Доклады Международного конгресса ИИСАА. Т. 1

Foreword Доклады Международного конгресса по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки. Т. 1. 2020 17 All this is clearly seen in the careful selection of papers from the XXX International Congress on Source Studies and Historiography of Asia and Africa held at St Petersburg University. Eloquent and vivid episodes demonstrate the mutual perception of cultures — be it St George with the sword of the Prophet Muhammad or the procession of elephants of Nadir Shah’s embassy in St Petersburg; the transformation of Chinese legal terminology or the disappearance of primordial toponymy. Reality acquires sharp details in the description of Russia in the time of Patriarch Nikon through the eyes of the Antioch hierarchs or in the story about the secrets of the capture of Kars by the Russian army through the lips of the repetitive renegade Osman Bey. New political influences lead to the peculiar transformations of the Chinese popular prints as well as to new interpretations of the wars in Korea and Vietnam. The present is unexpectedly recalled even in the paper on the “Martyrdom of St Aretha.” The image of the free international navigation in the Red Sea at the early junction of Antiquity and the Middle Ages is in tune with today’s problems of the south of Arabian peninsula, where the political situation is strikingly similar to the struggle of Byzantium and Iran in that area in the VI century. The beauty of the unusual appears to the reader in the images of the Sufi poetry of East Turkestan, in amazing combinations of old traditions and new ideas in Caucasian Islam and in the analysis of a range of books being read by local Caucasian Muslims. The most important feature of all the works presented in the collection from the Congress is a strictly academic approach, a rigorous analysis of the sources, their language and the psychology of their authors. This has been the basis of the competitive advantage of traditional Oriental Studies in St Petersburg. Its hallmark is on all the works selected, no matter which part of the world they have come from. For that, credit must go to the organizers of the Congress. A strictly academic approach has made it possible to conduct a dialogue on the most delicate subjects and topics. In this sense, an article about the life and work of Vladimir Ivanov, the creator of academic Ismaili history, emotionally and rationally acceptable both to purely academic scholars and to zealous followers of this doctrine, is particularly revealing. True science provides knowledge with devotion to goodness and purified from poison. We have a covenant with our predecessors who created this Conference/ Congress and established its scholarly tradition. Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Dean of the Faculty of Asian and African Studies of St Petersburg University, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, Professor, Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Arts