Download PDF | Kristina Richardson - Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World_ Blighted Bodies-Edinburgh University Press (2012).
169 Pages
Acknowledgements
This book began as a graduate seminar paper on al-Jāḥiẓ’s Kitāb al-Burṣān for Professor Michael Bonner’s course on classical Arabic biographical dictionaries. Set on writing a dissertation on slavery, and convinced that a study of disability would have too few primary sources, I put aside my interest in this text. However, the paper did awaken me to the idea of working on a topic that had not been so thoroughly studied as slavery. Encouraged by Dana Sajdi’s fascinating work on a Chester Beatty Library manuscript of an 18th-century Damascene barber’s local history, I leafed through the Chester Beatty manuscript catalogue in the hope of fi nding a singular source on which I could build a similarly interesting study. To my amazement, I stumbled across A. J. Arberry’s entry for MS 3838, Ibn Fahd’s 950/AD 1543 ‘treatise on the affl ictions suffered by famous scholars’.
Only then did I begin to think a study of disability could be a possibility. With the support of the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School and the International Institute, I arranged a visit to the Chester Beatty Library in the summer of 2005. Dr Elaine Wright, curator of the library’s Islamic collections, was of immeasurable assistance during my stay there and granted permission to use a library image as the cover art. My thesis adviser, Dr Kathryn Babayan, introduced me to al-Badrī’s poetry anthology, which quickly led me to the other writers featured in this study. I am immensely grateful for her continued support and mentorship. Support from the National Endowment of the Humanities allowed me to work under the supervision of Dr Monica Green and Dr Emilie SavageSmith in London in the summer of 2009.
These two experts in medieval medical history helpfully introduced me to Latin and Arabic medical literature on balādhur and baldness, which has strengthened Chapters 2 and 5. My current intellectual home, Queens College of The City University of New York, graciously granted me a pre-tenure leave and encouraged my participation in the 2010 Faculty Fellowship Publishing Program. There, CUNY colleagues Brijraj Singh, Al Coppola, JoEllen DeLucia, Ramesh Mallipeddi, Karl Steel and Andrea Walkden generously read and commented on various chapters of this work. An ArtSTOR travel grant permitted me to visit archives and museums in Damascus. Julie Singer read Chapter 2 closely, and usefully suggested ways to reorder the material to emphasise my argument about friendship. Adam Talib offered many keen suggestions and corrections for Chapter 3. Professor Geert Jan van Gelder closely read and helped me revise the introduction. I am extremely grateful for the professionalism and eagle-eyed readings of my copy-editor, Ivor Normand. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers of this manuscript for their helpful suggestions, and my incredibly patient editor at Edinburgh University Press, Ms Nicola Ramsey. Living and working in New York City has been an incredible cultural experience.
With the library, museum and university partnerships, my work is constantly stimulated with new ideas and discussions with learned colleagues. Annick des Roches, the Islamic art collections manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, invited me to view specimens and peruse the typed notes on various pieces of artwork at a time when the Islamic wing was closed to the public for renovation. There, I saw 55.121.40 and 1975.360, both of which are featured in this book. I would like to thank Dr Ozgen Felek for her translation of the Ottoman inscription on 55.121.40. And, were it not for my students at Queens College, I would never have looked so closely at representations of disability in visual sources. I thank them for expanding my view. Especial gratitude goes to my godmother Lillie Virginia Ming, who sadly died just before this book went to press, my mother Ann, who wanted us children and raised us fi rmly and lovingly, my father Thomas for his patience and intellectual encouragement, my little sister Kelly, who has aided my writing with an endless supply of pens, ink cartridges, paper and notebooks over the years, and my daughter Cecilia Mae Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق