It is Spring Break Break. Let joy be unconfined. Wandering around campus and downtown today I am reminded just how wonderful Bloomington can be when a) the weather is mild, and b) most of the students have left. Lest I be accused of misanthropy or academic snobbery on account of the latter point, I should point out that I happen to think Bloomington fairly lovely - if not outright wonderful - most of the year. It's just that, like a good wine (wah-wah-wah) sometimes you need a little time and space to breathe in order to truly appreciate the, err, and here the metaphor dies .. pfft.
That said, I've been able to return to some projects that have had to go on the back burner while I've been focused on the Conference, work, and regular studying. One of these projects involves gathering older i.e. 19th century scholarship on Nava'i. I've mentioned (I think ...) Monsieur Belin before, who published a two-part survey of Nava'i and his works in the early 1860s.
In the same venue - Journal asiatique - he published his translation of Mahbub al-qulub, Nava'i's treatise on ethics and society. A little earlier, the Russian orientalist Mikhail Nikitskiy, under the aegis of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, also published a survey of the works of Nava'i, as well as descriptions of Mir 'Ali Shir from period sources (Davlatshah Samarqandi, Khondamir, Sam Mirza et al).
These materials I've either been able to download off teh interwebs, or scan to .pdf from the wonderful microfilm and facsimile collection of Central Asian scholarship held at the Sinor Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies - where I happen to work. Most convenient.
