The practice of stone carving is an important part of Chinese history, art, and culture, and likely one of mankind’s oldest crafts. This video presents a fascinating confluence of stone carving and traditional Islamic calligraphy. The video shows how Wang Fengtong [王凤桐], along with three generations of his family, carved […]
I am pleased to announce that I have won a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for a project which focuses on what has been an area of interest of mine for the last few years. The project is entitled ‘Literacy and Harmony: A study of Sino-Muslim heritage literacies in modern […]
I recently became interested in Ottoman literacies (see previous post), and came across another aspect of that history which piqued my interest: the Ottoman board game Şatranc-i Urefa. I finally managed to track down the game to play at home. Şatranc-i Urefa is a game that was played […]
I finally got round to reading Huo Da’s ‘The Jade King’ or, in the original Chinese version ‘Funeral of a Muslim’ (穆斯林的葬礼). A best-selling and award-winning novel in China, and based in part on the author’s own experience, it tells the story of three generations of a Muslim […]
I am very slowly, line-by-line, working through, and trying to get a handle on, work by Zhang Chengzhi (张承志), a prominent and outspoken Chinese-Muslim intellectual. Little or none of his work is available in English, but he remains an important voice to be accessed in terms of understanding […]
I read two interesting books this Summer: George Makdisi’s Rise of Colleges and W. Montgomery Watt’s Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe. Both books contain authoritative accounts about how the scholastic method of inquiry, and most elements of the academic system (but not its organisational system) in the […]
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