Retrospect

The Caucasian Studies welcomed a fully booked cooking class of 20 people in the "Kitchen Studio Walther" to teach the culinarily curious one of Georgia's national dishes: Khinkali. Those are filled dumplings that impress mainly by their form and making because the dough isn't just simply folded around the filling but elaborately twisted or wrapped around it with a certain dexterity so that in the end little tassel like bags or loafs reminding of fish fins or bunny ears are formed. The filling is changeable, depending on one's nutrition or taste. After a short bath in boiling water the dumplings are ready to be served. Khinkali can be dipped in smetana or any other sauce.

By the way: It's said real Georgian men are able to eat at least 20 Khinkali at a time! Quite a challenge.

On this Monday evening Josef Jeschke invited into the premises of the university's Mineralogical Collection for a jounrey through the development of Arabic-Islamic Numismatic Culture as well as through the history of the Oriental Numismatic Collection of Jena.

The beginnings of the Oriental Numismatic Collection of Jena are to be traced back into the 18th century when Johann Gottfried Eichhorn gave his habilitation lecture about the origins of Arabic coinage as newly appointed professor of Theology and Oriental Languages. The founding of an actual numismatic collection finally happened via the Court of Weimar and Goethe, not least because Johann Gustav Stickel took a stand for the localisation of a purchased numismatic collection in Jena. Within the following decades until 1906 the collection's inventory grew up to about 13,600 coins, but fell into a deep sleep afterwards of nearly a hundred years. It was not until 1993 when again a chair for Semitic Philology was established at the Friedrich-Schiller University which is, since then, in charge of Prof. Dr. Norbert Nebes. Nebes got the hint to look at "some coins in the basement". Prof. Nebes was no numismatic though and so he entrusted his assistant Stefan Heidemann with this work. He was it who enabled, from 1998 onwards, a first, increasing new acquisition of Arabic coins so that the collections grew up to 21,000 objects.

The History of the Arabic-Islamic Numismatic Culture goes along with the development of Islam itself, its expansion in the 7th century and the development of its own cultural properties: That's why at the beginning Byzantine coins with the images of Eastern Roman Emperors and Christian symbols were used. These were followed by imitations under Arabic-Islamic influence, validated by the imprinting of Arabic characters. Henceforth own mintings were designed, at first bilingual (Greek/Arabic) to make use of them in the neighbouring Byzantine Empire. Finally totally own coins were minted that wouldn't have the occidental cultural contacts surmised at all. Starting from initially pagan depictions of rulers and religions, one proceeds to mint pure textual and ornamental images to obey the Islamic prohibition of pictures.

On this Thursday evening an audience of different spheres of interest gatherd in the Haus auf der Mauer. Among experts from the Caucasian Studies, scientists and students from other subjects with interest in the Caucasus region within their respective discipline, gave lectures.

On this Monday afternoon several interested people gathered to have the Arabix Manuscript Culture explained by Prof. Dr. Tilman Seidensticker, the chairholder of the Islamic Studies in Jena.

As illustrative material, Prof. Seidensticker brought two original copies of Arabic manuscripts with him, at which he entertainingly pointed out the peculiarities of such manuscripts and not least their differences to western literature: Especially amusing was the digression about the oddities of side notes that purport e.g. prayers against the bookworm, fiscal emergencies or against talking in sleep, cursings of the one who doesn't trim his beard or even fortune telling by twitching limbs. Very intensively he gave attention to Listener Certificates, propably a unique characteristic of the Arabic manuscript Culture – and Prof. Seidensticker didn't even shy away from providing his audience with a sample of reading and listening to Arabix texts.

Dr. Cornelius Berthold came especially to Prof. Seidensticker's support from Hamburg where he deals with Koran Manuscripts in miniature: Those Koran editions measure up to not more than 3cm in height and their script is way too small to read it properly. Presumably they had some symbolic character and were used as amulets. Even today such miniature Korans can be found as rear-view-mirror-pendants of taxis in the Arabic world.

Early in December Jena's Southeastern European Studies presented themselves in the course of three days with a multifarious programme for listening, watching and participating: In interesting lectures the audience was introduced to the Balkans in all facets from past to present and from West to East and even beyond. Somewhere between documentary, cultural report and historical political barometer the shown films ("Portavoce" at the opening with director's talk, "Revolucionarni dom" and "Nekome Svome" from Montenegro as well as "Whose is this song?" from Bulgaria)about the lives and actions of Southeastern Europe's different nations, are to be sorted in. Culinary workshops about Southeastern European eating habits as well as a dancing workshop accompanied by the live-band "Canticas de Sefarad" were likewise part of the programm, just as the photo exhibition "Faces and Landscapes of Southeastern Europe" was, to be seen at the university's campus.