Shii News – Academic Items

1. Query: Maritime cartography and a late 17th-century French chart of India

At the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam we are researching a French chart of the second half of the seventeenth century. It is part of a collection of 5 charts procured by the Museum in 1949.

While 4 of these maps are nautical charts used by the Dutch East India Company during the 17th century, the fifth one is a French chart outlining the Bay of Bengal, dating around 1650-1700 without details on the cartographer or place of manufacture. You will find the chart, with an image on our collection website: https://collectie.hetscheepvaartmuseum.nl/details/museum/505967

All the maps in the collection bear, in the same hand, in manuscript on the reverse side N (number) Bonté (year)” . To state an example, the French map is signed “N 12 Bonté 1692. At the moment, it is a mystery to us what or who Bonté could be.

We are also having difficulty finding literature connected to maritime cartography and representation of the Indian Ocean in a French context during the late 17th century. If someone would have suggestions for further information of literature, this would be much appreciated.

Sincerely,

Diederick Wildeman

Curator of Navigation, Cartography & Library Collections

Het Scheepvaartmuseum / National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam (Netherlands)

2. Society for the History of Discoveries Virtual Lecture Series:

“There is Nothing in the Desert”: Empire, Environmental Perceptions, and the Allure of Emptiness in Modern Desert Exploration

Dr. Andrea Duffy, Associate Professor of History, Colorado State University

June 4, 2026, 2 pm CST.

Modern imperialism was about more than just resource-rich environments and new spaces for settlement; it also involved the investigation, acquisition, and control of desolate, forbidding places such as deserts, high mountains, oceans, polar regions, and space. These extreme environments involved heightened threats to human visitors and created unique challenges for imperialism. They also defied common assumptions about the drivers and objectives of imperialism. Unlike other landscapes of exploration and empire, extreme environments were generally considered uninhabitable and lacked the appeal of resources. Explorers branded them as useless, dangerous, and empty, even when they were not.

While most extreme environments were considered natural – and in some cases the most pristine examples of nature – imperial agents often viewed desert regions as unnatural and sought not just to contain or tame them, but to restore them to an idealized, fertile past. This paper highlights the unique nature of desert exploration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It affirms that imperial ventures were largely about power and the ideal of control over not just territory or people, but nature itself.

You can RSVP here: https://discoveryhistory.org/event-6689464
A zoom link will be distributed closer to the date!

Contact Information

Cortney Anne Berg

Contact Email

archivist@c-berg.com

URL

https://discoveryhistory.org/event-6689464

3. Orbs of Blood in 14th-Century Persia

The «Tānksūqnāmah» and Its Theory of the Rotational Motion of Blood

Ben Kavoussi

28 May 2026 – 5 PM (CET)

A 14th-century Persian medical manual on the Medicine of Cathay (Northern China) known as the Tānksūqnāmah-yi Īlkhān dar funūn-i ʿulūm-i Khaṭāʾī (Tānksūqnāmah) explicitly states that blood “makes rounds” within the body, flowing from the liver to the heart, then to the lungs, and returning again to the liver.

Commissioned by the vizier and physician Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī (1247–1318) during Mongol rule in Iran, the manual is an attempt to explain Chinese medicine to a Persian readership, translating a book that summarised Chinese medical knowledge at the time.

Drawing on Chinese cosmology and medicine, as well as the Graeco-Arabic medical tradition, the book ultimately advances its own conception of blood movement, moving beyond simple continuity. This model, which links bodily processes to celestial movements, differs from the philosophical description of pulmonary transit by Ibn al-Nafīs (1213–1288) and the quantitative theory of systemic circulation by William Harvey (1578–1657).

The Tānksūqnāmah is therefore best understood as a product of the distinctive cross-cultural milieu of Mongol-era Iran, exemplifying how scientific ideas can emerge through reinterpretation within zones of cultural and scientific contact rather than through linear transmission within a single lineage.

To register for this event, please click here.

Kindest regards,

Andreas Hylla

Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR) – Assistant Coordinator

Domus Comeliana, Via Cardinale Maffi 48, 56126 Pisa, Italy

Tel.: +39.02.006.20.51 – Mobile: +39.333.13.12.203

Email: ah@csmbr.fondazionecomel.org

4. Interdisciplinary hybrid conference at the University of Geneva, May 20–21:

Reframing the Constitutional Revolution: Gender, Law, and the Iranian Press

This interdisciplinary gathering brings together scholars from art, literature, history, and religious studies from Iran, the United States, and beyond.

The conference will explore new perspectives on the Constitutional Revolution through the lenses of gender, law, and media. At a time of renewed global and local challenges, these discussions aim to offer critical insight into the historical and contemporary significance of these issues: https://unige.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UIwLbMwjSeOC6GycTFSvgA

5. Hybrid:2026 Sir William Luce Lecture – Wednesday 10 June 2026 – 12.00 – 1.00 (GMT)

You are warmly invited by Durham University’s Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies to attend the 2026 Sir William Luce Annual Lecture scheduled to take place on Wednesday 10 June 2026 from 12.00pm – 1.00pm in Room IM102, Al Qasimi Building, School of Government & International Affairs, Durham University,DH1 3TU.

The 2026 Sir William Luce Fellow, Professor Simon Smith will present a lecture on ‘Recovering lost slave voices: Slavery and Manumission in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula’. Professor Simon C. Smith is a Professor of International History at the University of Hull. His research focus is on imperialism, nationalism and decolonization in South-East Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East with a particular focus on the Gulf region.

You can attend the lecture online on the day at 12.00pm on Wednesday 10 June 2026 using the following link – Sir William Luce Annual Lecture

If you plan to attend the lecture in person can you please RSVP to luce.fund@durham.ac.uk by Monday 1 June 2026.

6. Call for Papers: Entangled Histories Seminar Series 2026–2027

Following the success of the current edition, the Entangled Histories Seminar Series invites abstracts for its 2026–2027 cycle:

“Borders and Sustainability: Human and Natural Resources across Time and Space.”

This edition explores sustainability not as an exclusively environmental concern but as a multifaceted concept that intersects with borders across diverse cultural, material, and ecological contexts.

The series adopts a diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective, spanning from prehistory to the contemporary world.

Sustainability and Borders: A Broad Perspective. We seek to investigate sustainability in its multiple dimensions:

Material sustainability:recycling of resources (manuscripts, architectural structures, waste, and landscapes).
Ecological sustainability:relationships between humans, animals, and environments; balance between preservation and exploitation.
Social, linguistic, and cultural sustainability:transmission of knowledge, endangered languages, healing practices, migration, and community resilience.
Symbolic sustainability:representations of ecological limits, hybrid beings, and cultural imaginaries of nature and borders.

Conceptual Framework At the heart of the series lies the concept of borders, understood as dynamic thresholds that shape access to resources and regulate interactions. Borders are not only physical or political: they can be ecological, cultural, social, linguistic, political and material. While we encourage long-term temporalities and global spatial entanglements, we also offer the elements (earth, water, air, fire, ether, wood, etc.) as a possible heuristic framework to explore these dimensions across different historical strata.

Topics of Interest: We encourage contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to:

Archaeology and Prehistory: Resource use, landscapes, indigenous practices, and environmental interactions over time.
Medieval Studies, Philology, and Manuscript Cultures: Material sustainability of manuscripts, palimpsests, intellectual ecologies, literatures and languages, and the transmission of knowledge.
Art History and Visual Culture: Representations of nature, landscapes, borders, and material practices across different periods.
Anthropology and Folklore: Vernacular ecological knowledge, oral traditions, liminal beings, and environmental imaginaries.
History of Science and Medicine: Healing practices, scientific knowledge, and environmental understanding across cultures.
Environmental Humanities and Ecology: Human–non-human relations, ecosystems, climate, and resilience.
History of Economy, Trade, and Food Systems: Circulation of resources, subsistence, scarcity, and sustainability practices.
Architecture and Infrastructure Studies: Built environments, water and soil management, roads, and material borders.
Geography, Cartography, and Media Studies: Spatial representation, mapping, and communication of environmental knowledge across borders.

🌟 High-Impact Publication Opportunity: A selection of the most significant contributions will be published in a dedicated edited volume or a special issue with a leading international publisher (past collaborations and ongoing projects include prestigious venues such as Brill, De Gruyter, and Routledge). This ensures that the research presented reaches a global audience of specialists.

Submission Guidelines

Format:Online seminar (approximately 30-minute talk + discussion).
Schedule:October 2026 – Summer 2027.
Required:Title, Abstract (250–300 words), Short Bio (100–150 words), Affiliation, email address, and preferred months of availability.
Deadline:31 August 2026.
Send to:seminars@outlook.com.

Contact Information

Organized by: