The library’s entrance with the security booth to the left. Photo Credit: Yasemin Akçagüner.
Off the beaten track of researchers and scholars of the Ottoman Empire, Tire Necip Paşa Library is an endowment (Tr. vakıf, Ar. waqf) library dating back to the early-nineteenth century located in the Turkish town of Tire in Izmir province. Sometimes spelled Necippaşa or Necib Paşa, this library is more accurately described as a manuscript museum and conservation site. Established in 1827-28 by the Ottoman statesman Mehmed Necib Paşa, the library boasts 5156 titles that include 1754 manuscripts and 3402 print books in modern Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian. The library continues to serve researchers through digitization services and limited capacity in-person viewings in its original location today.
The digital exhibition had been introduced to the cultural heritage scene before the pandemic, but since Spring 2020, it’s here to stay, in part because of the accessibility of the form and in part, because increased familiarity with digital curation has allowed students, independent researchers, and others to partake in carefully bringing together objects and pairing them with one another. However, very few, if any, have tackled a digital exhibition exploring scent. That’s the challenge the curators of Bagh-e Hind, Bharti Lalwani and Nicolas Roth, have set themselves. The exhibition explores 17th and 18th century India through both the lens of scent and the garden: each exhibition room is based around either rose, narcissus, smoke, iris, or kewra, featuring not only paintings where the scent is part of what is being communicated, but poetry in translation, other objects related to those scents, and the curators’ notes, so we can follow along behind the scenes.
As Bagh-e Hind represents the collaboration between an academic and a perfumer (who is also an art critic), it sits nicely at the nexus of the communities Hazine is trying to cater to. Beyond simply documenting the curation of such an exhibition, there’s also something intriguing about the history of olfaction, which is often thought of as elusive: yet, Lalwani and Roth bring together multiple wells of knowledge to allow us to smell the past and challenge our ways of knowing.
A wax cylinder turning on a Thomas Edison phonograph
The sound recording industry blossomed in the Ottoman and Arab world at the turn of the twentieth century. Initially in the hands of entrepreneurs like the Blumenthal Brothers in Istanbul, British, French and German companies (like Gramophone, Pathé and Odeon) were soon to take over. Competition to sign the big stars – like Egyptian vocalist Yusuf al-Manyalawi (1847-1911) – heated up. Technology changed quickly, too. The earliest entrepreneurs had started with the wax cylinder phonograph, patented by Edison in 1887. Phonographs were a remarkable invention – portable, robust and, eventually, affordable. But the cylinders on which they recorded and played back sound were none of these things. They were hard to duplicate, fragile, and wore out quickly on repeated playing. By 1903, shellac disc recording began to take over.
عندما كنا نفكّر في موضوع للدعوة لكتابة المقالات المتعلقة بممارسة الفن واستهلاكه، أردنا أن نترك الباب مفتوحًا إلى حدٍ ما ولكن أردنا أيضًا أن نشجّع الكتّاب على التفكير النقدي في موضوع أثّر على حياتنا ومعيشتنا بشكلٍ لا نستطيع إنكاره، ألا وهو المجال الرقمي، وهناك الكثير من الكتابات والأبحاث النقدية التي تضع موضوع التطوّر الرقمي وما قدّمه لنا (وما أخذه منا) نَصب أعينها، ولكن علينا أيضًا مناقشة التغييرات التي طرأت على الفن بشكلٍ خاصٍ بفعل التطوّر الرقمي وكيفية ممارستنا واستهلاكنا له في ظل هذا التطوّر.
خلال الشهور القادمة، سنقوم بنشر مجموعة من المقالات بالعربية وبالإنجليزية ضمن هذه السلسلة لمناقشة قضايا تتعلق بماهية الفن الرقمي، وكيف أثّرت التكنولوجيا الرقمية على انتشار الفن، والطرق التي يقوم هؤلاء الشغوفين بالفن باستهلاكه والاستمتاع به، خصوصًا في أوقاتنا هذه التي ينتشر فيها وباء كورونا، وأيضًا، ما قدمته مواقع التواصل الاجتماعي للمشهد الفني. سنبدأ هذه السلسلة بمقالٍ باللغة العربية من تأليف إسلام علّام حيث يشارك معنا العملية الفكرية التي رافقت رحلته نحو تطوير أسلوبه الخاص في الفن الرقمي.
خلال السنة الماضية، قمنا بتقديم محتوى أكبر عن الفن بشكل خاص، وأثناء البحث عن الفنانين لكتابة المقالات وإجراء المقابلات معهم، أردنا أن نظهر أفكار مختلفة يتم إهمالها أحيانًا أثناء الممارسة والتفكير في الفن مثل الخط العربي، ولكنها تؤثّر على جوانب مختلفة من حياتنا، منها الجوانب الثقافية، وأردنا أيضًا إلقاء الضوء على مناطق مختلفة يظن الكثيرون أنها لا ترتبط ببعض الممارسات الفنية ولكنها مرتبطة بها بشكل تاريخي ووثيق. أيضًا، بدأنا مؤخرًا بالعمل على المراجعات النقدية للمعارض الفنية –وهذه مبادرة منفصلة عن سلسلة الفن والمجال الرقمي هذه– وقمنا بنشر أول هذه المراجعات وسنقوم بنشر المزيد خلال الأشهر القادمة، وبعض الأهداف من كتابة هذه المراجعات تكمن في اهتمامنا بالفن الإسلامي والتصميم بشكل واسع، وأيضًا أهمية التفكّر في الأساليب التي يقوم الفنانون باستخدامها أثناء ابتكارهم للأعمال الفنية والرسائل التي يتم إرسالها للمتلقي في ظل سياقات اجتماعية وسياسية واقتصادية معينة، ونرى أيضًا أن الممارسات الفنية مرتبطة ارتباط وثيق بالممارسات الأرشيفية والمكتبية. ونحن لا نتحدث فقط عن الفن فقد بدأنا أيضًا باستخدامه –في شكل القصة المصورة– كوسيلة للتحدث عن مواضيع اجتماعية مهمة، مثل المصدر المفتوح وكيفية تعريفه، للوصول لنوع آخر من المتعلم، وهو المتعلم البصري.
نتمنى أن تقوم هذه السلسلة بتشجيع الفنانين والمهتمين بالفن أن يكونوا على دراية بالأدوار المهمة التي يلعبها المجال الرقمي أثناء ممارستهم واستهلاكهم للفن والتي يمكن أن تكون سلبية في بعض الأحيان. أثناء نشرنا للمقالات، ننتظر منكم أن تشاركونا آرائكم بشأن المواضيع المطروحة. سنقوم بوضع روابط المقالات أدناه عند نشر كل مقال. إذا كان لديك رغبة في كتابة مقال عن موضوع خاص بممارسة الفن أو استهلاكه أو إذا كان هناك معرض يقام في منطقتك تريد أن تتحدث عنه أو تكتب مقال نقدي عنه، يمكنك التواصل معنا: hazineblog {@} gmail.com.
As we were brainstorming a theme for the call for pitches for essays on artistic practice and consumption, we sought to keep it relatively open but also to encourage critical thought on a phenomenon that has indisputably influenced how we go about our lives: the digital sphere. While there has been much critical discourse on the things that digital advancement has given (and taken away from) us, it is important to discuss how it has changed the ways in which we have practiced and consumed art.
Over the coming months, this series will present articles, in both Arabic and English, that discuss what constitutes digital art, how digital technology has influenced the dissemination of art, the ways in which art enthusiasts consume art, particularly in pandemic times, and what social media has brought to the art scene. We’ll begin our series with an essay in Arabic by Islam Allam where he takes us through the thought process that accompanied his journey towards developing his own digital artistic style.
The last year has seen Hazine slowly expand its offerings on art. While searching for artists to profile and interview, we have kept an open eye for modes of thought that are often overlooked while creating and thinking about artwork like Arabic calligraphy, as well as work that is done in settings that are not necessarily associated with certain artistic practices. We have also sought to emphasize that certain forms of art can and may belong to more peoples than we may assume. We recently began running exhibition reviews –distinct from the Art in the Digital Sphere series– and you’ll see more of those in the next few months. Part of the motivation behind this expansion is our commitment to Islamic art –broadly defined– and design. We’re also seeking to better understand and critique the methods which artists use in their work and the messages that viewers receive in light of particular social, political and economic contexts. Another element of it is our acknowledgement that artistic practice and curation overlap with archival and library practices. We have also begun, not only discussing artistic practice, but also using it as a tool –in the form of comics– to appeal to the visual learner to discuss significant issues, such as open access and how we define it.
We hope that this series will encourage practitioners and consumers of art to be critically aware of the important, and sometimes adverse, roles that the digital plays in their practice and consumption. As we release the essays, we’d like to know your thoughts on the ideas discussed. We’ll be linking the essays below as they come out. Get in touch and let us know if you want to contribute something on artistic practice, consumption or discourse or if there’s an exhibition in your area that you’d like to review: hazineblog {@} gmail.com.
Destined for the heights. Destined to strive and reach the unattainable. Destined to preserve and create a new level of consciousness, understanding. Some may say I took the meaning of my name too literally. Perhaps I did, but is your name not part of your identity? A namesake that you should strive to embody? I suppose that would also depend on what your name means. For I am blessed to have my name serve as a constant reminder of my light, my purpose. Aaraf: derived from the Holy Quran (Surat Al-’Araf- Chapter 7) and translated from Arabic to mean ‘theheights’. It is who I am, it is where I will always go.
From the first commercial audio recordings at the turn of the 20th century to the 1940s, a dozen or so record companies made tens of thousands of audio recordings for sale across the globe to the peoples and diasporas of the southern and eastern Mediterranean regions.* The vast majority of these recordings were of music, but they also included recordings of comedy sketches, political speeches, Qur’anic recitations, and a smattering of other audio forms. Recording companies sought to capitalise on the region’s communal diversity by recording materials in Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Greek, Armenian and other local languages; especially after realising that there was a market for these materials in diaspora communities from the region, particularly in the Americas. Beyond commercial recordings, the region’s audio heritage includes a large volume of one-of-a-kind recordings, such as radio transcriptions prepared for broadcasts, ethnographic recordings, home recordings by amateurs, and so on.
A sampling of records and their sleeves from UCSB’s Historical Recordings Collection (Photo credit: Heather Hughes)
Over a century later, several archives with varying breadths to their collection mandates have identified these recordings as priority areas for collection, preservation, exhibition and digital curation. In this piece, I aim to provide information that could be useful to researchers of the southern and eastern Mediterranean regions who are interested in such things as recording history, cultural heritage, music, and archival practices and provenance. I profile five institutions with some of the most substantial collections of relevance to the history of audio recording in the region: the AMAR Foundation (Lebanon), The Palestinian Institute for Cultural Development-Nawa (Palestine), Centre des Musiques Arabes et Méditerranéennes: Tunisian National Sound Archive (Tunisia), the British Library (UK) and the University of California at Santa Barbara Library (USA).
Music is a shared love amongst those of us on the Hazine team, and we are excited to present this series on music sources and archives, and the interplay between historical recordings and performance. Inspired by projects and labels such Ian Nagoski’s Canary Records, Arshia Haq’s Discostan, Jonathan Ward’s Excavated Shellac, Chris Silver’s Gharamophone, and and Hatim Arbaab Eujayl’s The Sounds of Sudan, and having worked at an institution with an amazing audio collection such as UCSB, has made me want to spotlight some of these amazing resources as well all as profile collections outside our area of knowledge, particularly outside the United States and Europe.
We are also cognizant of the fact that much audio archiving and preservation is happening with limited or no institutional support. We hope that this series would bring visibility to collections and archival work in the Middle East, Mediterranean region, and South Asia; encourage greater use of music and sound sources in research and teaching; examine archival work in different contexts; and also look at the unique relationship between performers and historical records.
We’ll kick off the series with a helpful overview on the various institutions collecting music and materials on music from Palestine to California. Over the next few months we’ll release pieces exploring wax cylinders as a format and their impact on Nahda-era music, ways of finding the voices of South Asian women in archives and sources, and a critical look at musical compilations and labels that distribute music from the Global South.
We would love to expand this series! Get in touch and let us know if you want to contribute something on music and sound: hazineblog {@} gmail.com.
Figure 1: Still from “At those terrifying frontiers,” with Palestinian hills in the background (Photo credit: N.A. Mansour)
Maybe I just have to resign myself to the fact that some Palestinian art is not made for me, a Palestinian.
When Palestinian culture is given some representation at major institutions and major publications, my instinct is to support it, even though I know diversity, equity and inclusion policies are instrumentalized as corporate tools. I try to be optimistic.
I tried to be optimistic when I heard that the Art Institute of Chicago was running Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s exhibition If only this mountain between us could be ground to dust, from July 31, 2021 until January 3, 2022. It’s one of the very few shows the Art Institute of Chicago has organized featuring contemporary artists from the Arabic-speaking world; it might even be the first, certainly the only in the last decade. The Art Institute’s permanent collection has a poor record when it comes to modern Arab artists, with only a handful representing the region, including Ghada Amer, Lalla Assia Essaydi, and Jacob El Hanani. Compare that to the dozens of Warhols perpetually on display.
Why are manuscripts critical to Islamic and Islamicate studies, and how do they impact pedagogy? How does material culture help us venture into the past, and how do manuscripts affect religious practice, be it Muslim, Coptic, Armenian, etc? Hazine is seeking 3-4 pieces on manuscripts and material culture from the Mashriq, Maghreb, East Africa, West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, Iran, Greece, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean broadly that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
MS Or 503, MS Or 504, MS Or 191, Ḥirz Chahārdeh Ma’ṣūmīn, undated, Persia, Twelver Talismanic scrolls worn as amulets, located at RBML Columbia University. (Photo credit: Shabbir Agha Abbas)
Miniatures, calligraphy, and other forms of Islamicate art
Talismans, amulets, and other items from the occult sciences
New findings that challenge established notions, such as variant readings
Technical aspects of handling and preserving manuscripts; innovations in the field of conservation and preservation
Efforts on decolonizing western manuscript collections, including archive reviews
Send pitches to hazineblog[at]gmail.com. This is an open-ended call.
Pitches should be no longer than 300 words and should be accompanied by a few sentences telling us who you are. Pitches (and pieces) are accepted in English; we accept essays and are open to different forms such as resource guides, archive reviews, as well as creative formats like zines and comics. We welcome different forms of style as we expand the essay category of the site but do have a look at the essays we’ve run previously, like this one on typography and this one on archivy, because they demonstrate what we’re really looking for: a strong point of view. Completed essays –if accepted– will be 2000 words or less. Deadlines for completed pieces are flexible. Each piece is paid at least 100 USD upon publication; we are in the process of adjusting our fees.
Our Logo as Stickers: our visuals are designed by Marwa Gadallah (Photo Credit: N.A. Mansour)
Hazine fundraised for the very first time in the summer of 2020 and since then, with your support, we’ve been able to pay our web hosting fees, launch a new visual identity, and translate some of our materials into Arabic, including an essay on Arabic typography and our digital visual resources guide. Most importantly, we have been able to pay our writers and editors: this has resulted in all sorts of new content, to resource guides for learning non-Arabic Sudanese languages, an inclusive pedagogy series, interviews and more. We are so grateful for the funds we received during last year’s campaign and what that has allowed us to achieve.
We value being able to pay our writers and editors, as well as expanding into Arabic; it is very rarely done in academia and publications like Contingent have paved the way in terms of paying their writers and team. We are grateful to them and hope to follow in their lead. Additionally, we are focused on providing a space and support for writers who might not be able to publish such work elsewhere: encouraging creative and intellectual freedom requires time and energy from our team and our writers. In order to offer more competitive fees to our writers –many of whom are freelance writers or graduate students from outside the US and Europe– and to fairly compensate our editors for their intellectual labor, we are launching our 2021 fundraising campaign, with an aim of raising 10,000 USD. In addition, the funds we raise will allow us to bring on guest editors for special series, further diversifying our content.
This year, in order to thank our donors, we’re able to send a small gift according to a tiered system. Our gifts are based on our visual identity, which is rooted in Islamic art and spearheaded by our arts editor, Marwa Gadallah. The best way to support our work is to set up a monthly donation to help us plan for the year.
You can also make a one-time donation equivalent to a year at one of the following levels ($5, $10, or $20) and receive the related thank you gifts:
Set up a recurring donation of at least $5 a month and you’ll receive a bookmark, a postcard and a sticker.
Set up a recurring donation of at least $10 a month and you’ll receive a bookmark, a postcard, a sticker and a magnet.
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Note to our current monthly donors: we will honor your continuing contributions and send you rewards that match the tiers. Please contact us at hazineblog{@}gmail.com if you haven’t heard from us already to send us an up-to-date postal address.
All of our donors will receive some small token of our thanks.
Use the form below to donate; please include your mailing address in the ‘Notes’ section. We are grateful for your continued support.
