the comparative research about the common features and roots of the shāh-nāme, the most renowned iranian national epic and the most comprehensive and authoritative source of heroic narratives, with other works of the same nature in verse and prose is a long story and cannot be adequately addressed in a limited scope. however, the present article aims at describing one or more common aspects. on...

Most political theorists are familiar with Augustine's story of Alexander asking a captured pirate where he got the right to steal from other ships, and receiving the answer that he got it from the same place Alexander got the right to conquer other countries. Most will recognize Augustine's famous summation of the point of the story: "Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminal...

Beginning in the seventeenth century, a burgeoning slave trade saw Africans captured and brought to America in bondage, separated from their relations and sold, leaving individuals with no point of familiarity: forced into slavery, on a new continent, without kin or social contacts. Out of this desolation came the unfortunate liberty for Africans to develop a new culture from their abrupt chang...