CENTRE for MEDITERRANEAN, MIDDLE EAST & ISLAMIC STUDIES

During the historical trajectory of the Middle East, music has been associated with an unexpected spiritual power that can transform the performers and the audience in a numinous way. This power has its locus at the concept of tarab. Tarab underpins the connection that the performer and the audience develop through songs or oriental dance, by sharing the same sentimental conditions. This condition is created through the emotional connection and aesthetic reactions that performance causes. Having this spiritual power, tarab has the ability to break the constructed cultural boundaries among mind and body, cognition and emotion, providing an empirical given reality that mediates in society.

The most well-known spirit possession in Islam is performed through Ζār. The term denotes a form of spirit possession that causes illness, when the spirits descend into a person, and at the same time a healing ritual that incorporates one of the most therapeutic practices. For Ζār, the human body becomes the locus, the mediator and the carrier that embodies the spirit and its culture in daily life. For that reason, Ζār practices break the boundaries of strict medical and psychological interpretations, making their foundation inextricably linked with the way existence is comprehended. Therefore, Ζār constitutes, first and foremost, a cultural practice determined by philosophical and traditional frameworks.

One of the most interesting, controversial and challenging religious forms that has shaped and constructed different kinds of beliefs and believers is Sufism. Sufism constitutes a combination of mystical form, spiritual ethics and traditional religion that represents the internalistic and spiritual side of Islamic belief. What Islamic mysticism represents through Sufism is not something separate from the Islamic religion and philosophy, nor a different type of religious ideas coming from Islam. Instead, Sufism portrays another spiritual behavior where bodies, experiences, emotions and embodiment intertwine in an esoteric path.

"I know the black ditches
I always carry a rocket launcher on my shoulder;
I know the hot trenches
I always ambush the enemy;
I know war, conflict, and disputes
I will tell the truth even if I am hung on the gallows..."

A new anthology of Taliban poetry aims to bring some cultural understanding of the ‘violent, suppressive and fearsome Taliban’ to English speakers. The book Poetry of the Taliban is now on sale through Amazon and Hurst Publishers in the UK, and coming out in June in the USA. It is a collection of over two hundred contemporary poems, originally combining Urdu, Persian, and Pashtu verse.

African architecture is usually associated with temporality. Building methods are based on earth and water. Yet Ethiopia is endowed with grand religious architecture made out of rock, dating as far back as the 10th century.

History, especially in lands where the arts are immediately associated with court patronage, can be very much clarified and better apprehended by looking at the material culture of the period in question. In this series of articles dealing with the arts and the material culture of Middle Eastern lands, the immediate aim is to represent the connection between history, religion, ethnic/royal identity, politics, norms, society and how these are mirrored through art. A second aim is to highlight near-hidden gems of the Islamic artistic repertoire, bringing into question widespread assumptions that Islam may have prohibited the blossoming of artistic production.