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Showing posts from October, 2007

I'm having identity issues

So I changed my blog's author name.

Sultans and Mosques: The Early Muslim Architecture of Bangladesh

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Taken from a friend's Facebook entry on Dr. Perween Hasan's publication, made earlier this year, on Muslim Architecture in Bangladesh . Dr. Perween Hasan, professor in the Department of Islamic History and Culture at Dhaka University , recently published her book Sultans and Mosques: The Early Muslim Architecture of Bangladesh (London: I.B.Tauris and Co Ltd). Though the book originated as her doctoral thesis and is fairly technical in nature, with architectural terms and plans not easily accessible to the layperson, it is on a subject that is inherently interesting to Bangladeshis. How can we not be interested in the mosques around us, not be curious about their origins and history, not wonder about the ideas and environment that shaped them ? What do they reveal about the arrival of Islam in the delta from north India and beyond, about its impact and spread, about our own evolution as a nation and state? Dr. Perween Hasan, by focusing her study on the independent Bengal Sult

Online Etymology Dictionary

Great website for those who like to find out the origins of words - on how it came to be, where it came from and how the meanings of words have changed over time. I'm sure from this many would find how global languages are and how much we borrow from lands we would not have thought of. It would be great if we had this in other languages though...