Requirements to be completed by Semester's End

Here is a list of what you'll need to have done to demonstrate competence for the first semester .

Exams
Geography test on the Middle East
Geography test on North Africa
Geography test on Equatorial Africa

All country reports handed out need to be collected into a notebook.

Writings
Any writings not included in the journal should be collected and placed in a folder

1. A story: something that happened in the last ten days
2. A fable
3. Your story of flying around the world
4. A Ghazal
5. Your assigned definition from our study of Islam

A 1000-word (or more) paper covering Islam. The words "Vocabulary of Islam" on this website should be incorporated into the paper in such a way as to demonstrate an understanding of their significance.
Format:
1. typed
2. double-spaced
3. Do not plagiarize. Find sources, get the understanding, and put it in your own words. If you quote a source, acknowledge it by including the name of the source in the text. For example:

The Wikipedia defines Islam as "a monotheistic religion . . ."

4. Include a complete list of sources: with the following information

Books/journals/magazines and other periodicals:
author, title, date published, publisher, place of publicatio

Internet and other non-print sources: include the URL or other rource for the informatio; also information as listed for books.

You should have a journal that has in-class writings, your Ghazal, anything else you want to include

Invent-a-Culture Project:
This project should demonstrate your understanding of what culture is and some elements common to most cultures.
Imagine a group of people that lives apart from the vast majority of the rest of the world.
Determine the following attributes of your culture:
What is the environment this group lives in.

Your cloth book should be complete

Example of a Ghazal

A Clumsy Ghazal
by Priscilla Smith

The rising sun is the earth's true turning.
The shining sun is that star's dire burning.

The rose blooms red, the lover's finger pricked,
The rose dusts the bee's legs as its scent he's discerning.

The sky glows a blue dome, a ceiling for birds flying
The sky floats clouds, the weather ones concerning.

The scolding squirrel's a watchdog
The chittering squirrel's a judge--his courtroom adjourning.

The river snakes across the rocky field
The river glows with sunset; it is burning.

The bending trees attend the wind's whispers
The sighing trees the secrets learning.

The moon is waning, losing light,
The moon is hiding, sun's shine spurning.

The spring is greening, blooming, grassing, ferning,
The spring is movement, rolling, sun's warmth earning.

Homework for Thursday, October 18

Write a Ghazal

See the previous post for more information. To sum up, a Ghazal has 8 to 15 couplets. The opening couplet rhymes and the ending line of each of the couplets rhymes with the first two. The rhyme scheme is as follows. The ending syllable of each line represented by a question mark can be anything:
A
A

?
A

?
A

?
A

Poets ad Poetry

Shams al-Din Hafez Shirazi was born at Shiraz the capital of the province of Fars, Iran about the year 720/1320; some fifty years after the death of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 672/1273), Persia's most influential mystical poet. He grew up in an age when the finest Persian literature had already been written, and in the shadow of the reputation of his distinguished fellow-citizen, Shaikh Sa'di (d. 690/1291 or 691/1292). Persian poetry had thus reached its consummation in the romantic epic, the mystical Mathnavi, the Robaii, the Qasideh, and gnomic verse; Hafez spent little time on Qasideh and Robaii, and none at all on the other classical forms, but elected to specialize in the Ghazal or Sonnet, no doubt supposing--and not without cause--that he had something to contribute to this most delicate of all poetic forms.

A Ghazal or Sonnet is an eight to fifteen verses joined in meaning by a kind of symbolic inspiration and in style by the same melody. Each verse has two parts. In Ghazal, the second part of all verses share the same ending word or sylab.

The Vocabulary of Islam

Hejira - Mindy
Gabriel, The Prophet Muhammed's night flight to Jerusalem and to heaven - Landry
Women in Islam - Iza
Islamic art - Andrea
Sunni - Marcus
Shiia - Diana
Abu Bakr - Frankie
Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Hagar - Maunglwin
ablutions in Islam - Joshua
fikh - Marguerite
Sharia - Fabumi
Mosques - Maungkyaw
Kaaba - Jacob
imam - William
Dervish - Rocio
Hadith - Trey
Sahaba - Tin
Caliph - Allen
Fitrah - Raina
Islamic banking -
Umrah - Sujin
sufism - Sissi
Yusuf

Homework 10/2 Read Sura 17 of the Qu'ran

http://www.masjidtucson.org/quran/noframes/ch17.html