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[ by Charles Cameron — Syria echoes Guernica ]
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This, from JM Berger today, offers a glimpse of Syria that is neither war, nor peace, if I might put it this way, but war longing for peace:

‘All Syrians Are Tired of This Absurd War’: Voices From the Ground During the Cease-Fire https://t.co/H6rifenXHz

— J.M. Berger (@intelwire) September 15, 2016

Irresistibly, it reminds me of this:

5 May 1937
-commissioned the "Guernica" at the Paris World's Fair. pic.twitter.com/ZknE4okL

— Pablo Picasso JAG (@GuernicaArtWork) May 6, 2012

Isn’t that a bull’s head in cloth, hanging right above the shoulder of the leaping boy in the Syrian image — and isn’t that alnmost exactly Picasso’s swooping white head, again in cloth, just to the right of it? The illusion of their similarity is enhanced by the aspect ratio of the Twitter image from Syria, which cuts off a stretch of green in the original photo, just below the image as you see it here..

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But it may be I’m seeing this because the bullfight and tauromachia have been on my mind recently — mythic combats of man pitted agains one of his worthiest opponents. There’s an archaic resonance there that’s inmportant in some way, but the actual killing of the bull, blood in the sand, horrifies me, the animal descending from grandeur to humiliation, its bowed head propped on one horn as it awaits finality — terrible.

And I was accordingly happy to recall the less violent version of the sport, still pitting man’s skill against adversary — in the bull-leaping of Knossos:

Bull-Leaping Fresco from the Great Palace at Knossos,Crete pic.twitter.com/hZNTKqBIFp

— Libertas (@VeraCausa9) May 25, 2016

and its latter-day practice, shown here at the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona:

Recordator JUMPING over charging bull in Pamplona goes back to bull leaping in ancient Crete https://t.co/67U2mkRBOI pic.twitter.com/KKfQFX22iE

— Richard Kellie (@rjkellie) July 10, 2016

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Taurus:

This image comes from the fabulous Constellations of Words site.

[ by Charles Cameron — interfaith rivalry on the checkered board ]
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Many of you will be familiar with the Christian and Muslim playing chess in this illustration from El Libro de los Juegos or Book of Games of Alfonso X of Castile:

"Book of games" by Alfonso X "The Wise".King of Castile and León. 1238.(El libro de los juegos). pic.twitter.com/iRUgZfqSpm

— art (@art3666) July 16, 2016

— but let’s not forget that Andalusia was also home to learned Jews, including the great Maimonides. In this illustration to the same work, we see a match-up between Muslim and Jew:

A Jew & a Muslim playing chess in al-Andalus.
El Libro de los Juegos, commissioned by Alphonse X of Castile, 13th c pic.twitter.com/dEuwAkAfmS

— Bibliophilia (@Libroantiguo) August 23, 2016

[ by Charles Cameron — on St Clare’s feast, two tales of miraculous television, and the fragmented memory of a third ]
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Today, August 11th, is in the Catholic calendar the Feast of St Clare of Assisi, friend of St Francis and patron saint of television:

In celebrating her day, I cannot but remember the Sufi al-Sha’rani, whose capacity #20 as recorded in Arberry‘s little book has long delighted me.

I believe similar, more detailed stories are told of other Sufi saints, one of whom (if memory serves) saw and greeted from Spain a master in Damascus or Baghdad with whom he would subsequently meet.

I should look into that..

[ by Charles Cameron — astronaut in a cathedral, nuclear reactor in Gabon ]
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I enjoy scoping and snoping out strange claims, and had to check out possible anachronicities not once but twice today — first, to verify the presence of an astronaut in Salamanca’s seventeenth-century (1513-1733 to be more precise) “New Cathedral”:

and then, of a nuclear reactor from two billion years ago in Gabon, West Africa.

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Neither one turned out to be von Däniken fool’s gold, but both certainly glisten enough to be worth a mention.

The Salamanca cathedral astronaut is there, carved in stone, all right — but as part of a 1992 renovation. And what’s most interesting to me is that it’s entirely in conformity with tradition for an artist working today on such a restoration to “sign” his work with a contemporary flourish of this sort. It is thus faithful to what Benedict XVI would call the hermeneutic of continuity.

And 2 billion year old nuclear reactor?

It’s not as old as the sun, of course, by about 3.6 billion years, nor as close to us, nor as vast — but it’s there, it’s there.

Hat tips:

for the astronaut, Jeff DeMarco

for the reactor, Cheryl Rofer

[ by Charles Cameron — Hagia Sophia and the Mezquita, Cordoba, with a glance at Guadalupe / Tepeyac ]
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Interiors of the Mezquita, Cordoba [left], and Hagia Sophia, Istanbul [right]

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Opening paras of my latest from LapidoMedia:

HERITAGE watchers are waiting to see whether Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister, Yalcin Topcu, who has called for the reopening of basilica-turned-mosque-turned-museum Hagia Sophia as a mosque, has retained his job.

Topcu, an independent, was given the interim post in the negotiations that followed the AKP’s failure to achieve an absolute majority in an earlier round of elections in June.

Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP or Justice and Development Party won a landslide victory in last Sunday’s elections, but as we went to press, posts still remained to be re-allocated.

You can — should, eh? — read the rest here.

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Exteriors of the Mezquita-Cathedral, Cordoba [left] and of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul [right]