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Irrationalities in Islam and Media in Nineteenth-Century Iran
Faces of Modernity
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2022
About this book
This book deals for the first time with the cultural history of media in nineteenth-century Iran, a history that deals with how modern techniques of representation and communication were received in the Iranian Shi.a society. This reception history is examined in religious photography, military reforms, Persian passion plays, Shi.a medicine, and the burgeoning telegraphic culture. The problematic relationship between Sh..a Islam and 19th-century media is conceptualised and contextualised, especially through the lens of the first Polytechnique college (D.r al-Fonun, 1851) in Iran. This college is conceptualised as a media laboratory, where the technological sphere in Iran was fundamentally transforming. It is also contextualised in the age of reform, a period in which the Middle East was undergoing widespread social, political, and military changes. Islamic (art) history, Iranian Studies, and cultural analysis form an interdisciplinary analytic framework to create new knowledge about the historical complexity of 19th-century Iran.
Author / Editor information
Contributor: Arash Ghajarjazi
Arash Ghajarjazi received his PhD from the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University. His work deals with the relations between Islam, sciences, and media technologies in the Middle East from the 19th century onwards. More broadly, trained both as a cultural analyst and a historian, he explores how Islamic traditions have evolved in and as media. He approaches histories of Muslim material cultures and ideas together. His work seeks a balance between historical contextualisation and philosophical conceptualisation.
Reviews
"This is a very concise and thought-provoking study on the crossroads and intersections of Qajar intellectual history, history of sciences and medicine, religious studies, media studies and Shiite Islamic studies. It does not fit smoothly into narrow disciplinary definitions, and this is what makes it so compelling, and at times challenging. – Christoph U. Werner, University of Bamberg The manuscript is written well and is original and very compellingly argued. The subject offers brilliant insights into the ways Iranian Shi’i belief systems, habits and praxis intersect with and adjust to new technologies and appropriate their potentialities to naturalise, through ‘the absurd’, those new ways of sensing the world. "
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Frontmatter
1 -
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Table of Contents
7 -
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List of Figures
9 -
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Transliteration table
11 -
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Acknowledgements
13 -
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Preface
15 -
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Introduction
17 -
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CHAPTER 1 Resurrectional mediations: Shiʿa eschatology and photography
33 -
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CHAPTER 2 Mourning mediations: taʿziye performances and military sonic techniques
49 -
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CHAPTER 3 Therapeutic mediations: Shiʿa medical imagination and cholera
79 -
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CHAPTER 4 Spiritual mediations: Shiʿa demonology and telegraphy
103 -
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EPILOGUE The semiotics of Shiʿa absurdism
125 -
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Notes
129 -
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Bibliography
153 -
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Index
173
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
November 2, 2022
eBook ISBN:
9789400604438
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Illustrations:
11
eBook ISBN:
9789400604438
Keywords for this book
modern science; reception history; photography; passion play; medical history; telegraphy
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
