• Acta Via Serica
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.65-84
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• 2017

Media has become an inseparable companion of $21^{st}$ century culture, exerting immense influence on our daily lives. This article aims to reveal how cultural aspects and media in a particular part of the Silk Road have adapted Western cannons. Iran has redefined and transformed Western culture through the modern Silk Road by the method of cinematic adaptation. Karim-Masihi employs the general plot of Hamlet, the well-known drama by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), in his movie Tardid (Doubt 2009); however, he transforms some of the characters to reflect the current socio-cultural aspects of Iranian society. One of the characters is named Siavash, whose life is similar to Hamlet. In passivity, he awaits his imminent death and other tragic consequences. Yet, the movie ends differently. It is not an Elizabethan tragedy in a strict sense, although the final scenes abound with corpses. This article aims to find the similarities and differences between the two works, while reasoning the significance of the alterations. It concludes with how different cultures react to the same themes.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.85-108
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• 2017

This paper details the advance of the "Hui" (回) people to Korea and their socioeconomic activities in forming their own community during the late Goryeo and early Joseon period. Hui (回) or Hui Hui (回回) is generally recognized as representative of Muslim culture in Chinese and Korean sources. From the $8^{th}$ century, Korean-Muslim cultural relations accelerated as an outcome of ancient Chinese-West Asian commercial transactions along the Silk Road. These contacts between Muslims and Koreans on the Korean peninsula are borne out by references to Korea found in 23 Islamic sources written between the $9^{th}$ and $16^{th}$ centuries by 18 Muslim scholars, including Ibn Khurdadbih, Sulaiman al-Tajir, and Mas'ud1 i. Ibn Khurdadbih was the first Arab who wrote of Muslims' residence in the Unified Silla Kingdom (661-935CE). However, in the period of Silla, we could not find any reliable written documents in Korea to show encounters between Korea and the Muslim world. In the Goryeosa (GS) chronicle, Muslim merchants who came to Korea were described as "Daesik" (大食: Tashi). Daesik (Tashi) is most probably derived from "Tajir", which means "trader" in Muslim language. Muslims' mass influx and their wide ranging influence on Korean society manifested from the late $13^{th}$ century when the Goryeo Dynasty first came under Mongol control and afterward in the early $15^{th}$ century with the new dynasty of Joseon in Korea.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.109-120
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• 2017

The city of Basra, established on the shore of Basra Bay in the south of modern Iraq, played an important role in agriculture and trade for centuries, with its geography and its position where two great rivers of Mesopotamia flow. Before being established with its current name by the Muslim Arabs, the city was known as Teredon in the Chaldean period and VehiŞtebad ErdeŞir in the Sasanid period. It was reestablished with the name Basra in the early period of Islam by Arabs between Hijri 14-16 (635-637 CE). Afterward, the city became one of the most important centers of trade, science and thought; had a perfect cultural diversity; and hosted important schools of Arabic language and thought for centuries. Besides the commercial effects of its being a transfer point on the axis of Europe, Mesopotamia, Iran, and India, the schools of thought which emerged here were affected by this mobility. In this paper, we try to reveal the philosophical-religious approach which the Ikhwan al-Safa school of thought in Basra, one of the most important cities of the Silk Road, created in parallel with the characteristics of this city. Shiite Ismaili beliefs and thoughts in the region and its characteristics which feed different religions and traditions emerging from Egypt and with the scientific approach of Greek thought; with Indian-Iranian teachings that merge Greek thought and Neoplatonic philosophy, give us the summary of Silk Road civilizations.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.11-25
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• 2018

The Renaissance is generally said to be the rebirth of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, and was centered around Italy from the 14th to the 16th century. This includes the temporal peculiarity of the Renaissance as a sudden phenomenon after the Medieval Ages, and the spatial peculiarity of what happened only in Europe. However, if we remove the European-centered bias here, the horizon for interpreting the Renaissance becomes much wider. There have been claims that similar cultural phenomena resembling the Renaissance existed in other civilizations at the same time. This paper seeks to investigate two possibilities. The first is the possibility of a spatial expansion of the Renaissance. This suggests that the Renaissance was created by long-term exchanges with the Eastern, Middle and Western Hemispheres. The second is the possibility of a simultaneity of the Renaissance in the 14th and 16th centuries. This suggests that it was a global phenomenon that occurred in different civilizations. The Renaissance, therefore, was a crystallization of a complex of civilizations created by the crossing of various cultures along the Silk Road, and should be referred to as the 'Global Renaissance' instead of the 'Western Renaissance.'

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.119-138
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• 2018

The dragon of the East was an object of worship and an authority to make rain, unlike the West. The dragon image, one of the positively accepted Chinese motifs with the blue-and-white porcelain of the Ming dynasty by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, was combined with gigantic saw-edged leaves to create a genre in Saz style. By combining Eastern dragons with plant motifs instead of clouds, dragons were no longer accepted as authority and nobility but as symbols of life and longevity. Unlike Iran and other countries, the image of dragons in Turkish miniature paintings has evolved into a unique style using Turkish calligraphy. The stylistic feature is that a thick black line that gives the impression of calligraphy forms the dragon's back or a huge saz leaf stalk and forms the axis of the screen. Most of the work was black ink drawing, not painting, and partly lightly painted. In the development stage, the dragon appears as a protagonist on the screen of the early works, but the dragon retreats to the latter half and the saz leaves play a leading role on the screen. A common feature in all paintings, whether early or late, is that they have a militant character and create tension on the screen. From the viewpoint of comparative culture, Turkish dragon miniature drawings of the 16thcentury Ottoman period and the Joseon dynasty are somewhat similar in that they are based on calligraphic character and desire for longevity and loyalty, and are drawn according to certain iconic principles.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.43-56
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• 2018

Religion and new media are two important factors in contemporary Middle Eastern societies. Media is seen as a relatively newcomer while religion has been and remains an old and core component of the fabric of societies in this region. This article is an attempt to examine the encounter of these two phenomena in the Middle East. It will try to explore the variety of ways by which new media have served religion both positively and negatively, and how religion has taken position for and against media in Middle Eastern countries in general and in the Iranian case in particular. It is also the purpose of this article to look at the different aspects of this relationship between media and religion, analyzing how one affected the other, and how this interaction affected society. It is argued that the outcome of the interaction between religion and media has had a great impact on shaping the social and political culture of the countries in this region including Iran. The dimensions of this impact will determine the outcome of the clash between modernity and tradition in the region.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.57-83
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• 2018

Historians describe the early years of the 20th century as a period of "nationalism." During this period, Turkish nationalism transformed into a thought movement which emerged to defend Turkish national sovereignty during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Approaches towards nationalism in Turkey are based on the idea of national sovereignty and the ideas of national independence that developed subsequently. Nationalism in Turkey first transformed from Pan-Islamism into multinational Ottomanism, and finally developed into Turkish nationalism and patriotism. This process emerged as a movement of self-discovery in the multicultural structure of the Ottoman Empire and transformed into Turkism. The Balkan Wars (1912-1913) destroyed the foundation upon which Ottomanism was based, and led to the rise of Turkish nationalism, in other words, Turkism. The idea of nation in modern terms in the recent history of thought and nationalism subsequently developed based on this idea and emerged with the Turkism movement. Thus, Turkism became the movement of Turks in the empire, combined with political Turkism which was supported by the intellectuals who came to the Ottoman Empire from Russia. In this article, the formation of Turkist movements and the leading intellectuals of Turkish nationalism, who emerged at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of 20th century in the Ottoman Empire, are investigated in order to examine the historical progress of nationalist approaches in a period in which a new national state was established and improved.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.85-102
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• 2018

This study aims to contrast phonological characteristics of Korean and Turkish in terms of language universality. Considering consonants, both languages have the same number of consonants (21), which is the most typologically plausible structure of consonants. Thus, it can be said that they display high universality in the number of consonants. However, Turkish shows higher universality in regards to their substance, i.e., it differs from Korean when it comes to the structure of plosives and affricates. Turkish has two contrastive consonants, i.e., voiced and voiceless. However, the Korean plosives and affricates consist of neutral, tense and aspirate voiceless. In the case of vowels, both Korean with 10 vowels and Turkish with 8 vowels show lower universality. Yet, all of those vowels belong to the list of the most plausible vowels which makes their universality higher in substance. In respect of the syllable structure, Korean with its (C)V(C) type shows a moderately complex structure while Turkish with its (C)V(C)(C) type has a complex structure. The coda may consist of two consonants in Turkish while only one consonant is possible in Korean. However, onset is composed of one consonant in both languages. The contrastive study of similarities and differences between Korean and Turkish in terms of phonological characteristics will help not only understand the two languages but also provide useful information to increase the efficacy of Korean language education for Turkish learners of Korean, whose number is rapidly increasing.

• Neonatal Medicine
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.89-93
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• 2021

Nemaline myopathy is a genetically heterogeneous neuromuscular disorder and one of the most common congenital myopathies. The clinical manifestations usually vary depending on the age of onset. Neonatal nemaline myopathy has the worst prognosis, primarily due to respiratory failure. Several genes associated with nemaline myopathy have been identified, including NEB, ACTA1, TPM3, TPM2, TNNT1, CFL2, KBTBD13, KLHL40, KLHL41, LMOD3, and KBTBD13. Here, we report a neonatal Korean female patient with nemaline myopathy carrying compound heterozygous mutations in the gene KLHL40 as revealed using next generation sequencing (NGS). The patient presented with postnatal cyanosis, respiratory failure, dysphagia, and hypotonia just after birth. To identify the genetic cause underlying the neonatal myopathy, NGS-based gene panel sequencing was performed. Compound heterozygous pathogenic variants were detected in KLHL40: c.[1405G>T];[1582G>A] (p. [Gly469cys];[Glu528Lys]). NGS allows quick and accurate diagnosis at a lower cost compared to traditional serial single gene sequencing, which is greatly advantageous in genetically heterogeneous disorders such as myopathies. Rapid diagnosis will facilitate efficient and timely genetic counseling, prediction of disease prognosis, and establishment of treatments.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.125-146
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• 2019

This paper deals with the question of the origin of polo. Although it is a sport that has been mainly active in the West since the nineteenthcentury, it is well known that British troops in the northern part of Pakistan learned about the sport from the local people there. Most agree that the origin of polo is Iran. However, in this paper, rather than specifying a specific area as the birthplace of polo, it is argued that polo was a cultural phenomenon commonly found on the Silk Road. This is based on the fact that polo has been known for centuries in China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan, as well as throughout Iran, northern India, Tibet, Central Asia, and the Uighur Autonomous Region. Yet, the transmission of polo cannot be traced chronologically according to the supposed propagation route. This cultural phenomenon has changed over a long period of time according to the local environment, and the change was caused by mutual exchanges, not by one party. Therefore, there are limitations to interpreting cultural phenomena linearly. Thus, the origin of polo could also be identified with another area, namely Baltistan in modern day Pakistan, instead of Iran. These results support the argument that to understand Silk Road civilization, a process-centric approach based on 'exchanges', not a method of exploring archetypes to find 'the place of origin', should be utilized. Polo is undoubtedly an important cultural artifact with which to read the Silk Road as a cultural belt complex, as well as an example of the common culture created by the whole Silk Road.