 And she is a very prolific and creative in all of these fields. Professor Salma Haddad has a strong academic career, and many scholarly publications in translation, translation theory and cultural studies. Following her PhD in translation from Harriet Watt University in Edinburgh in the UK. She has been working on three English-Arabic specialized dictionaries focusing on the cultural dimension of language and highlighting connotative meanings. The trilogy aims to bridge the gap between cultures, facilitate communication, and reduce misunderstanding. And the title of the dictionaries she's been working on and it's not out yet. Salma has given talks on numerous occasions in the UAE and Syria in the United States. She has also won many national and international awards. Salma is with us today as a creative writer, as a poet, and in particular as a storyteller, considering the context of our conference. So I'm going to start asking Salma some questions and please feel free to kind of, if you feel you want to follow up and ask her questions, just be at ease. That's fine. And I'm going to talk about her stories because she's going to be responding and talking about them in more depth in response to my questions. So I'll start the questions. So Salma, thank you very much for being here. Good morning to you. Kind introduction. Thank you all for coming. Yes. So I'll probably begin by asking you to talk about how, considering I already did, I took it upon myself to define you as this multi-person in one. So how do you see yourself? How do you define yourself? And who comes first in you as you see yourself? Is it the poet? Is it the novelist? Is it the exographer? Please. Yeah. Well, I actually started writing poetry when I was 10 years old. And at that time I was one of the Arabic language with only one linguistic vision and one poetic vision as well. And then I started to write some short plays. And I had the strong passion for this, but then for no reason I stopped. And I didn't have any passion for this anymore. And then I started writing English poetry. I just started to mix all these poetic visions between Arabic and English and to do something very special that is not related to Arabic, not related to English. Then I started thinking about writing novels. And this took me a long time actually. I don't know why. The idea persisted occasionally. And it was over there in one mile. I don't know why I resisted this idea. Maybe because I was very proud of my role as a poet. Maybe because I was skeptical about my narrative. So I just tried to postpone the idea and then I couldn't resist it. And the whole idea came to me with all the characters, with all the themes and everything. So I couldn't resist it anymore. So I put pen to paper and started to write my first novel. Of course the dictionary compiling came to me after getting my PhD. And as a researcher in the fields of cultural studies and translation, translation theory, social acoustics and all the rest of this, I find that this area of cultural dictionaries is overlooked by researchers. So I said to myself, I'll do this myself. And I will concentrate on the connotations, cultural connotations, rather than the actual meaning of words, the connotative meaning of words. These dictionaries are not going to be useful to the laymen of the street, of course. These are going to be very useful for researchers in the fields of comparative studies, the fields of translation theory, social linguistics, cultural studies, analytical studies, all the rest of this. These are going to be useful for them. Unfortunately, it's a very slow movement. It's due to the fact that I'm working on all this on my own, say, and this projection has been taken by a team, of course. So I'm very optimistic about this. I'm not going to stop working on this because it's my passion here. But at the same time, it's going to be this rubbish party. Well, I wish you all the luck. Thank you very much. I really need it. I read your poetry, and I'm a big fan of yours. Your poetry is very philosophical and very reflective. But I also love your novels. The two that came out already and the one that I'm looking forward to read it, because I'm sure readers will agree with me once they read you. You are a very strong narrator. So I'll let you talk to us about your narrative techniques. Yeah, well, I think I am very much interested in the details. When you, of course, are kind of engaging details. When you immerse your reader with all these engaging details, the reader you are inviting the reader to your text has an insider rather than an outsider. So I'm just going to read some of these points, and I'm going to give you some examples of some parameters about all these details just to understand the idea of these pragmatic, I can say, functional details. So I think the functional engaging details play a major role in this. When we write a story, we are creating a new world, a world that is a blend of reality and imagination. But this world must look realistic, logical and coherent. The details connect the story to everyday life of the reader who imagines himself there through captaincy. In my novels, there are hundreds of details that immerse the reader in the character's experiences. Through these details, the reader sees what the characters see, smells what they smell, tastes what they eat, and feel what they feel. Let me read an example of these things. This is taken from my first novel, Sukhainah ibn Atul-Matur. I'm sorry, I'm going to read this in Arabic, and I know most of you speak Arabic. Sukhainah fell on the voice of the 60-year-old with the voice of Taqtia, who was left behind by the Red Lion, who was the mother of Zouk, who was carrying the sandwiches, as well as the pieces of the falafel and tahina, and the lemon, and a little bit of the pomegranate, and a little bit of the red sumac. The reader is invited, one, to hear the noise of the knife on the chopping board. Two, see all the details of the food and the house. Three, taste the falafel sandwiches with pickles, tahina, yogurt, lemon, parsley, and sumac. And four, smell the oil that has been heated many times. So all these details have been to be inscribed in Arabic. So all these details help the reader to be insider rather than outsider. He knows everything about Sukhainah's family, even the dirty colors of the pillow they have. However, this takes a lot of sweat. Without careful choosing the right descriptive details, and balancing them by an overall guiding structure, the text will boringly balloon. The good writer should be three in one. The writer, when he puts down the novel in a certain order. The character, when he feels what the character feels and produces real flesh and blood. And the reader, when he expects what the reader is waiting for. So these are the details I am engaged in. And I am engaging my reader in just to make him feel free to visit the environment I'm talking about and to feel an insider in this environment. I agree with you because when I took your first novel, I really couldn't put it down. I wrote it in just one breath. I agree with you. You do engage the reader in a very, very strong way. You have written, as I just mentioned, three novels. The one is just coming out. And my question to you is whether you intend to have some continuity and whether each novel is like a different text on its own. And in relation to our conference, which is on storytelling and travel writing, I kind of wonder whether the theme of travel is one of these connecting aspects. Do you see them? Of course, the three novels are connected through many aspects, including each other. So I'm just going to give you a brief idea about these novels just to see how connected they are and how connected they are to the theme of the conference. The protagonist in the three novels are struggling women. In Sukena ibn Atamnatur, Sukena is subject to physical, verbal and psychological violence in a domestic setting. In a male-dominated environment, the abusers, her father and step-brother, want her to conform to their norms without questioning them. They see her revolutionary, ambitious character as a threat to their authority because it will ultimately empower her and disempower them. They believe that she will one day bring dishonor to the family and that they have the right to wage preventive war on her. They choose to discipline her physically by frequently beating her up in an extremely violent way, verbally by using abusive language with her, name-calling, just they always call her al-baqara al-baqla ila akhalihi, and psychologically by systematically threatening her of blocking her access to education and employment, restricting her self-determination and limiting her personal freedom. In a society which outflows domestic violence, neither Sukena nor her mother dares to report being abused for fear of further punishment. In the middle of all this violence, Sukena has to hang on to her dreams through creating life-boy techniques. She finds safe haven in reading Greek mythology and merging it with her dreams to form a single reassuring entity, an entity that situates her in a wider context where she can face challenges and plan for a better future with a relatively clear mind. Her total rejection of what she sees as a stigma of her life and her desperate attempt to dissociate herself from it drives her to the rate the details of her miserable life using the sheer point of view because she doesn't feel comfortable with who she is. When she restores the right to self-determination after a long struggle, she switches to the eye point of view and expects her audience to switch from being sympathetic to admiring. In this novel, women are viewed maybe as productive wounds. Failure to give birth to babies is not tolerated by a society which highly appreciates kids, especially boys and considers them part and parcel of the marriage package. Women's awareness of this intense pressure puts her on the defensive and graceful position of weakness, guilt and inferiority. The character of the university student's stepbrother who gives himself the absolute authority to physically misplan his sisters and occasionally his stepmother raises doubts about the ability of university education to challenge and modify the ideological system of some stereotypes who decide to let knowledge be through sleep inside books. Sukena, the protagonist, spiritually travels to Greece as a life-boy technique. She finds safe haven in reading Greek mythology and merging it with her dreams to form a single reassuring entity, an entity that situates her in a wider context where she can face challenges disassociate herself from the stigma of her life. I will drink coffee in Brazil and this is the second novel I wrote a couple of years ago. The protagonist Leila feels more emotionally secure with her father who warmly and leniently responds to her needs and doesn't set limits to her actions and dreams. On the other hand, she hates her punitive mother who adopts disciplinary behavior because she believes that her father is too lenient and tolerant to raise her appropriately. She keeps calling her idiot, speaks about her father in an offensively patronizing manner, tries to confiscate her self-determination and places restrictions on her actions and dreams. The totally different, parenting styles create a growing gap between Leila and her mother whose relationship dramatically deteriorates after the death of her father. However, Leila starts later on to put this relationship on a better track by reassessing it and finding reasonable objective justifications for her mother's aggressiveness. In addition to her battle with her mother, Leila has another lengthy draining battle. She strongly believes that love defeats money and revenge. However, she loses her appetite for love and accepts full control of brain when she finds out that her lover's equation is to defeat love by money and revenge. Under the leadership of her brain, Leila starts to see life differently. Leila is the daughter of Syrian expats who live in Sao Paulo and hold Brazilian passport. Pedro, her Sao Paulo childhood friend and future love is the son of a Syrian father and Brazilian mother. Her childhood in Sao Paulo influenced her Syrian identity and obviously conceived her Syrian culture. When her parents take her back to Damascus, Leila feels homesick, uprooted and disconnected from the surroundings. Since she doesn't see the Syrian culture as her own, suffers what is called a reverse culture shock or own culture shock. There is cultural confusion and a question of belonging. The presence of her father Pedro and her nanny in her Damascus life is the only helping factor in adjusting to but not integrating into the culture where she managed to develop routine. The premature death of her father and the consequent death of her nanny and the sudden departure of Pedro brings Leila back square one where she has another attack of reverse culture shock manifested in mood swings with drool, anger and boredom. She starts to recreate the idealized version of Sao Paulo and her childhood there. Her unhealthy, contentious relationship with her mother slows down her readjustment process after the second shock and drives her to isolate herself from an environment she comes to perceive as hostile or at best unfriendly. Taking the position of the rejecter, the only way out for her is to leave Damascus, her host culture, and return to Sao Paulo, her original culture, to study death history there. But Pedro is no longer the innocent caring child he used to be and she used to know. Years have taught him to weigh options in a businessman's balanced scale and to make unilateral, unemotional decisions. The scales fall from her eyes and she starts to see the exact sizes and colors in life. Obviously, her extreme disappointment in Pedro and the loss of their baby shredded the picture and damaged the relationship between her and Brazil as an original country. As she is an untidy mixture of different cultures Leila starts to see Brazil as her passport country but she is still not categorizing herself as Syrian. Sao Paulo is a graveyard of her heart and baby and Damascus is a graveyard of her father and man. The cold-heat relationship reflects her unpleasant movement between the two cultures and her confusion about her real cultural identity. And here is a small talk about this kind of cold-heat relationship a kind of dream she saw about her father after. I felt he was still in love with me but he left. Oh my God! I was killed by the cold-heat. Where did you go, my father? I put my nose in my mouth and I saw the hair falling on my neck with a white color. And I saw the appearance of the Muslim who was swimming in the air. Oh, Sarah! We must let his spirit go through the window so that she can laugh out loud before she goes to sleep. Before she goes to sleep. I put my nose in her mouth and I will get out of the cold-heat. Then I will quickly get out of the window and I will put my nose under her in search of the smell of my new father. So I didn't find her. Maybe she laughed out loud with the smell of the musk in the clouds. I felt a great fear of being inside and the cold-heat was giving me a strong feeling of the love of my father. Laila finally decides to create a temporary middle zone a third culture. Her own blend of Sao Paulo and Damascus and makes Damascus her final destination where she later adjusts to Syria as a world culture. In Akmeliniya Na'ila, my third novel, motherhood is women's major role. Gare's ward is full of dolls. Dolls to take care of, to feed, to give bath to, to talk to, to shout at, to instruct, to teach, etc. This heavy presence of dolls in their daily life lays the cornerstone for their forthcoming major role being mummies in a society where having kids is highly appreciated and socially cherished. They grow up with this dream that balloons by time. By the time they reach what is culturally perceived as the prime age range of marriage they have a full comprehension of the related social values and attitudes, customs, ideologies and shared assumptions. Nothing mirrors all this better than proverbs and social cliches that directly and indirectly. One, encourage the full package of getting married and having children. This figuratively means that those who have children do not die and those who don't do. Two, look pejoratively at spinsters and spinster wood, Aris Makhitan and Ashmat Tashira. The adjective Ba'ira itself is an extremely offensive word which refers to the spinster as an unwanted commodity or unproductive land. Three, frighten them of the consequences of being alone. The ragel Aris Min'aroud Khair Min'aroud With all these cultural assumptions in mind girls start to look at marriage as their first and most important target in life. To some, it unfortunately becomes the only target. When every dream becomes that smaller and that important someone's life the disappointment of not fulfilling it turns catastrophic. According to Na'ila spinsters go through three main stages. The stage of the usual age of marriage according to cultural norms. The pre-spinsterhood stage and the spinsterhood stage. The first is the dynamic era where time moves relatively smoothly between the stage of the usual age of marriage and pre-spinsterhood. During this period the social attitude is neutral and women's roles are specific and socially defined. There is a relatively friendly relationship between society and women based on food knowledge and respect of each other's duties and rights. In a pre-spinsterhood stage the relationship between women and society starts to take an ambiguous turn. It's the stage of a far less neutral attitude. The woman starts to get worried and confused and the society starts to interfere both directly and indirectly to put pressure on her to accelerate her search for a husband before she enters the following finals. The race begins and any man is better than remaining unmarried. Aris Men'ood, Khel Men'ood. The words sitting down in oud in this proverb very accurately described the way society sees the spinster as a paralyzed creature. The focus here is on immobility. However, the pre-spinsterhood stage is still a dynamic era where the unmarried woman weighs her option and chooses to achieve her target even at the expense of her emotions and the picture she has drawn for the future of her husband. In the spinsterhood stage the woman passed the common age of marriage. The relationship between woman and society becomes more hostile and the era takes a static form. The woman is socially classified as spinster. Status confirmed. She feels that she is undesirable and unwanted by the other sex and starts to wonder why. Any answer to her why will bring her more depression and more disappointment. At the social level she is stereotyped as unattractive, pathetic, aggressive and complicated. No matter what she does to change this stereotyped image it remains unchanged. So here Naila is talking about this. Disgusting, agonizing, rough, violent, indiscriminate, minimal amount of lust until her last few words for her husband in society as he makes from her a state of infallibility. The situation, the state of public silence is not in it's reach. No, sorry, sorry. that I worship love, and I do not believe in a Sunnah that love is not third. I do not believe in two bodies that the soul is third. I do not believe in a Sunnah that doesn't have the appropriate conditions, I do not believe in a single karrith, and I do not consider it a burden in its worst cases. So how will I convince a society to believe, to the extent that we will be able to control the system of marriage, the system of general and the karrith, that I am not a burden, I am not a burden, I am not a burden to anyone, I am not a burden to anyone, I am not a burden to anyone, how will I convince them that I am not them? How? This is the monologue of Na'ilah throughout the... Would you be able to translate a little bit, because it's very interesting. All the ideas are already mentioned, all the ideas are already mentioned in the excellent explanation before, talking about the spiritual. It's really very powerful when you said, how will I convince them that I am not them? And any other? Simply. You're struggling just to be yourself. It takes you ages to struggle, just to prove that you are yourself, not anybody else. At the family level, her duties are multiplied. Since, she is considered responsibility free, due to the absence of husband and children in her life. Everybody says, Na'ilah, I don't have anything. Na'ilah, I don't have anything. Na'ilah, because she's not married, her time is public property. In a society that does not appreciate independent accommodation for spinsters, the unmarried woman, by the way, I very much hate the word spinster, but I'm just using it for the sake of the... It's a horrible word, and it's very pejorative, a very passive word, but I'm just using it for the sake of the context, both in English and in Arabic. Of course. In a society that doesn't appreciate independent accommodation for spinsters, the unmarried woman is left without almost, with almost one choice, living for the rest of their life in the house of the family. In addition to complete loss of privacy, this entails extra responsibilities for three generations. So she has responsibilities towards three generations. Parents and their permanent or temporary guests. Visiting sisters and brothers and their kids. So she has responsibilities for all these generations. While some spinsters accept to stay in the corner they are pushed into by the ideological system of their society, others fight for their right to be who they are and nobody else. Nila's main antagonist is the way society stereotypes here as a completed angry spinster who has all the free time of the world to save everybody around her. Her time is viewed as a collective property, but she is not a study to become a spinster character. She sees herself as a butterfly that has every right to protect her wings in all possible means. Her complex is intros... At the age of 40, she's face-to-face with an ideological system within her own culture which had confined her to one major role, wife and mother, and started to offensively stereotype her when she failed to play this socially expected role. She dissociates herself from the stereotype imposed on her by her own culture and finds to re-culture it according to how she sees and feels it. Not according to the norms of the society she lives in. He says... We sat on the chair and placed my own paper with a soft fabric with a color tone so that it can be used. Then I made a move and raised my two small steps to show you how long it takes to be used. In front of us, so that it can be used. And we began to drink our power with an idea, with an idea. It ended with a visit to Hussam to the age of the people who lived there for more than two centuries. And the way forward to the age of the dead. I was given the opportunity to restrain myself on my chest to make sure that it is a social demand. I was given a social understanding that pushed me towards maybe it wasn't the day that was part of the idea. I was forced to leave his house so that I could restrain myself forever. I had to defend everything I believed in and to restore my home so that I could live with myself with my friends not with my children. I was forced to be a slave to a social system that I didn't share with the idea. Travel is seen in different ways by my protagonists. Maybe Sukena and Leila. While Sukena views spiritual travel to Greece and physical travel to France as an escape from physical, mental and spiritual confinement and control. Leila's relationship with the place is controversial and complicated. She is not quite sure about where she wants to be and who she is where she is. Her cultural identity is determined by the presence, absence of certain persons in her life. The physical or the emotional disappearance of these persons influences her feeling of belonging. So for Sukena travel was kind of a solution while for Leila travel was kind of a problem because she didn't know where she is and what she wants to be. Is she Syrian? Is she Brazilian? She doesn't feel comfortable there she doesn't feel comfortable here and all the time she wants to be there on the other side. When she is in Brazil she wants to go back to Damascus when she is in Damascus she wants to come back to Sao Paulo. So she is culturally confused so travel for her is not a solution it's kind of a problem. And you asked me about myself as a traveler so I would say to me travel is mobility. It's a journey outside the eye and the we who are supposed to share with me similar cultural aspects. But it doesn't only mean moving between distant geographical locations there is a big difference between a simple tourist and a world discoverer who gathers information gets to know other cultures takes time to build new social relationships and more importantly gets to know more about himself through knowing love. As an alter I strongly believe that when I occasionally disconnect from my daily routines I become more productive and more focused. Moreover the chance to visit different countries with different languages traditions cuisines lifestyles etc enriches my literary and cultural reservoir and improves the quality of my work by giving me new ideas to deal with and new colors to paint my characters. It expands my understanding of the world. Thank you I am looking forward to the journey to be served. It's already out. I haven't received a copy from Peru. It's out only a few days ago and I have received a copy. I can also see a type of a genre continuum because I can see the poetic style in your writing. I have a small question even though I hate classifications but do you call yourself a transnational writer? Can you speak about this you as a diasporic writer but now in the Arab world does this affect your way of writing your way of seeing space for example you didn't tell us about the setting in the first one Sukaina it's between Paris and Damascus between Paris and Damascus and then Syria and Brazil and the last one Damascus so this transnational then space in a way I don't know because when you are a person as what calls me different hats they all come into play okay you are a writing novel you are not only a novelist you are a poet, you are a traveler you are a linguist you are a transition theorist you are all of them together so you can't stop you can't draw a definite line between what you are and who you are and what you are talking about in your novels so sorry, I mean what I find great here is the spirit of dissent in your writing so that writing really becomes an act of resistance and it's not only victimizing women that would have really been hateful but I can see that you provide us with the spirit of the I'm always against victimizing women and I'm always against women who view themselves as victimized they have to just stand up any time they fall down they have to stand up again and just to face everything around them and to find other solutions women are not only rules for producing babies women are not only wives they have great roles in society if they don't get married they have other choices in life and this is how they have to see themselves and this is how they have to interact with society on this basis otherwise they will be destroyed if nobody has a question maybe you can end it by Salma just comment I'm curious about the theme of your next novel because it seems like there is a not repetitive but there is a thread that connects your novels like through the resistance, the stereotyping society of women and how would the trouble play a role in your next story like your next novel you mean the one I haven't like the one you're publishing now you said there is one coming out it's already out but I don't have the copies because it came out just a couple of days before so they couldn't usually they shipped them just two months before the start of the affair so what's your question exactly I was wondering about the theme of the next novel that you said would there be the same theme about women resisting the stereotyping it's about Na'ilah who's stereotyped as being everybody looks at her as pathetic they are stereotyping here but she's not that stereotyping and she's trying to make everyone understand that look I am myself I can't be stereotyped the way you are stereotyping me so she's defending herself all the way through and there's a surprise at the end of the novel in answer to our colleagues a question there's a technical surprise at the end of the novel which destroys everything and reconstructs that's it I'm not going to talk about this because I want to do something just to wrap up I know you are a very spiritual person so I wonder whether writing to you is part of your spiritual journey yeah you know the answer is yes and no at the beginning there's an initial spark this is spiritual of course and this comes before consciousness it comes at the level of subconsciousness but once you put pen to paper and you start writing no it's not spiritual although you can describe it as probably therapeutic you find it therapeutic when you cry it yeah of course so you start with a spiritual I'm talking about myself I don't know anything about the writers for me it starts with an initial spark the idea comes to me from unknown sources I don't know how from where I don't know anything just comes to me comes to my mind most of the times with everything with every important thing with the name of the character the protagonist the main theme the main events which are going to influence the movement of the thought and everything so they come to me this is at the subconscious level they come as spiritual and then consciousness starts to take role but at the same time this doesn't mean that spirituality disappears because every now and then it just pops out and guide me in one way or another at the same time I am aware of this it becomes in control and becomes under my control with the inspiration and spiritual they all come under my control but at the beginning of course it's not under my control do we have more time or do we have to wrap up the boat is waiting the boat is waiting please join me thank you by now we all will have met in some category our speaker for today our keynote speaker Dionysius Agous but now I'll tell you why he's here who he is he's a fellow at the British Academy emeritus al-Qasimi professor of Arabic studies Islamic material culture at the University of Exeter King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah Dr. Agous was educated at the Jesuit University Saint Joseph in Beirut and at the University of Toronto he's an ethnographer and linguist specializing in traditional wooden sea craft the people of the sea and their material culture in the western Indian ocean and the Mediterranean from classical periods to modern times and just so we know just how much he's engaged in this part of the world these are some of his books in the wake of the dull seafaring in the Arabian Gulf and all men classical ships of Islam and another one that is yet forthcoming with Ivy Taurus and Bloomsbury the life of the Red Sea Dull so now you know why we brought him here and please welcome with me Dr. Dionysius Agous it was a good introduction today sea stories in medieval Islam are relatively understudied area compared to the past a little more literally Arabic words of different genre they are written in a simple vernacular style and would appear at various lengths to have a reason to offer beyond entertainment value however a closer look at them can yield insights into the maritime culture and sea law and the early medieval Islam in the Indian Ocean and the sharing of such sea law with neighboring cultures and civilisation conducted feedback in the Arabian Gulf and Oman several years ago I connected a number of persons stories from men divers fishermen admittedly although much of what was recounted had an element of truth based on experience and skills there was also an element of intervention of embellishment in the narratives some of these, some of their stories in part are included in my book Seferi the whole idea was to capture the voices of men in their different activities in their experience out at sea there were in the stories sea creatures never seen before pirates that jumped on board and threatened to kill the crew games and storms witnessing the abyss of the ocean and jinn evil spirits which guided the ship to destruction such stories I found later a parallel to those related by travellers of the Arabian modern modern and European periods remarkably there is a collection of such stories called the marvels of India which was written in the 10th century in this unique collection of such stories that I'm going to talk about today although the title contains the name India the stories are not about India but perhaps reflect the centrality in the ocean in the ocean India brings many different communities of the ocean together and the cargo of pilgrim ships drop or wave and then sports I would like to begin with a few words about the medieval words of maritime culture before coming to this marvels of India its authorship and problems a description will follow on the landscape and seascape of the region where the stories were connected and what the stories entail one of the stories narrated by is one by the ship I will end with a discussion with actions on the genre of sea stories and the unique collection of the marvels of stories in the Middle East and the maritime works were written to offer information on sea trade rules navigation description of landscape and seascape imported and exported goods and as well as commenting on the customs and traditions of the coast of India the early maritime works are the first two are travel accounts of geographical context in the Middle East the first two are travel accounts of geographical context in the Middle East with information on maritime activity in the Middle East from Basra to Seraph to Soha to India the author of the origin of the sea is not known but the book was re-edited by a merchant the second one the accounts of the Seraph was collected by Suleyman Tharger Numeric both connected in the medieval port of Seraph for the third one the jihad of the king the marvels of India has been attributed to Buzhuk even in Shahriyah but the question is the question of its origin become related in its presentation the significance of these three maritime works is that they are the earliest non-examples of the distinctive sub-journey of medieval architecture all three works were published in the 9th and 10th centuries the marvels of India contains 136 sea stories many of which centered on the lives of members who ventured into the open sea as far indeed as Sumatra, Java, China they are a collection of disparate sea stories with no particular structure of the humanity the particular sub-journey of medieval architecture is called Aja the word for marvels wonders curiosities they are often narrated with a touch of ironic humor and with an element of exaggeration for effect making them similar in many ways in content and style to the tales of the seven voyages of Simba the sailor and the elite knights where the listener or reader is lost in wonder and the stories of exploration treasure in the words of one modern day traveler everything returning ship seemed to bring back fresh and ever more bizarre curiosities and every departure was packed with ever ambitious ambitious dreams to note that the marvels prepared to be factual stories printing on a chain of authorities on this land but their content would suggest animals while the stories of Simba are presumed to be fiction it is entirely probable that there are embroideries of earlier factual accounts and we stand here at crossroads between culture and history these stories may well contain underlying information of use not to the literature person but to the story even to the archaeologists so what do the sea stories of the marvels of India entail the stories contained entertainments by millers merchants and travelers embarking on cargo ships sailing to distant lands for trade they recount stories about how they survived storms their encounters with spirits and sea creatures and other experiences of marvels the stories are about the Indian Ocean which is divided into the seven seas it is the classic the Sea of Zanj which refers to the Africans the Sea of Laar they are in the Sea the Sea of Harkam the Bay of Bangal the Sea of Kalahbar West Coast of Malaya the Sea of Salahit Sumatra the Sea of Kartant between the islands of Sumatra and Borneo countries are grouped according to the trade commodities that they were known for so in East Africa the land of Zanj known for islands the countries around the southern region refer to the land of India the land of Petra Sumatra, Java, Malaya were the land of gold and Murukkas were known as the Spice until some years ago the marvels were attributed to Buzur Ibn Shahriyar of Ramul Murud Tertan from the province of Kuzistan southwest of Iran this alleged that he was a sea captain he lived in Tertan on the island coast we had however no date for his death no date for his death from a few dates in the stories we can gather that they were conducted in the 10th century it came to light the marvels of all times is actually not Buzur but one who came from Syrah and lived in Egypt in 987 his name was Abu Imran Buzur Ibn Bara Ausid extract of similar stories where Ausid were found in the later world in the 14th century by an encyclopedist and woman so how did this name Buzur came to be found according to a study by Khamid Shah this name his name was not recorded by Buzur but was added to Istanbul manuscript I.S.P. Young leading us to understand that Buzur had been whether we or kitchen that Ausid came from which is at the center of the stories Syrah was a prosperous port as is evident from written medieval Arabic sources located at the opposite Bahrain islands in the Iranian version it was connected diagonally with mainland Syrahs in the 10th century as it shows Syrah today lies in ruins it was a great way to China indeed all Syrians to and from China connected with the Red Sea in Istanbul excavations in Syrah show an active port from the Sassani period with a port village residents mosques and buildings the ship graphite is but a memory of the seafaring parts it is evident from medieval Arabic accounts that the sea route was much preferred to the land route most of the maritime trade was transferred to Syrah Syrah in the 10th century was excavated and visited the port city in the second part of the century both were impressed by the beauty and its effluent population the historian describes a number of mariners and merchants from the Indian Ocean Gallery in Syrah this information about maritime activity in Syrah is also mentioned in terms of the web Syrah was the rival of Basrah which was mentioned its size and splendor nearly equal to Syrah Wahidah to Qarid Syrah and Al-Maghdisi could not help but comment on the charm of the city I have not seen in the realm of Islam more remarkable buildings in those of Syrah Mara Aytu in Israel the heyday of Syrah was during the early decades of the buddhist dynasty there was a decline in the population maritime people left Syrah went to Syrah went to Jeddah went to West Indian coast trade declined and it was not clear as to what brought the end of Syrah whether it was precipitated by an earthquake natural disaster but its fame was echoed of many centuries later Syrah's mariners described by the geography as men who passed their whole lifetime on the ship al-Nusudi met many of these Syrah skippers on voyages to West India East Africa and China he says that they were the most knowledgeable and experienced of long distant voyages although he does not comment on their lives on the ship they understood that there were skippers of some famous otherwise they were not engineers and in a number of stories about Syrah's mariners found in the marvels of India exemplifies the heroism these people had shown in braving the seas of Arabia and China the marvels sea stories are eyewitness accounts of the stories the geographers have reported on Syrah possibly they captured their lives at sea crystallizing that moment in time Syrah and its mariners the marvels of India like the Syrah stories were connected with a name to entertain but also to instruct as many were narrated to the purpose connecting events and keeping often fortune telling to misfortune but ending with the marvel there is a pattern of marvel and mystery long distant journeys fire and volcano eruptions and shipwrecks Syrah for gold ivory and precious stones encountered with the unexpected the sieging monsters of China what captivated the audience was feeling about the magic experiencing the unknown and escaping to a different world with the air reassuring expectation that the main character would return back to normal the sea captain Akhara an extraordinary man who progressed from shepherd in the desert to fisherman then he became a sailor then he became a skipper sailing from Syrah to India and China the story was meant to be an example of one sea captain with much sailing experience and foresight he sailed to China seven times prompting the narrator to come only adventurous men had made this voyage before no one had managed without an accident even a man with a child he was finding out the way it was already a miracle returning safe and sound was unheard of I have never heard a tale of anyone except him Akhara who had made the two voyages there and back without disaster the storyteller is making an important point the journey to China was not without hazard an often disaster between the voyages whether from the forces of nature or union aggression here is a story written by a ship owner Abu Zahra Al-Baqir about a fellow sheikh master a person in the Muslim group who experienced just such a disaster on their way to China the calamity was purely human in origin and this is what happened the storyteller engages his message by telling that Al-Baqir was truly a man of integrity worthy of respect was indeed a man everyone took heed to what he said and therefore the story is worth telling and worth believing the story is about the island of women intrigued the audience she carried a number of merchants of diverse, ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds who in the course of their voyage from Zidaf to China faced the violence of the gate in a sea that boiled beaten about by frightening waves on a ship that leapt and plunged and shuddered and trembled each merchant in fear prayed according to his religion of surrender that the ship was about to thunder of the waves and winds it returned but because the negligence of the crew and the state of the rigging generated fear as the silent audience waited then on the third day the passengers and crew experienced an even more frightening sight their ship was approaching a fire spread over the whole horizon they preferred to die rather than to witness the suffering of each one of them once more the audience fell in silence until the narrator continued it was on board a ship an old man of Qadir from Islamic Spain who was hiding all through the voyage he was being fed by a sailor but actually this sailor believed that a guardian angel was eating the food and drinking the water and was not aware of the man in hiding he believed that by feeding the angel the ship would be protected against disaster when the old man of Qadir saw the danger of the ship and the state of fear was concerned he came out from the hiding some savers saw the man and they were bewildered and were shaken by how he appeared from nowhere he was taken to the captain after some time arguing about how and what the old man said and reassured them that there was nothing to worry about by the grace of God you would be saved what you see is an island on which the ocean waves are harrowing themselves during the night this produces the effect of an enormous fire which frightens them sometimes this illusion he reassured them fear not this brought joy to the people the following days when the old man was gone they approached the island they all disembarked and threw themselves on the sand and rolled in the light on the ground the tragedy was yet to come it was an unhappiness who fell upon each one of the crew and passengers and used them for their pleasure sadly all the men died of exhaustion one after the other the old man of Qadir however was taken away by one woman and treated kindly and together they escaped on the ship's boat and reached the port where the ship had come she became a Muslim gave him several children and they lived happily there are four parts in this story the first is presenting facts about the narrator Al-Baghra the ship owner converted to Islam we are also given details about the ship sailing to China the merchants of different backgrounds the crew and their monotonic skills the second feature is the embellishment of the story with marvelous curiosities the island of woe the tragic death of the passengers and crew thirdly the hero who seems to have had divine guidance the ship will not be lost in spite of the incompetent crew who did not render the rigging properly while both crew and passengers alone deserve to be overcome by the sexually homogenous women leaving the men of Qadir and this Muslim comparative one to say this story is gone and I will not go into detail in this part we can gather what is it that we can gather the first the factual information navigating the room to China the hazards of the Malay sea the nautical skills of the skipper a skipper was guided by stars Al-Baghrafi Al-Baghrafi's fellowship speaks of his characters we are at the wind of the wind and the waves first of all there is that fire we are running towards and that already fills the horizon we would rather we would rather the stars guide and navigate and they still do not think it's very good especially the the Malay sea and they warn voyagers of climatic change they warn voyagers of storms and rains some are believed to be symbolic of something to happen certainly in this story the characters signify the bending of hope of the human but the factual and trust in the men of Qadir another factual information is that the skipper takes a note not to expose the ship to loss for us captains when we board the ship stay loyalized and destined if the ship is safe we remain loyal if it is lost we die a code of practice it is one of the 12 principles of navigation recorded by Al-Baghrafi the book of education second we have the union in direction of nature the state of fear the people experience by the firing of the gate and the approaching of that empire a superstition of the belief in the God in making protecting the ship from destruction and the belief in it that it would happen is the last thing of the fire playing together according to one's religion there was a Muslim put this the men becoming tools of the wooden spectrum in the old man and the old world the sea stories in the marbles of India are the earliest in the country in many countries in the Arabic literature they are unique in the book of the stories with the exception of the seven colleges of sin but the same has affluent sin and it is important to note that the simple voyages are only a part of the faith which is largely under the sea although the marbles of India see stories fall within the agitated theme of wonders and marbles of the art of it and wealth of information on diverse subjects that are both instructive touching on the new element of life by the sea the moral, law, and the end the marbles are in heretic representing a diversity of ethnic and religious and linguistic community notion and they contain facts about the poor cities seers, slave goods and they often demonstrate a commodity these stories have obviously developed from the oral culture which would have been the commodity again and again they bond communities together about events that they share they came to be written down as a way of solidifying the past and ending the stories we find parallel themes of these sea stories in the Sanskrit and Persian tradition and indeed in the West there is a striking similarity between the story of the island of women in the marbles of India and owners obviously where the women play the roles of sedactresses such as the goddess Circe who lived in the island of Ereya and the goddess Calipso on the island of Orgigia who both seduced the sailors away from his return to this home and the wild in the marbles of India the theme of the island of women is taken into a more darker extreme trade to concentrate on the land the apocryphal acts of Andrew Christian by the tradition portrays scenes of shipwrecks pirates and cannibals such stories were known in the early Christians by the early Christians of Africa Egypt, Syria Asia Minor and other places they run parallel to sea stories of the Arabian version and even cultures and although it may be argued that they have influenced each other we can listen the agile literature is a genre which pervades in early and medieval times it is important to note that the Quran is one of God's marbles and that extraordinary things were the signings of God's created power the marvel of God's creation was then a pious act the marvel stories are written in mixed literary and vernacular style of Arabic that's breaking away from the canon of good Arabic literary style which was the known for any Arabic written in the way written the marvels and the Arabic stories follow this big style and they are the connection of themes of the marvels such stories were memorized and then narrated to the common people and marvels in places of present in doing so the story told the terror they have felt freer to improvise rather than stick to the flexible inflexible written story the mixed style of the story is thus a reflection of the older but the older culture is dynamic and the background of this culture connects men of literature historians geographers travelers have given us a few scattered examples of metam stories and there are hints that there may have been more many more but sadly they are lost according to the language which makes the marvels of India such a joy not only to be enjoyed for their narratives and to enjoy by us but also for the researcher looking for nuggets of information on the social culture history of the time they are indeed a unique source like your audience thank you for listening to me we are only slightly behind and the comment I'd like to make is not a question at all that have you noticed how well Dr. Anthony who's tied together all the themes it's like he's written the one that is himself yes the fictionality effect the bringing back of the curiosities from other parts of the world and acting and also effect telling the story the performer any comment any other comment beyond this this is a comment from India and you got to be able to count something as a ninja as the a la gul of course we would have a legacy of such taxes and even before the end of Leila was basically based on Hadara Sana and again that was based on such so many things from India in the context of idea and so on two things are very striking in terms of the accounts that could be related geographically in the Indian coast there have been some efforts in this regard so that it's not simply the fiction rather it is related to the fact number one number two what have been the possibilities of the relationship between the accounts in Agaib and the tools that we find in the Al-Qaeda or Leila in the Indian context two main points physically yes the names of ports are factual not only in India by the way this is why we have Southeast Asia and up to Indian China and of course the commonality which mentions a number of islands and ports and yes a lot of it of this tradition is of course Sanskrit and Persian of course thank you literally texts of ancient times are differing there's very much about Ominah and you could have known better if you have if you have seen this sign or if you have taken this sign into consideration this is of any importance to these texts as well so by starting the cruise there's some light signal which might sign to the later development that there is a catastrophe ahead of something like this or are they utterly surprised surprise that's an interesting I'm not aware of this talking about other stories but it's very important in ancient times you could have known this because Ominah are even today of great importance on which side to spit on which side to stand etc is of great importance to seafaring up to today so how did they want to prepare for the travel by some some gestures habits or something they made to secure travel are we talking factory but the customs are factory but the literary text makes something out of it as well which is purely fictional so there's a crow coming coming from heavens he's flying right left everybody knows that you don't have to get on the journey when there's a crow flying as far as I know from the stories that I have read and I've heard them a few times this element of surprise is much more common I've had to take a picture thanks I was wondering you mentioned from the text that happens during the travel on see but I mean that kind has been occupied by the the existence of the sea travel itself to say to me on the ship and you mentioned the Quran also and there are Quranic references between the two types of travel travel by land, travel by sea is there anything in the text that you read that describes the particularity of the travel by sea in this type of general way specifically in the stories to some extent yes I mean as opposed to traveling by land well all the stories are I mean that the travel at sea or travel by sea as such has been a symbol for a way of being way of living yes it's mentioned but my not in the agile but by historians or geographers so you have got your experience what would you say if the particularity of the travel by sea is it virtuous in what sense my experience in other words you know if you take the ship as a symbol of the way of going to life as a voyage a particular type of voyage how would you think of travel by land or what is the particularity of it we're not talking philosophically over here because I have to be careful not to the question is coming from a philosopher no no because I mean there's something there were many advantages by traveling by sea as opposed to by land sea was shorter the distance were shorter by land you had problems problems of moving at winds length of distance while the sea worked with the monsoondial winds which worked in a six month cycle there were many benefits what does it mean that they were not hazardous they were as we have seen from the stories there's something there but I in philosophy this is quite interesting because from an interior perspective it is the other way around the land is more safe and you can go from city to city and everything is fine when you're on the sea you are highly dependent on the gods and if they want you to die you die but you can't do anything on your own if the gods want you to die it's that way so it's completely the other way around the way by land was very much the same way I think you'll be surprised to know that going by land they were worried and it wasn't safe in neither way was safe but there was a feeling that you could do more on your own when you were by land you could prepare for thieves or robbers or anything like this by taking men into or getting extra gods but on a sea with a strong what can you do you're completely lost so this is the difference yes I think that the most important aspect of this type of stories is the invention of danger it's more inventing danger than danger itself and then this is for the sake of creating the hero which you said by the end you provided us with several aspects and it looks like the colonial adventure stories also built later on in the land in central speaking for example about English the English language later on built a lot on this aspect of inventing danger so it can be though if it's not the weather then it is women are also a major source of danger it's always this engulfic woman type of woman which engulfs enticing women which should be subdued I mean this is what happens I mean it's a very interesting perspective obviously I don't subscribe to it 100% but there is some element of it that I agree with you and the danger there was danger when you hear the stories I mean in my book I see very many people that tell these stories you know where especially different divers and so on the danger was incredible unexpected you know where in games unexpected women and cuttings you hear so many times of hundreds of ships of dollars so too cruel to say that they yes natural dangers are there I mean storms don't forget that there is the element of enticing come up with some exaggeration but sea men do exaggerate they like that they love it so what extent is theological thought reflected in these stories for example kada or predestination by god I mean you have to ship because god predestined is there a notion of theological thought in these stories or are they only entertainment folk theology popular belief popular belief popular belief so superstition is very strong and in my book we all have the scene of the storm and you all look like there is famous stories about many Lusak they called them Nasi Zahid in the ship and especially there was a story about Adraham when there was a sage with them in the ship and started praying in order to save the ship from the storm and the clouds that they started to extend their tanks to move the ship everywhere so there was an element of exaggeration definitely which one is Al-Wa'aiz Al-Ajaib we have examples in the Ajaib of piracy the identity of the pirates is clear when they come from India they were famous but then they were which side of the coast on the west Indian coast but also on the south they are mentioned and with the decline of Sira there is anything historical question with the decline of Sira there is another hub that takes over that function because presumably maritime travel did not have the decline of Sira do we know anything about you notice these sea stories up to this very day there is no connection of sea stories there is a joke you can do because this has perpetuated the idea that Arabs are not sailors but clearly we have early evidence of the fact that they are but what the Ajaib brings out maybe it is cosmopolitan it is an illusion of India it is amazing it describes as Islam Islam was cosmopolitan Muslim and non-Muslim often living in harmony that is what I was preaching in Bahrain if only we go back to those times when we lived in harmony unfortunately there is no graphic that we are finding in Ajaib and also in Sira they have totally based on the ERC and some other tradition for that it must have been corrected in some power studies just let me collect one example because I just recollect the text of a place in Sira he mentions about the illicit relationship between women in India and the first class a particular punishment which is actually incorrect for example burning yes such class of traditions have never been taught of any different science okay this is where the history of course the archaeology came in look at Sira yes that's it I mean there is once the question is finished I will tell you about the story okay according according to the Ajaib the headache little story abandoned ship they went on the ships boat small 12 of them there was this fat boy quite plump he was doing what they called the cabin boy and they were rowing one day two days rowing to an island getting weaker and weaker four days they were still rowing and the eyes the seamen fell on this boy this boy was rowing his eyes until suddenly this boy turned his face and he said land and it ends there right the whole thing is that they were going to be rowing yes so nice entertaining but also normal well if there are no more comments we can perhaps break for coffee and I would like to thank very much Dr. and Bruce for coming in tie it together