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.