MESA BULLETIN 28 1994 303 Communications ABC-CLIO, the publisher of Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life, needs volunteer abstracters to cover journals dealing with Middle Eastern history, including the MESA Bulletin. ABC-CLIO works with scholars from around the world to provide the academ- ic community with abstracts of historical articles from more than two thousand journals. Scholars who work with ABC-CLIO write English-language abstracts of articles from history and other social science journals within their fields of expertise. Most abstracters contribute ten to twenty abstracts a year. Those who contribute more than forty abstracts a year receive a complimentary subscription to either Historical Abstracts or America: History and Life. In addition, abstract- ers receive a by-line with each abstract published and keep the journals they abstract. Available in print, CD-ROM, and on-line, the abstracts become part of the ABC-CLIO databases and provide bibliographic access to the world's history literature. ABC-CLIO has a number of journals in English, Arabic and other languages available for abstracting now. Librarians, professors, graduate students and other specialists are invited to volunteer. For more information, please contact Inge P. Boehm Library, ABC-CLIO, PO Box 1911, Santa Barbara, CA 93116-1911, Attn: Wesley Palmer (800/422-2546 ext 119; fax 805/685-9685; internet edi- tors@abc-clio.com). Ed. note: The Bulletin is one of the journals for which ABC-CLIO is seeking abstracters. In Memorium Aydin Sayih, 1913-1993 Prof. Dr. Aydin Sayih's long and productive life spanned much of the twentieth century and the first seventy years of the Republic of Turkey. Perhaps no other person perceived more acutely both the wisdom of the Turkish past and the modern knowledge of the Turkish present. His vantage point in time and his unusual personal qualities provided him with an angle of vision at once illuminat- ing and unique. After graduating from secondary school in Ankara, Aydin Sayih won a scholarship from the Turkish government to pursue his higher education in the United States. In 1942 he received the first doctorate in the history of science awarded by at Harvard University. Returning to Turkey in 1943, he began his long and distinguished academic career in the College of Letters of what soon became Ankara University. He rose rapidly to full professor, and just ten years later was appointed to the newly established independent chair in the history of science. He held that chair for thirty years until his retirement from teaching in 1983. During much of that time he also served concurrently as chairman of the Department of Philosophy. Aydin Bey wrote on such nationally and linguistically separated thinkers as Aristotle, Copernicus, Goethe and George Sarton. He published analyses of research on a wide range of scientific subjects including astronomy, mathematics, medicine, neutron theory and optics, as well as commentaries on the pseudoscien- terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026318400030376 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:21, subject to the Cambridge Core mailto:tors@abc-clio.com https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026318400030376 https://www.cambridge.org/core 304 MESA BULLETIN 28 1994 ces of alchemy and astrology. His primary focus, however, was on the develop- ment of scientific thought throughout the Islamic world from premedieval times to the present. Ninety of his 119 publications (books and articles) are devoted to that specialty in which he made the modern world cognizant of the fact that scientific theory and methodology were never monopolies of Western Civilization. Professor Sayih's longest and most definitive enunciation of that thesis can he found in his book, The Observatory in Islam and Its Place in the General History of the Observatory. First published in Ankara by the Turkish Historical Society in 1960, it was reprinted in New York in 1981 by Arno Press. Demonstrating first the importance of astronomy to Moslem religion and to the claims of astrolo- gers, Professor Sayih proceeded to describe in detail the operations of observato- ries at Baghdad, Balkh, Cairo, Damascus, Dinavar, Istanbul, Shiraz and Tabriz between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. He marshalled an overwhelming body of evidence to show that the astronomical observatory as we know it—a special- ized institution comprising its own scientific staff and equipment—was a product of Islamic culture. In a major review of the book in 1962 in Isis (Vol. LIII, pp. 237-239), E.S. Kennedy concluded, "By writing it Professor Sayih has earned the gratitude of all persons interested in the history of the exact sciences in antiqui- ty." Along with the history of natural science Aydin Sayih had a broad interest in other areas of learning. He frequently provided advice and assistance to col- leagues working in the humanities and social sciences. The Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative was only one of the many beneficiaries of his generous help. Among his various contributions to the Archive were, for example, extended commentaries and bibliographies on such diverse and somewhat esoteric subjects as (1) the tradition of the Bird of Fortune (Talih Kusu) in Middle Eastern litera- ture and folklore, and (2) religious practices, past and present, of the extremely ancient cult of Hizir. He was, to a degree, a modern avatar of those Renaissance scholars who took all knowledge to be their province. He was fluent in five foreign languages (Arabic, English, French, German and Persian) besides his native Turkish. What could illustrate his catholicity of interest more than his tenure as Presi- dent of the Ataturk Kiiltiir Merkezi (Ataturk Culture Center), one of the three component organizations of the Ataturk Kiiltiir, Dil ve Tarih Yiiksek Kurumu (Ataturk Supreme Council on Culture, Language and History)? Under his leader- ship the Culture Center became (among other things) the Turkish near equivalent of the French Academy. Aydin Bey spent countless hours editing and guiding through the press the numerous books published by the Center. Not the least of Aydin Bey's skills was his ability to discover and encourage talented and promis- ing younger scholars. The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, "An institu- tion is the lengthened shadow of one man." Whatever new and exciting programs the Ataturk Culture Center may undertake in the present and in the future, it may well always remain within the long shadow cast by Aydin Sayih. - adapted with permission from: Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative, 1994 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026318400030376 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:21, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026318400030376 https://www.cambridge.org/core