This paper explores the practices of auditors in a non-Western cultural environment. Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics framework and narrative interviews with twenty Tunisian auditors, we investigate how auditors reconcile their duty to independence with the expectations of a kinship economy. Additionally, we explore how institutions—such as professional oversight bodies—play into this reconciliation. We find that, although auditors may pursue a telos at odds with international auditing standards, the purpose that these auditors serve is congruent with their moral tradition. (...) That is, rather than positioning themselves as objective arbiters of financial reporting, these auditors position themselves as guardians of their auditees. While this revised position engenders conduct that may appear to violate their independence, our auditors’ practices are congruent with the virtues of justice, courage, and honesty, as they conceive of them in the context of a Tunisian moral tradition. This study makes two main contributions to the literature. First, we provide empirical evidence into the ways in which auditors redefine independence in the context of a kinship economy. Second, we demonstrate that, when auditing local firms, auditors apply a version of professionalism that emphasizes community-oriented care over objectivity. (shrink)

One of the ṣaḥābīs of Prophet Muḥammad is ʿUrwa b. Masʿūd from the Ṭāʾif tribe of Thaqīf. He belongs to the Ahlâf part of the Thaqīf tribe and he is the ruler of this part. ʿUrwa’s ancestry is known without any controversy until Kasî (Thaqīf). According to a narrative his epithet was Abū Yaʿfur and another of his epithet was Abū Masʿūd. Father of ʿUrwa an important person too. He is one of the leaders of his tribe and he commanded (...) his part (Aḥlāf) in wars of Fijār. Mother of ʿUrwa is Subay’a bt. ʿAbd Shams from Banū Umayya. In this way ʿUrwa has kinship both with Banū Umayya and Prophet Muḥammad. So ʿUrwa has a very important position because of his lineage, his mother and father. Thefore, his connections with Mecca and Quraysh strengthens his position. In our sources there is no information about his dates of birth and death. It is likely to be over middle age when he became a muslim, considering that he was the leader of his tribe and his son become a muslim after he died. There is too little information about weddings of ʿUrwa. According to narratives, he had ten wives before becoming Muslim. After becoming a Muslim Prophet Muḥammad warned from him to prefer four out of ten wives. One of his four wives is the daughter of Abū Sufyān. Howev-er, there is no information about the names of his wives. Names of his sons: ʿĀṣim, Abū Murra, Abū Mulayḥ, Dāwūd, Hammām and Hishām and names of his daughters: Umm Saʿīd (married with Ḥaẓrat ʿAlī) and Ḥalīma. We could see he served as embassy before the treaty of Hudaybiyah. His embassy duty shows us the superiority of his position. Also, this embassy duty was very effective at peace negotiations. He mentioned kinship relations which connects about Mecca. He said that it could be beneficial to talk to Prophet Muḥammad himself. The Meccans mentioned about their trust in ʿUrwa. During the time of his embassy, he expressed that both sides should be away from war. In this context, he told the Meccans: The people around Prophet Muḥammad are very loyal to him and he told to Prophet Muḥammad: People around him could disintegrate easily. This mission shows us he is intelligent, respectable and had high persuasion skills. ʿUrwa, observed loyalty of ṣaḥābīs to Prophet Muḥammad. He confessed this loyalty can not be for any ruler. This observa-tion probably affected ʿUrwa’s conversion to Islam. Because of the conquest of Meccah and the events that followed, the people of Ṭāʾif were very worried. Because of this reason people of Ṭāʾif took part in the side of Hawāzin’s and they bat-tled with Muslims. In this time they sent ʿUrwa b. Masʿūd and Ghaylān b. Salama to the city of D̲j̲aras̲h̲ of Yemen, to learn about some war machines and techniques. Therefore they did not join wars of Hunayn and Ṭāʾif. Prophet Muḥammad ended the siege of Ṭāʾif and went to Medina. Meanwhile, ʿUrwa and his friend returned from Yemen. According to narratives when the Prophet Muḥammad returned Medina or he was way in Medina ʿUrwa visited him and became Muslim. Some people tell about the date of ʿUrwa’s being Muslim at before or after Abū Bakr’s emirate of Hadj. However, when the narrations are examined, it can be said he became Muslim after four or five months from Prophet’s siege of Ṭāʾif and before three or four months from Tabūk expedition of Rabīʿ al-awwal or “Rabīʿ al-ākhir” (July or August) in the year 9/630. As for the conversion of ʿUrwa, basic sources report that “Allah, inspired Islam to the heart of ʿUrwa and he changed his situation. He went to the Messenger of Allah and he became Muslim.” They do not give a specific reason. But after this period the narratives tell the reason for ʿUrwa’s becoming a Muslim as due to an experience he had while travelling to Najrān for trade. In this travel, two mysterious young girls and the priest in Najrān said the last prophet came and ʿUrwa must be subject to him and ʿUrwa became Muslim after he returned. But this narrative is prob-lematic with regard to evidence and text. After being Muslim, ʿUrwa wanted permission from the Prophet to invite his tribe to accept Islam. The prophet did not want to accept this at first. Because the people of Ṭāʾif had an arro-gant stance against Islam, and he said that the people of Thaqīf could kill ʿUrwa. Eventually ʿUrwa went to his hometown with permission of Prophet and invited people to Islam and they did not accept this invitation and cursed ʿUrwa. The next morning ʿUrwa read adhan of fajr and people of Ṭāʾif killed him. ʿUrwa b. Masʿūd was likened to Prophet Jesus by the Prophet Muḥammad. It is generally accept-ed that ʿUrwa b. Masʿūd el-Thaqafī is “one of the biggest from two cities” expressed in sūra Zukhruf. Only two weak narrations were reported of Urwa who could live as a Muslim for a few days and was matyred by his tribe. (shrink)

According to Zeilinger’s information interpretation of quantum mechanics ‘the distinction between reality and our knowledge of reality, between reality and information, cannot be made. They are in a deep sense indistinguishable’. This is what we call Zeilinger’s thesis. This thesis has been criticized as a lapse into ‘informational immaterialism’ and amounting to nothing more than a tautology. However, we will argue that this criticism is based on a pre-Kantian view of reality, namely metaphysical realism which could be questioned on the (...) basis of Putnam’s arguments. Furthermore, it will be argued that to understand Zeilinger’s thesis one should abandon the pre-Kantian perspective of metaphysical realism and adopt a post-Kantian perspective on the relationship between the mind and the world. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a unified causal account of natural kinds. Using as a starting point the widely held view that natural kind terms or predicates are projectible, I argue that the ontological bases of their projectibility are the causal properties and relations associated with the natural kinds themselves. Natural kinds are not just concatenations of properties but ordered hierarchies of properties, whose instances are related to one another as causes and effects in recurrent causal processes. The resulting account (...) of natural kinds as clusters of core causal properties that give rise to clusters of derivative properties enables us to distinguish genuine natural kinds from non-natural kinds. For instance, it enables us to say why some of the purely conventional categories derived from the social domain do not correspond to natural kinds, though other social categories may. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence represents a key technology being inbuilt into evermore products. Research investigating attitudes towards artificial intelligence surprisingly is still scarce, although it becomes apparent that artificial intelligence will shape societies around the globe. To better understand individual differences in attitudes towards artificial intelligence, the present study investigated in n = 351 participants associations between the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) and the Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence framework (ATAI). It could be observed that in particular higher levels of SADNESS were (...) associated with higher negative attitudes towards AI (fearing AI). The findings are discussed in this work from an evolutionary perspective because primary emotional systems—according to Affective Neuroscience Theory—represent tools for survival, which have been homologously conserved across mammalian species including homo sapiens. (shrink)

Kinds that share historical properties are dubbed “historical kinds” or “etiological kinds,” and they have some distinctive features. I will try to characterize etiological kinds in general terms and briefly survey some previous philosophical discussions of these kinds. Then I will take a closer look at a few case studies involving different types of etiological kinds. Finally, I will try to understand the rationale for classifying on the basis of etiology, putting forward reasons for classifying phenomena on the basis of (...) diachronic features, thereby making a provisional case for considering at least some etiological kinds to be natural kinds. (shrink)

The current study investigates whether tournament incentives motivate chief executive officer to be socially responsible. Furthermore, it explores the role of sub-national institutional contingencies [i.e., state-owned enterprises vs. non-SOEs, foreign-owned entities vs. non-FOEs, cross-listed vs. non-cross-listed, developed region] in CEO tournament incentives and the corporate social responsibility performance relationship. Data were collected from all A-shared companies listed in the stock exchanges of China from 2014 to 2019. The study uses the baseline methodology of ordinary least squares and cluster OLS regression. (...) Moreover, firm-fixed effects regression, two-stage least squares regression, and propensity score matching deal with the endogeneity problem and check the robustness of the results. The results provide reliable evidence that tournament incentives motivate CEOs to be more socially responsible. On the other hand, sub-national institutional contingencies positively affect the association between CEO tournament incentives and CSRP. The findings have important implications for companies and regulators who wish to enhance CSP by providing incentives to top managers. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of the Chief Executive Officer ’s interlocking, created through serving on other companies’ audit committees and/or boards, on corporate social responsibility performance of the focal company and that of its linked companies. We find that CEO interlocking positively affects CSR performance of both the focal company and its linked companies. Further analysis shows that interlocks created by the CEO enhance CSR performance and in turn the financial performance of both the focal company and its linked (...) companies. Our findings are robust to a battery of analyses, including Heckman’s selection bias correction, propensity score matching, alternative measures of CSR performance, and CEO interlocks. These findings are important to regulators, company management teams, and other stakeholders with an interest in how the social ties of CEOs influence companies’ CSR performance and in the CSR–financial performance nexus. (shrink)

Mu‘allâkâtların, tefsir, nahiv, sarf ve dil ilimlerindeki önemli rolünün yanı sıra Arap dili ve edebiyatı âleminde de yüksek ve önemli bir konumu bulunmaktadır. Cahiliye devri müfredatlarının pek çoğunu kapsamasından ötürü dil ve edebiyat erbabı ona önem atfetmiştir. Onlardan biri de, ‘Şerhü’l-Kasâ’idi’l-السبع’ adıyla el-Muâ‘llekât’a yaptığı şerhiyle Ebu Bekir Muhammed bin el-Kasım bin Beşar bin el-Anbari. Bu eserinde pek çok nahiv, zamirin aidiyeti, harflerin manası, zarf ile car ve mecrûrun bağlı olduğu yerin belirlenmesi, müfredatlarıni‘râbı, illetler arasındaki üstünlükler, kıyasa ve luğatta asıl olana, (...) kelimenin irabını belirlemede bazı seslerin etki nedenlerine, sarf, lügat, belağat, eleştiri vb. konulara değinmektedir. Bu itibarla bu araştırma, betimsel analitik yöntemini kullanarak et-Anbari’ninMu‘allâkât şerhindeki nahiv yöntemini, Arap nahiv ilminde iki önemli konu olan kıyas ve ta‘lîl ile ilgili duruşunu açıklayarak değerlendirmeyi hedeflemektedir. (shrink)

Basṭāmī, ʻAlī ibn Ṭayfūr, active 16th century-17th century. Akhlāq-i ḥusnaʹ ; Islamic ethics- Early works to 1800.

Frederic Stoutland (1982a, 1982b) has argued that a Davidsonian theory of meaning is incompatible with a realist view of truth, on which the truth-conditions of sentences consist of mind-independent states of affairs or concatenations of extra-linguistic objects. In this paper we show that Stoutland’s argument is a failure.

The innovation systems approach has swiftly spread out worldwide in the last three decades and stood as an important framework for policy-making in the fields of science, technology, and innovation. At the same time, there have been serious and untreated concerns in the literature about the theoretical soundness of this approach. Our discussion in this paper is based on the belief that a detailed analysis on epistemological foundations of the approach could shed a judgmental light on the aforementioned concerns. To (...) provide that analysis, we reconstructed and studied the nature and evolution of innovation systems approach as a case of conceptual revolution against the more established traditions in economics of innovation. Our analyses show that the rise of the systemic view of innovation include radical changes in conceptual structures pertaining to orthodox view of innovation. These developments also go so far as to include significant shifts in epistemological foundations of the old paradigm. These later shifts provide us with an epistemological base from which we can shelter the innovation systems approach from the hard criticisms rooted in a quasi-positivist point of view. That epistemological base also shows the path for the future development of the approach towards more robustness and precision. (shrink)

In this paper we recount several research projects conducted at ImaginationLancaster a Design-led research laboratory, all of which consider Object-Oriented Ontology. The role OOO plays in these projects is varied: as a generative mechanism contributing to ideation; as a framework for analysis; and as a constituent in developing new design theory. Each project’s focus is quite unique—an app, a board game, a set of Tarot cards, a kettle and a living room—however they are all concerned with developing new understandings relating (...) to the ubiquitous, networked, ‘smart’ technologies which are often referred to as the Internet of Things. Through our reflexive account of these research projects the aim of this paper is to provide insights into, and promote new discussion about, the relevance and scope for OOO in socio-technical Design Research, and beyond. (shrink)

A number of innovative hermeneutical approaches emerged in Muslim exegetical discourse in the second half of the 20th century. Among these developments is a trend of systematic reform theology that emphasises a humanistic approach, whereby revelation is understood to be dependent not only upon its initiator, God, but also upon its recipient, Prophet Muhammad, who takes an active role in the process.Ali Akbar examines the works of four noted scholars of Islam: Fazlur Rahman, Abdolkarim Soroush, Muhammad Mujtahed Shabestari and Nasr (...) Hamid Abu Zayd. His study shows that the consequences of taking a humanistic approach to understanding revelation are not confined to the realm of speculation about God-human relations, but also to interpreting Qur'A nic socio-political precepts. And the four scholars emerge as a distinctive group of Muslim thinkers who open up a new horizon in contemporary Islamic discourse. (shrink)

Breaking from prevailing conceptions of ethics and morality as matters of moral rule or principle, this volume calls attention to ethical life in South Asia—the moral dispositions at work in lived experience, and the embodied practices of ethical engagement through which such dispositions may be cultivated and shared. Taking up themes such as the transmission of tradition, ethical engagements with modernity, ethical practices of the self, and moral relations between self and others, this volume puts South Asian traditions of ethical (...) life into conversation with the Aristotelian, Christian, and liberal traditions that have been so consequential for ethical life in the West. (shrink)

It is well known that there may be many causal explanations that are consistent with a given set of data. Recent work has been done to represent the common aspects of these explanations into one representation. In this paper, we address what is less well known: how do the relationships common to every causal explanation among the observed variables of some DAG process change in the presence of latent variables? Ancestral graphs provide a class of graphs that can encode conditional (...) independence relations that arise in DAG models with latent and selection variables. In this paper we present a set of orientation rules that construct the Markov equivalence class representative for ancestral graphs, given a member of the equivalence class. These rules are sound and complete. We also show that when the equivalence class includes a DAG, the equivalence class representative is the essential graph for the said DAG. (shrink)

I introduce the reader to the character and complexity of lying, in terms of how the lie should be defined as a particular type of intentionally deceptive utterance, whether or not the deceiver succeeded in that aim, and examine how we might usefully avoid prejudging the justifiability of the lying utterance when compared to alternative forms of intentional deception and the overall outcome sought.

This study concentrates on adaptive event-triggered control of complex dynamical networks with unpredictable coupling delays and stochastic deception attacks. The adaptive event-triggered mechanism is used to avoid the wasting of limited bandwidth. The probability of data communicated by the network is established by statistical properties and Bernoulli stochastic variables with an uncertain occurrence probability. Stability analysis based on Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and the stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed. Using the LMI technique, we obtain triggered parameters. To demonstrate the feasibility (...) and usefulness of the suggested methodology, two examples are shown. (shrink)

This study explored the impact of financial literacy on potential entrepreneurs' intent in Saudi Arabia. It also examined saving behavior as a mediator in the relationship between financial literacy and entrepreneurial intention. The study's data were collected by an online questionnaire sent to a sample of 270 potential entrepreneurs at Abqaiq Applied College, affiliated with King Faisal University. Data analysis was done using partial least squares structural equation modeling. According to the findings, there is no direct relationship between financial literacy (...) and entrepreneurial intent. However, it has been reported that saving behavior can mediate between financial literacy and entrepreneurial intent. (shrink)

Utilizing a pre-experimental pre-test post-test design, this study investigated the effect of an authentic audio-visual American sitcom on the intercultural sensitivity and intercultural effectiveness of a sample of male and female upper-intermediate English students. To this aim, 34 Iranian EFL students were selected through convenient non-random sampling. In order to assure the participants' homogeneity in English proficiency, the selected students were given the Oxford Quick Placement Test prior to the intervention. Over a 10-week period, the participants were presented with nearly (...) 30-min-long episodes of Friends in a flipped context, two episodes every week uploaded to the accompanying website. An online 10-item quiz on the day of watching and a next-day meeting were held. During the online discussion meetings, the participants discussed cultural questions tailored to the aims of the study. The required data were collected through the administration of the intercultural sensitivity scale and intercultural effectiveness scale in pre- and post-test assessments. The analyses of the data indicated that both ICS and ICE improved significantly during the intervention. However, ICS indicated more improvement. In addition, a semi-structured interview was administered to the participants to examine their perception of the flipped classroom experience. Having analyzed the data using MAXQDA 2020, some significant themes emerged which are reported. On the whole, the participants portrayed positive attitudes toward using technology in flipped classes. The educational and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

The current study strives to examine the determinants of employee innovative work behavior and job performance. Therefore, an integrated research model is developed with the help of paternalistic leadership style and job embeddedness theory to investigate employee behavior toward innovative work behavior. The research model is extended with the moderating effect of environmental dynamism between the relationship of innovative work behavior and employee job performance. Data were collected from 411 employees working in small medium enterprises. For inferential analysis, the structural (...) equation modeling technique is used. Results of the structural equation modeling revealed that altogether paternalistic leadership style and factors underpinning job embeddedness theory have explained 52.1% of the variance in employee innovate work behavior. The findings of this research suggest that managers and policy makers should focus on benevolent leadership, moral leadership, and on-the-job embeddedness to boost employee job performance and innovative work behavior. (shrink)

BackgroundNurses provide the majority of health-care services and face numerous health challenges during an epidemic. During the COVID-19 epidemic, nurses are subjected to physical, mental, and social disorders that impair their quality of life and hardiness. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the situation of nurses. The current study aimed to compare the compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue and hardiness among nurses before and during the COVID-19 outbreak.Materials and MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 508 clinical nurses from one public hospital (...) in southern Iran. The subjects were recruited using census sampling methods in 2019–2020. Sampling was performed before and during the COVID-19 with a 1-year interval. Although, the study setting was the same before and during the COVID-19, questionnaires were completed by different nurses before and during the COVID-19. Demographic questionnaire, professional quality of life questionnaire and Occupational Hardiness Questionnaire were used to collect data.ResultsThe scores of compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue and hardiness did not differ significantly during the COVID-19 compared with before the COVID-19. Before COVID-19, hardiness and work experience predicted 11% of the variance of compassion satisfaction, whereas during COVID-19, hardiness and gender predicted 26% of the variance of compassion satisfaction. Before COVID-19, hardiness and work experience predicted 3% of the variance of compassion fatigue, whereas during COVID-19, hardiness, type of employment and gender predicted 6% of the variance of compassion fatigue.ConclusionThe current study found that compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue and hardiness did not change during the COVID-19 outbreak compared with before the COVID-19 outbreak. However, during the COVID-19, the hardiness was a significant predictor of compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue. The study results showed that it was possible to increase the compassion satisfaction and reduce the compassion fatigue by strengthening the hardiness of nurses. However, these results need to be considered in future studies, especially in crises such as COVID-19 disease. (shrink)

Much of the recent literature on the normativity of belief has focused on undermining or defending narrow scope readings of doxastic norms. Wide scope readings are largely assumed to have been decisively refuted. This paper will oppose this trend by defending a wide scope reading of the norm of belief. We shall argue for the modest claim that if it is plausible to regard belief as constitutively normative (in the minimal sense that false belief is eo ipso defective), then a (...) modified version of the wide scope reading of the norm of belief should be preferred to the narrow scope reading. (This is subject to certain attractive conditions relating to the holism involved in the fixation and confirmation of belief.). (shrink)

Este trabalho estabelece um diálogo entre o discurso filosófico e literário. Os autores que fundamentam esta tentativa são John Dewey e George Orwell. Pensamento Reflexivo e Comunicação são os conceitos aqui empregados. A assim chamada novilíngua tem, na obra de Orwell, a pretensão de restringir o próprio pensamento individual manipulando o processo social da comunicação. Discutir sobre a possibilidade de uma manipulação em massa da mentalidade conduz a um exame crítico das noções presentes no pensamento deweyano sobre educação.

Background Providing quality care is of the fundamental elements of holistic nursing practice, and burnout and moral intelligence of nurses be mentioned as the important factors influencing the quality of nursing care. The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between moral intelligence, burnout, and the quality of nursing care. Methods This descriptive-correlative study was conducted on 125 nurses working in Sari-based Educational hospitals affiliated to Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Iran, between June and August 2020. The sample was (...) selected via random sampling. The data were collected by the Maslach Burnout Inventory, Lennick and Kiel Moral Intelligence Scale, and Quality of Patient Care Scale. The data were analyzed by SPSS-21 and Amos-24. Results A direct and significant relationship was found between the quality of nursing care and moral intelligence ( r = 0.285, p = 0.001). Quality of care had an inverse relationship with subscales of frequency of burnout including emotional exhaustion ( r = −0.369, p < 0.001) and depersonalization ( r = −0.471, p < 0.001) and also, a direct relationship with personal accomplishment ( r = 0.226, p = 0.011). The findings also showed an inverse relationship between quality of care and subscales of the intensity of burnout. Amos software yielded results that demonstrated moral intelligence as a robust mediator between burnout and the quality of care. Conclusion The findings implied the necessity for more attention to moral intelligence as a mediator in order to come up with properly managing the personality traits influencing the nurses’ burnout reduction, which can ultimately lead to improved quality of nursing care. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Run Away from HistoryKazim Ali (bio)I’m at the tail end of this conversation but also at the tail end of history. Fanny Howe says five Black boys on a corner (any corner) are “runaways from history.” Meaning they are still enslaved. Still a slave. Tongo Eisen-Martin says, “I am arrested all the time for nothing.” And yet there is no white crime in America, statistically speaking, no police crime.When (...) a dog wagged its tail and approached Christian Cooper in Central Park a white woman began screaming. That is the mythic beginning of the end for a Black man: a white woman screaming. It doesn’t matter what laws apply to his body because Blackness is the first law. It happened exactly when George Floyd was expiring. I thought of his breathlessness when I read about Amy Cooper screaming into her phone in Central Park. “Cooper,” every newspaper found it necessary to mention, “is of no relationship to Cooper.”Floyd being pressed from breath is what Cooper in her brutal imagination wanted to happen to Cooper.Fanny is the mother of a novelist and a designer, mother-in-law of another novelist and a poet, aunt to a novelist, sister to a poet, daughter of an actress and a Pink Boy, mentored by a playwright called Beckett, mentor to an aspirant named Ali, who followed her from the Vineyard to the Western shore, as did the characters in her novels, obsessed also with understanding race in America, trying to understand what is the worth of a person.I saw Tongo Eisen-Martin recite his poetry twice, and each time—for twenty minutes or a half hour—he recited off the page, only from memory, no, not from memory, membery, but from breath. In breath his lines arose. I kept checking against the page because I thought he might be engaging in a more ancient practice of inspiration, but no, not that: the words were as inscribed. [End Page 139]What words inscribe laws on bodies? Old Western ones that began with the representation of wealth: value placed upon labor and bodies required to transfer wealth. But from whom to whom? One Cooper was looking for birds. But in Black life in America the most ordinary event brushes up against death. [End Page 140]Kazim Ali Kazim Ali is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and cross-genre work. He is professor and chair of the Department of Literature at the University of California San Diego.Copyright © 2022 State University of New York... (shrink)

“Being is an ocean in perpetual agitation,Of this ocean people perceive but the waves.On the apparent surface of the ocean, hidden in them,Look at the surging waves arising from secret depths!”One of the leitmotifs of the literature of Iranian Sufism is the “quest for the Orient” (istishraq). It is an Orient that is neither localized nor localizable in the realm of positive geography. It escapes our normal perception; it is the mystic Orient, point of Origin and of Return, located at (...) the “heavenly pole” of the cosmic North. It figures in that geographia imaginalis that is perceived only by the power of the imagination. It is located, then, beyond the devastated lands of this sensible world, lands that incarnate troubled and dispersed hearts for Iranian Sufism. (shrink)