The article gathers comments on selected articles to be found in the 1964 Constitution of Afghanistan - the third in Afghanistan’s history but at the same time the first in many respects, not only because of its modern, by the standards of the time, nature, as it was supposed to change the nature of the monarchy from an absolute into a constitutional/parliamentary one. The text is divided into four parts: (0) Introduction, where the aims of the analysis and reasons for writing the text have been presented; (1) Historical perspective of the Afghanistan’s constitutional movement; (2) In-depth comments on: (i) Royal Promulgation, (ii) The Preamble, and (iii) nineteen articles; as well as (3) Conclusions.

In this article, I explore the content of Iran’s first women’s newspaper, Dānish (‘Knowledge’), published in Tehran in 1910–1911. Using the method of close reading, I address the question of the model of womanhood that was presented in the pages of the weekly. In this regard, I examine selected articles that appeared in the surviving issues of Dānish, distinguishing three dominant thematic areas: the education of girls and women; marital relationships; child rearing, hygiene, and health care. By putting the journal’s discourse in the context of the discussion on ‘women’s issues’ that was ongoing in the press during the Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911), I reflect on the relationship between the agenda of the early Iranian women’s movement and the discourse of constitutionalist nationalism.

While much attention has been paid to several dialectal Arabic narrative and poetic genres, Negev Arabic (NA) daḥīyah songs (NA diḥḥiyyih, also known as daḥḥa) have received little scholarly attention. I report here eight traditional Negev Bedouin daḥīyah songs, one neo- daḥīyah, and one haǧīn (NA hiǧnih) - recorded during personal meetings with informants from 2017 to 2019 - in transcription and translation with some stylistic and linguistic comments. Background information is provided on the characteristics of this vernacular genre - its performance, contents, and scope - and its evolution. Daḥīyah has profoundly changed in content, language, and form in the transition from traditional Negev Bedouin society - before the establishment of the State of Israel - to the present. Originally a form of martial collective chant and dance mainly performed at wedding celebrations, the daḥīyah has gained popularity in neighboring sedentary Palestinian communities, where it has become an expression of identity, resistance, and revolt on various festive occasions. Today, several closely interconnected daḥīyah types coexist in the Negev, from songs that adhere to traditional models in terms of composition and performance to neo- daḥīyah.

While the debates of the first term of Iranian Parliament- the National Consultative Assembly, or Majles (1906-1908) - have long been an important source for historians and other scholars, no serious effort has ever been undertaken to try and properly understand this historical source. As a result, a number of misconceptions exist about the debates of the early parliament and what survives as their minutes. The present paper aims to dispel some of these misconceptions by focusing on two issues: 1) whether - and to what extent - what survived to our day (by the virtue of being published in the Majles newspaper) should be considered the official minutes of the parliament; 2) what were some of the characteristics of the later edition of the minutes published as the supplement to the Official Gazette of Iran. This is achieved by the careful analysis of a number of sources, mainly the debates themselves, legal documents, periodicals and memoirs.

This article looks at Iranian television series and how their creators dealt with historical themes, especially those related to the Qajar dynasty and the Iranian Constitutional Movement. The study is focused on the works of three selected Iranian filmmakers - Ali Hatami, Mohammad Reza Varzi, and Mehran Modiri. Its main objective is to identify the dominant approach to history they have applied in their works. By analyzing their television activities, the paper discusses debates that accompanied serials broadcast, their reception among the critics, and seeks to reflect on the place and role historical productions play in the cultural, social, or political context in modern Iran.

We are currently witnessing the demise of Arab-Jewish identity and culture - a tradition that started more than 1,500 years ago is vanishing before our very own eyes. Until the twentieth century, the great majority of the Jews under the rule of Islam used Arabic as their language but after the establishment of the State of Israel, Arabic has been gradually disappearing as a language mastered by Jews. The Arabized Jews have been deliberately excluded from Arabism to the point that we can now assume an unspoken agreement between Zionism and Arab nationalism to carry out a total cleansing of Arab-Jewish identity and culture. The present article focuses on the changes in the concept of identity and belonging among the Arabized Jews, especially the Iraqi-Baghdadi intellectuals among them. As I previously argued, due to some processes that those Jews had experienced during the twentieth century and because of some global developments, they gradually developed a negative sensitivity toward the notion of stable identity, whatever identity. Instead of that, they started to assert, explicitly and implicitly, their particular singularities and to search for alternative forms of identification, mostly various kinds of inessential solidarity and belonging. The article refers as well to the scholarship on Arab-Jewish identity and culture that has frequently been moving into non-academic spaces, neglecting the necessary unbiased scholarly discourse.

This article analyzes an unusual document in the Arabic dialect of the marshlands of southern Iraq. Written by a Jewish Iraqi poet, who arrived in Israel from the city of ʿAmāra in the late 1940s, this document consists of two monologues, each repeated twice: first in Hebrew letters and then again in Arabic script. While the writer evidently spoke a qǝltu dialect as his mother tongue, the monologues demonstrate the gilit dialect of the southern Iraqi marshes, and include several idiosyncrasies of that region. The document thus provides linguistic evidence from a dialect area so far documented only partially and insufficiently. We have been able to identify significant differences between the Arabic and Hebrew versions, which led us to view the former as a more reliable attestation of the linguistic reality of the Iraqi marshlands, and the latter as a version produced at a later stage. The writer’s intention was apparently to demonstrate the close inter-communal relations between the Jews of southern Iraq and the Marsh Arabs, yet his attempt to reproduce a text in the marshland’s dialect reveals a more complex picture: While the marshland gilit dialect was known to the qǝltu speakers of the area, the shift between the varieties remained challenging, as is often the case in co-territorial communal dialects.

The following article can serve as yet another report from the workshop of an Etymological Dictionary of Arabic ( EtymArab).1 Work on a ‘zero version’ of such a dictionary has seen (slow but) steady progress since several years now. Taking the root √SLQ as an example, this contribution gives an idea about the high potential of such a project, but also shows its clear actual limits. The enormous spectrum of semantic values covered by √SLQ—one may distinguish more than thirty meanings that, at first sight, do not seem related to each other—provides a fine illustration of the complex composition of the modern as well as the classical lexicon. The current state of affairs in Arabic etymology allows us, to a certain degree, to ‘sort out things’ and bring some order into this confusing complexity. In many cases, however, research also remains ‘hanging in the air’.

This article discusses some proposals aimed at creating a new discipline named polonistyka (Polish studies), an umbrella term which would encompass those research (sub)divisions that fall outside the traditional academic taxonomy. The article identifies three cultural turns whose shockwave effect have significantly changed the face of the humanities. They are the transition from the analogue to the digital; an impasse in the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies; and the continual fragmentation of research interests. The new discipline, as envisaged by the article, would reintegrate and provide institutional recognition to all kinds of studies, projects and probes. It would also create a framework for some kind of academic certification of research interests that are in dispute. To achieve these goals it would be necessary to redefine the subject matter, the scope as well as the functioning of the new discipline. That, in turn, implies a reformatting of the legacy model of teaching and study to fit in with the new discipline. The transition is absolutely necessary, not least because of the real danger of marginalization and pauperization of the profession (i.e. teachers and specialists in the field of ‘Polish philology’).

From its beginnings – in Poland it was the second half of the 18th century – the novel, a genre that eluded the distinctions of traditional normative poetics, had to face all kinds of strictures, not only in the sphere of aesthetics. At the same time, due to its innovatory representation of reality and its effectiveness as a tool of persuasion, it aroused a genuine interest among the enlightened elites. This positive attitude appears to have been shared by Ignacy Krasicki, whose work (not excepting novels) was generally regarded as a model of unparalleled literary excellence. This article re-examines his achievement as a novelist and discusses at greater length his first novel Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki. Published in 1776, it was the first Polish novel and the most interesting example of early realistic fiction until the appearance in 1815 of Dwaj panowie Sieciechowie by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz.

This article marks the 400th anniversary of a series of bloody battles which were fought from 2 September until 9 October 1621 between the Polish-Lithuanian army and the invading Ottoman armies led by Sultan Osman II. Intent on defeating Poland and conquering all of Europe, the 17-year-old sultan gathered well over 100,000 troops, probably the largest fighting force ever assembled on one battlefield. The campaign culminated in the Battle of Chocim (Khotyn), in which the Turks lost approximately 40 thousand men (one third of the invasion force). As a result Osman II was compelled to back off and sign a peace treaty which brought to an end his plans of expansion. What turned the fortunes of war in favour of Poland was a conjunction of two factors, the indomitable fighting spirit of the soldiers in the field and, no less important, the use of modern defence tactics under the agile command of Hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz. While the victory at Chocim aroused great interest not just in Poland, nowhere was its significance given so much weight as in Rome. Pope Gregory XV issued a breve Victoriarum gloria and instituted a special thanksgiving service (officium gratiarum) to be celebrated in Catholic churches worldwide. The article looks again at these, better known reactions to the Polish-Ottoman war of 1620–1621 before exploring a raft of diaries and memoirs, in manuscript and printed, and various types of publications, including leaflets describing the battles, published in various languages in Poland and all over Europe. However, at the centre of this study is the poetic legacy of the war. The poems in which the war is remembered and celebrated focus their praise either on Hetman Chodkiewicz or Prince Władysław Waza (the future king of Poland), who was also present at Chocim. The article examines this duality primarily in the poems of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, Samuel Twardowski, Wacław Potocki, Ignacy Krasicki and the Croatian Baroque poet Ivan Gundulić.

It was with great sadness that we learned on 18 October 2021 of the death of the distinguished Italian Slavist and Polonist Sante Graciotti, professor emeritus of the Sapienza University of Rome. This personal tribute, written on the first anniversary of his death, begins with a recollection of the ceremony of awarding Sane Graciotti the title of Doctor honoris causa by the Jagiellonian University. on 16 December 1986. The laudatio, delivered by Professor Tadeusz Ulewicz, presented our guest's achievements and the main stages of his academic life. It began with the study of Italian philology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan and came to a turning point at La Sapienza in Rome, where he pivoted towards Slavic philology. The youthful fascination became a lifelong commitment which earned him the acclaim and honours that are the crown of an academic career. Finally, he concentrated his attention on Poland, Polish history and culture, and the history of Polish-Italian cultural relations. In his explorations of the new field, he could count on the friendly assistance of his Polish colleagues, especially Tadeusz Ulewicz, a historian of Polish literature with a profound knowledge of the historical ties between Poland and Italy. The respect they had for each other's work led to the promotion of Graciotti's research in Poland and the awarding of the doctorate honoris causa to Tadeusz Ulewicz by the Università Cattolica in Milan.

This is a presentation of letters regarding Maria Konopnicka from the Maria Dulębianka Papers held at the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv. After Maria Konopnicka's death in 1910 Dulębianka kept in touch with the poet's youngest sister Celina Świrska and her daughter Laura Pytlińska. Apart from tracing letters and notes written by Konopnicka's close relatives, the author of this presentation has gone through the letters of a wide circle of Maria Dulębianka's friends and acquaintances, among them Jan Baudoin de Courtenay, Stanisław Karol Lineburg (social activist from Suwałki) and Paulina Kuczalska-Reinschmitt (women's rights activist). Their correspondence gives a better insight into various facets of Dulębianka's life, her relations with Maria Konopnicka and the poet's close relatives. Some letters and notes contain information about behind-the-scenes arrangements to dispose of Konopnicka's country home at Żarnowiec and Dulębianka's collection of paintings (including her portraits of Maria Konopnicka).

This article takes a closer look at Juliusz Słowacki's poetic drama Ksiądz Marek ( Father Marek) from the perspective of its links and affinities with some of the prophetic books of the Bible. A comparison of the text of the drama with parallel passages of the Book of Isaiah and the Book of Ezekiel in the Jakub Wujek Bible throws into sharp relief the prophetic-visionary characterization of the title hero (whose real-life prototype the Franciscan friar Marek Jandołowicz was the charismatic leader of the Bar Confederation) as well as other dramatis personae (especially Klemens Kosakowski). Comparing parallel passages not only brings to light Słowacki's use of Old Testament imagery but also reveals a multilevel embedment of the drama in the biblical vision of God's work in the world. It seems that this aspect of Słowacki's creative art has not been fully appreciated in the critical readings of the drama. His relationship with the Bible should be treated as something more fundamental than a an indicator of his religious faith and, also, as a respectful and critical commitment to a narrative model of ageless relevance.

This articles explores the life and work of Elżbieta Glaize Walkerowa, a forgotten poet from the early19th century and owner of a girls’ boarding school in Lwów. Hitherto unknown archival sources, which have been used to reconstruct her biography, reveal that she was a close relative of François Glaize, Poland's most eminent tapestry-weaver, with connections to the House of Działyński (the Trojanów branch). The second part the article focuses on Elżbieta Glaize's 1801 debut poetry volume Pierwiastki mojej muzy [ Elements of My Muse]. The poems, written in the sentimental style which was in fashion at that time, represent the sensitivity and worldview of a young woman who, having been raised in a home steeped in literary culture, was keen to showcase her own literary ambition.

This article argues that the short story ‘Ave Patria, morituri te salutant’, first published in a book of Stanisław Reymont's short stories in 1907, shows an overwhelming influence of the expressionist aesthetic. It is conspicuously present in the story's stripped-down sentences, spiked with highly emotive (animal) imagery, and cast in lines that move inexorably towards the catastrophic end. It manifests itself in the disillusioned, sarcastic tone which the writer uses to take up old certainties like military glory and patriotism. Finally, it brings to the fore the conflict between man and nature, man and the universe, the individual and the crowd. As all of those elements are evidently part of the narrative and dramatic structure of ‘Ave Patria…’, it should be viewed as an exemplification of Reymont's drift from realism to modernism (preexpressionism). That transition is also signalized by the tripartite structure of the story. The divisions are worked out with the precision of a master craftsman assembling ‘an epic clock’ (to borrow a telling phrase from Kazimierz Wyka's analysis of the structure of The Peasants), or a painter designing a triptych. The article pursues the latter analogy further by discussing the impressionist technique of framing and cutting off the dispensable elements of the picture.

The thread that runs through this article is made of silk, a fabric with a fascinating history of origins in China and a long record of projects aimed at organizing and mechanizing its production in Europe. The silk motif recurs throughout 19th century literature. As an object of realist description it gives the writer the opportunity to explore its sensuous material appeal and, also, to create around it a web of additional references and associations. For Honoré de Balzac and Bolesław Prus silk carries connotations of elegance, social status and social aspirations. In the fiction of Eliza Orzeszkowa it is one of the regularly recurring elements of descriptions of outward appearance of characters. It can interpreted as a mechanical repetition or, perhaps, the foregrounding of the stereotype meaning of silk intended as an invitation to the moral judgment of characters furnished with that mark.