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6 - In Memory of al-Andalus: Using the Elegy to Reimagine the Literary and Literal Geography of Cordoba
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- By Anna C. Cruz
- Edited by Nizar F. Hermes, University of Virginia, Gretchen Head
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- Book:
- The City in Arabic Literature
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 10 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 15 May 2018, pp 103-123
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- Chapter
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Summary
This chapter will examine the manifestation and transformation of the genre rithāʾ al-mudun (the city elegy) in the poetry of Ibn Zaydūn (d. 463/1071), a fifth/eleventh-century poet who experienced the disintegration of his home, the city of Cordoba, from afar. While Ibn Zaydūn composed numerous poems lamenting his bygone relationship with his beloved, the Umayyad princess Wallāda bint al-Mustakfī (d. 484/1091), he also wrote a number of poems elegising his beloved city. Throughout the course of his poems, his exile unfolds in temporal and spatial ways as he creates his version of Cordoba based on memories from his youth. The result is an exhaustive mapping and memorialization of Cordoba and the palace-city Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ as a Paradise Lost. By plotting the sites mentioned by Ibn Zaydūn in consultation with archaeological, art historical, and landscape architectural sources, the goal is to present an idea of the Cordoba that once was, fusing the task of the poet and historian into a single role of connecting the past city space with the patterns of a quotidian life long gone.
Ibn Zaydūn attempts to compensate for his loss of time, space, and identity through his distinctive rendition of the rithāʾ al-mudun and many of the sites, which are no longer in existence, are revivified to serve as personal repositories of memory for the exiled Cordoban. The rithāʾ al-mudun genre is traditional in form and style, utilising a series of stock tropes and patterns for a twofold purpose: as a medium for one's own mourning while simultaneously immortalising the lost city as remembered by the poet. While the city elegy provides a specific framework with which one can lament the loss of a homeland, Ibn Zaydūn reformulates the elegy's existing characteristics in his mukhammas to evoke the same feelings of mourning, remembrance, and nostalgia.
The rithāʾ al-mudun emerged in al-Andalus in the fifth/eleventh century after the fall of Cordoba in 1013 due to the Berber fitna and remained an important Andalusian form until the Capitulation of Granada in 1492.
12 - Gender and Economic Well-being among Older Filipinos
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- By Grace T. Cruz, University of the Philippines, Anna Melissa C. Lavares, Demographic Research and Development Foundation, Maria Paz N. Marquez, University of the Philippines, Josefina N. Natividad, University of the Philippines, Yasuhiko Saito, Nihon University
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- Book:
- Gender and Ageing
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 20 August 2014, pp 288-314
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Older women are often perceived as more vulnerable to social, economic, and health disadvantages. It is often surmised that gender discrimination is the main cause for the disadvantages they face. In situations where social structures reinforce such gender biases, particularly in education and employment opportunities, the cumulative effect of earlier life experiences render older women generally poorer than men. There are those who argue that the perceived disadvantaged position of older women may be an oversimplified global generalization which ignores the substantial variations in the relative situations of older men and women (Ofstedal, Reidy, and Knodel 2004; Knodel and Ofstedal 2003). In the Philippines, for example, the legal framework affirms equality for all citizens regardless of gender, which has helped ensure a relatively high degree of protection of its women. This is not to say that gender equality has been fully achieved, given the discrimination against women that continues to prevail in some sectors in the Philippines. It is thus important to understand the gender situation, particularly on the economic front among the older cohort, most of whom come from the generations that preceded the enactment of policies and programmes that have protected the rights and privileges of women in the country.
This chapter aims to provide an empirical analysis of the economic well-being of older Filipinos highlighting differences across gender and marital status groups. It explores the levels and differentials in economic status of older people using various objective and subjective indicators of economic well-being. The extent to which subjective and objective indicators of economic well-being interrelate with each other is likewise examined so as to generate a more appropriate measure for assessing the economic well-being of older Filipinos. This analysis is of importance in a low-income country such as the Philippines where a third of the country's population is currently living in poverty (UN OCHA, n.d.), with the older sector expected to be more vulnerable to economic liabilities.
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