10.21.07

Fall, 2007 - The Midway Point

Posted in UIS, Doing History at 11:39 pm by Stephanie

Now entering Week 10 of the semester and I am busily researching my paper for History of Islam due at the end of the semester.  I was really excited and happy to spend most of my day reading one of the many books from my bibliography.  It has been a very long time since that’s happened, usually I feel like I’m just slogging through.

My topic is Sufism and my approach will be a descriptive narrative using mostly secondary sources.  I want to write about the origins of Sufism and its impact upon Islam itself.  The book I am currently reading is J. Spencer Trimingham’s The Sufi Orders in Islam which turns out to be a book about the origins of the many different orders of Sufism.  It wasn’t what I was expecting but it’s a good read anyway.

I choose this topic because mysticism always fascinates me and I remember copies of Idries Shah’s books about Nasrudin in the house when I was a teenager.  I had no idea what they were all about and wanted to explore that.  I am not reading any of Shah’s books for this paper but I am beginning to understand that Nasrudin is the clown found in all mystic traditions.

10.13.07

What About Columbus Day?

Posted in Doing History, TiH at 10:34 am by Stephanie

Happened upon this about Columbus Day.

Columbus was not the first European to successfully cross the Atlantic. Viking sailors are believed to have established a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland sometime in the 11th century, and scholars have argued for a number of other possible pre-Columbian landings. Columbus, however, initiated the lasting encounter between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.

Notice the answer to the question of who got here first and why Columbus Day.