From Oct. 6-13, Dr. Nabil Al-Tikriti, associate professor of Middle Eastern history, served as an election monitor for the Belarus presidential election. Joining more than 30 other Americans in the U.S. delegation, Al-Tikriti worked as an OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and STO (Short Term Observer) in the capital city, Minsk. His observation partner was a Czech national and former U.N.D.P. staff member; the team’s interpreter was a college professor of English; and the team’s driver was a cardiac surgeon. For more information on these Belarus elections, and OSCE’s support of these elections, please see:  http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/belarus/174776.

In the course of his visit, Al-Tikriti also observed a Belarus primary school musical performance, toured the national museum, and visited several monuments, including the Lenin statue pictured here.

Professor of History and American Studies Nabil Al-Tikriti published conference proceedings entitled “The 1502-1504 Correspondence between Şehzade Korkud and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem” in the Italian peer-reviewed journal, “Mediterranea – ricerche storiche.”

The journal is supported by the International Association of Maritime Studies (IAMS) and Piri Reis University and published conference proceedings this past summer from the Second International Congress of Eurasian Maritime Studies, which Al-Tikriti participated in at Venice in 2013. Al-Tikriti‘s contribution appears in the third part of the volume, which can be accessed here:

https://www.academia.edu/16248774/The_1502-1504_Correspondence_Between_%C5%9Eehzade_Korkud_and_the_Knights_of_St._John_of_Jerusalem

The article abstract is as follows: “When the 1499-1502 Ottoman-Venetian war ended, Bayezid II’s son, Şehzade Korkud, was granted the task of managing relations with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Between 1502 and 1504, the two parties exchanged many missives. Their English translations are published here, together with the translations of other documents written by the Knights about their negotiations with Korkud.”

The entire journal volume can be accessed here: http://www.storiamediterranea.it/portfolio/agosto-2015/.

During this past summer, Associate Professor of History and American Studies Nabil Al-Tikriti carried out many activities while continuing to actively serve as a member of the Board of Directors of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)/Doctors Without Borders USA.

For five weeks in May and June, Al-Tikriti served as a cultural facilitator/mediator on MSF’s “Bourbon Argos” ship off the Libyan coast. In the course of this period, the ship rescued well over 1,000 individuals from more than 20 countries.

While in the Mediterranean, Al-Tikriti co-authored an article with Ahmad Al Roussan addressing Turkey’s role in today’s migration movements. Entitled “Syrian and Iraqi conflicts move Turkey to the heart of Europe’s refugee crisis,” the article was carried in both the May 2015 print and digital editions of the Turkish Review, and can be accessed here: http://www.turkishreview.org/opinions/syrian-and-iraqi-conflicts-move-turkey-to-the-heart-of-europe-s-refugee-crisis_551188.

Upon return to the U.S., Al-Tikriti moderated a panel on International Humanitarian Law at the 2015 MSF USA General Assembly. Panelists included MSF’s own Francoise Saulnier and Jordan Davidoff, as well as Action Against Hunger’s Chris Lockyear and ICRC’s Philip Spoerri.

Associate Professor of History and American Studies Nabil Al-Tikriti appeared on Los Angeles-based KPFK’s “Radio Uprising” program on Wednesday, April 15, to discuss the latest developments in Iraq and the region. Al-Tikriti has now appeared on this program, hosted by Sonali Kolhatkar, at least three times in the past two years.

The segment lasted just over five minutes, and can be screened via this podcast link. (Direct video link here.) In the course of this discussion, Al-Tikriti compared the current Iraqi Prime Minister to the previous officeholder, and commented on the state of the Iraqi military, as well as American media coverage of Iraq in general.

On Monday, April, 20, in his capacity as a member of the Board of Directors for MSF/Doctors Without Borders USA, Al-Tikriti represented MSF on a joint panel addressing military-humanitarian cooperation. The panel was part of the Marine Corps University’s “Nine Innings” exercise on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief at Quantico, Virginia. In the course of this panel, Al-Tikriti joined representatives from ICRC, IMC, OCHA and Islamic Relief to provide institutional perspectives on these and related concerns.

Nabil Al-Tikriti, associate professor of history and American studies,  delivered a paper, “An Ottoman View of World History: Kâtip Çelebi’s Takvîmü’t-Tevârîh,” to the 1st International Kâtip Çelebi Research Symposium on  Friday, March 28. This symposium was organized by Izmir Kâtip Çelebi University (established 2010) in Izmir, Turkey. This was an invited presentation.

In this paper,  Al-Tikriti provided historical context and analysis of Kâtip Çelebi’s Takvîmü’t-Tevârîh, a chronology, summary, and attempted reconciliation of ancient and Islamic history completed in 1649 C.E. Kâtip Çelebi (d. 1657), the namesake for this recently established Turkish state university off the Aegean coast, was a prominent 17th century Ottoman scholar who is widely considered the foremost representative of “secular” scholarship in his era. In addition to this work, Kâtip Çelebi is renowned for completing the most detailed encyclopedic catalogue of Islamicate manuscripts prior to the 20th century, the most advanced Ottoman world geography text of its time, and roughly 20 other historical, geographical, and political texts.

The work Al-Tikriti presented, Takvîmü’t-Tevârîh, was a very popular text, with at least five translations (Latin, Italian, French, Arabic, Persian), 45 known manuscript copies, and three continuations. In 1733 the first Ottoman publisher, the Müteferrika press, published over 250 copies of this text for sale throughout the empire. 

With this text, Kâtip Çelebi appears to have set out to reconcile all known calendars of the ancient world, offering a chart of five prominent calendar systems and comparing their respective dating systems. He also chronicled what he considered the most important events of the pre-Islamic world, and provided an annual calendar of events in the post-Islamic world up to his own day. After providing charts of Ottoman sultans, grand viziers, judges, prominent elites, and other figures, Kâtip Çelebi closed with his own theory of history and dynastic continuity, which bears some resemblance to the theories of the prominent pre-modern historian and sociologist, Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406).

Nabil Al-Tikriti, associate professor of history and American studies, participated in the annual Field Associative Debate (FAD) for MSF staff serving in Athens, Greece, on March 7. Al-Tikriti is board member of the United States section of  MSF/Doctors Without Borders.

The Athens team debated on issues connected to forced migration in the Mediterranean and Balkans regions — their primary programmatic focus. In the course of these debates, participants addressed questions concerning the importance of “people on the move” consisting of refugees, economic migrants, or mixed groups; the propriety of MSF providing general humanitarian relief as opposed to narrow medical assistance; the possibility of MSF providing relief in detention centers without becoming instrumentalized as part of state policy; and other issues connected to providing medical humanitarian relief to vulnerable populations on the move in the Mediterranean and Balkan regions.

Prior to this year’s FAD, Al-Tikriti went on a brief field visit to an MSF urban referral clinic in Athens, and upon his return helped the team start a FAD report, and completed a brief memo on regional operations for internal review.