INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES (THE JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES)
Year:2002 | Volume:9 | Issue:3|Papers Count:3

This paper is devoted to a study of Persian musical instruments in the Timurid era as depicted in a number of the 15th century miniature paintings. It begins with a discussion of the usual system of classification of musical instruments as well as a brief description of the common musical instruments in that period according to some extant musical treatises. Then an effort is made to locate illustrations of musical instruments in some Timurid miniature paintings. Finally, attempt is made, to compare the data derived from both organological and iconographical sources in order to get a better understanding of the morphology and the function of the musical instruments, which were supposed to be prevalent in the Timurid epoch.

The foundations of Islamic legislation has continuously progressed in an evolutionary fashion. Contrary to the Western experience during the renaissance where legislation based on revelation was differentiated from legislation founded on individual views and interests, these two contrasting sources of legislation progressed in parallel and complementary to one another. The structure of Islamic law is divisible into two parts. First, The Holy Qoran and the Traditions of the Prophet that are collectively considered as the primary sources of legislation in Islam. Second, legislation based on arising discussions and theories of contemporary nature. A second source of legislation in Islam refers to consensus, deduction (according to Sunni interpretation and rationality according to Shia interpretation). A reliable reference to these sources of legislation is also inferred from the first primary source. As a result, the ultimate source of legislation in Islam is The Qoran and the Tradition of the Prophet of Islam. What truly legitimates teh methodological and conceptual foundations legislation in Islam is a vivid and direct inference from The Qoran and the Tradition of Prophet. After teh passing away of the Prophet of Islam (pbuh), the relationship between Islamic law and issues requiring legislation based on qualified interpretations and jurisprudence advanced and progressed on the basis of The Qoran and the Tradition as issues arose. As developments intensified, two other sources of legislation gradually gained validity. First, interpretations and religious decrees of Islamic scholars. Second, consultative bodies and views expressed on specializations. These two new sources provided dynamism and diversity to Islamic legislation. In this respect, Islamic scholars for the most part deal with issues such as marriage, divorce, ownership and other Islamic contracts. In contrast, consultative bodies based on specialized vviews and public desires in the context of overall Islamic laws deal with complex issues such as environment, pricing and educational system.

In more recent approaches to describing figurative language, metaphors are seen as based on human conceptual system, realized as a set of conceptual mappings or ontological correspondences that obtain between a source and a target domain (Lakoff, 1993). In multilingual education, especially in second language acquisition (SLA), the challenge is how to establish the relationship between the learner"s level of language proficiency and the tacit knowledge necessary in understanding metaphorical expressions in L2. This paper intends to investigate the possible role of semantic transparency in motivating cognitive mechanisms leading to the formation of metaphorical meaning in a second language learning context. The first language of the learner is Persian and the target language English. Statistical support will be provided for the hypothesis that the traditional way of looking at metaphors as items of the lexicon independent of any conceptual system (Kovesces and Szaho, 1996) leads to problems for L2 learners.