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Conversation between Dr. Anatoli Kanev and Prof. Ilia Todev about the role of historians and more specifically the history of Batak.
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Conversation between Dr. Anatoli Kanev and Prof. Ilia Todev about the role of historians and more specifically the history of Batak.
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Tracking the terms „populism“ and „the people“ from the 19th century, Marco D’Eramo offers a striking new interpretation of their current applications—the first levelled indiscriminately at any political force that steps outside the bounds of convention, the second banished from the scene.
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The article comments on legislative initiatives of the Cabinet of Alexander Stamboliiski, which aim to alleviate the material status of teachers and to provide more funds for the construction of new school buildings. And all this against the backdrop of economic collapse, which relegated the country after three wars, the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Neuilly and huge casualties given in hostilities.
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Integration process in the region of East Asia is a relatively new phenomenon in comparison with Europe or America. The idea for deepening East-Asian regional cooperation emerged during 50s and 60s of XX century. Nevertheless, East Asian countries were not ready to take steps in that direction yet. Although a few South East Asian countries managed to establish in 1967 first successfully operating regional organization – ASEAN, real attempts for deepening regionalism and integration, including East Asian countries, appeared after the end of the Cold War. This study aims to outline Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul’s basic views on development of East Asian integration and to analyze similarities and differences between them. The study also attempts to explain what really prevents East Asian countries to achieve comprehensive and effective integration of the region.
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In this paper it is not so much about the epistemology of waste, but about the epistemology of science from the standpoint of the system theory. Although science meant from its beginning the search for causes and correlations –thus necessarily considering the systems it has focused on – its modern history presents rather a kind of dialectic of holistic and fragmentary approach. In other words, the inherent analytical approach in the construction of scientific theories, the deepening of the professional character of science and special disciplines have seemed to leading to the separation of the main results from the aggregate of results and phenomena. No one has aimed at discussing the residual/secondary phenomena, because what seemed to be respectable in the scientific research was the correlation between the laws or regularities, emphasised through difficult measuring and arguments, and the main phenomena “reflecting” the laws or regularities and targeted and pursued by the scientists. As we know, the accumulation of data, information and aimed theories emphasises the shortcomings and contradictions in the given corpus of science. At the same time, the coherence of theories is confronted with the real phenomena, irrespective here of the definitions we forge for “reality”. In the middle of the last century, the current of the integrationof fragmentary theories related to the sub-systems targeted by scientists into a general system theory has appeared and, obviously, has shaped the scientific outlook on the world, with all the inertial continuation of fragmentary research.Nevertheless, the systemic tackling had –and still has –a serious deficiency: the much weaker attention to the residual/”unintentional”results. But the thesis of the paper is that this deficiency is not so much generated by the internal logic of science than by the extra science logic of decision-makers who control science. Illustrating this thesis, the scientific view of Aristotle-Ludwig von Bertalanffy line is counter-posed to the present distortion of the real world full of all kinds of waste.The epistemological conclusion is that the problem of waste/consequences imposes the re-thinking and transformation of the whole model of input-processing-output system.
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With interdisciplinary and deeply original and pioneer scientific contributions, Emil Racoviţă was a Romanian biologist and bio-speleologist, founding father of this later discipline, well known all around the world. Hard-worker, with an exemplary scientific probity, with unusual analytical intellect, both in laboratory and in the field investigations, he proved to be a visionary explorer of oceans and caves, and author of general concepts in the evolutionary thought. We celebrate in 2018,150 years since Racoviţă was born. The scientists from the Institute of Speleology (founded by him), together with all biologists from the country, are grateful and proud to continuing his ideal of scientific research of living beings, and to working in their morphology, systematics, ecology, origin, evolution and distribution.
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The paper presents the main commercial law institutes and their manifestation on the Bulgarian market in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century – commercial companies, commercial courts, bankruptcy. They are regulated by the trade legislation and, in this sense, modernity is enshrined in them. Insofar as the modernity is difficult to break through and difficult to place in the oriental conditions of the region, these institutes acquire a specific local appearance that is subject of the analysis in the article. In these structures the modernity is combined with traditional stereotypes. In addition, there are phenomena that are contrary to the law and public morality: corrupt practices, the use of friendly and ties to provide a favorable outcome of a case, seeking legal information and specialized advice through informal contacts, pressure on the members of the trade court. Several key case studies have been considered in the paper and an attempt has been made to formulate hypotheses on the subject, both on the basis of own studies – already published and current, as well as on the basis of recently published contributions, mainly PhD theses. The present study revises the statement in the historiography that laws are adopted in the Ottoman Empire, but they remain “just on a book”, while reforms are formal and imposed “from above”. This statement is not true about the Commercial Law and the commercial law institutes.
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The article describes the establishing of the first circle of Kabbalists in Salonica by two scholars who later laid the foundations of The Golden Age of Safed: R. Joseph Karo, whose Shulchan Aruch became the authoritative codification of Jewish law; and his companion, kabbalist and poet R. Solomon Halevi Elkabetz. While performing a mystical ceremony on the nights of Shevuot (Pentecost) of 1533, a prophetic voice was heard through R. J. Karo’s throat and mouth. The voice urged the companions to ascend immediately to the Land of Israel in order to redeem the Assembly of Israel and be redeemed from exile.Special weight is given to the messianic enthusiasm of the circle, and to their interpretation of the triumphs of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent over the Christian coalition led by Emperor Charles V as an omen to the fall of the satanic realm of “Edom” and as an encouraging step towards redemption.
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Scholars have relied upon diverse methodologies and sources to produce a new corpus of studies about Salonica’s Jews that explores the impact of the end of the Ottoman Empire and the consolidation of the Greek nation-state. Much of the newer scholarship, however, reinforces the perception that Salonica’s Jews experienced a period of “decline” after the city’s incorporation into the Greek state (1912 – 1913) that culminated in their deportation to Auschwitz (1943). This study investigates why such a lachrymose and teleological interpretation of Salonican Jewish history persists today. By reference to new sources and a different interpretive lens, this article also challenges conventional wisdom concerning key turning points in the narrative of the city’s Jews: a major fire (1917), a compulsory Sunday closing law (1924), and the first major act of anti-Jewish violence (1931). The article thus offers a new approach to assessing the encounters between the multiplicities of Jews in Salonica and the Greek state.
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From 2002 to 2015 a considerable number of large-scale, geopolitical bannered exhibitions have been dedicated to the ‘the Balkans.’ This article aims to analyze and compare two types of regional, large scale exhibitions from/on the Balkans: contemporary art exhibitions and interpretative (dedicated to historical and ethnographic themes) exhibitions. The pervasiveness of the stereotypical visual representations of ‘the Balkans’ – called by the Bulgarian artist Luchezar Boyadjiev the ‘Balkan blue’ – as a region of everlasting conflicts and binary oppositions coincides with the birth of contemporary Balkan art. By attempting to overcome the stereotypical images of the Balkans (‘the Balkan ethos’) still prevalent in our days, the travelling exhibition ‘Imagining the Balkans: Identities and Memory in the Long 19th Century’ – opened in Ljubljana (Slovenia) at the National Museum of Slovenia, in April 2013 and then displayed in other national museums of history from the Balkan region – endeavors to place national histories in a perspective where they interact.
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The paper analyses some new contemporary approaches, notions and discussions in the study of religion within the “phenomenology – scientific “reductionism” dilemma. The “comprehension” and the “religious experience” approaches were the direction taken by the phenomenology of religion, which proceeded from the idea of the “absolute autonomy” of religion (Otto, Eliade). Religion was perceived as being an autonomous, unique sphere, which cannot be explained and defined through factors lying outside it. As an expression of the opposite trend, the analysis gives attention to some new scientific and explicatory “reductionist”, “functionalist” approaches, and especially to the research program called Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) – a trend of naturalization of religion as a result of the development of contemporary evolutional biology and psychology.
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The present article deals with the phenomenon of rabata – sufic and neosufic practice and ritual typical of the Nakshibend order and its branches. In the article, several aspects of rabata are discussed: the descriptions of rabata in the writings and works of Nakshibend authors, the different kinds of rabata and their places in the Nakshibend ritual complex and belief system, the theosophical and ecstatic aspects of rabata and its early history. Final conclusion is that the origin of rabata must be sought among the Persian speaking Muslim communities influenced by the Middle age batinism and Sufism.
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This article represents a photo of Vasil Levski, which was found in the Turkish Presidency State Archives of the Republic of Turkey – Department of Ottoman Archives in Istanbul in October, 2018. Its presence in exactly this archive, along with other documents of the Bulgarian revolutionary organization and the text on the back of the photo in Ottoman Turkish, leads to the conclusion that this is the photographic portrait of the Apostle, which was used for his chasing. With it, the total number of Vasil Levski‘s photos amounts to eight.
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The treasure from the Golyama Brestnitsa village in North-Central Bulgaria consists of one cylindrical vessel and five dippers with total weight of 1.650 kg highest grade silver. The dippers are not identical in size and ornamentation. An inscription is incised on the bowl and on one of the dippers, which reads: Κυριω Ηρωι Πυρουμηρουλα Φλ(αβιος) Μεστριανος β(ενε)φ(ικιαριος) ευχαριστηριον (“To master Heros Purumerulas from Flavius Mestrianos beneficiarius, as a sign of gratitude”). The prevalent opinion in the literature is in favour of the meaning “big/ brilliant fire” for the epithet Πυρουμηρουλας, and for the name of the beneficiarius Μεστριανος – that it is a Latinised Thracian name. The making of the vessels is dated to the end of the 1st or the beginning of the 2nd century, and its burying is associated with the barbarian incursions and more specifically with the late 3rd century. The paper interprets for the first time the treasure and the inscription from a functional and a ritual point of view in the context of the Romanisation to the north of the Balkan Range. Inscriptions with the epithet Πυρ(ου)μηρουλας, Pirmerulas occur to the south of the Balkan Range and along the Struma valley. An assumption is given in the paper that the donor of the treasure with a dedication to a god-horseman (and hunter) with fiery-solar characteristics may originate from these regions. Another possibility is the epithet to have been carried to the north by Thracians who settled in the region after their military service. The treasure from Golyama Brestnitsa supports the theory that two types of transformations took place during the first two centuries of the first millennium AD between the Balkan Range and the Danube as a result of the inclusion of the Thracian lands within the Roman Empire, namely: visible, formal Romanisation of urban and communication infrastructure and the emergence of multicultural enclaves, name system and formation of a shared trade space, and actual Romanisation – of the lifestyle, faith and ritual.
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The year 2018 marks the quinquagenary of Thomas Merton’s death. A wealth of international events has been organized to commemorate this monk, writer, peace and social justice activist, renewer of monastic life, and significant contributor to interreligious dialogue. This issue of the biennial journal "Świat i Słowo” is a Polish contribution to those events. Consisting of two original articles written specifically for this occasion, as well as translations of several important articles that were first published in "The Merton Annual” - a flagship journal of international Merton scholarschip – Thomas Merton – Living with Wisdom pays homage to the versatility and intellectual and artistic accuity of the famous Trappist monk. Foregrounding the trope of wisdom, the articles gathered here present crucial aspects of Thomas Merton’s life and writing.
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