. They can come to the website and find all these amazing works and begin to live authentically and live for themselves and create lives full of life and joy.
Queer Roots for the Diaspora: Ghosts in the Family Tree by Jarrod Hayes
Queer Roots for the Diaspora: Ghosts in the Family Tree takes as its primary object of study this desire for rooted identity—a desire to find and become one with one’s roots—as well as the problems that inevitably arise when one sets out on such a journey.
— Queer Roots for the Diaspora, p. 1
For those interested in the Armenian Diaspora, [Hayes] examines it in chapter five through an analysis of the films of Atom Egoyan.
About Strange Lands and People by James Najarian in Our World, Your Place: An anthology of short stories edited by Trevor Maynard
About Strange Lands and People follows Brendan, a gay Armenian adopted by an American family. Najarian explores the differences of how Brendan and his boyfriend Garo navigate the world of Armenian cultural identity as they set out to find Brendan’s birth parents, both of whom are Armenian. Garo represents one reality, a boy who grew up in an Armenian household, within an Armenian community. Brendan, on the other hand, represents a different reality, a boy growing up in an American household, where his Armenian heritage is exotic (his kindergarten teacher calls him, “our gypsy boy”). As Brendan and Garo get closer to learning the truth, Brendan’s inner conflict grows as he wonders what might have been.
First Light at Dawn by Nyri Bakkalian in Queerly Loving #1 – ed. G. Benson and Astrid Ohletz
Bakkalian writes the short story as an email from Kate Davis to her high school friend Hannah. Davis hasn’t seen Hannah in years. They have only recently reconnected. Davis’ tell-all email focuses on her “deployment and discharge and transition and the bad days.” Deployed to Iraq, Kate has a moment of clarity during the Battle of Al-Hakawati, not just about the war, but about her invisibility as a trans woman. She applies for her discharge and begins her transition. From there, she details for Hannah her new life, the symptoms of PTSD, and her experiences being seen as a woman, who she has been her entire life.
Queer Motherhood is Speculative Fiction by Kamee Abrahamian in Mizna: Queer + Trans Voices – ed. Joukhadar Zeyn
When they pushed their way into this world, a portal ripped my body open and remained that way for many months. During labor, the midwife kept measuring the size of this opening. As the numbers increased, I became worried that this portal would sever waist from hips, a magic trick gone wrong. There was a period of silence and bliss in which my understanding of where the room ended and where my body vanished entirely, followed by convulsions, an exorcism—then she said “ten centimeters,” and I knew it was done growing. I did not realize until that moment that my experience of time and space had transformed, my perspective was no longer three-dimensional.
— excerpt from Queer Motherhood is Speculative Fiction in Mizna
We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora – ed. Aram Mrjoian
We Are All Armenian brings together established and emerging Armenian authors to reflect on the complications of Armenian ethnic identity today. These personal essays elevate diasporic voices that have been historically silenced inside and outside of their communities, including queer, multiracial, and multiethnic writers. The eighteen contributors to this contemporary anthology explore issues of displacement, assimilation, inheritance, and broader definitions of home. Through engaging creative nonfiction, many of them question what it is to be Armenian enough inside an often unacknowledged community.
The Institute for Other Intelligences by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian
Published in 2022, The Institute for Other Intelligences by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is a work of speculative fiction and media theory about an imagined future where machine intelligences convene annually for curriculum on algorithmic equity. The book presents a transcript from one of these conferences in which a community of “AI agents” gather at a school for oppositional automata to deliver lectures on the human biases and omissions encoded in their training data. Drawing on feminist, queer, and critical media scholarship, the trainings collected in the book aim to optimize the operations of future generations of intelligent machines toward just outcomes.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, Armenians in diaspora have excelled at sharing the losses and lessons of their lives in the form of personal memoirs. Now, Queer descendants of Armenian Genocide survivors have continued this tradition by publishing their own stories.
Transition: Becoming Who I was Always Meant to Be by Chaz Bono
Best known as the child of Sonny Bono and Cher Sarkisian, Chaz Bono was one of the first trans people to tell their story widely on the public stage. His autobiography Transition is likewise the first known full-length memoir by an author of Armenian descent.
Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some by Chris Edwards
Wildly successful advertising mogul Chris Edwards seems like a paragon of American capitalist masculinity. In Balls, however, he tells the story of how his Armenian-ness and his trans-ness have interacted – both with each other and with his identity as a quintessential businessman.
Straight to Gay: How Coming Out Saved My Life – Creating Joy & Health by Audrey Kouyoumdjian
Half-memoir and half-self-help book, Audrey Kouyoumdjian’s Straight to Gay tells the story of how one “typical” Armenian-American woman’s embrace of her own lesbianism helped her deal with death, health issues, and deeply ingrained cultural stigmas and traumas.
Author Spotlight: Taleen Voskuni
Taleen Voskuni is an award-winning writer who grew up in the Bay Area Armenian diaspora. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in English and currently lives in San Francisco, working in tech. Other than a newfound obsession with writing rom-coms, she spends her free time cultivating her kids, her garden, and her dark chocolate addiction. Her first novel, Sorry, Bro, received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist, was named an Amazon editor’s pick, and was favorably reviewed in The New York Times. Sorry, Bro is also winner of the 2023 Golden Poppy award for best romance. Lavash at First Sight is her second published novel.
When Ellie’s lovingly overbearing parents ask her to attend PakCon – a food packaging conference in Chicago – to help promote their company and vie to win an ad slot in the Superbowl (no big deal), she’s eager for a brief change and a delicious distraction. At the conference, she meets witty, devil-may-care Vanya Simonian. Ellie can’t believe how easy it is to talk to Vanya and how much they have in common. Their meet-cute is cut short, however, when Ellie’s parents recognize Vanya as the daughter of the owners of their greatest rival. Sworn as enemies, Ellie and Vanya must compete against each other under their suspicious parents’ scrutiny, all while their feelings for each other heat to sizzling temps.
There are so few books on the Armenian diaspora experience, very few lighthearted ones, and even fewer LGBQTA+ stories. Armenians deserve joyous stories, queer Armenians even more so. I wanted to give visibility to the forgotten people within a forgotten people, and give them a happy ending. Also, I wanted to open the narrative on the complex contradictions of Armenian diaspora culture—how it is both painful and funny, beautiful but repressive.
Michael Barakiva is a Jewish-Armenian theatre director, producer, and novelist. Born in Haifa, Israel, Barakiva grew up in New Jersey before attending Vassar College and Julliard, where he focused on English literature and theatre. Currently residing in Manhattan, Barakiva has directed and produced a wide range of stage plays and musicals across the US and around the world.
Barakiva’s young adult novels feature protagonists who, like himself, are Queer members of the Armenian diaspora. While they inevitably tell us about the way in which Barakiva views his own identity, their Armenian-ness and Queer-ness are not necessarily central to their stories. Instead, they serve as examples of Queer members of diaspora “just existing” in the same contexts as non-Queer protagonists do – albeit with a healthy dose of overblown family drama or fantasy.
One Man Guyis the story of Alek Khederian, a high school student with a loving but overbearing Armenian family navigating growing up gay in suburban New Jersey. When his demanding parents force him to attend summer school to improve his grades, Alek meets the impossibly cool Ethan and, as high school students often do, falls head-over-heels in love. Yet, while Alek is worried about what his conservative parents will think of his new beau, it’s his older brother Nik’s new half-Armenian, half-Turkish girlfriend Nanar that tests the limits of his family’s love.
Published in 2019, Hold My Hand by Michael Barakiva is the sequel to his first novel One Man Guy. […] Hold My Hand is notable for the fact that it is the first YA novel with two gay Armenian-American characters. Barakiva introduces us to Arno, a shy Armenian-American whom our hero Alex befriends at Saturday morning Armenian school at church. When Alek discovers that someone has written Gyot on one of Arno’s textbooks (an Armenian version of “faggot”), Arno comes out to Alek. Hold my Hand is also notable in how Alek navigates his sexuality in terms of whether he will have sex for the first time. […] For the Armenian community, this is a major breakthrough for Queer youth.
Keepers of the Stones & Starsrepresents a departure from Barakiva’s earlier novels, both in its fantastic premise and in its backgrounding of the theme of the Armenian diaspora family. While the tale still begins in the humble city of Asbury Park, New Jersey, Keepers focuses on its two main characters – Reed and his new boyfriend, the Armenian-American Arno – as they become charged with magical stones which imbue their bearers with special powers and, of course, the burden of saving the world. Together, they amass a crew of misfits who, over the course of their quest, learn as much about themselves and their eclectic identities as they do about the strange cosmic powers which chose them for their quest.
The Fear of Large and Small Nations by Nancy Agabian
Feminist writer and teacher Natalee–aka Na–flees the conservative fearmongering of George W. Bush’s America to reclaim her cultural roots in post-Soviet Armenia. As she contends with rigid gender roles and rampant homophobia, learning the language when her linguistic roots in the Ottoman Empire have all but disappeared, and centering her identity as a bisexual Armenian American woman amid her own secret desire for love, Na is soon left with more questions than answers about where her fractured self belongs in the world.
Written in gripping short stories interspersed with intimate journal entries and blog posts, the fragmented narrative reveals what is lost in the tightrope journey between cultures ravaged by violence and colonialism–and what is gained when one woman seizes control of her story, pulsating in its many shades and realities, daring to be witnessed.
Nancy Agabian’s previous books include Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter, a memoir honored as a Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBT Nonfiction and shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Writing Prize, and Princess Freak, a collection of poetry and performance art texts. In 2021 she was awarded Lambda Literary Foundation’s Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. The Fear of Large and Small Nations is her first novel.
Confluence: A Person-Shaped Story by Nyri A. Bakkalian
Wielder and blade. One heart together. Surveying the ruins of her wife’s hometown, River Victoria Eginian felt useless. Still adjusting to her cybernetic prostheses — the result of career-ending combat wounds amid coming out as trans — life was already a challenge. But soon she met the local combat dolls—cybernetic beings. River’s wife Dr. Isawa Kasu, a brilliant cyberneticist, leaps headfirst into helping her wife remake herself as a blue-haired combat doll with a new name: River M59A1.
Published in 2022, Confluence: A Person-Shaped Story by Nyri A. Bakkalian is a novel about a trans-lesbian couple: an Armenian-American combat specialized cyborg and her Japanese cyberneticist spouse Isawa Kasu. Their intense loyalty to each other carries them through a fight against long odds and systemic injustice.
Nyri A. Bakkalian, Ph.D. is a queer Armenian-American by birth, a military historian by training, and is proud to have called the American and Japanese northeasts her home. Her writing, art, and photography have appeared in Gutsy Broads, Metropolis Japan, The Copperfield Review, and other venues. She authored the novel Grey Dawn and the essay The Armenians of Pittsburgh.
In a small Texas town, Brent comes out to his parents, and on that night his place in the world cracks wide open. Unmoored from his family but unwilling to give up on his dream, Brent enters the Peace Corps with the incredible task of navigating an unfamiliar land, a new language, and a new identity as a gay man in post-Soviet Armenia. When his Peace Corps commitment begins to take unexpected turns, Brent must decide what matters to him most and where he thinks he belongs.
Published in 2024, Leap by Brent Love is a memoir that details his experiences when he came out to his American family and then three days later began a two-year Peace Corp assignment in Armenia. This is the first memoir by an American writer detailing queer life in Armenia.
Brent Love is an American memoirist and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. During his work as Roving Correspondent for the American Refugee Committee, Love covered stories across the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Love studied political science and international relations at Abilene Christian University and began his career in refugee resettlement in West Texas. He is the host of the surrogacy podcast Hope Works.
The name of a library is usually an afterthought in the mind of a reader with a deadline – little more than a direction towards the book they need, or a quiet place to study until their next lecture. If they give it any thought at all, then most people when hearing the name “Nizami Ganjavi Library”, assume that Nizami Ganjavi must have been a donor of some significance, perhaps an alumnus of what used to be the Oriental Institute, or a recently-deceased scholar who the University saw fit to memorialise.
In truth, Nizami could not have donated to, taught at, or attended the University – on account of having been dead for nearly nine hundred years.
Since Nizami was not a court poet, the only real source that we have for his personal life is his own writing – which is often lacking in detail and therefore hotly debated by modern scholars. We know that he was born around 1141, likely in Qom in central Iran, or perhaps Ganja, to a Kurdish mother – before being orphaned and raised by his uncle in Ganja, who had him educated in a wide variety of subjects. While it is intuitive that he was well-versed in both Arabic and Persian literary traditions, his knowledge of other topics ranged from astronomy to law to botany – his skills in which make themselves known throughout his poetry.
He was married three times over the course of his life, but each of his wives died young, with each of their deaths coinciding with the completion of one of his romantic poems. He is said to have loved his first wife the most, with whom he had his only son, and who died when he finished Khosrow and Shirin. Some suggest that her name may have been Afaq, but it’s not a definite fact, and history doesn’t record the names of his other wives, who died after he finished his two other romances. Regarding this, he is reported as having exclaimed “God, why is it that for every mathnavi I must sacrifice a wife!”
The twelfth century was a time of great political instability in Persia and the Caucasus, but also of never-before-seen reach for Persian poetry, which is in turn reflected in Nizami’s poems. He had various patrons throughout his career, from several different and sometimes rival dynasties; such as the Seljuqs, Eldiguzids, and Ahmadilis – the influences of these different cultures and their languages make themselves known through his stylistic choices, such as cross-cultural idioms and certain words from the local Pahlavi dialect that spread beyond their traditional range. Nizami mentions several other poems, contemporary and otherwise, which he used as inspirations for his own – but maintains his superiority over his influences.
Nizami is known for his mathnavi poetry – didactic and romantic poems composed of rhyming couplets with a metre of eleven syllables, rarely ten. His most famous work is the Khamsa (خمسه, ‘Quintet’) – an anthology made up of five long narrative poems which he wrote over the course of about forty years:
Makhzan-ol-Asrâr (مخزنالاسرار, ‘The Treasury of Mysteries’), 1163 (some date it 1176)
Khosrow o Shirin (خسرو و شیرین, ‘Khosrow and Shirin’), 1177–1180
Leyli o Majnun (لیلی و مجنون, ‘Layla and Majnun’), 1192
Eskandar-Nâmeh (اسکندرنامه, ‘The Book of Alexander’), 1194 or 1196–1202
Haft Peykar (هفت پیکر, ‘The Seven Beauties’), 1197
He did write other shorter-form lyric poems, mostly ghazals and qasidahs, which were not held in as high regard as the Khamsa in his own time, and only a few of these survive to us.
Influence in Modern Culture
There is no shortage of retellings of the stories in Nizami’s poetry, with varying levels of fidelity to the renditions that appear in the Khamsa as opposed to elsewhere. These retellings have taken the form of both poetry and prose translations of his work, as well as films, stage plays, songs, and even a few ballets. The versions of these stories that remain in the public consciousness are not always exactly the ones Nizami told –there is a lot of overlap with the versions that inspired Nizami – such as those found in the Shahnameh. In other cases, parts of the story are changes to align with current preferences; for example his Majnun is Layla’s uncle, a detail which is often changed in modern accounts. Despite these changes, Nizami’s influence on the most common versions of the story in the modern day is still evident.
Many would say that the most notable interpretation of Nizami’s work, however, was as the inspiration for Derek and the Dominos’ album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. The titular song, and centrepiece of the album, Layla, was inspired by the all-consuming love in Nizami’s poem Layla and Majnun, and went on to be ranked at #27 on Rolling Stone’s 2004 list of the greatest songs of all time above A Day in the Life by The Beatles at #28 – most people recognise it almost instantly by the opening riff, if not by the title. Earlier in the album, in the notes for the song I am Yours, singer/guitarist Eric Clapton listed the composer as Nizami as well as himself, because he had used so many of the lines that Majnun sings to Layla in Nizami’s poem that he felt he couldn’t take all of the credit for the lyrics.
^Album cover for Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos
Status as National Poet of Azerbaijan
When Azerbaijan was formed under the Soviet Union in 1936 and had to name a national poet, they chose Nizami due to his widespread influence and having spent most of his life in the area, though not born there. At this time there were no serious claims that Nizami was ethnically Turkic – it was widely accepted that he was Persian but lived in Ganja – and this wasn’t an issue for the citizens of Azerbaijan who loved his poetry anyway, and held an 800-year anniversary of his poetry in order to keep up with the other Soviet countries who were holding celebrations for their own recently-appointed national poets. It seems that the idea of claiming Nizami as a native Azerbaijani poet began with the First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party, who held deeply-felt anti-Iranian sentiments. The idea was bolstered by the Institute of History of Language and Literature of the Azerbaijani affiliate of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, who started publishing his poetry, and the magazine Pravda, which mentioned Nizami as specifically Azerbaijani as opposed to Persian.
By 1939, with the involvement of Soviet Orientalists and perhaps even Stalin, the idea spread that Nizami had been forced to write in Persian instead of a supposed native Turkic language, and he was only now being “returned” to his “true heritage”. This statement was usually followed by an assertion of the greatness of the Soviet Union for enabling this to finally happen – feeding into the Soviet nationalist ideology of the period. Despite being based on ethno-territorial assumptions and deliberate misinterpretations of Nizami’s work, the USSR directly benefited from the idea that fascists in Persia and the West had deliberately conspired to steal Nizami from the nation of Azerbaijan. As a consequence, many Orientalists continue to this day to assert that Nizami was not Persian, and there are still serious consequences in Azerbaijan for disagreeing.
Resources at the Bodleian
Many books related to Nizami Ganjavi and his works can be found, intuitively, in the Nizami Ganjavi Library under the shelfmark PK6501, as well as in the Middle East Centre Library, the Weston Library, and elsewhere. We have books of his poetry in the original Persian, as well as translated into several other languages including English, Russian, and Japanese. Additionally, there are several manuscripts of Nizami’s poetry, the earliest dating from the fifteenth century, which have recently been made searchable within various digital archives on the new Marco software.
^illustration of one of the scenes in the Iskandar-Nameh, in a manuscript of the Khamsa linked above
Further Reading
Baum, Wilhelm. Shirin: Christian – Queen – Myth of Love: A Woman of Late Antiquity: Historical Reality and Literary Effect. Gorgias Press, 2004
Berthels, Evgeniĭ Èduardovich, and Edmund Herzig. The Great Azerbaijani Poet, Nizami: Life, Work and Times. Edited by Paul D. Wordsworth, Translated by James White and Maroussia Bednarkiewicz, Gilgamesh Publishing, 2016
Brend, Barbara. Treasures of Herat: Two Manuscripts of the Khamsah of Nizami in the British Library. Gingko Library, 2022
Chelkowski, Peter J., and Niẓāmī Ganjavī. Mirror of the Invisible World: Tales from the Khamseh of Nizami. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975
Chelkowski, Peter J., editor. Crafting the Intangible: Persian Literature and Mysticism. University of Utah Press, 2013
Cross, Cameron. “The Many Colors of Love in Niẓāmī’s ’Haft Paykar:’ Beyond the Spectrum”. Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures, no. 2 (June 30, 2016): 52–96
Geybullayeva, Rahilya, and van Ruymbeke, Christine, editors. The Interpretation of Nizami’s Cultural Heritage in the Contemporary Period: Shared Past and Cultural Legacy in the Transition from the Prism of National Literature Criteria. Peter Lang, 2020
Nezami, Parviz. Twelve Centuries of Persian Poetry and History: Classics to Modern (8th to 21st Century). Gutinbirg Publishers, 2022
van Ruymbeke, Christine. Science and Poetry in Medieval Persia: The Botany of Nizami’s Khamsa. Cambridge University Press, 2007
van Ruymbeke, Christine, and Johann-Christoph Bürgel. A Key to the Treasure of the Hakim. Leiden University Press, 2011
Rypka, J. “POETS AND PROSE WRITERS OF THE LATE SALJUQ AND MONGOL PERIODS.” The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 550–625
Seyed-Gohrab, A. A. (Ali Asghar). Laylī and Majnūn: Love, Madness, and Mystic Longing in Niẓāmī’s Epic Romance. Brill, 2003
Stchoukine, Ivan. Les peintures des manuscrits de la “Khamseh” de Niẓâmî au Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi d’Istanbul. P. Geuthner, 1977
Talattof, Kamran, et al. The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi: Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric. Palgrave, 2000
Talattof, Kamran. “Siavash Lornejad: Ali Doostzadeh, On the Modern Politicization of the Persian Poet Nezami Ganjavi (Yerevan Series for Oriental Studies—1), Yerevan: ‘Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies’, 2012, 215 Pp.” Iran & the Caucasus, vol. 16, no. 3, 2012, pp. 380–83
The South Asia Archive and Library Group will be holding its summer meeting at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies on Wednesday 19th June. SAALG is a UK-wide organisation that brings together librarians, archivists and scholars with an interest in South Asia and we meet once or twice a year, with lunch and speakers.
We are very much looking forward to our one-day event in mid-June at OCIS – see the poster for information about the speakers and talks. All are very welcome to attend, but please register in advance with Hedley Sutton (Hedley.Sutton@bl.uk), ideally by Friday 7th June. There is a charge of £25, payable on the day, to cover catering and administrative costs.
Researchers at Oxford are invited to use the Digital Archive of the Baghdad Observer as part of a trial ending on 6th April 2024.
The Baghdad Observer was a state-sponsored Iraqi newspaper founded in 1967, published in English until its closure in 2003. The Observer not only covers key events from the recent history of Iraq and the Middle East – such as the Gulf War and the presidency of Saddam Hussein – but also wider global news that happened concurrently, often clearly filtered through the Ba’athist perspective promoted by the Iraqi government at the time.
^An article published in the Observer in 1986. While framed as simple analysis of historical sources, it places the blame for the Iran-Iraq War entirely in the camp of the Iranians and their determination to “destroy and plunder the cultural centres of Mesopotamia”.
The Baghdad Observer provides a valuable insight into a narrative of events in the Middle East in the mid-late twentieth century, especially when used in conjunction with other newspapers from the same period available on the Global Press Archive. The biases of the government are more apparent in some articles than in others – but the wide variety of subjects covered in its forty years of publication make it a valuable resource for researchers in many areas.
^ An Observer article published in 1989 on the founding, layout, and artefacts of the Ashmolean Museum. The author is largely complimentary of the pieces in the collections, as well as the way they have been displayed, and laments the lack of funding given to public museums in the eighties.
The digital archive itself contains 7619 issues of the Observer – comprising 60563 pages in total. The database has very user-friendly search and filter functions which can be used to find articles by the date of publication as well as by their title and topic. There is also a text-search function to find keywords within an article or issue.
Oxford researchers are invited to trial Egypt and the Rise of Nationalism: 1840–1927, part of East View’s Archive Editions series. This resource consists of 4,050 digitized documents, almost all derived from government records held in The National Archives UK; they capture an era of rising nationalist sensibility in Egypt and the response of the British government in its evolving policy towards the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The British military occupation in Egypt was a legal and political anomaly. Never formally described as part of the “British Empire” by successive British governments, that relationship may have been inferred, applied by the popular press, or understood to be a colonial relationship by the public. But Britain was an administering power and the term “protectorate” was a debated definition of the relationship as early as 1884. The eventual end of British occupation marked the emergence of modern Egypt.
With more than 4,000 primary source documents in English, French and Arabic, Egypt and the Rise of Nationalism presents the development of nationalist sensibilities, movements, and publications from the 1870s until the third decade of the twentieth century and culminating with the formal dissolution of the British protectorate in 1924.
Letter from British Diplomat L. Oliphant, to for the Foreign Office, 1 June 1922. U.K. National Archives, T 161/155
The documents included in Egypt and the Rise of Nationalism range in scope from records of casual conversations, formal meetings, correspondence with individuals and groups, monitoring of the nationalist press, internal British evaluations and debates on objectives and the status of leaders and individual campaigners, and forceful responses to insurgencies involving nationalist activists.
This collection focuses on developments connected to figures prominent in nationalist activities and pays special attention to interactions between them and British authorities, typically at flashpoints. As such, some years in which no specific events occurred may be omitted, while documents relating to particularly eventful years figure more prominently in the record.
Due to the official nature of the documents included, there is an inevitable bias against Egyptian nationalist sentiments for its inherent negative implications to British interests. However, some officials and politicians were more sympathetic and supportive than others, depending on the overall policy of the home government.
Each document in this collection is richly tagged and full-text searchable. Users can browse by people, places, and topics (as identified by the collection’s editors), as well as document types (e.g., despatch, map, telegram, letter, etc.). Each object is also georeferenced in a map view, both by geographic origin of the document and by locations associated with items in the collection.
Palestine has been in the news for as long as anyone can remember. The latest episode returned the region and the issue to the fore. But while media coverage and academic scholarship on Palestine has been intermittent and determined by politics and ideology, as well as power balance at any given time, literary representation of Palestine by Palestinians has remained largely outside media and social science accounts of the region. Yet, literature remains one of the most significant and most relatable means of self-representation and exploration of shared local and global human dimensions of conflict and strife. Palestinian literature is perhaps the richest yet the least explored archive on Palestine. It has been multilingual, diverse in mode and spans a long historical period.
Lydia Wright, Bodleian Librarian for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Mohamed-Salah Omri, Professor of Modern Arabic Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St John’s College have teamed up to highlight this diversity in a dedicated display this month at the Bodleian Nizami Ganjavi Library. The display is an invitation to read Palestinian poetry, short stories, memoirs and novels in their original Arabic, English, and Hebrew, as well as in English translation.
The call to read follows a series of seminars lead by Professor Mohamed-Salah Omri in collaboration with Ziad Kiblawi, an Oxford DPhil student focusing on Arabic intellectual history. These seminars were designed to read and discuss Palestine through its literatures. The series aims to participate in an inclusive and democratic decolonial education, which does not exclude forms of coloniality and anti-colonial struggles based on considerations of racial, ethnic or religious backgrounds. They took place in hybrid mode and attracted hundreds of participants from a wide audience, which included university students, staff and the general public from around the world. Video recordings of the three seminars (Poetic Palestine, Gaza Writes, and Expressions of Exile) can be found on Professor Omri’s website. Together with the books proposed for reading by the library they aim to provide a window on how Palestinians represented their personal and collective history; expressed their hopes and reflected on their society in a diversity of styles, modes and languages.
The books on display are a mere selection from the relevant resources available at the library, which could serve as teaching support, research material and reading for pleasure.
Do drop-by the display at the NGL or browse the suggested readings below.
Boundaries of the Kingdom of T’ao-K’larjeti in 900. (source)
In the late ninth century CE, after centuries of foreign domination in Tbilisi, the Bagratid family fled to their ancestral lands of ტაო T’ao and კლარჯეთი K’larjeti to the south. Here in their place of refuge, the Bagratids established the Kingdom of the Iberians. In doing so, they launched a cultural, religious, and political renaissance which would culminate in the establishment of the Georgian Empire and a dynasty that would endure for a millennium…
Niko Kontovas and a local in the village of Cevizli in Artvin Provice, Turkey, formerly known as ტბეთი T’beti in Georgian.
My name is Niko Kontovas. I work as the Nizami Ganjavi Subject Librarian and Curator for the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Ottoman Turkish. Almost every summer for the past decade, I have toured the ruins of the Kingdom of the Iberians (Georgian: ქართველთა სამეფო Kartvelta Samepo, existing from around 888 to 1008 AD) in what is now southern Georgia and northeastern Turkey. Also known as the Kingdom of the Georgians or The Kingdom(s) of T’ao-Klarjeti, after its constituent regions, this state holds a special place in the memory of many Georgians as the place where the Bagratid dynasty established itself as the rulers of an “independant” Georgia. This is the same dynasty which would go on to found the The Georgian Empire (Georgian: საქართველოს სამეფო Sakartvelos Samepo) a.k.a. the Georgian Kingdom, the Empire of Georgia, or the Kingdom of Georgia. Though the Empire would only last around 500 years from 1008 to 1490/1493 AD, the Bagratids continued to play a role in Georgian political and cultural life, and remain the only serious current claimants to the Georgian throne — even though Georgia itself has become a republic.
Though my adventures in ტაო-კლარჯეთი T’ao-K’larjeti began long before my position here at Oxford, the collections of the Nizami Ganjavi Library hold materials on the region which are truly unparalleled in terms of their breadth and depth in collections outside Georgia. Our current book display combines photos and notes from my fieldwork in the region with selections from the library for readers to learn more about this fascinating but little studied slice of Eurasian history.
The devil’s in the details
The Devil’s Fortress at Çıldır. (photo courtesy of Niko Kontovas, 2023)
Among the most impressive structures in historical ტაო-კლარჯეთი T’ao-K’larjeti is the Devil’s Fortress (Turkish Şeytan Kalesi) in the Turkish province of Çıldır. Though its origin is uncertain, it had already attained its current form by 1064, when it is mentioned by the invading Seljuk Sultan آلپ آرسلان Alp Arslan, suggesting it dates to the period of the Kingdom of the Iberians.
In Georgian, the fortress is known as ქაჯის ციხე Kajis Cixe “The Kaji’s Fortress”. The ქაჯი kaji are a race of magical beings in Georgian mythology or, alternatively, a tribe of humans similarly adept at magic appearing in შოთა რუსთაველი Šota Rustaveli’s 12th c. epic ვეფხისტყაოსანი Vepxist’q’aosani “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin”. Many Georgians equate the ქაჯის ციხე Kajis Cixe in Çıldır with the ქაჯთა ციხე Kajta Cixe “Fortress of the Kajis” mentioned as the home this tribe in Rustaveli’s poem.
The heroes of შოთა რუსთაველი Šota Rustaveli’s ვეფხისტყაოსანი Vepxist’q’aosani “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” look out upon the ქაჯთა ციხე Kajta Cixe “Fortress of the Kajis”. From a 2011 illustrated Georgian edition of the text available to read the the Nizami Ganjavi Library.
The unassuming origins of empire
If ტაო-კლარჯეთი T’ao-K’larjeti is the cradle of the Georgian Empire, კლარჯეთი K’larjeti is the cradle of the Kingdom of the Iberians which started it.
Ardanuç Fortress (photo courtesy of Niko Kontovas, 2023)
On a hilltop plateau in the centre of the modern town of Ardanuç in Turkey (Georgian არტანუჯი Art’anuji) stand the ruins of an impressive fortress. This fortress was built by the Bagratid prince and Duke of კლარჯეთი K’larjeti, აშოტ I დიდი Ašot’ I Didi, a.k.a. Ashot I or Ashot the Great, around 813-818 on the site of an older castle, supposed to have been built by ვახტანგ I გორგასალი Vaxtang Gorgasali, or Vakhtang the Wolf’s Head – the semi-legendary ruler of an earlier Georgian kingdom in the 5th c. Later Georgian historiography has tended to view Ashot I’s choice of location as a conscious reassertion of an older tradition of Georgian kingship, though whether Ashot I also thought this way is a matter of some debate.
It was from here that Ashot I launched numerous campaigns against the Muslim rulers who had taken over various Georgian duchies – a process continued by his son, ადარნასე II Adarnase II, who united კლარჯეთი K’larjeti with the neighbouring dutchy of ტაო T’ao, and his twice great grandson, ადარნასე IV Adarnase IV, the first ruler of the Kingdom of the Iberians. In time, these Bagratid-lead campaigns would result in the takeover of the old capital of Tbilisi and the proclamation of the Empire of Georgia.
Ashot I also sponsored the creation and expansion of Georgian Orthodox churches in the region, supporting the efforts of გრიგოლ ხანძთელი Grigol Xanżteli, or Gregory of Khandzta – another village currently located in Turkey which houses the ruins of one of the many monasteries which he built. Monks trained by Gregory would act as emissaries to the Byzantine Emperor, and may have been instrumental in his granting Ashot I the title of κουροπαλάτης kouropalatēs – employed as a sort of Byzantine Christian “defender of the faith” at the time in the Caucasian borderlands of the Empire.
Scholars debate whether the Georgian polity which followed the Kingdom of the Iberians in T’ao-K’larjeti should be referred to as the Georgian Kingdom or the Georgian Empire. Whatever you choose to call it, it is beyond doubt that it had a profound impact on neighbouring empires and, as a result, the history of Eurasia as a whole.
Its imperial nature is exemplified by the Georgian Bagratid dynasty (ბაგრატიონი Bagrat’ioni in Georgian), which for numerous reasons epitomized Georgian interconnectedness. In his article on Iberia on the eve of Bagratid rule (in Le muséon LXV, 1952, pp. 199-259), Toumanoff argues that the Georgian Bagratids emerge as political players from a branch of the Armenian Bagratids (Բագրատունի Bagratuni in Armenian). While this is a matter of much debate amongst scholars, the Georgian Bagratids undoubtedly controlled many lands previously inhabited by Armenian-speaking peoples and polities.
Exterior view of Սուրբ Գրիգոր Լուսավորիչ Եկեղեցի Surb Grigor Lusavorič’ ekeɫec’i The Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator at Ani, popularly referred to as Տիգրան Հոնենց Եկեղեցի Tigran Honenc’ ekeɫec’i The Church of Tigran Honents. Built during the period of Georgian imperial domination. (photo courtesy of Niko Kontovas, 2023)
If a kingdom becomes an empire through its incorporation of foreign states, no single Bagratid ruler bears more right to claim the title of Emperor than თამარ მეფე Tamar Mepe Queen Tamar. Under her rule, the Georgian Empire helped to liberate the ancient Armenian capital of Անի Ani, which it then ruled first directly and then by proxy through the semi-Georgianised Armenian Զաքարյան Zak’aryan or Zakarid dynasty. Several churches the ruins of which are still well preserved at Ani were built during the period of Georgian domination, such as the splendidly decorated Սուրբ Գրիգոր Լուսավորիչ Եկեղեցի Surb Grigor Lusavorič’ ekeɫec’i Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, popularly referred to as Տիգրան Հոնենց Եկեղեցի Tigran Honenc’ ekeɫec’i The Church of Tigran Honents after the wealthy merchant who funded its construction.
Likewise, the Empire of Trebizond, a Byzantine rump state centred around the Black Sea coastal city now called Trabzon, owes its existence to Bagratid Georgia. Though founded by the Κομνηνός Komnēnos family, the Empire of Trebizond’s founder, Αλέξιος Α΄ Μέγας Κομνηνός Alexios I Megas Komnēnos or Alexios the Great, had like his grandfather before him taken refuge in the Georgian imperial court during in-fighting over the Byzantine throne. Though the extent of Trebizond’s cultural Georgianisation has been debated, Alexios was no doubt aided in establishing the independence of his Empire by his maternal aunt, Queen Tamar.
How the mighty have fallen
Just northwest of the village of Penek in Turkey’s Erzurum province lies the ruins of a royal cathedral known as ბანა Bana in Georgian and բանակ Banak in Armenian.
Heavily damaged by Russian fire in the late 19th c., Bana was once the royal cathedral of ტაო T’ao. In 1032, it hosted the wedding of ბაგრატ IV Bagrat IV of the newly established Georgian Empire and the Byzantine princess Ἑλένη Ἀργυρή Elenē Argyrē.
ႱႠႳႩႳႬႭ ႾႱႤႬႤႡႠ (Memory eternal)
Along with ტაო T’ao and კლარჯეთი K’larjeti, the historical region of შავშეთი Šavšeti (Turkish Şavşat) also occupies a special place in the Georgian imagination – in part because of the many monasteries which Georgian monks built there under Bagratid patronage. During the spring and summer months, the ruins of these monasteries are awash with Georgian pilgrims and tourists, many of whom light candles and leave offerings on the very walls built by the Bagratid rulers over a millennium ago.
The monastery of ტბეთი T’beti, now located in the town of Cevizli in Turkey’s Artvin province, was once home to the famous monk, გიორგი შავშელი Giorgi Šavšeli. He would later move to the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem, where he would be known as Saint Prochorus the Iberian. Among other exemplary manuscripts, he penned a book of hours now housed in the Weston Library.
Pilgrims’ offerings at the ruins of ტბეთი T’beti monastery (photo courtesy of Niko Kontovas, 2023).
Leaf from Saint Prochorus the Iberian’s book of hours, 11th c. Jerusalem. Prochorus was born გიორგი შავშელი Giorgi Šavšeli, i.e. George of Shavsheti, and was trained at ტბეთი T’beti Monastery in what is now Cevizli village, Şavşat Prefecture, Artvin Province, Turkey. Written in Middle Georgian in ნუსხური nushkhuri and ასომთავრული asomtavruli scripts. (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Georg. b. 1)
Who cares for shared heritage?
The physical remnants of ტაო-კლარჯეთი T’ao-K’larjeti are overwhelmingly located within the borders not of the Georgian Republic, but of the Turkish Republic.
Though the region was the site of bloody battles between the Russian and Ottoman Empires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, few now seriously challenge Turkish claims on these lands. Relatively free movement across the Georgian-Turkish border means that Georgians can visit medieval sites in Turkey fairly easily.
The fully restored church of იშხანი Išxani Ishkhani (Turkish İşhan) in Artvin Province; restoration complete as of 2019, yet still closed to the public as of 2023. (photo courtesy of Niko Kontovas, 2021)
Some of these projects, such as the reconstruction of the church of იშხანი Išxani Ishkhani (Turkish İşhan) in Artvin Province, were nearly complete as of 2019. Others, such as the reconstruction of the massive cathedral at ოშკი Ošk’i Oshki (Turkish Öşkvank) in Erzurum Province have proceeded much more slowly.
Even in the case of successful reconstructions, most sites which have been the object of big projects have, sadly, still not fully opened. While the reasons for this are officially uncertain, locals often claim that municipal and provincial governments are worried that an influx of Georgians may prompt official requests to hold religious services at these sites, which could aggitate local sensitivities and possibly provoke irredentist claims from Georgia. Some also claim that official openings have been delayed until Georgian authorities show similar interest in restoring Muslim religious sites in Georgia.
Despite this, some of the best preserved site still fully visitable in the region today are those which have been transformed into mosques, such as the church of the monastery of ხახული Xaxuli Khakhuli (Turkish Haho) in the village of Bağbaşı, Erzurum. Additionally, many Muslims in the region of შავშეთი Šavšeti Şavşat consider themselves both Turkish and Georgian, sometimes even speaking Georgian at home. Even where destruction of Georgian sites has been documented in the past, locals now overwhelmingly want to see the sites restored and reopened, as much out of a sense of pride for this shared heritage as to attract more revenue from tourism to otherwise impoverished rural areas.
On 4th May 2023, the NGL was delighted to welcome a very special guest: Brother Anthony of Taizé!
The Bodleian Libraries house many important Korean manuscripts and books brought back from Korea by missionaries since the end of the 19th century. Brother Anthony suitably follows in the footsteps of Bishop Trollope and Monsignor Richard Rutt by donating his personal library to the Bodleian.
His visit started with viewing some important Korean manuscripts and books at the Weston Library. He then gave a talk ‘Books and People: a Korean Cornucopia’ in the Window on Korea Room, Nizami Ganjavi Library, commenting on selected books and the personalities behind them.
The lecture was followed by drinks and 장구Janggu, a Korean drum performance in the Chapel, Hertford College.
To learn more about Brother Anthony, his fascinating work, and his extraordinary life as a bridge between the UK and Korea, visit his person web page.
