The Bear
The Bear

Author: Michel Pastoureau

Publisher: Belknap Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780674047822

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From antiquity to the Middle Ages, the bear's centrality in cults and mythologies left traces in European languages, literatures, and legends. Michel Pastoureau considers how this once venerated creature was deposed by Christianity and continued to sink lower in the symbolic bestiary before rising again in Pyrrhic triumph as the teddy bear.

The Sultan's Fountain
The Sultan's Fountain

Author: Agnieszka Dobrowolska

Publisher: American University in Cairo Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 9774165233

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The small sabil-kuttab (a charitable foundation particular to Cairo that combines a public water dispensary with a Quranic school) built in 1760 opposite the venerated Sayyida Zeinab Mosque is almost unique in Cairo: it is one of only two dedicated by a reigning Ottoman sultan, and--astonishingly--it is decorated inside with blue-and-white tiles from Amsterdam depicting happy scenes from the Dutch countryside. Why did the sultan, Mustafa III, cloistered in his Istanbul palace, decide to build a sabil in Cairo? Why did he choose this site for it? How did it come to be adorned with Dutch tiles? What were the connections between Cairo, Istanbul, and Amsterdam in the middle of the eighteenth century? The authors answer these questions and many more in this entertaining and beautifully illustrated history of an extraordinary building, describing also the recent conservation efforts to preserve it for posterity.

The Ottoman House
The Ottoman House

Author: S. Ireland

Publisher: British Institute at Ankara

Published: 1998-12-01

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1912090619

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Seemingly contradictory ideas of privacy and community dominate Ottoman cities. While houses are internally divided to guard female modesty behind a frontage studded with peep-holes, streets in cities like Amasya are often bridged by first-floor passageways between different houses. This book contains 17 papers by architects and archaeologists looking at how the Ottoman house was structured, how it has varied over time and space, and how surviving examples are faring in a world of breeze-block construction. Although the examples discussed are all Near Eastern, and mostly from Turkey, the revelations this book contains about structuring principles will make it a valuable companion to understanding architectural relics from all over the Ottoman Empire.

The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature
The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature

Author: Scott Atran

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13:

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An analysis of the cognitive consequences of diminished contact with nature examines the relationship between how people think about the natural world and how they act on it, and how these are affected by cultural differences.

The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800
The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800

Author: William Monter

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2012-01-24

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 030017327X

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In this lively and pathbreaking book, William Monter sketches Europe's increasing acceptance of autonomous female rulers between the late Middle Ages and the French Revolution. Monter surveys the governmental records of Europe's thirty women monarchs—the famous (Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great) as well as the obscure (Charlotte of Cyprus, Isabel Clara Eugenia of the Netherlands)—describing how each of them achieved sovereign authority, wielded it, and (more often than men) abandoned it. Monter argues that Europe's female kings, who ruled by divine right, experienced no significant political opposition despite their gender.