The mediaeval Islamicate world was dominated by a language-obsessed culture that placed great value on words and their meanings. These words and meanings could, for those who used them, make the difference between both earthly success or failure, and salvation or damnation in the hereafter. Scholars were also conscious of the contingency of the links between words and their meanings, and the potential this created for ambiguity. This dissertation is about the mechanisms, models, and assumptions those scholars used to manage linguistic ambiguity. My investigation focuses on ar-Rāġib al-Iṣfahānī (fl. ≤ 409/1018), one such language-obsessed scholar. I provide a comprehensive review of his life, works, and times. He put together a portfolio of intellectual positions in exegesis, theology, ethics, and poetics that was guided by a philosophy of language which accepted and negotiated linguistic ambiguity. Underpinning that philosophy was a theory of meaning that used the pairing of expression and idea (lafẓ and maʿnā) to deal with polysemy, the intent of the speaker, and the function of the lexicon. Ar-Rāġib’s philosophy was emblematic of what I call the Arabic Language Tradition, the shared assumptions of which constituted an indigenous philosophy of language that was able to supply its own answers to the central questions of linguistics and then use those answers across all of the genres encompassed by its scholarship, from grammar to poetics, law, and theology. It was an Arabic Language Tradition that is best understood through comparison to an alternative Classical Language Tradition that had its roots in the Organon and a theory of meaning with little space for ambiguity. Re-telling Islamic intellectual history through the lens of language in this way shows us that in addition to the well-known and oft-studied Islamic engagement with Hellenistic philosophy there was another, indigenous, tradition with its own answers to the problems of mediaeval scholarship. This Arabic Language Tradition saw in language a solution to these problems, rather than seeing language as just another hurdle to be overcome. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the semantics of honor and shame in the Hebrew Bible and to demonstrate how these social values intersect with Israel's fundamental social organizing principle, covenant. Though many scholars have claimed that honor and shame are pivotal values for biblical Israel and that covenant is fundamental to her conception of the divine-human relationship, no work attempting to explore the juncture of these two important social phenomena has appeared. Thus, our study has two major goals: (1) establish the semantics of honor and shame in the Hebrew Bible; and (2) demonstrate that honor and shame, however conceived in context, are pivotal to biblical Israel's understanding of her covenantal relationship with YHWH in Deuteronomy 28 and 2 Samuel 7. With regard to Deuteronomy 28, which defines Israel’s understanding of covenantal fidelity, we show that honor is depicted as pre-eminent military and economic status among the nations and as a major goal of the covenantal blessings and designed to motivate Israel to greater loyalty (vv. 1, 13). Shame, however, is not just the loss of pre-eminent status (vv. 44, 48), but also the loss of social existence (v. 68). The explicit covenantal formulation of both values appears unique to Israel, despite her adoption of other ancient Near Eastern covenantal forms.With regard to the 2 Samuel 7, we argue YHWH honors David and Zadok with eternal royal and priestly positions because Saul and Eli failed to honor YHWH (e.g., 1 Sam 2:30), but also because David and Zadok would be loyal (e.g., 2:35). As a result, David will be given “a name like the name of all of the great ones of the earth” (2 Sam 7:9), denoting David’s military superiority (8:13). Moreover, we show that from a Deuteronomistic prespective, the discipline of the Davidides in 2 Samuel 7:14–15, entails royal shaming (1 Kgs 11:31). Thus, we prove that, while honor and shame are variously conceived in both covenants, they are pivotal to our understanding of the divine-human relationship in the Hebrew Bible. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Every father is the son of a mother. While this would appear to be a commonplace, studies of patrimonialism as a political system in the ancient Near East have rarely considered its implications. Royal women, as objects of exchange and as agents of political action, played a central role in negotiations between Late Bronze Age states and in dynastic struggles within these states. The relative positions of royal men were shaped by their relationships to royal women. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

This study proposes two models for exploring the lexical contents of Part One of the most popular Arabic as a Foreign Language textbook series, Al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum Al-'Arabiyya. Through the lens of a word families framework, this study hypothesizes on the contents and arrangement of the L2 Arabic mental lexicon after completing the textbook. Through counting lexemes, lemmas, and word family members, it is possible to gain insight into the quantity of vocabulary items present within the textbook outside of traditional measures like the triconsonantal root. Through a frequency-based framework, this study analyzes textbook vocabulary items in light of the 5,000 most frequent lemmas in the language from a corpus of 30 million tokens from A Frequency Dictionary of Arabic (Buckwalter and Parkinson: 2011). A comparison between textbook vocabulary and frequency data points to the relationship between the vocabulary studied by AFL learners and the most widely used forms in the language as a whole. While this study gives special consideration to frequency data up to the 3,000 word level, the sheer amount of lexical knowledge necessary for reading Arabic newspapers and novels necessitates integration of frequency-derived data at even the novice level. A lexical and frequency-based approach to AFL instruction and curriculum design may prove helpful in decreasing the decidedly large vocabulary burden (Nation: 1990, cited in Young: 2011) for learners of Arabic as a Foreign Language.

At the intersection of religion, law, and the state lies the opportunity to explore the impact of the state on the legal order. This study investigates such an impact through an examination of authoritative Hanafi legal works from the 16th - 19th centuries CE, casting new light on the understudied late Hanafi jurists (al-muta'akhkhirun) in the early modern period. This dissertation argues that jurists secure the authority of the late Hanafi school (madhhab) through engagement with legal texts from previous generations of Hanafis, disclosure of the reasoning that underlies late Hanafi legal opinions, and invocation of principles, authorities, and juridical formulas that construct late Hanafism in the early modern period in particular ways. I demonstrate how late Hanafi jurists develop their own identities, opinions, and consensus in relation to earlier Hanafi opinions. For late Hanafis, the past authorities, texts, and opinions were never irrelevant: the past constituted a point of reference and continuity for their scholarship. The division of Hanafis into late and early is not simply a matter of time, although it is true that the late Hanafis produce legal works chronologically later than the early Hanafis did. The distinction is more important for identifying that there is a tradition which characterizes the group of scholars identified as being chronologically "late" that develops in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. By taking the madhhab and its juristic discourse as the central focus, this study demonstrates how late Hanafi jurists assign probative value and authority to Ottoman state orders and edicts. This is reflected in the state's ability to settle juristic disputes, to order specific opinions to be adopted in fatawa, and to establish its orders as authoritative and final reference points. The incorporation of state orders within authoritative Hanafi legal commentaries, treatises, and fatawa collections is made possible by a turn in Hanafi legal culture that embraced the indispensible nature of the state in the law-making process. Current scholarship in the field of Ottoman Studies that focuses on "structural" interventions by the state (appointing muftis and judges, developing an Ottoman learned hierarchy) does not fully capture the influence of the state on the substance of the legal discourse. This project explores late Hanafi responses to Ottoman state interventions in the process of law-making, and the ways in which late Hanafi jurists talk to and about political power. The dissertation concludes by offering two proposals. The first is that late Hanafi legal scholarship in the early modern period secures a limited space for the political authority in the process of law-making. This proposal finds that the argument for the epistemic divorce between the domain of Islamic law and the authority of the state in current Islamic Studies scholarship is untenable. The second proposal is that the late articulation of the Hanafi legal tradition is not only integral to understanding modern movements to codify Islamic jurisprudence, and the role of the state in these transformations, but also to tracing many legal norms that were incorporated in modern civil codes in majority Muslim countries. By introducing "late Hanafism" as a category of analysis, and situating the madhhab as the locus of the investigation, this dissertation fills in a gap in the fields of Islamic legal studies and Ottoman studies. This study draws the focus from Ottoman court archives to the Hanafi juristic discourse itself for understanding how Islamic law was developed and applied, offering a new perspective on the internal legal discourse of late Hanafis and their responses to state power.

Neoliberal preferences by the ruling families and elite of both the UAE and Qatar have informed their decision-making along the lines of investors or CEOs of country corporations. Therefore, 21st century development in these countries has followed the patterns of diversifying a portfolio. While the literature speaks to the diversification of the economy, this dissertation presents the diversification of security, wherein a neoliberal worldview shapes holistic approaches to security. Given the hard power weakness of these countries, built as it is upon the foundation of a temporary strength—resource wealth—that is rapidly becoming a future weakness, the leaders of these states have sought to maximize the efficient use of resource wealth by developing a broad array of capital and cooperation-producing activities that fill particular niche roles in the international community, thereby providing interdependence that contributes to maintaining the status quo and security. In the UAE this has followed the haven approach, a pattern that develops internally to offer a depth and breadth of activity that draws in the international community and its various forms of capital. Qatar has taken the broadcaster approach, building upon a haven-like foundation to project outward through media and diplomacy for the sake of producing interdependence. Interestingly, both countries leverage sport for the diversification of security in each approach. The UAE offers sheer numbers and scope of sport that contribute to and promote the sport capital of its haven while Qatar courts fewer but grander large-scale events that present a stage for projecting its sport power. Yet, as is the case with any strategy there are inherent risks to implementing these approaches for security purposes, chief among which is the exchange of one set of known risk—or insecurity—for another, below-the-surface set. Both countries have exacerbated or created internal sources of instability, from rapid, untenable development and the subsequent abuse of migrant workers to challenges to traditional values and identity. Ultimately, however, the UAE's haven approach has proven the most diverse and therefore most durable, especially in light of the Arab Spring. This is shown through the press profile measure, which uses keywords derived from the (in)security characteristics of each approach to ascertain the profile of each country based on articles in the international press. It, too, demonstrates that the depth and breadth of the UAE's diverse portfolio haven activities better situates it to present a profile of a viable partner for interdependence to the global community. In neoliberal and investment terms, during an economic downturn the UAE held cash and a wide assortment of bonds while Qatar doubled-down on high-risk, high-reward stocks like military and political engagement as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. On one hand, as the value of these stocks plummeted Qatar's portfolio has lost tremendous value and it continues to delay "realizing" its losses by cutting ties and rebalancing. On the other hand, the UAE now has the freedom to further rebalance and diversify its portfolio of security activities by selectively engaging in prestige-producing endeavors like using a female fighter pilot to spearhead the US-led coalition against ISIS.

<p>This dissertation examines how Jews in medieval Egypt negotiated marital disputes while maneuvering between individual desires, legal prescriptions and societal expectations. The main sources for this investigation are the documents of the Cairo Geniza, a rich cache of manuscripts discovered in the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo. The study of medieval Jewish communities is often dominated by a top-down approach that focuses on the elites and adopts the perspective of the communal leadership as it examines the 'Jewish community' as the fundamental manifestation of Jewish life. The present study complements this perspective by offering a 'view from below' of married life and communal institutions. Recovering the life-stories of non-elite individuals as they experience communal institutions and creatively negotiate the legal arena reveals a substantially different image of Jewish communal life. For example, I show how women experienced the legal arena differently than their husbands as communal officials tended to pressure women to compromise their monetary rights. This, in turn, led women to adopt certain characteristic practices and behaviors in their interactions with communal leaders so as to withstand these pressures. In this way, rather than seeing communal legal institutions as merely imposing religious law on deviant practice, I shift the focus to the litigants' point of view as "consumers" of legal resources whose navigation of the pluralistic legal arena depended on status and personal networks as much as on legal considerations. Gender and status are revealed to be crucial categories in our understanding of Geniza society and medieval patriarchy. The result of this analysis is a better understanding of the instability and flexibility of married life and of their implications for the pursuing of legal disputes in medieval Egypt. The study is accompanied by an edition of nineteen previously unpublished Geniza documents that demonstrate the various aspects of married life examined in the study. </p>

abstract: This study frames research on board games within a body of anthropological theory and method to examine the long-term social changes that effect play and mechanisms through which play may influence societal change. Drawing from ethnographic literature focusing on the performative nature of games and their effectiveness at providing a method for strengthening social bonds through grounding, I examine changes in the places in which people engaged in play over the course of the Bronze Age on Cyprus (circa 2500¬–1050 BCE), a period of increasing social complexity. The purpose of this research is to examine how the changes in social boundaries concomitant with emergent complexity were counteracted or strengthened through the use of games as tools of interaction. Bronze Age sites on Cyprus have produced the largest dataset of game boards belonging to any ancient culture. Weight and morphological data were gathered from these artifacts to determine the likelihood of their portability and to identify what type of game was present. The presence of fixed and likely immobile games, as well as the presence of clusters of portable games, was used to identify spaces in which games were played. Counts of other types of artifacts found in the same spaces as games were tabulated, and Correspondence Analysis (CA) was performed in order to determine differences in the types of activities present in the same spaces as play. The results of the CA showed that during the Prehistoric Bronze Age, which has fewer indicators of social complexity, gaming spaces were associated with artifacts related to consumption or specialty, heirloom and imported ceramics, and rarely played in public spaces. During the Protohistoric Bronze Age, when Cyprus was more socially complex, games were more commonly played in public spaces and associated with artifacts related to consumption. These changes suggest a changing emphasis through time, where the initiation and strengthening of social bonds through the grounding process afforded by play is more highly valued in small-scale society, whereas the social mobility that is enabled by performance during play is exploited more commonly during periods of complexity. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2016

Fictional uncertainty is a complex technique that utilizes literary devices such as changing points of view, multiple themes, and fluid characterization. Fictional uncertainty enables an author to create a layered narrative based upon multiple perspectives and a deep look into the characters' individual personalities and inner lives. Every work of fiction involves some amount of uncertainty, but in modern Iranian literature there was a distinct transition in the late twentieth century from greater realism to greater uncertainty. Indeed, the mode of fictional uncertainty is central to Iranian authors' modernist project, focused as it is on the psychological aspects of the charterers' lives and narrative aesthetics. Fiction prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution usually focused on sociological matters, but post-revolution modernist fiction has been distinguished by emphasis on the deeper realities of characters' individual lives. Fictional uncertainty is the most significant literary technique that authors have used to portray the complexity of Iranians' post-revolutionary experiences. It has provided a tool for a number of Iranian writers to oppose the dominant social, cultural, historical, and religious certainties of post-revolutionary Iranian society. Shahriar Mandanipour, one of the greatest users of this technique, has extended the boundaries of Persian fiction through his experimental fiction. Although Mandanipour does count some traditional realist fictions among his works, his efforts in applying fictional uncertainty make him unique and exemplary. Under the influence of Russian Formalism, Mandanipour mostly uses his content as a pretext for formalist fictional experiments. Mandanipour's focus on "literariness" is the basis of his interest in the technique of fictional uncertainty and his understanding of the essentiality of "form" in fictional works. Fictional uncertainty is not always guided by one particular ideology or discourse, but rather by the ways in which devices such as changing points of view, multiple themes, fluid characters, and unstable settings function in the text. In the case of post-revolutionary Persian literature, fictional uncertainty has also provided authors a way to investigate and recreate the complex dynamics of revolutionary and post-revolutionary life, which is to some extent ultimately related to ideology and discourse. A close reading of Mandanipour's short stories and novels will show that his application of fictional uncertainty is related to the Bakhtinian concepts of "polyphony, dialogue, unfinalizability" and becoming, which are embodied in the plots, characterizations, and points of view in his works. Using these fictional devices, Mandanipour portrays an atomized Iran full of violence, despair, fear, infidelity, revenge, and loneliness. However, his works go far beyond Iran as a historical nation-state and discuss a number of universal subjects like love, death, loneliness, and revenge by application of the technique of fictional uncertainty.

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