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Working in the Archives – Manuscript Research at the Khizana al-Hasaniyya, Rabat

One of the major manuscript collections in Morocco is currently the property of His Majesty, King Mohammad VI. The Khizana al-Hasaniyya or the Bibliothèque Royale as it is known, is housed in the royal palace in Rabat and directly attached to the royal residences. The Researcher Annex where most guests of the library work, is detached from the palace yet located within the palatial environs.

Due to the personal nature and physical location of this library, it is necessary for the aspiring researcher to observe security protocol and to put their best professional foot forward. Like many things in Morocco, the rules will not be explained in detail but everyone will act as though you know them. When in doubt, ask questions.

Basic Details

The Khizana al-Hasaniyya is part of the Qasr al-Malik or Palais Royale in Rabat and consists of the main manuscript library attached to the royal residences and the Researcher Annex. The Researcher Annex is opened from 9am-4pm Monday – Friday. Most work is done in the Researcher Annex, a new building completed sometime after 2014 and staffed with computers for manuscript consultation. Be advised that electronic devices such as phones, tablets, and laptops are forbidden in the Researcher Annex, and all bags must be stored in the small cupboard in the corner of the Researcher Annex.

At the time of the visit, the Khizana al-Hasaniyya manuscript library was open only to those researchers with specific codicological research though it is possible for one of the librarians to give you a tour of the Khizana. The manuscripts they have on display are stunning, from early Qur’ans to musicology texts to a copy of Ibn Khaldun’s al-Muqaddima copied by one of his students and annotated in the margins by Ibn Khaldun himself.

Researcher cards can be obtained by contacting the director of the Khizania al-Hasaniyya, Dr. Ahmed Chouqui Binebine (a.binebine@gmail.com), and requesting a meeting with him to discuss your research. Dr. Binebine speaks Darija (Moroccan dialect of Arabic), Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic or MSA) and French; if you do not speak these languages, it is best to arrange your meeting with the help of another scholar with current researcher privileges; that way, they can advocate on your behalf while translating as needed.

If you arrive in Morocco and you don’t have someone in country who can pull strings for you at the Hasaniyya, contact Dr. James Miller, the director of MACECE in Rabat.  He is used to helping Americans make connections with Moroccans and may know someone who can help.

Bring your passport and a copy of the passport face page and the page with your date of entry to Morocco or your Carte de Séjour, your research clearance and/or Lettre D’Attestation, and two passport sized photographs to your meeting. Unlike the BRNM, there is no fee associated with this card. It is unclear as to whether or not researcher cards are valid for a specific amount of time or if this time can be negotiated.

For the record, I was able to gain a researcher card valid for three months. This card is an index sized paper card written in Arabic and stamped with the official seal; you will need it for subsequent visits to the library.

During your meeting, you can also request a copy of the General Index for the Khizana al-Hasaniyya along with other catalogs relevant to your research.  This is invaluable as copies of the General Index are quite hard to come by in the United States (Emory and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have copies of the General Index).

The General Index of Manuscripts for the Khizana al-Hasaniyya. All entries are in Arabic.

While the General Index just lists the manuscripts alphabetically and with little information about the manuscript, the more in-depth catalogs, such as the catalogs on Ash’arite manuscripts and those concerned with Islamic law, are much more detailed.  You can request copies of these subject-specific indexes from Dr. Binebine.

Additional manuscript catalogs; text in Arabic.

Dr. Binebine and other librarians at the Khizana may also give you additional texts, such as their publications on codicology. Dr. Binebine’s 2015 book, Histoire des bibliotheques au Maroc, is worth having for any medievalist or manuscript specialist.

The dress code is business wear, with many Moroccan researchers wearing traditional Moroccan clothes such as djellabas. Looking like you have a valid reason to go to the royal palace will help convince the guards and employees that you are not some random tourist hoping to see the king.

For those spending the day or at least the lunch hour at the Khizana al-Hasaniyya, there is a small arcade opposite the soccer field near the Researcher Annex where you can get a pizza (15 MAD) and fresh orange juice (10MAD) as well as a sandwich on occasion or snacks from the nearby hanout (kiosk). It is best to be discreet about drinking water in the Researcher Annex just to avoid any problems.

Getting There

The Qasr al-Mālik is a massive compound located at the end of the Avenue Mohammed V in downtown Rabat and is guarded around the clock. For your first visit, you will need to present your passport and tell the guard that you have an appointment with the director of the Khizana; the guard will then phone to confirm your visit. For subsequent visits, saying that you are a researcher (chercheur/chercheuse) at the library and presenting your researcher card is enough to get in, though it never hurts to have your passport and your Lettre D’Attestation in case someone asks for it.

Unlike European palaces, the Qasr al-Mālik is more akin to a city within a city, making it difficult for the first time visitor to get to where they are going. For the person going alone, it is best to take a petit taxi to the main gate, Bab Soufara, and then have the cab driver continue through the gate and take you directly to the Khizana.

NB: Make sure the driver takes you to the right spot; simply asking for the Khizana al-Hasaniyya might bring you to the Researcher Annex or it might bring you to the Khizana itself. The same is true when it comes to asking for directions inside the compound. If the cab driver wants to leave you at the gate, it is a 10-15 minute walk to the Researcher Annex from Bab Soufara.

Conducting Research

As previously mentioned, the physical manuscripts are largely off-limits to most researchers, meaning that the majority of manuscript work is now done digitally. To request a copy of the manuscript, you will need to fill out a small request form at the desk in the Researcher Annex and give it to the librarian sitting there; they will then call up the digital copies of the manuscript and load them on one of the computers lining the walls. When the files are ready, the librarian will call you over to the computer.

To request digital copies of the manuscripts, you will need to write directly to the director of the Khizana, Dr. Binebeine, and state what it is you want and why you need it. Do not email Dr. Binebine but present a printed and signed copy of your letter to the librarian at the Researcher Annex and ask them to give it to Dr. Binebine. The librarian will then convey your request and, if it is approved, a digital copy of the manuscript will be given to you within 24-48 hours.

Prior to 2013, digital copies were presented to researchers on CD but as of March 2017, a colleague was able to load the files directly onto a USB stick.

NB: One might be limited to the number of folia they are allowed to request per manuscript. Some have reported that they were only able to request 10 folia of a manuscript, while others said they were able to get 40-50 folia. As such, plan your requests and research accordingly.

Language

The Khizana al-Hasaniyya runs on Arabic, especially Darija. The various manuscript indexes, from the General Index to the more thematic indexes of manuscripts, are in Arabic, along with the manuscript request forms. Researchers should have a solid command of the Arabic script and decent penmanship in order to correctly write out their requests.

Spoken French can get one by in a pinch, especially if one’s vocabulary related to manuscripts is not as strong in Darija or Fusha (MSA) as it is in French. For those researchers who are Caucasian or black, the staff may speak to you in somewhat broken French, assuming that you either come from France (if white) or one of the francophone African countries (if black).

The computers in the Researcher Annex all run Microsoft OS and are in French, not English. The screens are touch screens, meaning that you can pinch and zoom in on the images, as well as swipe back and forth. However, most of the other researchers in the Annex use the mouse so it’s probably best to follow their lead.

When it comes to writing a manuscript request letter, the letter must be in Arabic (MSA) or French. If you are unsure about the protocol or language within the letter, ask the librarian in the Researcher Annex if they have a copy of a request on file for you to use.

Misc.

The Royal Palace is a trip for a medievalist not in the least because it is a functioning palace on the scale of medieval administrative cities.  Those who live on the palace grounds and who work there inherited the position from their family members, many of whom may have been part of the royal slave retinues just under two hundred years ago.  To see the Royal Palace in Rabat gives one a good appreciation for the scale of medieval administrative cities like Baghdad, Samarra, Qayrawan, Cairo, Fez, and Marrakech and for the way in which such palaces were cities in their own right.

For additional resources on the Hasaniyya as well as other manuscript libraries in Morocco, see J. Hendrickson and S. Adil, “A Guide to Arabic Manuscript Libraries in Morocco: Further Developments,” (2013)

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Grendelkin

Most of us in the English-speaking world have read Beowulf, in translation and in high school. It is generally taught as an ancient text with insights into Anglo-Saxon culture, whispering from our distant past. But can these whispers speak meaningfully to us today, aside from mining historical gems from the text?

Beowulf is a medieval poem about heroes and monsters. But it also a poem cautioning against the destructive forces of violence and greed, the very same combination of forces which most trouble the world today.

For those who read the text in the original language, Beowulf is a playful, at times suspenseful, poem which masks its monsters in ambiguous language and draws verbal parallels between the heroic protagonists and their monstrous antagonists in ways that challenge a reader’s assumptions. And, of course, it was performed!

Are there ways of performing Beowulf, which speak both to then and now? This is the mission behind Grendelkin.

“Grendelkin” at Notre Dame, produced by Richard Fahey and sponsored by the Medieval Institute.

Grendelkin is an upcoming two day production sponsored by Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, which seeks to highlight the ethical concerns expressed in Beowulf through professional storytelling and avant-garde performance. Grendelkin interrogates the function of reciprocal and sanctioned violence within the text and challenges tribalism and the warrior ethos of the poem, while keeping a modern audience and their contemporary concerns in focus.

Cost: The event is free (no ticket charge) and open to the public. Tickets will be given at the door and programs will be available at the venue.

Dates: 4/7 & 4/8, 2017

Time: 7:30-9:00 with refreshment the following hour both evenings

Place: Washington Hall (third floor), University of Notre Dame


Event Schedule and Artist Biographies:

DAY 1 (Friday, 4/7): Beowulf: A Poem for Our Time
Performance by Chris Vinsonhaler

An award-winning performance, Beowulf: A Poem for Our Time, will roar to life on Friday, April 7, in a program that is free and open to the public. This performance frames her version of Beowulf in both an Anglo-Saxon historical context and in conversation with contemporary current events and cultural knowledge.

The general public is invited, and high school classes are expressly invited. However, because of the sophisticated and violent content, the performance is recommended for adults and young adults only.

Awarded a fellowship funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Chris Vinsonhaler is an internationally touring artist who also serves as a professor with the City University of New York.

Chris Vinsonhaler performing her piece “Beowulf: A Poem for Our Time.”

Her performance work has received praise from scholars, poets, teachers, storytellers, and armchair readers. “You made Beowulf come alive even for those who hated reading it,” said Rosemary DePaolo, President of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. “You made the audience feel that Beowulf, Grendel, and Hrothgar were with us—in the room, and in our time.”

“Vinsonhaler’s Beowulf bristles with an energy and enthusiasm that is both captivating and infectious,” said Andy Orchard, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University.

“Beowulf does indeed have something for everyone,” said Vinsonhaler. “It is a dazzling work of poetry, and it is also a knock-em, sock-em piece of pop culture about a Dark Ages super hero. It is somber and thought-provoking, but it is also a lot of fun. That’s what great storytelling has always been about.”

Yet those who are familiar with Beowulf should expect to be surprised. “Beowulf has many surprises in store,” Vinsonhaler said. “The poem is ironic, subversive, grotesque, and darkly comic; and it may even lay claim to be the world’s first murder mystery. Yet, above all, Beowulf is a prophetic work about the death of nations. It presents a world overshadowed by the image of a burning tower and by monstrous acts of avarice, envy, deceit, and revenge. It is very much a poem for our time.”

Now fifteen years into the project, Vinsonhaler has completed a Ph.D. in pursuit of the project. And she believes the secret of the poem is revealed through performance.

“As a professional storyteller, I wondered what would happen if Beowulf were seriously examined and interpreted through performance. Although many questions remain unanswered, one thing that is almost certainly true: Beowulf was meant to be heard, not read. What excites me most, and what I hope to share with others, is that the poem does indeed take on a life of its own when returned to spoken form.”

Chris Vinsonhaler is currently working to revise her translation and has a website designed to help students of Beowulf access the “bones” of the language in order to better understand the poem and its performed context.


DAY 2 (Saturday, 4/8): Haunting Tales of Grendelkin

Act 1: Giedd in Geardagum “Songs of Yore”
Recitations by Richard Fahey
with instrumentation accompaniment by Chris Vinsonhaler (harp)

This first act will be comprised of three recitations of short episodes from Beowulf in the original Old English language and accompanied by the bardic harp.

  1. The Lay of Scyld “Terror and Tribute” is the first of the three lays, and the shortest. Scyld’s Lay establishes a paradigm for heroic kingship in the poem. It tells of the heroic deeds of Scyld Sceffing, as he terrorizes the surrounding nations and exacts his tribute from them.
  2. The Lay of Sigemund “Murder and Plunder” is the second lay in the series, and tells of the heroic deeds of Sigemund (from the Vǫlsunga saga and associated literature), especially his slaying of a mighty dragon and plundering his treasure. This episode foreshadows the later dragon episode and describes Sigemund in terms similar to the monsters in the poem.
  3. Grendel’s Approach “Becoming a Monster” is the last section of Beowulf, and describes how Grendel comes from the dark night, through the swamps and into the hall to feast on the men there. Grendel’s Approach isolates the terrifying moments in which the monster finally arrives and confronts both characters and readers for the first time in the narrative.
Richard Fahey, PhD candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame

Richard Fahey is a PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Notre Dame where his research interests include monstrosity, syncretism, rhetoric and intertextuality in Old English, Old Norse literature and Anglo-Latin literature. In addition to producing Grendelkin, Richard is currently working on his dissertation “Enigmatic Æglacan: Riddling the Beowulf-monsters” which brings the Exeter Book riddles into conversation with Beowulf through lexicographical and stylistic analysis. Richard is also an editor and contributor to Notre Dame’s medievalist blog The Chequered Board and for the affiliate Old English Poetry translation and recitation project.

Act 2: Sceadugenga
Avant-garde performance by ❨❨❨:: Of The Sun ::❩❩❩
with instrumentation by Tom Fahey, Adam Blake and CJ Carr
and dance accompaniment by Wisty Andres, embodying the character of Grendel

Boston sound artist Tom ‘Totem’ Fahey started working with sound and becoming invested in music as far back as elementary school. Forming several bands in his youth, he eventually found himself at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in the S.I.M. program [Studio for Interrelated Media]. Here he took to avant-garde compositions and developed his ear and vision for studio and live event production.

Since then Tom has performed in numerous projects ranging from folk music to experimental noise to black metal, and has done various sound installations and sound design work for local artists and musicians. Tom has worked also as art director for Boston’s annual New Year’s art festival First Night from 2011-2015.

(((::OF THE SUN::))) was started in June 2010 by Tom Fahey and Adam Blake from the ashes of an experimental improvisational sound project called Fractillian, which performed around the Boston area from 2007- 2010. Having taken on the visual projection art of Andrew Goldman, they performed live for the first time in November 2010. (((::OF THE SUN::))) is influenced by Norwegian Black Metal and avant-garde Drone music.

Boston sound artists “❨❨❨:: Of The Sun ::❩❩❩ performing two acts in Grendelkin.

Shortly after forming, the vocal and performative force of CJ Carr joined Fahey and Blake and they performed as a trio for the first time in February of 2011.

In 2012 (((::OF THE SUN::)) started performing with acro-yoga artists Adam Giangregorio and Nicole Leland, which became a regular part of the experience, and in 2015 joined forces with the movement artist Wisty, performing with Grendelkin.

Wisty Andres, originally from Tokyo, Japan, started dancing in Columbus, OH at age 7. She has trained in classical ballet, modern, jazz, latin dancing, stilting, and tumbling. She is an alumna of Interlochen Arts Academy where she performed Les Patineurs, Sleeping Beauty, Viva Vivaldi, Serenade, and other classical and contemporary works. Andres holds an AA in Dance from New World School of the Arts College in Miami, FL.

Wisty Andres, Boston performing artist in ❨❨❨:: Of The Sun ::❩❩❩ and Grendelkin.

Andres moved to Boston in June 2013 and performed solo work (Satta under Vatten) at the Boston Contemporary Dance Festival 2013 and has also been involved in several projects with 1000virtuesdance since July 2013. Andres previously worked with Penumbra:Movement as a guest choreographer at the 2014 Dance for World Community Festival and a guest artist in the 2014 Spring aMaSSit concert.

Andres is currently dancing with Urbanity Dance Underground Company, and also a dancer and Resident Choreographer for Penumbra:Movement. She has been presenting works all over the Greater Boston Area as an independent choreographer in various venues, including NACHMO Boston 2014 and 2015, Third Life Studios Choreographer Series, Urbanity NEXT showcases, and Green Street Studios.

The second act, Sceadugenga is inspired by Grendel’s haunting approach to Heorot, and the psychology and mythology surrounding a monster. This piece incorporates the Old English language and raises some of the questions discussed in the current scholarship.


Act 3: Umberhulk
Avant-garde performance by ❨❨❨:: Of The Sun ::❩❩❩
with instrumentation by Tom Fahey, Adam Blake and CJ Carr
and dance accompaniment by Wisty Andres, embodying the character of Grendel

❨❨❨:: Of The Sun ::❩❩❩ performing with Shri Rajuli at “First Night” Boston, TRIBE VIBE (12/31/14).

For those interested in previewing a performance, there is video footage corresponding with the above image of❨❨❨:: Of The Sun ::❩❩❩ performing their song “Light” at Boston’s “First Night” in an event called Tribe Vibe.

The third act, Umberhulk, explores the parallelisms between heroes and monsters, such as is found in descriptions of Beowulf and Grendel during their epic battle in the hall.


​​Act 4: Wrecend 
Movement art piece by Shri Rajuli
with instrumentation accompaniment by Tom Fahey (drums and throat singing)
to music by Eivør Pálsdóttir

“Shri” Rajuli (Rajuli Khetarpal Fahey) dances with a spirit that is rooted and ancient. Every movement piece is a ritual for Rajuli. Over time, a fusion of movement influences from around the world has blossomed into her ever evolving dance style, which Rajuli describes as “Temple Tribal Fusion.”

Rajuli has performed and taught for over ten years. She has studied and collaborated with dance professionals all across America. Rajuli is an active movement and installation artist from Boston, and received BFA with Distinction from the Studio for Interrelated Media from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is a Rachel Brice 8 Elements Initiate. Her movement art incorporates elements of Indian folk, Ballet, Jazz, African, Haitian, Flamenco, Gothic, Butoh and Modern and modern dance style.

Movement artist Shri Rajuli. Rajuli will be performing her piece “Wrecend” and embodying the character of Grendel’s mother.

Rajuli has produced movement art shows in the past, such as her recent event Immaculate Portal (7/22/15), which celebrates the experience and journey of motherhood through interpretive dance. Links to additional performances may be found on her website.

Rajuli will be performing the final act of the evening, her piece titled Wrecend, which explore the experience of maternal loss and grief from the perspective of Grendel’s mother.

After the final act, there will be a brief panel discussion of performers in Grendelkin, discussing their art in relation and conversation with some trends in scholarship. At this time, audience feedback and questions are welcomed!

Whether you are a medievalist, an artist, an educator or an enthusiast, we hope you will join us for Grendelkin!

Special thanks to Chris Abram, John Van Engen, Thomas Burman, Megan Hall, Peter Holland, Sara Maurer, the English Graduate School, and especially the Medieval Institute for their support of this project.

Richard Fahey
Art Director and Producer
PhD Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame

 

Resources for accessing Beowulf in Old English and its manuscript context

Critical edition: Frederick Klaeber’s critical edition
Student edition: George Jack’s student edition
Electronic edition: Kevin Kiernan’s electronic edition
Digitized Manuscript: British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.xv (Nowell Codex).

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The World is not Flat; It Is Interdisciplinary

This past week, I and a number of my Fulbright colleagues here in Morocco traveled to Amman, Jordan in order to participate in a regional Fulbright conference.

Over three days, Fulbright researchers from Israel and Palestine, Jordan, and Morocco presented a snapshot of our current in-country research, discussed the various issues and challenges we faced along the way with the regional, cultural, and linguistic differences between our respective host countries, and got to know one another over numerous cups of coffee.  We not only came from all across the United States, but we also came from just about all the different academic and professional disciplines:  social work, medicine, sociology, art history, literature, economics, political science, education, and medieval history.  In short, we were living up to the stated mission of the Fulbright Program: to foster international exchange in order to increase mutual understanding and diminish the threat of conflict based upon an inability to see the world as interconnected.

While the architects of the Fulbright Program imagined this exchange happening at an international level in order to lessen conflict and promote peace, it also works on a domestic level.  By offering the grant to those in the sciences and in the humanities, Fulbright illustrates the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of our world and how much we rely upon the expertise of each other in their respective fields order to proceed with our own research.  The following sketches are but a few examples of the ways in which each of us Fulbrighters depend upon one another and our various subjects of expertise in order to complete our own projects.

  • One of the Jordan-based grantees is looking at the various hurdles faced by entrepreneurs and small-business owners in Jordan and in Palestine, including the time it takes to register a business, the types of documentation required, the amount of capital needed at the start, and the laws governing ownership.  It turns out that for Palestine, one needs an expert in the Ottoman legal code, the Mecelle, in order to start a business in 2017.  Not only does this mean that potential entrepreneurs need translations of the Mecelle from Ottoman Turkish to modern Turkish (which also involves a shift from an Arabic alphabet to a Latin one), Modern Standard Arabic, or English for consultation, but they also need historians and legal scholars to explain how the code functions, what its restrictions are, and its various historical precedents.  This particular Fulbright researcher needs articles summarizing all of this in order to gain a deeper understanding of the various hurdles their colleagues face and proceed with their own research.  In short: to study current business practices in Palestine, someone with a financial or business background has to rely upon the work of historians, lawyers and legal scholars, and translators.
  • On a similar note, one of the Morocco-based grantees who is studying divorce proceedings in Morocco needs to rely upon the work of theologians in addition to historians, lawyers and legal scholars in to order to understand divorce proceedings in Morocco and conduct their research.  Although much of Moroccan law is based on French civil law —which in turn requires them to depend upon the work of experts in French legal history— the family code is based upon Islamic religious law (Shari’a law).  However, the foundation for Morocco’s family code (as well as its name) comes from the Mudawwana, a 9th century book of juridical opinion based upon the legal writings of 8th and 9th century scholars and written in Classical Arabic.  It is also a code that is unique to the Maliki school of Sunni Islam, a school that has its origins in the Arabian peninsula rather than North Africa. Like all legal codes and religious texts, the Mudawwana also has numerous compendiums and guides for its interpretation and implementation. Thus, this particular Fulbrighter needs medieval historians (such as myself) to explain how the code came to Morocco and gained favor among the jurists during the Middle Ages, modern historians to explain the creation of a mixed civil and religious code during the Protectorate and post-colonial periods, linguists to help translate and explain Classical Arabic terms in Modern Standard Arabic and in French (the language of civil law in Morocco), and legal scholars to interpret the laws themselves and explain how they influence current rulings on divorce.

Such an illumination of intellectual interdependence needed to answer contemporary questions could not come at a more dire and drastic time.  The release of the the 2018 Fiscal Budget, with its draconian cuts to both the Sciences and the Humanities along with programs and initiatives designed for the public good such as the State Department (which runs Fulbright), is predicated on the idea that grants such as Fulbright and fostering intellectual and geographical exchange among grantees is not a priority.  The proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities is a sign from the US Government — the same institution that created the Fulbright Program in 1946—that the government (and by extension, its citizens) have no role in funding the study of humanity itself. Wrapped up in all of this is the idea that “academics,” especially those in the Humanities, are not “useful” for anyone outside of their narrow specialty, and that funds should be allocated to those fields which promote business and long-term employment.

Yet these ideas did not begin at the federal level, nor did they begin with this Administration.  The shift away from fostering intellectual exploration, research, and an interdisciplinary framework began at the state and local level as a way to resolve budget crises (often not brought about by education spending), and it has been pushed by many in higher-ed including College and University boards and deans.  As colleges and universities continue to push the idea that their graduates are “successful” and that such success is only measured by the imagined direct causation of undergraduate degree and major to one’s income across their lifetime, they re-write their curriculum requirements to discourage interdisciplinary study among the majority of their students.  Cutting or eliminating requirements to take a number of classes outside of one’s concentration while allowing SATII or AP courses to “count” for college credit means that our students will not be prepared to engage in intellectual exchange, much less have the tools necessary to turn to other fields and experts in order to answer their own questions.

Toting the equation of “undergraduate specialty = personal wealth” and “interdisciplinary study ≠ “gainful employment” (an argument that does not hold much water) undercuts the very support needed to answer legal and economic questions posed by these two Fulbright researchers.  If there are no specialists in Ottoman law, medieval history, legal codes, and Islam — to say nothing of language teachers and translators required to make these documents available to your average Anglophone who does not speak or read Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, or French—then it is impossible for these projects to move forward.  Yet in order to have specialists, you must have an education system that allows them to study the materials they need without telling them directly or indirectly that their choices are “economically precarious”  and hold “little to no weight in ‘the real world.’” You also need a civil society that promotes intellectual exchange, that underwrites programs dedicated to interdisciplinary study, and says that spending a (very very very small ) portion of taxes on such programs is necessary in order to create forums of intellectual exchange that lead to international understanding and peace.

The skeptic always asks “What’s the worst that could happen?” when faced with a narrative.  The answer in this case, I believe, lies within Jordan.  As part of the conference, we were treated to presentations by development experts about the various challenges within the kingdom today.  One of the most acute revolves around education and the lack of a robust civil society.  In Jordan, any degree other than one in engineering, medicine, or law is viewed as socially and economically worthless, because there are no jobs other than laborer or service work and because jobs themselves are not determined by aptitude or interest but by your high school exit exam scores, which then determine your university education and subsequent career path.  As a result, Jordanians themselves must depend upon the knowledge, insight, and vast amounts of money and trained foreigners in order to run their own country, understand their past, and answer basic questions.

Unlike Jordan, there is no other country who can underwrite the educational failings of the United States.

The world is interdisciplinary by default. Trying to understand our present relies upon the study of the past and the necessary experts to guide and shape that study.  Institutions such as liberal arts colleges dedicated to a broad education for all of their students (not just humanities majors), intellectual centers such as the Medieval Institute, and government programs like Fulbright not only recognize this inherent interdependence but point to it as the avenue in which additional interdependence can be and needs to be fostered in order to increase mutual understanding.  To insist upon the opposite against all evidence to the contrary and to do so by forcing our students into strict, narrow categories would raise generations against the very grain of their human nature and their environment and leave us utterly unprepared to see the world as it truly is.