Johann Heiss

Migrations and Federations: The Origins of the Tribal Federation of Khawlān According to al-Hamdānī

This contribution focuses on the beginnings of the tribal federation called Khawlān in the north of what today is Yemen. Al-Hamdānī, the Yemeni philosopher, genealogist and astronomer writes about these beginnings in two of his works; a passage from Nashwān’s ‘Shams al-‘ulūm’ will complete the picture. At first, a son of Khawlan migrates from Ma’rib to Ṣirwāḥ, in the territory of another group called Khawlān. From there, a grandson of the first migrant goes on to the region of Ṣa‘da, where he forms a federation with another tribal group. Both settle in the plain of Ṣa‘da or in the mountainous region west of it. To accomplish that, they have to wage war against Hamdān who are the original settlers there. These are the basic facts deducible from the texts. Khawlān really comes into view when the tribal groups wage war. The groups of the original migrants and their allies are not related. Religion plays no part in the occurrences put forward in the texts. As far as possible, these narrations are interpreted and brought into relation to the tribal situation of Yemen at the time.

The Political Usage of Religious and Non-religious Terms for Community in Medieval South Arabia: A Comparative Response to Gerda Heydemann’s Chapter

This comparative response, or perhaps rather “reflection”, will provide comparative cases to be seen in relation to Gerda Heydemann’s article “People(s) of God? Biblical Exegesis and the Language of Community in Late Antique and Early Medieval Europe” in this volume. It will focus on several comparable community-related terms. However, some fundamental epistemological considerations have first to be introduced in order to establish further comparability. A comparison of terms only, used in different regions, languages, and periods would not lead very far, since their meaning, potential, and significance are very much related to the way in which they are used by actors in specific contexts. An analysis based on one or more written “texts” certainly has some merits as a starting point and an orientation. However, it makes sense to take account of a wider range of primary and secondary context-related data, especially (but not only) considering community-related terms. The basic object of comparison must contain ideal and literal contents, in addition to a more or less “real”, graspable historical context. Agency has to be included in the analysis, even though some of the terms used seem at the first glance to be remarkably stable across time and space, as if existing in their own right. A term itself has no agency, but the usage and belief in the term does. For us, the various community-related terms indicate the ability of people to (re)present, claim or resist visions of community, reflecting political aims, social realities or political-religious hierarchies. We do not intend to take an extreme instrumentalist position and claim that our study objects (people with agency and a particular usage of terms) did not “believe” in their community-related terms. Most of those using these terms may even have taken them for granted. However, most of our sources were written by highly educated individuals who chose to use specific terms deliberately and in specific ways, employing advanced conceptual apparatuses to

Competing Visions of Community in Mediaeval Zaydī Yemen

The Muṭarrifiyya was a popular religious movement in the northern highlands of Yemen in the years around 1000-1220 CE , perhaps best known for its opposition to two powerful Zaydī imams around the years 1150 and 1200 and the lively intellectual battle that these tensions engendered in the fields of theology and cosmology. This article takes a new and critical look at the formative years of the Muṭarrifiyya, questioning the assumption that it started with a theological dispute and rather arguing that there was already a form of “proto-Muṭarrifiyya” around the year 1000, existing as a loosely organised network of intellectuals engaging in common rituals, study circles, practices of hospitality and the collection and redistribution of zakāt .

Fieldnotes, Diary, and Retrospective Imagination

has always been a very important part of the autism story and that scientific evidence suggesting an autism epidemic must be carefully evaluated. In chapter 8 Grinker describes the search for effective interventions for Isabel. The difficulties surrounding Isabel’s school placement are offset by the story of her fascination with Monet’s painting of the Japanese bridge and the children’s book Linnea in Monet’s Garden, by Cristina Bjork. Chapters 9–12 remap the world of autism—and not only in a geographical sense. By speaking to parents and others who live in New York, in the mountains of Appalachia, in South Africa, in India, and in South Korea, Grinker deconstructs and closely scrutinizes the sociocultural and historical processes that have resulted in autism as a clinical diagnosis. Some of the stories in these chapters have familiar themes, among them that of the Zulu parents who left their homeland and moved to Cape Town to be closer to educational resources for their son. Others are uniquely and tragically American, including the story of a mother of two boys with autism who created a group-home development program for teenagers and adults with autism after her husband died in the attacks on September 11, 2001. Chapter 13 returns to Isabel’s story, this time with the focus on parent advocacy and school legislation. The struggle to secure Isabel’s school placement serves as the background against which Grinker examines the issues of parent advocacy and litigation. Chapter 14 revisits the main arguments of the book. Cross-culturally, Grinker writes, the symptoms of autism and its etiology are defined according to local theories of illness, personhood, and kinship, and there are variations within cultures in rural and urban areas and across racial and ethnic boundaries. In urban areas in South Korea, the diagnosis of autism is so stigmatizing that the preferred alternative is reactive attachment disorder, believed to be caused by lack of mother’s love. In large cities in the United States, African American children are diagnosed with autism more than a year later, on average, than Caucasian children, and their diagnosis generally requires more visits to clinicians. Such issues make autism centrally relevant to the field of anthropology, Grinker writes, because these variations are a product of complex interaction between culture and biology and are at the very core of anthropological concerns. Unstrange Minds’s contribution has been recognized by its selection as one of Library Journal ’s Best Books 2007 and as finalist for the 2007 Victor Turner Prize awarded by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology.