What is Kasurian?
Kasurian is a general-interest magazine for the 21st century. Its name is a stylised Latinisation inspired by the Arabic word for fractal, chosen to represent patterns that repeat across scales, spring from a single source, and reveal an order beneath the myriad phenomena of civilisation.
It began as a COVID-era reading group, a handful of people spread across continents, ages and professions, coming together to explore ideas, both novel and recovered, that might seed a culture of curiosity, rigour, ambition and truth-seeking, even at the expense of intellectual comfort.
Kasurian’s worldview is curiosity and conviction: the conviction that, in an uncertain age, certain truths remain unchanged; the curiosity to ask how they carry into our present and future.
Our deeper preoccupation is practical. Flourishing civilisations are information-processing enterprises: ecosystems of institutions, each playing a distinct role, that together create the conditions under which excellence compounds across generations.
We’re interested in the process knowledge of how such institutions are actually built. Process knowledge can be studied, reverse-engineered, and rebuilt—but only once it is understood.
Kasurian is where that understanding is assembled piece by piece, drawing across a wide range of disciplines—deep history and intellectual history, political economy and philosophy, science and technology, sociology and culture—and pursuing each question through case studies, heuristics, and first-principles inquiry.
What to Expect
Each season, Kasurian publishes six essays—one every Sunday for six weeks. Footnotes carries shorter pieces in between seasons: notes, articles, op-eds and letters.
The Issue is the heart of the magazine. Each Sunday for six weeks, we publish sustained, long-form inquiry around a specific theme. We do not currently accept outside pitches for the Issue.
Notes are short-form heuristics we are testing—a field note on an institution, an observation, an open question we are still turning over. They are provisional by design, intended to spur conversation, and revised as our understanding sharpens. We do not currently accept outside pitches for Notes.
Articles are out-of-season long or short-form essays exploring a question that can’t wait until the next issue. We are currently accepting outside pitches for Articles.
Op-eds are argued positions with a clear stance on a question that matters, defended in good faith. We are currently accepting outside pitches for Op-eds.
Letters are sharp responses to something we’ve run—a correction, a rejoinder, or a thread we left hanging and you feel you need to pull on. We are currently accepting outside pitches for Op-eds.
If you are interested in pitching an Article, Op-ed, or Letter, please review our submission guidelines in the Writer’s Guide below.
Artwork
All art has been hand-drawn for Kasurian by Ahmet Faruk Yilmaz. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter/X.
Managing editor — Mariam Mahmoud
Artist — Ahmet Faruk Yılmaz