[...]Beyzai's parochial claims of iranianness] of) middle-eastern narrative traditions = arabic + persian + otaman turkish + jewish + christian (+ several other) narrative traditions related to each other and none of which may claim an exclusive position

city of Brass
the Golden City is a legendary city built in africa by Tawil, the brother of the giant Ug, both of whom were born from the incestuous relation between Cain and his sister Anaq. having been deserted for more than a thousand years, the Golden City was later conquered by Egyptians and became the source of their fabulous wealth.

agahi آگاهی knowledge
na javan mard ناجوانمرد impudent one
farz فرض rite
sonat سنت manner
mardi مردی manly combat

[Sina, Ehsan -->] in the manner of *narrative men* --> typical for the thousand and one nights--whose protagonists of merchants (often thrift sons of rich merchants, who embark on travel after they have wasted their fortune with false friends)
•save himself by his inventiveness, strong determination, physical strength
•there is no single predestined future but a variety of options whose eventual practical course depends on the protagonist's active intervention
•(Sinbad left behind on an island where) the Ruhh has laid its eggs (spirit's eggs تخم های روح 🥚🥚🥚)
•althought most of them kill other people in order to survive, their action is spontaneously motivated by the needs of the moment
•

با هزار زحمت with a thousand efforts


customary formal “hearing is obeying”


pitfalls
“[...]When I returned home, my wife had died. They lifted her up, took me along, and brought us to that cave. With a rope they let me down and blocked the entrance of the cave. After they had lowered the [body of my dead] wife and the [bundle of] clothes and I had regained my senses, I got up and saw a tremendously large cave. I installed the wick and lit the lamp, chose a place by the side, cleaned it and made a bedstead. And when every two days they threw somebody down there alive, I killed that person with my knife and took the supplies of three days bread and water, until one day they deposited in that cave my former wife’s sister alive, together with her dead husband. When she saw me, she recognized me and consented to marry me. I slept with her and had several children with her. Some time later I started to dig the ground in a corner of the cave with my knife until I had made a [large] hole to the side of the sea. Every day I would sit there, until I finally saw a ship. I attached a piece of cloth to a stick and waved it, until the ship came close and took me and my children aboard. They also asked me the same question [i. e. why my children had heads like horses], I told them my story, and they delivered me to my country. I had many more children with[...]

[...]er in medieval texts (and on instagram, telegram, whatsapp) (=/= the idea of “knowing = appropriating” ==> knowing is impossible)

medieval theorist [& my bestiary research] --Bynum--> wonder: (admiratio) cognitive, nonappropriative, perspectival, particular, (not merely a) physiological response
[*]wonder: recognition of the singularity and significance of the thing encountered

‘thing =/= knower’ (in a context + from a particular point of view) ==trigger==> wonder

telegram bestiary --> capacity to be shocked by the singularity of the event (==Sina==> search for significance ~/= cause, explanation)


scholarship on (early modern age of) wonder
1- enthusiasm for wonders = *expropriative & appropriative* (ضبط و سلب) --> *orientalism: projection of self or construction of “other” as self --> the rape of the New World seems implicit in wonder at it
(early modern europe) impulse to *collect & explore*:
◦collection of narwal horns and jewels, deformed fetuses and human captives (made by rulers, missionaries, and naturalist)
◦origins of museums in the wunderkammer (wonder cabinet)
◦voyages to the New World with their attendant goals of *conquering & missionizing* (=/= Sinbad)
◦use of inquisitors and questionnaires by government to assemble information for juridical *processings & taxation*
◦Columbus's “desire to know the secrets of the world” (glossed with) Jode de Acosta's praise of proselytizing curiosity
2- Aristotle's Metaphysics: “wonder = ignorance and doubt” { desire to seek causes (it did not understand) ==arose==> wonder (admiratio) ==> replacement by knowledge (scientia or philosophia) }--> miracula (marvel: natural effects we fail to understand) =/= mirabilia (unusual and difficult events [produced by God])
3- Descartes’ wonder: (first of all passions) a sudden surprise of the soul ==> tend to consider attentively those objects (which seem to it rare and extraordinary)
◦*begining of the tendency to reduce emotion to physiology*
◦Charles Le Brun's drawings of the passions
◦Darwin's wonder: a reaction ==> making the animal see and breathe better in crisis ==> increased its chances of survival (...raised eyebrows, opened and protruding lips, a hand held up, palm out with fingers open)
◦early modern physiology --> wonder: (~ startled response,) paradigmatic emotion
4- (the horrible) philosophical understanding of wonder: ignorance rationalized or erased by knowledge
a wondering desire that collects and appropriates what it endeavors to know or project its self onto an imagined other --> a passion that reduces to a startle response at the unfamiliar

}=/= historian (and teacher [and performance-lecturer]) vacation (or responsibility) --> (we must aspire to) imagine the kind of nonappropriative perspectival *intensely cognitive* response
[...]

[...]r of St. Denis describes the crowd (more desperate to touch, possess, appropriate) that is frantic over access to a power not only *beyond* but also in its nature *other than* what contains it
(God lodged in decayed body, manifested and hidden behind the crystal and gold)

narrative accounts not only described objects and events that were staged or constructed to produce wonder + they also *teemed with complex wonder-reactions*
--> hagiographer (Attar's) detailed in emotional sensual language the extravagant asceticism and para-mystical manifestations holy women experienced + the amazement such manifestations engendered in others {beauty was not merely referred to as wonderful, *it was also described in loving and lyrical language* as signaling a deeper pattern or purpose}

(old Augustinian idea that) the world itself is a miracle --> (homilist Aelfric) wundra (marvels) of God
•it requires no sorcery that the moon waxes and wanes, that the sea agrees with it, that the earth greens in response to its power 🌙
•(recounting the migration of salmon upstream to spawn) they leap from bottom to top with a leap that is marvellous, and except that is is proper to the nature of fish, marvellous


سندباد Sinbad
[fantastical] travelers’ tales (recounted) the *fearsome* and the *ugly* --as--> *wonderful*
to Marco Polo almost every animal he met was a marvel (the horrible crocodile, beautiful giraffe) [described with an earnest and urgent facticity --> ajayeb's tone]

in later middle ages (and in toda popular media) *strangeness appealed* --> stories abounded:
•of fabulous palces
•of stones with marvellous powers
•of monsters
•of mermaids
•of fairies
•of bizarre races with eyes in their chests or enormous umbrella feet

•Marco Polo's awkward and impoverished prose
•Mandeville's credulous tale-telling
•Sinbad: [a powerful sense that] what is wonderful: (is not chickens and peacocks, even cyclopses and cannibals per se, but) **a world that encompasses such staggering diversity** --Bynum--> ******the impulse to chronicle (such things) ~= a critique of the impulse to possess them******

“If you [Alexander the Great] had a body that matched your greedy mind and heart that know no bounds in their desires, or if your body equaled your great cupidity, the great world itself would not suffice to contain you ... Your right hand would hold the East, the left the West. Not content with this, in all your prayers you would be consumed with desire to investigate and find out where that amazing light hid itself, and would dare to climb into the sun’s chariot and ... control its wandering beams. So, too, you desire much that you cannot possess. Having subdued the world and conquered the human race, delighting in blood, you will wage war against trees, wild beasts, rocks a[...]

[...], *it was also described in loving and lyrical language* as signaling a deeper pattern or purpose}

(old Augustinian idea that) the world itself is a miracle --> (homilist Aelfric) wundra (marvels) of God
•it requires no sorcery that the moon waxes and wanes, that the sea agrees with it, that the earth greens in response to its power 🌙
•(recounting the migration of salmon upstream to spawn) they leap from bottom to top with a leap that is marvellous, and except that is is proper to the nature of fish, marvellous


سندباد Sinbad
[fantastical] travelers’ tales (recounted) the *fearsome* and the *ugly* --as--> *wonderful*
to Marco Polo almost every animal he met was a marvel (the horrible crocodile, beautiful giraffe) [described with an earnest and urgent facticity --> ajayeb's tone]

in later middle ages (and in toda popular media) *strangeness appealed* --> stories abounded:
•of fabulous palces
•of stones with marvellous powers
•of monsters
•of mermaids
•of fairies
•of bizarre races with eyes in their chests or enormous umbrella feet

•Marco Polo's awkward and impoverished prose
•Mandeville's credulous tale-telling
•Sinbad: [a powerful sense that] what is wonderful: (is not chickens and peacocks, even cyclopses and cannibals per se, but) **a world that encompasses such staggering diversity** --Bynum--> ******the impulse to chronicle (such things) ~= a critique of the impulse to possess them******

“If you [Alexander the Great] had a body that matched your greedy mind and heart that know no bounds in their desires, or if your body equaled your great cupidity, the great world itself would not suffice to contain you ... Your right hand would hold the East, the left the West. Not content with this, in all your prayers you would be consumed with desire to investigate and find out where that amazing light hid itself, and would dare to climb into the sun’s chariot and ... control its wandering beams. So, too, you desire much that you cannot possess. Having subdued the world and conquered the human race, delighting in blood, you will wage war against trees, wild beasts, rocks and mountain snows. *You will not allow the strange creatures that lurk in the caves to be untouched. Even senseless elements will be compelled to experience your rages.*
--> ***Chatillon's powerful prose understands that marveling at diversity can be the prelude to appropriation***
*marveling at diversity ~=> appropriation*


*impulse to collect/chronicle/list --(critique[sublimated?])-->~?=>(<--)(~/=!!) impulse to posses*


beautiful + horrible + skillfully made ==induce==> wonder
bizzar + rare (~= that which challenges or suddenly illuminates our expectations) + *range of differences* found in the world ==> wonder

admirabiles mixt[...]