The present article provides some interesting examples of how Christian apologetic discourse was developed within the framework of the ‘Nestorian’ theological encyclopedia written in Arabic in the medieval Mesopotamia. The author illustrates his treatise on love with examples of the Prophets who forgot self, in particular, Abraham and Job (cf. Qurʾān 38) and, finally, refers to Christ’s self-sacrifice. In the chapter on purity, he emphasizes clothing in wool of those who practiced asceticism thus implicitly connecting Muslim Sufis (Arabic taṣawwuf is commonly derived from ṣūf ‘wool’) to the Biblical and Christian ascetics. The research is based on the Paris manuscript of the Kitāb al- maǧdal - BnF ar . 190.

The present paper deals with the “History of the temporal world” written in the seventh century by the East Syriac monk John bar Penkaye, particularly with the concept of “the temporal world”: what is the history of the expression in the Syriac literature, how was it used and what did it mean. The author considers relevant passages from the works of the main East Syriac writers who employed the concept and makes an attempt to determine the authorship of the expression.

The article examines regional context of mid-1950s., from a point of its influence on the domestic affairs in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It analyzes question of the country’s accession to the Baghdad Pact, which caused conflict of British interests and that of the opponents of the project led by Egypt, as the key reason for emergence of Jordanian protest movement. Study provides argumentation for assessment that external actors played destabilizing role in the course of events.

The article is dedicated to the relationship of two major forces in Egyptian politics in the middle of the XX century, in particular to the development of conflict between “The free officers” and “The Muslim Brotherhood”.

The article analyzes main present day trends of Egypt’s foreign economic relations. After the public unrest of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011 which ousted the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, economy in Egypt has been hit hard. Till now the Arabic Republic of Egypt desperately needs an external source of financing. Egypt’s success will depend much on it’s correct choice of foreign partner. Still each of the potential financial donors is ready to provide Cairo with a selective aid, but the country won’t be able to solve all the problems it faces this way. That’s why the foreign economic policy of Egypt includes various trends.

The article deals with the description of the process of love’s genesis in Persian Sufi literature. The author takes an excerpt from the “Jasmine of Lovers” of Ruzbihan Baqli Shirazi (1129-1208), an early Sufi treatise entirely concentrated on Divine and human love, as an example. The article also includes an annotated translation of the treatise’s fourth chapter from Persian.

The article includes a first full translation into Russian of the second chapter from the “Memorial of God's Friends” ( Taẕkirat al-awliyā ), hagiographic compendium composed by Farid ad-Din ʻAttar in the 12th century. The chapter gives the life story of Uways Qarani (d. 657), Yamani ascetic and man of faith from the generation of Muhammad’s followers. The legends on Uways and his sayings collected and arranged by ʻAttar serve as a useful tool to understand the intricate Uways-related imagery which permeates Persian love and mystic poetry. The text of translation is preceded by a short survey of that kind of imagery and provided with a commentary related to philological and cultural details.

One of the principal topics in Sufism is Tawakkul, i.e. absolute reliance on God. The first attempt to conceptualize this term was made by Shaqiq Balkhi (d. 809), Horasan Sufi and theoretician of Sufism. The paper deals with the representation of the concept of tawakkul according to Arabic and Persian Sufi doctrinal and hagiographic narrative texts. The stories in Tadhkirat al-awliyya’ (Memorial of God’s Friends) by Farid al-Din 'Attar are being compared with the relevant chapters in the books which are considered among Attar’s most important sources: the works of as-Sulami, Abu Nu'aym, al-Qushayri and Hujwiri.

The purpose of the present article is to identify the main issues that the researchers are facing in the study of clothing of various ethnic groups of Vietnam, to consider the constructive forms and specific features of the traditional clothing of the nationalities inhabiting the SRV. The important problems within the context of studying the material culture of small nations are the specifics of their official subdivision into ethnic and linguistic groups, as well as linguistic and ethnographic situation in the region. The article is an attempt to answer a series of questions touching upon the similarities and differences in costumes of some small nations and the costumes of the kinh people, i.e. the Vietnamese proper.

This article is focused on the historical and geographical book named “Description of the Selected Villages” (“T’aengniji”, 1751) written in the 18th century by Yi Chung-hwan (1690-1756?), a scholar who spent more than 30 years in the exile. In “T’aengniji” he shared his knowledge of the eight Korean provinces: their history, geography, trade, people and traditions. Till the beginning of the XX century the book had been widely read in hand-copied versions. Nowadays more than 40 different hand-copied manuscripts are preserved in public and university libraries in South Korea. This article explores two manuscripts which are held in Yonsei University Library, where in summer 2014 the author of the article did the field research.

The article is dedicated to the concept of temple in the Japanese translation of the Book of Psalms, based on the texts of two modern Biblical translations into Japanese, and the main attention is drawn to the semantic filling of the idea of temple in the original, and also to the adequacy of its expression by means of the Japanese language. The main research object is the influence of the religious and cultural discourse on the language, the system of tropes and idioms.

Japan's involvement in the Second World War came to an end with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the loss of millions of lives and the acceptance of unconditional surrender. In the postwar years the assessment of these historical events underwent numerous reevaluations. A major shift in public opinion was indicated by the appearance of war films created by a Japanese filmmaker Okamoto Kihachi. Produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s these films rehabilitated a positive image of Japanese male-hero. Conducting a comparative analysis of Okamoto’s films with Japanese war cinema created in the preceding decade will help us understand how the regain of sovereignty and the country’s rapid economic growth affected Japan’s perception of its historical past.

The article is based upon the analysis of the traditional biography describing the life of Fujiwara-no Asomi Nakamaro, one of the most influential politicians of the Nara period (710-794). The biography is a part of the official historical chronicle “Shoku nihongi” (797). Nakamaro, in contrast to the most of the other heroes of the chronicle, described as a rebel who tried to usurp the imperial government and disrupted its monopoly on violence. The attempt is made to trace the specific points of the formation of the image of a rebel, so as the functioning of this biography in the text of “Shoku nihongi” and in the context of the concept of historical memory in Ancient Japan.