EUROPE AND THE ORIENT

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL
AND CULTURAL INTERACTIONS

Issue editors:
Nikolai Vukov, Evgenia Troeva, Galina Lozanova

© Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, 2023

Format 70×100/16
Printed Sheets 10,00

Printing office of Prof. Marin Drinov Publishing House of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
1113 Sofia, Acad. Georgi Bonchev Str, bl. 5

ISSN 2815-4894
 Issue 1, 2023
ISSN 2815-4894

EUROPE AND THE ORIENT

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL
AND CULTURAL INTERACTIONS

Issue editors: Nikolai Vukov, Evgenia Troeva,

Galina Lozanova

CONTENTS

Editorial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

ARTICLES

Slobodan Dan Paich (USA) – Cultural Osmosis, Overlap, and Shared Latitudes
Complexity and Ambiguity of Islamic Legacy in Non-Muslim Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Azucena Hernández Pérez (Spain) – Art, Science, and Technology in the Medieval
Mediterranean: the Case of the Astrolabes in al-Andalus and the Middle East. . . . . . . . . 15
Ekin Can Göksoy (Turkey) – Eating Out. Food Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman
Empire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Mohammad Mosa Foqara (Israel) – Traditions and Practices around the Tombs of the
Just from the Point of View of Judaism and Islam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Roza Zharkynbaeva (Kazakhstan) – Interaction of Western and Southern National
Cultures in Extreme Conditions of the Great Patriotic War (on the Example of Mobilized
Population from Central Asian Military District). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Pulat Shozimov (Tadjikistan) – The Creation of an Innovative Cross-Disciplinary
Methodology in Central Asia as a Result of a Dialogue Between Western European and
Central Asian Systems of Philosophical Thought. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Milena Benovska (Bulgaria) – The Soft Power of Seduction: Turkish TV Dramas as
Cultural Diplomacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Almat Musin (Kazakhstan) – Comics in Kazakhstan as a Cultural Phenomenon:
Varieties, Features, and Influences on Contemporary Youth Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

BOOK REVIEWS

José Manuel Losada, Mitocrítica Cultural. Una Definición Del Mito. Madrid: Akal, 2022
(Reviewed by José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas, Spain). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Ferenc Bódi, Andrea Ragusa, Ralitsa Savova, eds., Courage in Politics. Pisa: Pacini
Editore, 2020. (Reviewed by Nikolai Vukov, Bulgaria)c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Mohammad Mosa Foqara, Anthropology and Colonialism in the Past and Present.
Alhoda Press, 2022 [in Arabic]. (Reviewed by Duaa Taha, Israel). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Nevrie Chufadar, The Fantastical Elements in the Koroglu Destans. Shumen: Konstantin
Preslavski University Press, 2019 [in Bulgarian]. (Reviewed by Nikolay Papuchiev,
Bulgaria). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

CONFERENCES

“Miasto i Pamięc” – Gdynia, Poland, 27-29 October 2021. (Overview by Stefan

Halikowski-Smith, UK). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
“What’s Up?!” Conference of Directors of European Ethnographic Museums – Budapest,
Hungary – 25-27 May 2022. (Overview by Iglika Mishkova, Bulgaria). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
“Scientific Knowledge and Challenges of Historical Memory: Local and Universal” (III
International Conference for a Culture of Knowledge) – Almaty, Kazakhstan, September
19-20, 2022. (Overview by Nikolai Vukov, Bulgaria). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Guidelines for Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

 Nikolai Vukov / 3

EDITORIAL

Profound and multilayered, the centuries-long relationships between Europe and the
Orient bear the meaning of a longue durée in European and world history. In the wide
geographical space stretched amidst three continents, empires emerged, collided, and
disintegrated; communities, ideas, and religious systems traversed and contended
with each other; technologies, lifestyles, and artistic forms were in incessant and
self-enriching exchange. With no exaggeration, the political, social, economic, and
cultural interactions between Europe and its symbolic ‘Others’ – North Africa, the
Middle, and the Near East – have been formative for each of these regions, even more
so for the European continent. In the present-day situation, when the world is facing
not only new military conflicts, migration waves, and globalization challenges but also
enhancing difficulties of maintaining communication and mutual tolerance, studying
the past and present dimensions of East-West relations is no doubt a worthwhile task.
The current journal aims to serve as a scientific portal where scholars can
present their research work on past and present dimensions of the relations between
Europe and the Orient. The journal was initiated within the project “Europe and
the Orient: Historical Interactions and Cultural Heritage,” which involves scholars
from the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum –
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IEFSEM-BAS). A peer-reviewed edition, the journal
publishes articles in English and/ or French, in fields related but not limited to
history, anthropology, archaeology, art studies, foreign affairs, regional studies, and
international relations. With its multi-disciplinary profile and adherence to high
academic standards, the journal will certainly attract the attention of researchers
working in these fields and will be of interest to a wide circle of specialists and non-
specialists alike.

Nikolai Vukov
 Book reviews / 139

BOOK REVIEWS

José Manuel Losada, Mitocrítica Cultural. Una Definición Del Mito

Madrid: Akal, 2022, 824 pp1
From time to time, academic writers astonish the general and specialized audience
with the launch of a volume that addresses a very particular, at first sight, well-known
topic, changing the perspective scholars have over it. It has happened in the 20th and 21st
centuries in fields such as Horror Fiction, Comparative Literature, Feminist Studies, etc.
The publication of Mitocrítica cultural. Una definición del mito adheres to this trend,
meaning the culmination of a fifteen-year-long process. Prof. José Manuel Losada
(Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) has offered what many scholars have been
searching for decades: a useful, practical, and complete tool to define and analyze myths
and their cultural manifestations. As Dr. Losada mentions in the volume, one of the
main objectives is setting things clear: what constitutes a myth, and what does not. To
do so, a clear, working definition is presented in the “Introduction,” which is developed
in the following chapters. In a free translation, that definition argues that a myth is “a
functional, symbolic, and thematic narration referred to extraordinary events related to
the sacred and/or supernatural. These events may have a historical background and they
pledge to an individual or collective (but always absolute) cosmogony and eschatology.”
However, we can never lose the perspective that, as Losada has repeated on several
occasions, this is a definition of Myth, a very useful, very complete one, but subject to
discussion or re-evaluation.
As for practical issues, Mitocrítica cultural is divided into two parts, the first offering
a general introduction to key terms and a contextualization of myth in contemporary
times. The second part, the most important one within the book, approaches how
different myths, or myth-related notions, have evolved in Western, and European
history and culture. There, the author also addresses a deconstruction of the different
elements that make a myth a myth, analyzing how they work, how they are combined,
and how they should be understood by the reader and the myth critic. Finally, all of this
is completed with the inclusion of four indexes: on the different myths included in the
volume, on key concepts, on works mentioned, and on proper names.
Myths, half-literature, and half-religion, have been a constant affecting any given
civilization or culture since, at least, the advent of writing systems. They have addressed
crucial topics and questions such as “What are we?,” “where do we come from?”

1
This book review is part of the activities of the Research Group “Poéticas y textualidades emergentes.
Siglos XIX-XXI” [Poetics and Emerging Textualities: 19th to 21st Centuries] (Universidad Complutense
de Madrid, Spain), the Research Group “Estudios interdisciplinares de Literatura y Arte -LyA-”
[Multidisciplinary Studies in Literature and Art] (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), and
the Research Project “Aglaya,” sponsored by the Community of Madrid and the European Social Fund
Plus (Ref. H2019/HUM-5714).
140 / Europe and the Orient, 2023/ 1

etc. Myths have contributed to explaining what was unexplainable, to comprehend

what was incomprehensible. In consequence, myths have been created, worked with,
modified, substituted, and forgotten as their existence has suited human cosmovision(s).
Mitocrítica cultural successfully explains how this complicated (and convoluted) process
has come to existence.
Focusing on the first of the mentioned parts, one of the most interesting questions
addressed by Dr. Losada is that of globalization, or how myths (born in local, particular
traditions – although referred to as universal notions) have been affected by the current
global processes our world is going through, being this a problematic relationship.
Losada assesses that
El mito se opone a la uniformidad global de igual modo que las minorías
comunitarias se oponen a la intrusión de instituciones administrativas de nivel
superior. En contrapartida al falso “mito” del igualitarismo propuesto por los
paraísos artificiales, el mundo mitológico propone la complementariedad: ni los
dioses ni Dios han querido a los hombres iguales, amorfos, indiferenciados, sino
desemejantes para que se ayuden y sostengan mutuamente [Myths are opposed to
worldwide uniformity like minorities oppose administrative institutions’ actions.
Before the false “myth” of egalitarianism, proposed by artificial paradises, myths
offer complementarity: neither gods nor God have ever desired men to be equal,
shapeless, all alike, but dissimilar in order to mutually help and sustain] (2022: 66).
So, the global world is a side-, reverse-effect of myth, and the conflicts that have
shaped human history may be understood (or interpreted) through the lens of myth(s).
This argued relation of myths with history is re-visited by Dr. Losada along the
second part of Mitocrítica cultural. Indeed, “Chapter 8” is devoted to History and how
mythification processes work. Going back to the definition of myth, myths “may have a
historical background.” Losada adds that
“El acontecimiento narrado por el mito ocurre en un tiempo, pero no el tiempo
circunscrito en las coordenadas de la historiografía moderna, sino en el de una
ficción que apunta a unos referentes absolutos malamente enmarcables en esa
historiografía” [The narrations included in a myth happen in a specific period
of time, but they are not limited by the coordinates established by modern
historiography; on the contrary, they address absolute referential points impossible
to narrow down to what historiography says] (2022: 475).
Thus, myth and History, despite going hand in hand, have several friction points,
for myths transcend history. This is even more strongly addressed in the volume when
certain “mythical” historical figures (e.g. Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Rodrigo
Díaz de Vivar) are recreated into narrations sharing similarities with myths (and are
understood as such by the general audience). Losada is crystal clear: “no son mitos”
[they are not myths] (2022: 485), adding that they may be considered pseudo-myths or
characters who have suffered a mythification process. As mentioned, this is one of the
main strengths of the book: discerning tares from the wheat. In a similar way, literary
“myths,” such as that of Don Quixote (addressed on pages 391-402), are re-evaluated
through the lens of this approach, separating them from “real” myths.
 Book reviews / 141

However, what is more, relevant in Mitocrítica cultural is how the author analyzes
both the elements that constitute a myth, and how myths relate to them and to the
structural narrations in which they are usually included. Regarding the first of these
aspects, probably the most relevant chapter is “Chapter 9,” in which Losada deconstructs
the structure of myth. To do so, Mitocrítica cultural differentiates between the concepts
of “myth,” “theme,” and “mytheme,” explained the latter as
“la unidad temática y mitológica mínima cuya indispensable dimensión trascendente
o sobrenatural lo capacita para interactuar con otros mitemas en la formación de
un mito. Si los temas tienen razón mítica, es decir, atravesada de trascendencia,
son mitemas; de lo contrario, son únicamente temas narrativos” [the thematic and
mythic entity whose trascendent dimesion allows to interact with other mythemes
to form a myth. If themes have a mythical foundation (linked to transcendence) are
mythemes; is this not the case, they are just narrative themes] (2022: 536).
Once again, clarifying concepts, as seen for historical characters. Concerning the
second of the aforementioned aspects, we can read “Chapter 3” and “Chapter 6” together,
as explained below.
As we have mentioned, a myth is a narration halfway between literature and religion
and, in consequence, shares characteristics that belong to both cultural manifestations.
Losada has successfully addressed this hybrid nature of mythical narrations, explaining
both how they connect with literary pieces and how they cipher religious notions
such as cosmogony and eschatology. So, the author includes a discussion on concepts
such as genre or chronotope that are usually associated with mere literary narrations.
For instance, when discussing time and myth, Losada discerns between immanence
and transcendence, marking these as the frontier between narrative and mythical
conceptions of time. To have a myth, we need the former, as stated in the definition
Mitocrítica cultural offers. When addressing characters, Losada also discerns between
literary personae and mythical incarnations, what he terms “prosopomito.” Regarding the
religious dimension of myths, Losada has placed together chapters 10 and 11 to address
two of the fundamental questions religions have traditionally observed: origin(s) and
conclusion(s). Myths have usually tried to answer the questions “Why does everything
exist?” and “Where do I come from?” Thus, human cultures have constructed a series of
mythical cosmogonies around these narratives, explaining the beginning of everything
and everyone:
“El mito indaga el significado originario del mundo; quiere saber […] El mito presta
atención y busca interpreter simbólicamente los acontecimientos extraordinarios
en el extremo de los tiempos, donde el tiempo roza con el no tiempo” [Myths search
the original meaning of the world; they want to know […] Myths pay attention to,
and aim to symbolically explain, extraordinary events at the edge of time, where
time and no-time collide] (2022: 573).
Mitocrítica cultural addresses this theme with a fruitful evaluation of polytheistic
and Judeo-Christian approaches. As for eschatology, we are in front of a similar problem,
for it “se pregunta, sobre todo, por el futuro, pero no por los futuribles inmediatos, sino
por el futuro final, definitivo y absoluto de una persona, de un pueblo o el universo”
142 / Europe and the Orient, 2023/ 1

[asks, above all, about the future, not the immediate future, but the final, definitive, and
absolute future of a person, a community, or the Universe] (2022: 615). Thus, since the
future remains convoluted in shadows, myths have traditionally played (and still play) a
crucial role to approach it. In this section (“Chapter 11”), the author also addresses one
of those cultural notions that is usually mistaken with myths: the eternal return, or the
cyclical conception of history, subverting the Western conception of time. This analysis
is interesting for Mitocrítica cultural confronts the vision that is probably more familiar
to us (Judeo-Christian, medieval-based, projection of history) with extra-European
notions, closer to a circular vision of evolution.
In conclusion, as seen in the previous paragraphs, Mitocrítica cultural. Una
definición del mito offers a guarantee for the researcher when dealing with myths or
myth-related narrations, allowing us to work with them. On the other hand, José Manuel
Losada also gives us the chance of stating what is a myth from what is not, proposing
tools and hermeneutic devices to do so. In consequence, our task as cultural researchers
have become easier thanks to the enormous amount of work already developed by
Dr. Losada. His volume has become one of those giants’ shoulders from which we
can contemplate the academic horizon. Myths were shaped when knowledge could
not explain everything, they were created to enlighten our ancestors’ minds offering
a plausible and acceptable explanation to the most transcendental questions. Today,
like in mythical times, Mitocrítica cultural has also become a lantern to illuminate our
scholarly path and to solve our transcendental doubts.

José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas,

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Ferenc Bódi, Andrea Ragusa, Ralitsa Savova, eds., Courage

in Politics.
Pisa: Pacini Editore, 2020.
Dedicated to the complex and multi-layered relationship between courage and politics,
the volume edited by Ferenc Bodi, Andrea Ragusa, and Ralitsa Savova takes the reader on
a fascinating intellectual journey in history and political thought of the modern epoch.
Focusing on the problem of upholding courageous behavior in critical political contexts,
the volume analyses a wealth of examples from the modern history of courageous acts
as embraced by political figures and ordinary people in major historical overturns, as
key motors in the struggle for civic rights, and as expressions of dignity and opposition
to totalitarian rule. The diverse examples are approached in view of understanding
courage as a core human value that is able to counter attempts for political injustice and
by resisting unacceptable social order, to have a transformative power on society as a
whole.
The volume is a result of long-term research and academic collaboration of the
editors and authors in the volume that has found expressions in conference papers,