I've been reading Corbin for about 25 years now. After Sri Aurobindo's writing Corbin's has been the most significant to me in providing a cartography of the inner life; the world of soul making. James Hillman cites him -along with Carl Jung- as one of the fathers of Archetypal Psychology. I believe that his writing on Mundus Imaginalis, although they concern esoteric practices, are in need of a revival today, in an age when our encounters with imagination are increasingly as projected telemactic images. rc

What is that intermediate universe? It is the one we mentioned a little while ago as being called the "eighth climate." For all of our thinkers, in fact, the world of extension perceptible to the senses includes the seven climates of their traditional geography. But there is still another climate, represented by that world which, however, possesses extension and dimensions, forms and colors, without their being perceptible to the senses, as they are when they are properties of physical bodies. No, these dimensions, shapes, and colors are the proper object of imaginative perception or the "psycho- spiritual senses"; and that world, fully objective and real, where everything existing in the sensory world has its analogue, but not perceptible by the senses, is the world that is designated as the eighth climate. The term is sufficiently eloquent by itself, since it signifies a climate outside of climates, a place outside of place, outside of where (Na-koja-Abad!).

The technical term that designates it in Arabic, 'alam a mithal, can perhaps also be translated by mundus archetypus, ambiguity is avoided. For it is the same word that serves in Arabic to designate the Platonic Ideas (interpreted by Sohravardi terms of Zoroastrian angelology). However, when the term refers to Platonic Ideas, it is almost always accompanied by this precise qualification: mothol (plural of mithal) aflatuniya nuraniya, the "Platonic archetypes of light." When the term refers to the world of the eighth climate, it designates technically, on one hand, the Archetype-Images of individual and singular things; in this case, it relates to the eastern region of the eighth climate, the city of Jabalqa, where these images subsist preexistent to and ordered before the sensory world. But on the other hand, the term also relates to the western region, the city of Jabarsa, as being the world or interworld in which are found the Spirits after their presence in the natural terrestrial world and as a world in which subsist the forms of all works accomplished, the forms of our thoughts and our desires, of our presentiments and our behavior. It is this composition that constitutes 'alam al-mithal, the mundus imaginalis....   more »

Many of the achievements of Arabic science often come as a surprise. For instance, while no one can doubt the genius of Copernicus and his heliocentric model of the solar system in heralding the age of modern astronomy, it is not commonly known that he relied on work carried out by Arab astronomers many centuries earlier. Many of his diagrams and calculations were taken from manuscripts of the 14th-century Syrian astronomer Ibn al-Shatir. Why is he never mentioned in our textbooks? Likewise, we are taught that English physician William Harvey was the first to correctly describe blood circulation in 1616. He was not. The first to give the correct description was the 13th-century Andalucian physician Ibn al-Nafees… The golden age of Arabic science slowed down after the 11th century. Many have speculated on the reason for this. Some blame the Mongols’ destruction of Baghdad in 1258, others the change in attitude in Islamic theology towards science, and the lasting damage inflicted by religious conservatism upon the spirit of intellectual inquiry. But the real reason was simply the gradual fragmentation of the Abbasid empire and the indifference shown by weaker rulers towards science. …    more »

Abbasid Gardens in Baghdad and Samarra

Not Mecca the birthplace of Mohammad nor Medina where he became the Prophet and King, but Baghdad of the Abbasids was the centre of Islamic culture and civilization for five great centuries. Founded in 762 by the mighty Caliph al-Mansur on the banks of the Tigris this old Babylonian city, aptly called the Gift of God, remained in its conquering glory until the Mongols subjugated it in 1258. Baghdad as capital of the Caliphate became in the Middle Ages the seat of power and also had the distinction of being the intellectual centre of the world. A blaze of philosophical, scientific and literary creations brought to mankind another spirit of life’s opulence. The poet Anwari praised it as a seat of learning and art, with gorgeous crafts on display in streets and marts. Here were a thousand splendid mansions, villas and palaces “simple without, but within, nothing but azure and gold…. The royal palace at Baghdad had on its floors 22,000 carpets and on its walls 38,000 tapestries out of which 12,500 were of silk.”<br>
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When Mahomedanism appeared, Christianity vanished out of Asia, because it had lost its meaning. Mahomed tried to re-establish the Asiatic gospel of human equality in the spirit. All men are equal in Islam—whatever their social position or political power—nor is any man debarred from the full development of his manhood by his birth or low original station in life. All men are brothers in Islam and the bond of religious unity overrides all other divisions and differences. But Islam also was limited and imperfect, because it confined the ideal of brotherhood and equality to the limits of a single creed, and was further deflected from its true path by the rude and undeveloped races which it drew into its embrace. Another revelation of the old truth is needed ...   more »

With the 1978 publication of Orientalism, Edward Said launched a critique of Western scholarship on the Middle East that still reverberates through academia and government. By characterizing Middle Eastern cultures as incapable of adapting to modern life, the early Orientalists, in Said’s view, hid their colonial, and indeed racist, biases. In the process, he suggested, Orientalists fooled themselves—and Westerners generally—into believing that their studies were undertaken with total neutrality. Said particularly attacked Bernard Lewis as the contemporary exemplar of this entrenched view. In a series of exchanges, Said argued that such scholarly bias contributed to the failure of the West to recognize Palestinians as a distinct people or to value Middle Eastern nations except for their oil. While Said did not live to see how Lewis’s views would influence the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq, the terms of his critique still divide scholars.

Despite decades of controversy, however, neither Said’s most recent supporters, such as Juan Cole and Rashid Khalidi, nor his most ardent critics, Raphael Patai and Daniel Pipes, have succeeded in subjecting Said’s concerns to a serious analysis that might address the central question: can scholarship on the Middle East ever be freed from its political context? ...   more »

...The concept behind the project, which Negroponte unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, less than two years ago, is as simple as its name: give all children in the developing world laptop computers of their own. If we achieved that, he believes, we could bridge what's usually termed the "digital divide." The laptops would offer children everywhere the opportunity to benefit from the Internet and would enable them to work with and learn from each other in new ways. OLPC, the nonprofit organization that Negroponte set up to manage the project, has taken responsibility for designing the computer and engaging an outside manufacturer to produce it. But the nonprofit is not going to buy the computers. That, at least for now, is the responsibility of governments, ...   more »

VIENNA, Austria: As many as 150,000 Iraqis have been killed by insurgents over the past three and a half years, a senior Iraqi official estimated Thursday. -- For every person killed, about three have been injured in violence since the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq's Health Minister Ali al-Shemari said at a news conference in Vienna. -- Al-Shemari initially said he estimated that at least 150,000 had died, but in a follow-up interview with The Associated Press late Thursday, he said it could be in the range of 140,000 to 150,000. ...   more »

I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Lehner a few year's ago at Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti project, located in central Arizona, USA. I was very impressed with Mark's work, in which he's been directing the largest and most comprehensive archeological dig ever undertaken at the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Welcome to the official web site of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA). We're excited to provide this window into the ongoing work of Dr. Mark Lehner and the international team of the Giza Plateau Mapping Project. ...   more »