Tuesday, July 23, 2019

A01011 - Fariduddin Masud, Punjabi Sunni Muslim Mystic

Masud, Fariduddin

Farīd al-Dīn Masʿūd Ganj-i-Shakar (b, c. April 4, 1179, Kothewal, Multan, Punjab, Ghurid Sultanate (present-day Pakistan) – d. May 7, 1266 [5 Muharram, 665 AH], Pakpattan, Punjab, Delhi Sultanate (present-day Pakistan)) was a 12th-century Punjabi Sunni Muslim preacher and mystic.who went on to become "one of the most revered and distinguished ... Muslim mystics" of the medieval period. He is known reverentially as Bābā Farīd or Shaikh Farīd by Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus of the Punjab Region, or simply as Farīduddīn Ganjshakar.

Fariduddin Masud was a great Sufi master who was born in 1179 at a village called Kothewal, 10 km from Multan in the Punjab region of what is now Pakistan, to Jamāl-ud-dīn Suleimān and Maryam Bībī (Qarsum Bībī), daughter of Sheikh Wajīh-ud-dīn Khojendī. He was a Sunni Muslim and was one of the founding fathers of the Chishti Sufi order. Baba Farid received his early education at Multan, which had become a center for Muslim education. It was there that he met his teacher Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, a noted Sufi saint, who was passing through Multan on his way from Baghdad to Delhi. Upon completing his education, Farīd left for Sistan and Kandahar and went to Makkah (Mecca) for the Hajj pilgrimage with his parents at the age of 16.

Once his education was over, he moved to Delhi, where he learned the Islamic doctrine from his master, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki. He later moved to Hansi, Haryana. When Quṭbuddīn Bakhtiyār Kākī died in 1235, Farīd left Hansi and became his spiritual successor. He settled in Ajodhan (the present Pakpattan, Pakistan) instead of Delhi. On his way to Ajodhan, while passing through Faridkot, he met the 20-year-old Nizamuddin Auliya, who went on to become his disciple, and later his successor Sufi khalīfah. His nephew and disciple and successor Alauddin Sabir Kaliyari was amongst the greatest Sufi saints and from him the Sabiriya branch under Chisty order started.

Baba Farid had three wives and eight children (five sons and three daughters). One of his wives, Hazabara, was the daughter of Sulṭān Nasīruddīn Maḥmūd.

The great Arab traveller Ibn Battuta once visited this Sufi saint. Ibn Battuta reported that Fariduddin Ganjshakar was the spiritual guide of the Sultan of Delhi Sultanate, and that the Sultan had given him the village of Ajodhan. He also met Baba Farid's two sons.

Baba Farid's descendants, also known as Fareedi, Fareedies or Faridy, mostly carry the name Fārūqī, and can be found in Pakistan, India and the diaspora. Fariduddin Ganjshakar's descendants include the Sufi saint Salim Chishti, whose daughter was the Emperor Jehangir's foster mother. Their descendants settled in Sheikhupur, Badaun and the remains of a fort they built can still be found.

Fariduddin Ganjshakar's shrine darbār is located in Pakpattan, Punjab, Pakistan.

One of Farīd's most important contributions to Punjabi literature was his development of the language for literary purposes. Whereas Sanskrit, Arabic, Turkish and Persian had historically been considered the languages of the learned and the elite, and used in monastic centers, Punjabi was generally considered a less refined folk language. Although earlier poets had written in a primitive Punjabi, before Farīd there was little in Punjabi literature apart from traditional and anonymous ballads. By using Punjabi as the language of poetry, Farīd laid the basis for a vernacular Punjabi literature that would be developed later.

The city of Faridkot bears his name. According to legend, Farīd stopped by the city, then named Mokhalpūr, and sat in seclusion for forty days near the fort of King Mokhal. The king was said to be so impressed by his presence that he named the city after Baba Farid, which today is known as Tilla Baba Farid. The festival Bābā Sheikh Farād Āgman Purb Melā' is celebrated in September each year for 3 days, commemorating Baba Farid's arrival in the city. Ajodhan was also renamed as Farīd's 'Pāk Pattan', meaning 'Holy Ferry'; today it is generally called Pāk Pattan Sharīf.

Faridia Islamic University, a religious madrassa in Sahiwal, Punjab, Pakistan, is named after Baba Farid, and in July 1998, the Punjab Government in India established the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences at Faridkot, the city which itself was named after him.

There are various explanations of why Baba Farid was given the title Shakar Ganj^[ ('Treasure of Sugar'). One legend says his mother used to encourage the young Farīd to pray by placing sugar under his prayer mat. Once, when she forgot, the young Farīd found the sugar anyway, an experience that gave him more spiritual fervor and led to his being given the name.

Friday, July 12, 2019

A01010 - Colin Palmer, Jamaican American Historian of the African Diaspora

Colin Alphonsous Palmer (March 23, 1944 − June 20, 2019)^[1] was a Jamaican American historian. He was a Dodge Professor of History and African American studies at Princeton University.^[2]

Palmer was an author of several monographs pertaining to the history of diasporic Africans. His worked mainly focusing on the effects of the enslavement and colonization of Africans. The effects that he discusses are known as the African Diaspora^{[citation needed]}. Palmer attended the University of the West Indies for his bachelor's degree and then went on to receive his masters and PH.D from the University of Wisconsin. He went on to teach at several institutions including Oakland University, the University of North Carolina, and the City University of New York.^{[citation needed]} One of his most notable works, Freedom's Children, concerns the plight of Jamaican workers almost 100 years after the abolition of slavery. The monograph contains an in-depth history of British colonialism in Jamaica. It provides insight on Alexander Bustamante's association with the imperial regime, the rise of trade unions and the beginning of party politics in Jamaica. These topics are thoroughly detailed in this work, bringing the harshness of the British regime to light.^[3] Colin Palmer's works concerned the history of Blacks from several regions, including Jamaica, Mexico, America, and Africa. In addition to his books, Palmer also published academic articles in journals such as The Black Scholar. He later worked as a managing editor for the Blacks Studies Center and teaches at the University of Princeton.^[2] Palmer died in Kingston, Jamaica on June 20, 2019.^[1]

List of Works[edit]

Capitalism and Slavery (Editor) (1944)
Inward Hunger: The Education of Prime Minister (Editor) (1972)
Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650 (1976)
Human Cargoes (1981)
Modern Caribbean (1989)
The First Passage: Blacks in the Americas 1502-1617 (1995)
The African Diaspora (1996)
Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America (1998)
The Education of History for Twenty-First Century (2003)
Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History: The Black experience in The Americas (Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History) 6 vol. set (2005)
Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America (2005)
Eric Williams & The Making Of The Modern Caribbean (2006)
Ideology, Identity and Assumptions (2007)
Cultural Life (2007)
Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power: British Guiana's Struggle for Independence (2010)
Freedom's Children: The 1983 Labor Rebellion and the Birth of Modern Jamaica (2014)

Thursday, July 11, 2019

A01009 - Philip Freelon, African American Museum Architect

Philip Freelon, African-American Museum Architect, Dies at 66

Philip G. Freelon in front of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington in 2016, the year it opened. As lead architect, he was part of a team that worked on the museum for years.

Image

By Neil Genzlinger

July 10, 2019

Philip G. Freelon, an architect whose long list of credits includes museums and other cultural institutions devoted to the black experience, among them the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall in Washington, died on Tuesday at his home in Durham, N.C. He was 66.

The cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, his friend and spokesman, Michael J. Reilly, said.

In addition to the Washington museum and other notable buildings, Mr. Freelon designed or helped design the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson.

The architecture firm Perkins & Will, with which his own firm, the Freelon Group, merged several years ago, described Mr. Freelon in a statement as “arguably the most significant African-American architect in recent history.”

And Lonnie G. Bunch III, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, of which it is a part, called him “one of the great architects of our time.”

Philip Goodwin Freelon was born on March 26, 1953, in Philadelphia. His father, Allan, was a sales and marketing executive, and his mother, Elizabeth Neal Freelon, was an educator. Allan Randall Freelon Sr., the Harlem Renaissance-era painter, was his grandfather, a connection Mr. Freelon credited with spurring his early curiosity about the visual arts, drafting and design. It was an area of interest, he told the sports and culture site The Undefeated, that was not a natural for a young black student.

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“If you have a talented young African-American, their family will likely know a lawyer, doctor, teacher or a clergyman, but not an architect,” he said. “My parents, who were both college-educated, didn’t know an architect of any color, and certainly not a black one.”

With its exterior of bronze-colored aluminum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture is strikingly different from other buildings on the Washington Mall.CreditLexey Swall for The New York Times

He enrolled at the architecture school at historically black Hampton University in Virginia, then after two years transferred to North Carolina State University’s College of Design, earning a bachelor’s degree in environmental design in 1975. In 1977 he received a master’s degree in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1978 Mr. Freelon was made an instructor at North Carolina State, and he later taught at M.I.T. and other institutions. He worked as an architect for various firms before forming the Freelon Group in 1990. His firm, based in Durham, N.C., became known for its work on college campuses, libraries, museums and other public and cultural institutions, many of them in historically black areas.

“When I decided to start my own practice, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do and not do,” Mr. Freelon told The Undefeated. “I wasn’t going to design prisons, strip malls or casinos.”

That didn’t necessarily mean a flashy project like a museum; it could be as utilitarian as the transportation center he designed for Durham in 2008.

“We do work for everyday people,” he said in a 2012 video interview with Arch Daily. “We think that it’s very important for the average person to experience beautiful, inspiring architecture not only when they go to a famous building, but every day.”

AD Interviews: Philip FreelonCreditCreditVideo by ArchDaily

For his high-profile projects, he sought a look that spoke to the purpose of the building. The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, for instance, features an exterior of varying shades of wood, a tan-and-brown collage.

“It’s an expression of the variation in the people and the cultures that tells the story of civil and human rights, both here and abroad,” Mr. Freelon told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2014, when the building opened.

Of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, which opened in 2017, Siddhartha Mitter wrote in The Village Voice, “He has split the museum facade into irregular but graceful panels with sharply angled lines; terra-cotta masonry soothes the tense geometry, serving as a gentle metaphor for conflict addressed but not erased.”

Mr. Freelon at his office in Durham, N.C., in 2017. “We do work for everyday people,” he said.CreditGerry Broome/Associated Press

Mr. Freelon was part of a team that worked on the National Museum of African American History and Culture for years; he served as lead architect, with David Adjaye as lead designer. The resulting building is strikingly different from others on the Mall, with an exterior of bronze-colored aluminum.

“Most Mall museums are squat blocks, rooted in neo-Classical tradition,” Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times when the African American museum opened in September 2016. “Timeless grandeur and stability are their messages, and you barely look at them twice. The new museum seems to change texture at every encounter, giving it visual intrigue and also implying a more contemporary understanding of culture’s fleet, contingent, it-depends-on-who’s-looking dynamics.”

The opening took place only months after Mr. Freelon learned that he had ALS, which attacks nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain. The previous year one of his legs had begun giving him trouble when he would jog around the Mall for exercise on visits to Washington.

“I noticed I’d use the same effort, but it was taking me longer and longer to complete my course, and my right foot was dragging,” he told The Undefeated.

He continued to work after his diagnosis. One recent project is an expansion of the Motown Museum in Detroit.

Mr. Freelon married Chinyere Nnenna Pierce, now a noted jazz singer known professionally as Nnenna Freelon, in 1979. She survives him, along with two sons, Deen and Pierce; a daughter, Maya Freelon; a sister, Randi Vega; two brothers, Doug and Gregory; and seven grandchildren.

Although Mr. Freelon worked on many projects that may seem to be preoccupied with the oppression and struggles of black people, he did not view them as commemorating a negative.

“It’s not all about being a victim,” he told The Baltimore Sun in 2005. “The important part is that we persevered.”F