Not Everybody’s Darling

 

The original sources for the detailed descriptions of legends and fairy tales which circulate among both ordinary people in the Islamic world and, for example, Sufis since Muhammad’s and his followers’ conquest of much of the world have never been described in a scientific way. When reading, for instance, Eliot Weinberger’s Muhammad (Verso, London 2006), which is, according to the author, mainly based on the Holy Qur’an and ahadīth, or the traditions of the Prophet, one may ask the question how many generations of people have, over the centuries, embellished so nicely the historical facts (?) so that an attractive legend was created which fascinates even sober, contemporary Westerners, the main target audience of Weinberger’s nice booklet.    

Allah’s Darling (or Allahs Liebling, the original title of the book which has, so far, been published only in German) is the attempt of the renowned German Orientalist Tilman Nagel, a professor emeritus of the University of Göttingen, to explain the origins and manifestations of the belief in the founder of Islam, Muhammad. The book is sort of a spin-off of Nagel’s opus maximum, his voluminous biography of the Prophet, mainly praised but also heavily criticized by others.

When having read the subtitle of “Allah’s Darling” (“Ursprung und Erscheinungsformen des Mohammedglaubens”), I was wondering whether the author wants to make the point that Islam is not an extreme form of monotheism, as claimed in particular by Sunni Muslims, but rather that Muslims are “Mohammedans”, a pretty frivolous, Orientalist, conception. He frankly admits that everyone who would undertake the task of highlighting the circumstances under which a faith could emerge which was essentially based on prefabricated “eternal” knowledge, ever-valid for any area of life; a faith in an ever-competent messenger of Allah, would inevitably face the “foolish” charge of Orientalism or Essentialism. He may be right, but whether the charge is in fact foolish was not clear to me after having read the book.

The seemingly sound construction of what one may describe as the House of Islam is, however, not different from that of other, older, world religions. That, after the Age of Enlightenment, fundamentalist Christianity, for instance, has largely (unfortunately not entirely, though) been repelled in modern, determined secular, societies may have something to do with the foundation of Christianity as the author correctly claims, but not with its Church(es), as it (they) developed in century-long processes, with its (their), for example, heated arguments regarding the “nature” of Jesus, the World’s Redeemer; or strange beliefs in the Virgin Mary. There is no difference in overall absurdity. It is self-evident that, in order to write a credible, in particular scientific, treatise or even book on one of the world religions authors should make clear in the very beginning that they are not religious! That is unfortunately not the case here.   

Several times Nagel points to the huge problems of Integrationspolitik, i.e. how Muslims may be integrated in Western societies. He stresses that the time and again overpowering (erdrückende) majority of Muslims still live their fatalism due to strong beliefs in the believer’s general inability of getting hold of his own lives. For Nagel it seems to be clear that Mohammedanism should be regarded the main reason for the widely observed (in comparison) developmental retardation in Islamic societies. His plenty arguments, however, are taken from medieval authors commenting on ahadīth [1]; notoriously unreliable, as it becomes clear time and time again in Nagel’s narrative. The realm of medieval Islam (note, that the Middle Ages describe the dark ages of European cultures and societies when, at the same time, the Islamic world was bright and pretty enlightened) was huge, though, and spanned from Spain to Central Asia, from North Africa to parts of India. Islam, as Nagel describes it using accounts of numerous medieval authors, Andalusian, Cairene, Damascene, or Iranian [2], is not, and never has been, a monolithic entity. There are four prominent Sunni schools of fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, and two schools for the Shi’a, which are not covered in Nagel’s book.

In his epilogue, Nagel concludes with the description of his pretty unjustified dismay about the publication of now, since in 1981, eight volumes of Muhammad. Encyclopedia of Seerah (The Muslim Schools Trust, London, 2^nd ed. 1985), clearly a sort of personality cult. He might not even be aware of comparably voluminous works of contemporary authors about Shi’a Imams with a similar, of course questionable, approach [3]. That currently by the majority of the faithful practiced Islam won’t fit into a rapidly changing, now again flat, world with its traffic, world wide web, demands of intercultural competence etc, is commonplace. Professor Nagel acknowledges, in the preface of Allahs Liebling, one of his co-workers for introducing him to and solving emerging problems with electronic data processing. So, even he might not have arrived yet in modern times.

 

Notes

[1] When introducing the reader to his text, Nagel describes the pretty bizarre “fly” hadīth: The Prophet once narrated: “If a fly falls into one of your containers (of food or drink), immerse it completely (falyaghmis-hu kullahu) before removing it, for under one of its wings there is venom and under another there is its antidote.” The purpose here is clearly defamatory, not realizing that Christian salvation history is full of similar absurdities, not mentioning the Jewish Tanakh.

[2] As regards the latter, I am not even sure. Iran, a center of medieval Islam, seems not to be covered at all. Moreover, Nagel rarely informs the reader about the specific background of the authors he extensively quotes: the historical circumstances during the periods they lived when they created their scriptures. That, of course, raises questions about the targeted audience. Is it politicians, a lay audience? The book is not a reference text. In contrast to his claims, I would not even regard it a sound scientific study. Too copious, even biased, in its descriptions of absurdities (see [1]) which may have led eventually to his (or our) perceived totalitarian Mohammedanism of the Islamic world.

[3] I own, for instance, an English translation by Jasim al-Rasheed of the 1926 book by Baqir Sharif al-Qarashi’s The life of Imam Ali bin Musa al Rida; Ansariyan Publications, Qum 2001, which was a personal gift by Kuwaiti Shi’ites on the occasion of their pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine of Imam Ridha in Mashhad in 2006, when I was invited to join the group. Much of Nagel’s descriptions of the Prophet’s reported excellence, for example of his physics, his manners, his generosity etc., which elevated him from ordinary people, may be found in the description of Imam Ridha as well. It would have been even more interesting to study the deeply rooted piety of ordinary, say, Iranian people in rural areas, including their legends and personality cults as regards Ali, Husayn, the numerous Imami Shi’a Saints, etc. In particular ahadīth related to Ali, the Nahj al-Balagha, may prove that Allah may have just another darling besides Muhammad.

Profiles in Courage

September 11, 2001 had been a turning point for almost all people in the world. As regards me, I remember filling packing cases after a hard work’s day in the preparation of a significant move: to the Middle East; my departure scheduled only some ten days later. I was about to join a brand new faculty at Kuwait University when I switched on the TV and saw, again and again, Manhattan’s Twin Towers hit by airplane, and hit again, then collapsing. Only thirty minutes later I had received the first telephone call of a friend who tried to convince me that Kuwait would be safe and I certainly would not change my stance.

Well, I didn’t loose my courage although none of my new and most curious colleagues really expected me to come after 9/11. The new beginning was cumbersome but overall quite interesting. I met people from all over the world, a true international faculty. They had, though, very different profiles of courage. I learned to know rather anxious people who never really understood that Islam was a great cultural achievement and worth of being studied in detail. I met greedy people who were there for the money only. As usual in Academia, you always also meet people with highly problematic personalities, preventing any real collaboration.

The Kuwaitis were friendly and in essence very helpful. Some of my new colleagues from the West who had been there for some time complained, though, that they were snobby, considering themselves very special. Some allegedly even looked down to us, the western expats, coming for the money, the infidels.  

As I settled, I became aware of a would-be colleague from the Ministry of Health who was somehow a relative of our Dean. Dr. I. presented himself as a VIP within Kuwait’s health system, a former MP, even a journalist; in fact a multitalented member of Kuwait’s closed society. He arduously tried to get into the faculty. When having been seconded, he quickly demanded giving lectures on topics he could hardly be considered to be an expert of. When finally appointed as assistant professor, he managed to serve in two independent departments.

The first Arabic word I learned in this context was wasta, or insider relationship, old boys’ network. Dr. I. represented wasta. Asking him a favor, one almost immediately got satisfied. He knew people and places. In his own private clinic he had employed numerous humble and subservient domestics. He could always count on their slavish obedience.

While his remote relative, the Dean, knew about Dr. I. but could not prevent him from joining the faculty, problems with him quickly emerged. Absurd criticism of expats led to early cessation of contracts. Then he attacked his Kuwaiti colleagues. There is a highly questionable rule at Kuwait University that a permanent appointment does not depend on scientific publications but rather on passing the American board examination or an equivalent qualification. Dr. I. had dozens of publications (which have to be considered worthless from a scientific point of view) and he was a specialist who had passed an equivalent board exam in Ireland. But some of his rivals among the Kuwaiti colleagues had not. If they were too close to his arch enemy, the Dean, he liked to question their qualifications. He usually involved the media and even the University President, who received dozens of letters of complaint.

On an especially revealing and even instructional occasion Dr. I. sent a pages-long email to the culprit, a very likeable young colleague with certain talents as a University teacher, where he referred to a certain hadith which is well-known among adherents of Shi’a Islam: mubahala. He updated this email, in which he accused his colleague of lying about the assumed expiration of his part II board exam, on a daily basis and sent copies of it to the President’s office, the Ministry and all faculty members. He even sent copies to students.

Mubahala reminds the pious believer of an incident in 631 CE (9 AH) when a group of Arabic Christians argued with the Prophet Muhammad which of the two parties erred in its doctrine concerning the nature of Jesus. Muhammad, after likening Jesus’ miraculous birth to Adam’s creation, called the Christians to mubahala, or cursing, where each party should ask God to destroy the lying party and their families. He then covered himself and his family (Ahl al-Bayt), i.e., his daughter Fatima, her husband Ali and their two boys Hasan and Husayn with a cloak. The Christian envoy declined taking part in mubahala and chose instead to pay tribute.

As far as I know, I was the only western expat who recognized the tremendous impact of Dr. I.’s curse on our young Kuwaiti colleague. Muslims, who read through all the baseless accusations which were sent day after day to dozens of people, were deeply shocked. Mubahala is definitely exceeding the limits. Dr. I. did not fear any consequences for his ruthless defamation. But the young colleague eventually resigned and left the faculty for good.

Years later, I learned that Dr. I. is a pretty prominent liar himself. In 1990, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein had invaded the tiny but oil-rich country in the corner of the Persian Gulf. A 15-year-old Kuwaiti nurse, who had only been introduced as Nayirah and who later turned out to be the Kuwaiti US ambassador’s daughter, testified to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 that she herself had witnessed babies being taken out of incubators and being left on cold floors to die. The incubators were then taken to Baghdad. After the war, it became clear that another alleged witness, who had testified before the UN Security Council and the Congress that he had supervised the burial of 120 infants and personally buried 40 newborn babies who had died after taken from their incubators by Iraqi soldiers, had used false names and identities. This witness later revoked and admitted that he had never seen these atrocities. The alleged Dr. Issah Ibrahim was in fact our Dr. I., not a surgeon but rather a dentist. The notorious story is still remembered as the “incubator lie” which essentially served in motivating the World public to support America’s actions of throwing the Iraqi troops out of the Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. More information can be found in L. May’s Crimes against Humanity: A Normative Account, Cambridge University Press 2004.

A notorious liar is suffering from a habit. A Kuwaiti lawyer who I once had asked for some support in a libel case, in which Dr. I. was involved, was very hesitant to accept the job. “Is it about libel?” he asked me. “But that’s the way how we do it in this society.”

I recently got to know that Dr. I. has lost a lawsuit in court against his faculty chairman and has now sued the University President.

 

Note: Profiles in Courage is the title of the 1955 Pulitzer-Prize-winning bestseller by John F. Kennedy, which describes the integrity and bravery of eight US senators. It profiles moral courage of highly reputed men in the history of the Unites States. Despite overall enthusiastic reception the later 35^th US president was quickly blamed that he was the only man who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book which had been ghostwritten for him. The book has actually been written by his speechwriter Ted Sorensen.

In the Tower of Babel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those who have studied Islamic art and architecture for some time inevitably have asked sooner or later the following questions: How did they do that? Apart from the application of fundamental principles in geometry, how could they create most sophisticated and highly complicated geometric designs over extended areas in this stunning precision? And then, why did Muslims in the Golden Age of Islam do that? Who had taught them, and how? Where are the books and manuscripts? When and on what occasions met and collaborated  scientists and artists in Islamic civilization?

In the early 1970s these simple questions struck a young and extraordinary talented Iraqi lady with a strong background in history and historiography when she searched for a suitable topic for a doctoral thesis at Harvard [1]. These questions weren’t obvious at that time. When Wasma’a Chorbachi had explained her preliminary proposal and her desire of finding the relevant literature which had obviously been lost during the centuries, she was rather quickly turned down. Her advisor expressed his strong opinion that there was not such a thing. There had never been. His good advise was rather to expand her list of questions in order not to fail, for instance, including questions such as: Has the interest in science or geometry been part of the average cultured person’s background in the ninth or tenth century? What practical geometry had been developed by the tenth century? What caused the growth of this phenomenon? Geographically, where did it begin and in what directions did it spread?

 

A Needle in the Haystack

Wasma’a started her search taking advantage of the extensive resources of the Harvard library system. She read through catalogues and indices of manuscript collections available in libraries throughout the world. By the end of the week she had come across Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis bin Man’a, one of the most outstanding teachers at the main school of the early 13^th century in Mosul, Iraq (which has later been named after him, al-Madrasah al-Kamālīyah, [2]). Among his work was a commentary on an earlier work of one of the most eminent mathematicians and scientists of the Islamic world of the 10^th century, Abū’l-Wafā al-Būzjānī. He lived in Baghdad from approximately 945 CE until his death in about 987 CE. The transliterated title of the main work was also more or less the title of Wasma’a’s PhD project: “A treatise on what the artisan needs of geometric problems”, while the title of Kamāl al-Din Yunis’ commentary was “Commentary on the geometry problems.” Thus, by the third week of her search Wasma’a Chorbachi had already been successful in achieving her first aim: to locate the relevant literature as regards the teaching of medieval artisans of the Islamic world by scientists.

Wasma’a’s next step was to travel to Europe and find and read the original manuscripts, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris where she had located a Persian translation of Abū’l-Wafā al-Būzjānī’s manuscript of the “Treatise on what the artisan needs of geometric problems.” In Paris, she found an unnamed, undated manuscript probably from the 14^th century which clearly was of significantly greater importance than Abu’l Wafa’s work: “On interlocking similar and congruent figures.” Wasma’a writes:

“By the time I returned to Cambridge, I had located a range of written material, in the history of Islamic science and geometric design from the tenth century of the mid-nineteenth century, lying in library and museum storage rooms all over the world. In point of fact, my material turned out to be so convincing that it is now being used and propagated even by those who demonstrated such a strong sceptical attitude towards it at the beginning. Though locating the manuscripts took only two months, acquiring microfilms and/or photocopies of these documents without any backing or support took several years. Meanwhile; I was struggling to decipher the material, and to find an appropriate language in which to discuss it and describe the geometrical patterns with which it dealt.”

 

Confusing Language

Studying the right language (while noticing that different people with different background will describe what they see by using different terminology) took years for Wasma’a. It foremost included Group Theory, Crystallography and Symmetry Notation, fields with which historians and art historians are not really familiar per se. Wasma’a strictly applied scientific reasoning, though. It is interesting reading her rebuttal of ‘esoteric’ reasoning in explaining the ‘meaning’ in Islamic art which became most popular in the mid 1970s. According to proponents, the “principle of the unity of being’ was even “pushed to a point of scientific fallacy such as the claim that all geometric patterns of Islamic art are derivable through a single method of construction based on the subdivision of the circle, in order to declare this art work an example of the “Unity of Being”. ” Divine Unity, or Tawhīd, as the driving force for geometric patterns. That didn’t make sense in her opinion.

“The general public unfortunately remains unaware of this. If in these books, that are now readily available on the market, their authors had made clear that the presented views were modern understandings of old forms, turning them into symbols, there would be no reason to object. The problem lies in presenting these modern mystical views as historical truths, as if these symbols were the meanings at the time the art forms were created. The non-Islamicist who is exposed to these books [for example, I. El-Said’s Geometric Concepts in Islamic Art; L. Bakhtiar’s Sufi: Expressions of the Mystic Quest] will anachronistically assume that a modern interpretation is the historical truth. Where does one draw the line between true historical research and the creation of and attribution of symbolic meaning to forms from the past? How can we redeem the geometric shapes, forms and patterns from the shrouds of mystical interpretations in order to see the precise scientific design at their basis?” 

Describing the visual perception and linguistic or even fashionable semiotics further served only to confuse the interested layman in particular in the 1970s [3].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a comprehensive case study Wasma’a Chorbachi deconstructs one of several amazing brick pattern on one of the two Seljuq Kharraqan tomb towers (1093 CE) in the vicinity of Qazvin in northern Iran which consists, at first sight, of V-forms, X-forms as well as dots, but which, at second sight, comprises an extremely popular geometric structure, a square within a square within another square. I have described this pattern, which can be found, for instance, several times on the western and southern iwans of Esfahan’s Great Mosque [4], and how it may be created in another posting on this blog. It’s construction in five steps had been described in a systematic, scientifically correct, way in the above mentioned, unnamed, undated Paris manuscript No. 169 “On interlocking similar and congruent figures”, Wasma’a had been working on.

What follows is another case study of the Persian manuscript folio 192b about a similar structure of a kind of pinwheel which fascinates “in its use of a strict algorithm with irrational numbers.” It shows how the principles may lead to different designs which probably have been considered from a pure esthetic point of view.

“The science of symmetry of patterns tell[s] us that there are 17 different periodic two-dimensional groups and 7 groups periodic in a singular direction (string or ribbon), also that each of these groups could have an infinite number of different designs. Ad seen, these Islamic geometric manuscripts give us samples of the infinite design variations of the basic 17 periodic groups; these documented geometric problems or examples in turn could be the basis for developing  many new sets of design.”

See Dr. Wasma’a Chorbachi homepage here.

 

Notes

[1] This posting is about a remarkable text by Wasma’a K. Chorbachi which was based on two lectures given at MIT, Cambridge, in November 1987 and had been published in Computers Math Applic 1989; 17: 751-789: In the Tower of Babel: Beyond symmetry in Islamic design. It deals with a lot of questions which I have asked myself (and many others) since I became fascinated of Islamic art and architecture in recent years.

[2] Despite his Arabic name, Wasma’a’s advisor considered Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis a member of the Nestorian Church which had been revived in Iraq in the 12^th century. Dr. Chorbachi explains her dismay with considerable prejudices as well. I suppose it is not entirely correct that the annoying response of her supervisor reflected a general ignorant attitude towards the achievements of the Islamic world in the West after WWII, as she describes it. Ignorant supervisors are frequently found in Academia, even at Harvard. It might in fact be the case that in particular Americans are in essence Eurocentric. Not to forget that the 1970s were a decade of great technological and scientific achievements mainly coming from the US, which were very much occupied in proxy wars of the Cold War, for instance in Vietnam. Islamic art and architecture may not have been regarded a fruitful field where scientific breakthroughs had to be expected. In any way, Wasma’a continued her search and found quite a lot of information about Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis. I have to admit that in spite of considerable search of the internet, I could not identify the scholar yet.

[3] Mystic interpretations of Islamic geometric patterns are still prevalent in many esoteric circles in the West. When trying to talk about new discoveries or searches, for instance, the search for quasi-crystalline patterns, one generally faces incomprehension among people with a general interest in Islamic art and art historians. The “meaning” of the stunning patterns is of greater importance than the question, how could it be created. And whether it has been chosen for esthetic reason only.

[4] Interestingly, Wasma’a mentions 1122 CE as construction date of the iwans, i.e., after Assassin rebels had set the mosque on fire in 1121. She also mentions that the iwans were re-decorated in 1800. In fact, restoration and repair of the structures and tessellations constantly takes place. The celebrated decoration of, for instance, the western iwan is usually considered to be Timurid (15^th century) or Safavid (16^th and 17^th century).

See ArchNet for further pictures of the two Kharraqan tomb towers.

Sacked

Controversial figure Tariq Ramadan has been sacked as a visiting professor at Rotterdam’s highly reputed Erasmus University for the reason of not giving up presenting the presstv talk show Islam & Life produced in London studios. Presstv is an English language Iranian news channel largely imitating western formats such as BBC World News or CNN as well as Qatar-based Al Jazeera. Claims that it is independent of any commercial or governmental influence are not trustworthy in particular with respect to the latter. Definitely, presstv is, since its foundation in late 2007, an indispensable source when trying to follow sometimes confusing political news in Iran. One has to be very cautious, though. Current appearances of Mohammad Marandi, assistant professor at University of Tehran, on presstv (the “basiji professor” as he is called by his adversaries), who is notorious for eloquently trivializing the regime’s brutal oppression of the opposition movement in the aftermath of the recent election and power struggles within the labyrinthine ruling establishment have substantiated grave concerns about presstv lopsidedly featuring certain individuals acting solely as the regime’s mouthpieces. See, for example disgraceful Marandi in a revealing interview of July 27 with brave Fareed Zakaria at CNN.

Now, Ramadan, who is denied a US visa for some time now, could not resolve doubts that he acted as a mouthpiece of post-election Iran as well. In any case, Erasmus University’s decision should be seen as wrong as false accusations of Iranian prosecutors in the current show trials against top members of Iran’s opposition movement that what has been called the Green Revolution has mainly been orchestrated by Western powers (doubts continue to exist, though, even when Ali Khamenei has expressed yesterday his strong beliefs that Western powers were not involved). The University’s decision should be based on content. So far, Ramadan has not produced such scandalous contributions on presstv as Marandi did.

Ramadan, who is right now on vacation in Morocco, has announced that he would appeal Erasmus’ decision. He may be well-advised also revising his decision of appearing presently on presstv.

One Giant Leap

“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Neil Armstrong, 2:56 UTC, July 21, 1969

Ever fascinated by the uselessness of the first moon landing forty years ago, I gave all of my students the following advice: getting a PhD is exactly the opposite.

Polygons

“He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, shun him. And he who knows not and knows that he knows not, awaken him. And he who knows and knows that he knows, follow him.”

Arabic saying

The swastika has nowadays a bad reputation but it has of course not been invented by German Nazis. Rather it is a positively connoted, sacred symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, such as lucky charm. It is interesting to see that it has also found its way into Islamic Art, even as a sign of blessing. A famous square panel on the western iwan of Esfahan’s Great Mosque dating from the 17^th century (Shi’ite Safavid) resembles a Swastika, and its calligraphy mentions Ali [1]. It might be a beautiful example of “a simple design rotated 45 degrees which acquires two separate values, one as a carrier of geometric forms filled with (by the time of the panel) antiquarian writing, the other one as a violator of the sequence of both writing and architecture by forcing one into rare contortions to read the writing” [2]. The southern iwan which had got additional decorations by Sayyid Mahmud-e Naqash in 1475/76 sports a similar but definitely Timurid swastika-like panel, with its ample arabesque and floral motifs [3].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Square from Five Squares

These examples are not strict swastikas. Rather, they represent a popular Islamic geometric pattern, a square composed of three squares. In the 10^th century, artisans were thoroughly taught in a distinct academic context by mathematicians in geometry. Alpay Özdural (d. 2003) describes [4] how, for instance, Abu’l-Wafā’ al-Būzjāni (940- ca. 998), in his famous treatise Kitāb fīmā yahtāju ilayhi al-sani’ min al-a’māl al-handasiya (On the Geometric Constructions Necessary for the Artisan) teaches the right way of constructing this very combination of squares and avoid often made mistakes of the carpenter whose job involved cutting single pieces of material into parts and arranging them skillfully in attractive patterns in mosaics. Abul’l-Wāfa explains that artisans and even geometers (muhandis) often err in the assembling of the pieces, the former since they do not know the scientific proof, the latter due to lack of practice. As Özural writes, Abu’l-Wāfa’s book on Geometric Constructions was apparently motivated by meetings with practitioners and aimed in the proper advancement of Islamic Art. As a true academic, he displayed, in his book “pure geometry, familiarity with practical applications, and skill in teaching theoretical subjects to practical-minded people.”  

The figure below (from Özdural’s article) shows how, by cutting and pasting two, five and nine squares, according to Abu’l Wāfa’s theoretical solutions [5], pretty attractive patterns are created. The earliest “square from five squares” can be seen on the wooden door of the mosque of Imām Ibrāhīm in Mosul which is dated 1104 CE. And Abu’l-Wāfa also explains patiently why some popular ‘practical solutions’ were essentially wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While between the 11^th and 15^th centuries in Iran and Central Asia, Spain and elsewhere in the Islamic World, geometric tessellations became more and more ambitious, dazzling, breakneck artistic, it is not clear how much artisans actually knew about geometry and mathematics. Özdural’s paper convincingly shows how academics such as Abu’l-Wāfa in Baghdad or later Omar Khayyām in Esfahan and Jamshīd al-Kāshī in Samarqand frequently met with artisans, architects, masons and carpenters in what he calls conversazione, i.e., seminars and practical sessions, where the then popular cut and paste technique of dividing larger material into smaller pieces was exercised and got a sound theoretical foundation. While the Golden Age of Islamic Science and Art before and around 1000 CE, in particular Persia, was brutally brought to an end by Mongol invasions after 1220, with catastrophic destruction and by and large architectural inactivity for several decades, later-on, during Ilkhanid, Timurid, and even Ottoman periods, scholars again took over in assisting those who created the most incredible geometric and arabesque tessellations. But they still noted lack of knowledge and unwillingness of master-builders to entirely rely on geometric proof but rather dealt “with geometry in their unmethodological and incorrect way three centuries after Abu’l-Wāfa.” “Yes, we have heard of it, but in essence we have not heard how science of geometry works and what it deals with.”

 

Pentagons and Decagons

Especially fascinating may be the way, artisans had tried to use pentagons and decagons in their tessellations. There have even been speculations, at least since the late 1980s, whether medieval Islamic artists had been able to create aperiodic tiling, such as those which had been described by Roger Penrose in the 1970s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In studying the probably 13^th century manuscript by an anonymous author, Fī tadhākul al-ashkāl al-mutashābihah aw al-mutawāfiqa (On Interlocking Similar or Congruent Figures), which is now located in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, Wasma’a K. Chorbachi and Arthur L. Loeb [6] point to the similarity of the here described problem of interlocking convex decagons and pentagonal stars (the Islamic Pentagonal Seal) with those being now popularly known as aperiodic Penrose Tiling [7].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this manuscript one may find an interesting ‘practical’, albeit incorrect, solution for creating regular decagons and pentagons by cutting and pasting the kunya-5 triangle, a right-angled triangle with one angle equal to 36°. The approximation differs from 36° by only 12’22’’, i.e., 0.5% [8].

 

 

 

 

 

In particular in the 13^th century, the golden triangle (an isosceles triangle having angles of 36°, 72° and 72°; its base length equals f times its side-length, where f is the golden fraction defined by the equation phi = 1/(1+phi)), was used by Muslim scientists for the construction of regular pentagons and decagons [9]. The golden triangle can be subdivided in such a way that another golden triangle and a golden gnomon results, i.e., a isosceles triangle having angles 108°, 36° and 36°. As Chorbachi and Loeb write, artisans may actually have created the 36° angle using the (incorrect) method of constructing kunya-5.

The construction of the Pentagonal Seal in the Paris manuscript is, according to Chorbachi and Loeb, a very particular one, with its five-pointed star constituted by ten golden gnomons which exactly match the ten golden triangles which constitute the decagon. “It is historically significant that as early as the thirteenth century A.D., it was known that what we presently call the golden triangle and golden gnomon are together capable of tessellating the Euclidean plane, and that during the Middle Ages, Islamic design continued in the tradition of the Alexandrian and other eastern Mediterranean schools of mathematics. The use of this five-pointed star appears to have stimulated mathematicians to work on these practical problems in design. The importance of this problem to the Muslim scientists may be inferred by the fact that they tried over the course of several centuries to find the perfect solution.”

According to Wasma’a K. Chorbachi in “The Tower of Babel” [5], “[t]he true patron of the scientists who wrote these ancient manuscript was art. It was the artisans and the architects who called for the services of science and scientists to assist them solving the design problems that they were facing. And as in the case of Islamic art in the past, science must come to the service of the arts, whether we are talking today of Islamic art, of Western art or of art generally, today more than ever before […].” “[I]slamic tradition is so strong that, if we are in touch with the language of the present time and ground ourselves in this strong old tradition, we can arrive at an expression that is not only contemporary but could be meaningful and valid in the coming century.”

 

Notes

[1] According to Oleg Grabar in his fine book The Great Mosque of Isfahan (New York University Press 1990, p. 34) it contains in the four corners the pious quatrain: “As the letter of our crime became entwined [i.e., grew so long], [they] took it and weighed it in the balance against action. Our sin was greater than that of anyone else, but we were forgiven out of the kindness of Ali.” Grabar notes that the central part of the panel is nothing else than the plug of the artisan who was diligently involved in restoring the mosque in the 17^th century, Muhammad ibn Mu’min Muhammad Amin.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Decorative brickwork on the northern iwan of the mosques also shows clockwise and counterclockwise swastikas in one of the circumferential bands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[4] Özdural A. Mathematics and Arts: Connections between Theory and Practice in the Medieval Islamic World. Historia Mathematica 2000; 27: 171-201.

[5] Ibid. It is the Islamic proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, which is closer to the Indian method of Bhāskara Achārya (d. 1185) than to the Greek method in Euclid’s Propositions, as is beautifully explained by Wasma’a K. Chorbachi in her eye-opening article “In the Tower of Babel: Beyond Symmetry in Islamic Design. Computers Math Applic 1989; 17: 751-789.

[6] Chorbachi WK, Loeb AL. An Islamic pentagonal seal (from scientific manuscripts of the geometry of design). In Hargittai I (ed) Fivefold symmetry. World Scientific, Singapore 1992, pp. 283-305

[7] Ibid., p. 284: “Although the approach to the generation of this pattern in the Paris manuscript is quite different from that taken by Penrose, it is notable that these ‘quasi-periodic’ patterns were already of interest at least in the thirteenth century A.D. The manuscript stresses the uniqueness of the fivefold center of rotational symmetry in the pentagonal seal, thus implying the lack of translational symmetry in the pattern, but does not explicitly deal with the matter of non-periodicity.”

[8] Ibid., p. 286f: “The construction was therefore remarkably accurate, though not correct. Kamal ad-Din Musa Ibn Yunus Ibn Man’a in his thirteenth-century commentary on Abu’l Wafa’ al Buzjani’s book on the geometry of construction, with whom this construction may well have originated, actually was quite explicit in cautioning that some of his constructions, in particular of the heptagon, were practical, but not mathematically exact. They can be used in small-scale designs without noticeable discrepancies, which however become manifest on a larger scale.” 

[9] Ibid., p. 293: “[I]n the second half of the thirteenth century (ca. 1259) in the town of Marāgha, which became a center of scientific activities and contained the famous observatory, another illustrious mathematician, Nasir ad-Din at-Tusi, wrote commentaries on Euclid, in which he made obvious use of the golden triangle. … [H]is commentaries on Euclid included a short treatise dealing with the inscription and circumscription of polygons within the circle: Sittat Maqalat min Kitab Tahrir Uqlidis: Six Books/Articles from Euclid’s Book of Elements.” As an example, see the construction below, which had been created with some guidance from Eric Broug’s booklet Islamic Geometric Patterns, Thames & Hudson, New York 2008.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also on this blog

About difficulties of the Western perception of Islamic abstraction which might easily result in fundamental misconceptions

About decagonal tessellations on the west iwan of Esfahan’s famous Friday Mosque

About Alpay Özdural’s proof that the mysterious North Dome of Esfahan’s Great Mosque is based on Omar Khayyām’s triangle

A review of a booklet which makes complicated Islamic geometric patterns easy to reproduce

Decagonal Tesselations

The Great Seljuq Empire (1037-1194 CE) has been described as a period with stunning scientific and artistic achievements in particular in Iran. Their capital became Esfahan in central Iran under Malikshah I (d. 1092). Among the many Seljuq monuments found in Iran, Esfahan’s Great Mosque, or Masjed-e Jomeh, is probably the most remarkable. The Great Mosque’s huge courtyard of 65 by 55 meters with its four iwans , the standard model of later Iranian mosques, provides the two axes, one in the Makkah direction and the other perpendicular to it. The iwans differ considerably in their composition and decoration. The most important iwan to the south is connected to the larger of the two main domes which contains the mihrab indicating the direction of prayer. 

 

The western iwan is the most unusual and complex of all. While all iwans had been added to the Seljuq mosque after a fire pillaged by the Hashashiyyin sect in 1121 CE, their decorations are from the Timurid and early or even late Safavid periods (late 15^th till early17^th century) [1]. The western iwan and its counterpart to the east are called the sofe of the student (shāgird) and master (ustadh), respectively. Although both iwans were built at the same time as the southern iwan (early 12^th century), both of them are, “in their visible shape, late Safavid works of the seventeenth and, in case of the west one, even early eighteenth centuries”, as Grabar in his book about the Great Mosque writes [2]. So, while dating of the specific decorations may be highly problematic if the artisan had not signed his work, there is constantly restoration work which will inevitably change the appearance of the ‘living monument’ over time. More information about Esfahan’s Great Mosque, its amazing history and stunning architecture, can be found here.

 

There were suggestions that there had been a breakthrough in creating (almost) Penrose tiling in the late 15^th century, in particular on the Darb-i Imam in the Great Mosque’s vicinity. In the supporting online material  of Peter J. Lu and Paul J. Steinhardt’s article in Science magazine, you may find a picture of the western iwan where the authors suggest that the tiling can be subdivided in the same way as the respective pattern(s) on the Darb-i Imam shrine [3]. You can easily identify the pattern at the inner sides of the iwan’s portal. It is huge, about one meter wide and up to 10 meters high. At first glance especially this site seems to be an anomaly in Esfahan. Lu and Steinhardt also suggested so-called girih tiles to facilitate the incredible precision of the tiling [4].

 

As Lu and Steinhardt point out, based on a blurred picture taken from the book Design and Color in Islamic Architecture by Seherr-Thoss (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 1968) the large-scale pattern consists of large decagons and bowties [5]. When reconstructing the small-scale pattern, I could identify similar but not the same subdivision rules which transform the large bowtie and decagon girih-tile pattern into the small girih-tile pattern of decagons, bowties and elongated hexagons as on the Darb-i Imam. For instance, the pentagonal areas encircled in magenta can be filled with a fourth girih-tile described by Lu and Steinhardt, the rhombus. See, for instance, the rightmost picture of the panel and, in particular, in the magnification below. So, the pattern on the western iwan of Esfahan’s Great Mosque differs from that found on the Darb-i Imam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much of the discussions after the paper of Lu and Steinhardt had been published were about the possibility of medieval artisans had consciously or unconsciously been able to create what has become known as Penrose tiling, five hundred years before its description in the West. It might be concluded, however, that neither the dazzling pattern on the Darb-i Imam nor that on the western iwan of Esfahan’s Great Mosque are Penrose tiling, simply, because they are not aperiodic.

 

Lu and Steinhardt had been criticized not having given due regard to extensive previous work on Islamic Art. In particular, reading an almost forgotten book about Fivefold Symmetry, edited by István Hargittai (World Scientific, Singapore 1992), might be revealing. Much of Lu and Steinhardt’s ideas and conceptions may in fact be found there, not only Emil Makovicky’s paper on the 800-years-old Gunbad-i Kabud in Marāgha in northwestern Iran. Emil Makovicky’s response to the Science article articulates that neither the Gunbad-i Kabud pattern nor that on the Darb-i Imam are aperiodic, and hence do not represent Penrose tiling. Moreover, when considering the reconstructed pattern on the Gunbad-i Kabud in both Makovicky’s (Fig. 8b ibid) and Lu and Steinhardt’s (Fig. S6 of supplementary online material) articles, it may in fact be assumed that the pattern on the western iwan of Esfahan’s Great Mosque is not entirely dissimilar to the former.

 

I suppose Islamic artisans tried their best in creating most interesting (indeed dazzling) patterns which attract the attention of visitors now for several hundred years [6] rather than producing quasi-crystals. As E. Makovicky argues, both the patterns on the Darb-i Imam and the west iwan of Esfahand’s Great Mosque are variations of the stunning decagonal pattern on the Gunbad-i Kabud in northwestern Iran, built in 1196/97 CE. “[w]e believe that the artisans were satisfied by creating a large fundamental domain without being concerned with the mathematical notion of indefinitely expandable quasiperiodic patterns. However, they understood and used yo their advantage some of the local geometric properties of the quasi-crystalline patterns they constructed.”

 

 

 

Notes

 

 

[1] For instance, next to the western iwan the pretty famous Timurid gate had been moved and inserted into the façade. It contains signature and date of its creator Sayyid Mahmud-e Naqash, 1447. A similar, highly decorative floral style can be seen on the south iwan and on the Darb-i Imam shrine, some 300 meters west to the mosque, which is dated 1453. By the way, on the gate the date 1317 appears which translates into 1939 when restoration work had taken place. The Timurid gate near the western iwan of Masjed-e Jomeh leads to a room with a stunning dated (1310) mihrab of sultan Oljatu, the great Ilkhanid Mongolian ruler in northern Iran. The inscriptions are, according to Oleg Grabar, not qur’anic, but contain traditions about mosques and about Ali. Amazing that Oljatu in fact converted to Shi’a Islam in 1310.

 

[2] “[A] celebrated square panel in the western iwan [which] is one of the most commonly cited examples of complex geometric ornament using writing. It is easy to argue that here is a wonderful example of a simple design rotated 45 degrees which acquires two separate values, one as a carrier of geometric forms filled with (by the time of the panel) antiquarian writing, the other one as a violator of the sequence of both writing and architecture by forcing one into rare contortions to read the writing. And one could argue that here is precisely the use of geometry which gives it the high status so frequently heard and read about. In fact, however, the corner spaces contain the following rather undistinguished pious quatrain: ‘As the letter of our crime became entwined [i.e., grew so long], [they] took it and weighed it in the balance against action. Our sin was greater than that of anyone else, but we were forgiven out of the kindness of Ali.’ The central square is taken up by a signature of one of the most active craftsmen busy repairing the mosque in the seventeenth century. Even though formally related to the angular style of writing on the face of the iwan and in fact much more sophisticated in design, this panel is nothing more than a ‘plug’ for a local artisan.” The exact construction of a similar “square from three squares” has been described in Abu’l Wafa’s (d. ca. 998) book “On the Geometric Constructions Necessary for the Artisan”. As Alpay Özdural describes it in his article “Mathematics and Arts: Connections between Theory and Practice in the Medieval Islamic World” (Historia Mathematica 2000; 27: 171-201), contemporary mathematicians frequently held so-called conversazione with artisans explaining them how to create new inspiring geometric decorations.

 

[3] A second visit, after 2007, of the Darb-i Imam shrine end of December 2008 revealed that the patterns were in fact temporarily not visible. Because of the upcoming Ashura festivities the complex was heavily decorated with religious banners and transformed into a place of observance for daily husseiniyyas.

 

[4] I have mirrored, for example, the right part of a picture of the arch borrowed from ArchNet (left part of the panel) and can demonstrate (right part of the panel) that each tiny tessera on one side (as small as, say, a square centimeter) can be found in exactly the same place on the other side of the vault.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[5] It may be of interest to note that Peter Lu visited Esfahan only after his paper in Science magazine which attracted considerable public interest worldwide. The political situation before the US American election in the end of 2008 largely complicated the procedures for issuing visas for Iran, in particular for US citizens and individual travelers. Thus, the whole article was based on the diligent work in libraries, as Peter Lu mentions in a colloquium where he reports on his amazing findings.

 

[6] Just by comparison I would not assume that Sayyid Mahmud-e Naqash, who created and notched the late Timurid, beautiful floral, decorations on the south iwan and the gate in the western façade of the mosque was the one who designed the decagonal patterns on the west iwan (and similarly different decorations on the Darb-i Imam, as well). But who knows? It would be interesting to learn how contemporary artisans repair, with incredible precision, the decorations. 

 

 

 

 

See also on this blog

 

Esfahan’s Old City. Some impressions of a cultural heritage at risk. 

 

Islamic Geometric Patterns.  A nice booklet teaching you drawing incredibly difficult patterns with compass and straightedge.

 

The Mysterious North Dome of Esfahan’s Great Mosque. About the most significant mosque (from an architectural point of view) in Iran. Pictures can be found here and here.

 

Dazzling Tesselations. Presumed almost perfect Penrose patterns in medieval Esfahan which have attracted enormous interest in 2007 after a publication by Lu and Steinhardt in Science magazine.

 

 

 

Floss or Die

New Orleans was still the Big Easy. Hurricane Katrina devastated the southern metropolis about a decade later, and my attendance of the annual meeting of my main professional society was a nice relief of the daily monotony at my dental school at home. I met many of my colleagues and I had a fantastic dinner on a Mississippi paddle steamer which was sponsored by a company with which I was working at that time.

 

It was one of the very first occasions that scientists in my discipline talked about a possible relationship between poor oral health and dangerous chronic conditions such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. One of our most distinguished Professors in the field commenced his presentation with the message “Floss or Die”, a really frivolous statement. He later put the alleged relative risk for getting an infarction or stroke to 1.3 or so in case of more severe oral disease. It was the beginning of an endless discussion which mostly interested the numerous practitioners who, whithout any knowledge about odds or risk ratios, bothered their patients during the next decade with the menace of myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, low birth weight, etc., if their oral diseases had not properly been treated. Most of this has vanished in the meantime and more realistic views have emerged.

 

What I didn’t know at that time was that the distinguished Professor in Oral Biology had just received an award in Economics. Not the real Nobel Prize but the “IgNobel Prize”. It stands for ignoble, and it is in fact a parody for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” The chief sponsor of the prize is the Annals of Improbable Research which is a successor to a periodical that satirized scientific publications. That particular year, Jacques Chirac was among the laureates who, as the French President, had just launched a series of atomic bomb tests in the Pacific Ocean while the world was observing the 50^th anniversary of the Hiroshima massacre. It was the Peace prize, of course. Understandably, he didn’t show at the ceremony in Harvard University’s Memorial Hall where the prizes were conferred about 2 months before the real ones each year since 1991.

 

Our distinguished Professor got the prize in Economics for his remarkable discovery that “financial strain is a risk indicator for destructive periodontal disease.” Of course, he didn’t accept the prize either but rather ignored the event. It was long before the financial markets went out of control, somewhat before the dot-com bubble emerged and finally burst in 2000. People at risk for gum disease (according to our Professor those in financial trouble) have not participated in either bubble, I suppose.

 

All of this is certainly not related to the decline of periodontal disease which has been observed over the last decade or so. A slide with “Floss or Die” is still in use to attract the interest of my undergraduate and graduate students. But as ever, more as a joke than a serious suggestion. 

Pope Benedict

Pope Bededict’s remark on his first Apostolic Journey to Africa (Cameroon and Angola) that the continent’s fight against HIV/AIDS is a problem that “cannot be solved by the distribution of condoms: on the contrary, it will increase it”, has led to a fierce editorial in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. Irrespective of whether the Pope’s error was due to ignorance or because of a deliberate attempt to exact Catholic ideology, it had led to sharp criticism among several European governments and international health organizations. Now the scientific community condemns disastrous remarks as well, in particular as the Vatican is not withdrawing the devastating message but maneuvers with different versions and interpretations.

 

What can be found on the web site of the Holy See looks, in fact, a bit different than what had been reported at first:

 

Q. – Your Holiness, among the many ills that beset Africa, one of the most pressing is the spread of Aids. The position of the Catholic Church on the way to fight it is often considered unrealistic and ineffective. Will you address this theme during the journey? Holy Father, would you be able to respond in French to this question?

 

A. – I would say the opposite. I think that the most efficient, most truly present player in the fight against Aids is the Catholic Church herself, with her movements and her various organizations. I think of the Sant’Egidio community that does so much, visibly and also behind the scenes, in the struggle against Aids, I think of the Camillians, and so much more besides, I think of all the Sisters who take care of the sick. I would say that this problem of Aids cannot be overcome merely with money, necessary though it is. If there is no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by responsible behavior], the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it. The solution must have two elements: firstly, bringing out the human dimension of sexuality, that is to say a spiritual and human renewal that would bring with it a new way of behaving towards others, and secondly, true friendship offered above all to those who are suffering, a willingness to make sacrifices and to practice self-denial, to be alongside the suffering. And so these are the factors that help and that lead to real progress: our twofold effort to renew humanity inwardly, to give spiritual and human strength for proper conduct towards our bodies and those of others, and this capacity to suffer with those who are suffering, to remain present in situations of trial. It seems to me that this is the proper response, and the Church does this, thereby offering an enormous and important contribution. We thank all who do so. (Emphasis added.)

 

Did the Pope talk about condoms or what is meant by prophylactics? Does he weaken his first condemnation of condoms or is he rather worsening the message by referring now to ‘prophylactics’? Difficult to tell, indeed. The script on the web page of the Holy See of his infamous lecture in Regensburg in September 2006 now contains also numerous rectifying footnotes diluting the rude and insulting first remarks on Islam and its Prophet which has led to outrageous reactions in the Muslim world and the death of at least one nun in Somalia.

 

It is a pity that the 81-year-old Pope, a professor of Catholic Theology with an immense reputation, has proved again and again that he had not effectively changed since the times of Joseph Ratzinger: a merciless exponent of the former Roman Inquisition. As a matter of fact his pontificate has been a series of scandalous speeches, remarks and deeds; a rather recent and especially incomprehensible example being his pardon (later withdrawn upon international pressure) of Holocaust denier Richard Williamson.

 

The Lancet’s condemnation today will not lead to a change in the Vatican’s policies. Life is shed with and without an organization which might vanish in due time anyway.

 

 

See also on this blog

 

Out of Control.  Pope Benedict’s scandalous pardon of Holocaust denier Richard Williamson.

 

 

 

No Peer Review

Earlier this month, Scientific American reported on a serious case of scientific fraud in the field of pain therapy. Scott Reuben, a fifty-year old Professor in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, has fabricated the data in 21 studies. If that has not yet been accomplished, they have to be retracted, so that practitioners who heavily rely on medical information transfer through databases are not further misled. An unidentified number of patients might have been died from adverse effects of certain potentially dangerous COX2 inhibitors such as Merck’s Vioxx (rofecoxib), and Pfizer’s Bextra (valdexocib) and Celebrex (celecoxib), some having been pulled from the market in 2004 since independent research has reported on greater risks than expected.

 

Another case of scientific misconduct which had been widely discussed in the media only a couple of months ago is that of the Egyptian ‘mathematician’ Mohamed El Naschie, former Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Chaos, Solition and Fractals [1]. The Editor had published in ‘his’ journal more than 300 own papers since 1993 [2] and it was assumed that at least those did not undergo the usual peer review process. In The n-Category Café  physician John Baez made the point that much of this has to be considered complete nonsense [3]. Why did nobody point to that earlier? The ‘Journal’ enjoys a rather high scientific impact factor of 3.025, which is in fact higher than those of other periodicals in Mathematics [4].

 

The dependence of journals, editors, authors, and academic hopefuls on Thomson Reuter’s Impact Factor [5] has certainly excited greed among most scientists. Is it possible that the currently observed so-called information explosion in Science and Medicine is based, at least in part, on the publication of plenty of nonsense or even undiscovered, wide-spread fraud?

 

Having been observing this ‘business’ for almost 30 years, in a small clinical discipline though, the evolution from publishing definitive results of exciting, frequently ‘ground breaking’, research toward an obvious trend of publishing whatever had been done in the laboratory is obvious. Whether the, in theory, highly efficient peer review process still works in practice, in particular in the more hidden scientific habitats, might in fact be questioned [6].

 

The world has seen, during the past half a year or so, the credit crunch in the U.S. developing into a global financial and economic crisis which will keep us concerned and busy for the next couple of years. It might not be too far-fetched when comparing the recent annoying scandals in Science and Medicine with the burst of the bubble in the financial markets. Both, at first sight annoying, incidents may have positive effects on the systems in the long run.

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Publisher’s note in the latest issue: “The Founding Editor for Chaos, Solitons and Fractals Dr El Naschie has retired as Editor-in-Chief. The publisher will work with the editorial board and other advisors to identify a new editor. This is likely to also lead to revision of the aims and scope of the journal, as well as the editorial policies and submission arrangements. Prospective authors can keep informed of the progress on this through the journal’s homepage.”

 

[2] Whenever editors publish their works in their ‘own’ journal there should be suspicion regarding considerable bias: an orderly peer review process may not have been achieved. As an example, in a prestigious journal in my rather small field within Medicine, 1368 articles had been published (according to PubMed, accessed March 26) since 1990. The founding editor-in-chief, who kept this position for now more than 20 years, is authoring/co-authoring 12.7% of these, an estimate of 25% of all of his publications since 1970.

 

[3] It might be revealing that the link to the original posting is now broken. Baez’s arguments can still be found here.

 

[4] Since the impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations in a year given to those papers in a journal that were published during the two preceding years, it is likely that El Naschie has manipulated, i.e., unduly inflated, it as well, simply by citing his own ‘work’.

 

[5] The Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) had been founded already in 1960 by Eugene Garfield. The offered bibliographic databases enabled calculating measures such as a journal’s Impact Factor. Their publication in the Journal Citation Report in June is heavily awaited for by most members of the academic community.

 

[6] Editors and reviewers should be aware of attempts of fraud due to the ever increasing pressure of ‘publish or perish’. The former should encourage that all authors declare their contributions to the paper. Long traditions of adding department chairs automatically to the list of authors should of course be scrutinized. Conflicts of interest are most probably present whenever company sponsoring had been sought for; etc., pp.