Books published by publisher Gorgias Press LLC

This book is a classic in the history of the Oriental Churches, which are sometimes portrayed as heretical in general church history books, if mentioned at all. Written by a Copt, it portrays the history of the faith of these non-Chalcedonian Churches with first-hand knowledge of their traditions. The author covers Alexandrine Christianity (the Copts and the Ethiopians), the Church of Antioch (Syriac Orthodox), the Nestorian Church of the East, the Armenian Church, the St. Thomas Christians of South India, the Maronite Church, as well as the Vanished Churches of Carthage, Pentapolis, and Nubia.

This book discusses the alphabetic scribes (s piru) mentioned in Mesopotamian documents of the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods specifically, of the 6th-5th centuries bce. The period in question saw a wide diffusion of writing in the Northwest Semitic alphabetic script mostly in Aramaic in Mesopotamia; yet, alphabetic texts were normally written in ink on perishable materials and did not survive to be discovered by modern archaeologists. In contrast, cuneiform tablets written on clay have been found in large numbers, and they document different aspects of the alphabetic scribes activities. This book presents evidence for understanding the Akkadian term s piru as a designation for an alphabetic scribe and discusses the functions of these professionals in different administrative and economic spheres. It further considers the question of the ethnic origins of the alphabetic scribes in Mesopotamia, with special attention to the participation of Judeans in Babylonia in this profession. Bloch also provides translations of over 100 cuneiform documents of economic, legal and administrative content.

W. Warde Fowler's The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic gives a detailed commentary on Roman religious festivals covering public and sometimes non-public worship. It constitutes an introduction to the religion of the Romans aimed at students and scholars of history, literature, anthropology and history of religion. The book begins with a thorough introduction on the Roman calendar system. In the course of twelve chapters, the author catalogues and presents the festivals of each month of the year.

A prominent novelist, social activist, journalist, and nationalist, Halide Adivar Edib (1882-1964) was one of Turkey's leading feminists in the Young Turk and early Republican period. Memoirs is the first book in her two volume English-language autobiography, published in 1926, whilst she and her second husband Dr. Adnan were in exile in London and Paris having fallen out of favor with Mustafa Kemal's one-party regime. Ýn it Edib describes her childhood, her confrontation with her first husband's polygyny, her divorce, and her entry into political and literary writing. Providing an account of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, the Balkan and First World Wars, and ending with the demise of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Edib explains her philosophy of pacifist nationalism, and her ideas on Islam and Islamic civilisation. Her retrospective account of Young Turk and nationalist politics, emphasizing the agency of Ottoman women in their fight for emancipation, aimed to redress the Kemalist account of Republican historiography, which undermined the activities of the Young Turks in order to praise the reforms of the Republican period. Edib's account of her private life provides a unique example of a woman's individual and personal struggle for emancipation and gender equality. Hülya Adak is Assistant Professor in the Cultural Studies Program, Sabanc University, Istanbul, Turkey. Cultures in Dialogue returns to print sources by women writers from the East and West. Series One considers the exchanges between Ottoman, British, and American women from the 1880s to the 1940s. Their varied responses to dilemmas such as nationalism, female emancipation, race relations and modernization in the context of the stereotypes characteristic of Western harem literature reframe the historical tensions between Eastern and Western cultures, offering a nuanced understanding of their current manifestations.

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

In Sunshine and Storm in the East, or Cruises to Cyprus and Constantinople, Lady Annie Brassey (1839-1887) exemplifies the keen eye for human interest and narrative detail that propelled her to international fame as a travel writer. These pages present a daily diary of two voyages to Constantinople aboard the family yacht, Sunbeam. Here, the modern reader may glimpse the natural wonders, cultural distinctions, and political circumstances of such countries as Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Italy, Greece, and Turkey during the mid-1870s. Whether Lady Brassey is describing a boar hunt in rural Algeria, speculating on the causes of fever, or relating her tea-time conversation with the wives of Sultan Abdülaziz in their Turkish harems, she is always a cheerful, informed, and compelling guide. One also finds in this book an excellent example of the nineteenth-century European fascination with the "Orient" as a place of exotic customs, redolent sensuality, and commonplace cruelty-a place, that is, existing partly as a complex metaphor for imperial Europe's attitude toward "the Other" and partly as a socio-political reality. Scott A. Leonard is Professor of English at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, USA Cultures in Dialogue returns to print sources by women writers from the East and West. Series One considers the exchanges between Ottoman, British, and American women from the 1880s to the 1940s. Their varied responses to dilemmas such as nationalism, female emancipation, race relations and modernization in the context of the stereotypes characteristic of Western harem literature reframe the historical tensions between Eastern and Western cultures, offering a nuanced understanding of their current manifestations.

Hester Donaldson Jenkins (1869-1941), a professor at the American College for Girls in Constantinople from 1900-1909, wrote enthusiastically about the Young Turks, who in 1908 established a constitutional monarchy in the Ottoman Empire. They seemed to Jenkins to promise new freedoms for Ottoman women. In this book Jenkins uses her own observations of Constantinople, her students, and their families to construct an account of a "typical" Turkish Muslim woman's life cycle at this turning point in Ottoman history. She intends her comments on childhood, education, marriage, polygamy, and divorce to correct Western misapprehensions and she notes how Ottoman women selectively adopted Western customs, such as European clothing, and increasingly practiced monogamy. Jenkins's corrective is only partial, however, for she describes Turkish women as childishly charming but sadly ignorant and in need of the uplifting influences of Western education. In its confidence in the bright prospects of American influence and Ottoman reform, this book captures an optimistic moment in which social progress seemed to prevail against the looming social and ethnic divisions of the Balkan and First World Wars. Carolyn Goffman is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA. Cultures in Dialogue returns to print sources by women writers from the East and West. Series One considers the exchanges between Ottoman, British, and American women from the 1880s to the 1940s. Their varied responses to dilemmas such as nationalism, female emancipation, race relations and modernization in the context of the stereotypes characteristic of Western harem literature reframe the historical tensions between Eastern and Western cultures, offering a nuanced understanding of their current manifestations.