This paper explores “frozen images” of the Ottoman Empire that are part of the geographical imagination of descendants of Anatolian Armenians who survived the Ottoman pogroms surrounding 1915. I study a cohort of over 250 of these descendants now living in North America, Europe, and the Middle East who, as self-described “pilgrims,” have “returned” over the past 20 years to modern Turkey in search of their ancestral towns and villages, often even finding their actual family houses. The frozen images that these pilgrims carry with them are both textual and visual. Those that refer to what they often call “the ‘before’ time” (pre 1915) are comprised of family narratives, photos, maps and drawings of village life. Those from “the ‘when things began to change’ time” are comprised of family witness narratives of massacres. Thus, for these Armenian pilgrims, their “home” Ottoman town or village was a space that was imaged and imagined as frozen at a particular time. Although this time became iconic as a sort of “birth moment” for their current Armenian identity, it also can be said that, because of the images they carry, they travel as Ottoman citizens (or their representatives) to an Anatolia frozen in the past. But I suggest that the pilgrims’ journey itself can serve to thaw the frozen image that they have carried “home.” Tellingly, I suggest that, while there, their time-focus is changed into a more spatial-focus. This spatial turn both enlarges the meaning of the original space and changes memory. This change is not merely due to the contrast between pilgrim expectations and the actual perceptions of reality in their [formerly] constructed space. Rather, I show exactly how what was once the pilgrim’s single story --with images placed in a specific time in the past-- becomes an interlaced conversation composed of many overlapping spatial images from no single time yet from many places. Thus, I will suggest how the frozen image of Anatolia, and the pilgrim’s relationship to it, is re-imaged, as evidenced textually in the pilgrims’ memoirs and articles, and visually in their photographic representations of place. It appears, then, that new Armenian images of Ottoman Anatolia are being constructed. However, they have not yet become iconic; perhaps because their meanings are still too ignited by the needs of the present to be frozen.

The role of women as mediators of religious-cultural authority in Muslim societies has received increased scholarly attention, but this work often focuses on predominantly female environments (Boddy 1989, Jaschok & Jingjun 2000, Sengers 2003, El Azhary Sonbol 2005). Fewer studies have problematized the experiences of women who excel in disciplines traditionally dominated by men (Fathi 1997, Winegar 2008, Rasmussen 2010), and this is particularly so in the realm of Islamic calligraphy, with certain exceptions (al-Munajjid 1985, Simonowitz 2010, Kazan 2010). Some women have managed to study calligraphy in authoritative, genealogically-documented networks of instruction, depending on the milieu. State and private funding of the first International Symposium of Female Calligraphers, for example, held in Istanbul in 2010, suggests that women’s practice of the art may complement national policies or party agendas. Yet female masters usually face challenges in this field, not to mention in periods of social and political turmoil. Furthermore, the situation is different for women in the Turkish, Iranian, and Arab contexts. A social and cultural catastrophe of historic proportions resulted from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the relevant studies have not sounded the full-depth of the disaster (Polk & Schuster 2005, Bernhardsson 2005, Rothfield 2008, 2009). Using Arabic publications of the former Iraqi Ba`th regime, more recent primary sources, and original interviews, this paper will historicize the account of two Iraqi female calligraphers, child-prodigy sisters who began practicing the art in their early youth, and the husband of one of the women. These three Iraqi masters obtained ijaz?t (authorizations) to practice Islamic calligraphy at exceptionally young ages from some of the greatest practitioners of the twentieth century, including the legendary Turkish calligrapher Hamid Aytaç al-Amidi (d. 1982), regarded as “the last Ottoman master.” Examining the dilemmas brought up by their departure from Iraq in the aftermath of the war in 2003 and tenuous settlement in two different countries provides insights into the gendered politics of movement through traditional spheres of authority in modern states in transition. In the process of documenting the experiences of these master calligraphers, the presentation casts light on the historical displacement of ordinary and not-so-ordinary Iraqi women and men. It also explains the differences in patronage of women in modern Middle Eastern and Muslim societies. The comparative discussion of recent historical and political circumstances and their affect on cultural patronage brings the accomplishments of this family into yet higher relief.

This paper treats a distinctive type of wooden chair, which can be found in global museum collections today and is distinguished by ivory or bone inlaid decoration, a high pointed back, raised foot and armrests, and a caned or string covered seat. In East Africa, this type of chair is associated with the coastal cities of Lamu, Mombasa, and Zanzibar, where it is known as “kiti cha enzi,” a Swahili term that is often translated as “chair of power” or alternatively by the geographically oriented appellation, “Lamu chair.” In Egypt, a few similar examples, which likely date from the nineteenth century, can be found on view at the Gayer Anderson House. Orientalist writers Prisse d’Avennes and Edward Lane encountered these chairs in their Egyptian travels and have provided the ethnographic basis for other designations, like the “kursi al-‘immah” or the “Indian wedding chair,” referring to the seat’s function as the place for the groom’s turban in local marriage rites. In the little scholarly attention that they have received, the primary focus has been on determining the origin of this apparently widespread tradition of constructing and ornamenting raised free-standing furniture, often citing carpentry traditions of India and Europe as precedents. This paper engages with this ongoing discourse, but not by trying to resolve the problematic and seemingly multi-sited identity of this chair. Rather, the paper identifies it as an itinerant type of furniture whose meaning lies in the fluid cross-cultural maritime context of the Red Sea and western Indian Ocean. In fact, in this arena, carved wooden objects circulated anonymously between various sites of production and consumption and were worked in a manner that obscured their places of origin, rather than revealing them. Thus, the so-called “Indian wedding chair’s” resistance to the demands of the various national art histories of Egypt, India, Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen, which have attempted to date, claim, or repatriate it, is evidence of the endurance of this artistic strategy of anonymity.

Studies on Arabic printing in cities such as Beirut and Cairo emphasize the press’ late 19th century modernizing role, particularly its standardization of production and aid in spurring fin de siècle intellectual movements. Although the late 1800s witnessed a widespread transformation from scribal to printing practices, the press’ noteworthy nascent stage in Arabic book production took place from the 1820s to 1850, as exemplified by the Presbyterian American Syria Mission’s Arabic publications printed in Beirut for the region’s multi-confessional residents. In this earlier period, print still existed within a larger network of local manuscripts, leading to a dynamic interface between these two modes of book production and their conventions at a time when local conceptions of books and their functions were being altered significantly. This paper examines products of the American mission’s early religious and secular printed publications, such as Kitab fasl al-khitab fi usul lughat al-a‘rab [1836], Kitab al-bab al-maftuh fi a‘mal al-ruh [1843], Kitab majmu‘ al-adab fi funun al-‘arab [1855], and Kitab al-‘ahd al-jadid [1860], as dynamic textual objects produced in response to various local and external impulses. I explore how changes in the content, format and aesthetics of these books reflect shifts in the mission’s proselytizing goals and responses to local religious and communal concerns. For instance, the mission’s earliest publications aimed at attracting a wide audience of Christian and Muslim readers by displaying conventions similar to those found in local scribal traditions. By the late 1840s, as publications of local religious groups and Catholic missionary bodies featured more prominently in the region, the American mission’s books acquired a pointedly stark aesthetic that diverged from its earlier practices. At the same time, when local scholars became increasingly interested in solidifying a non-Ottoman identity and traversing the confines of sectarianism, the mission’s publications showed a growing inclusion of secular subject matter. In analyzing the mission’s changing publications throughout its early years, which at times embodied a modernist spirit of innovation, this paper aims to illustrate a highly adaptive situation where diverse local religious values, societal interests, visual conventions, and notions of the book were in flux.