This article investigates how Li Yuanyang, a Yunnanese scholar of the Ming Dynasty, pursued cultural orthodoxy both for himself and his homeland. Through reconstructing Yunnan's history, harmonising Buddhism with Confucianism, and showcasing the Chinese values practised in Yunnan, he positions himself as an orthodox Confucian literatus and defines Yunnan as an integral part of Chinese civilisation. Simultaneously, Li exhibits strong regional characteristics, perhaps unconsciously at times. He adopts some Bai-centric accounts, inherits Dali's pre-Ming Buddhist legacy, and especially extols local moral exemplars, highlighting the cultural refinement of Yunnan individuals. Thus, his identity is double-sided, functioning as both a Chinese and a native scholar.
The founder of the Hong Kong branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, John Francis Davis, published the first translation of a Chinese play into English, Laou-Seng-Urh, or 'An Heir in Old Age', in 1817. While significant in both literary and scholarly terms, Davis's work is also worthy of attention for its political undercurrents. An anonymously penned introduction draws connections between Davis's translation and theatrical performances in the context of Qing diplomacy, including Macartney's embassy of 1793, while an accompanying 'Advertisement' highlights Davis's role as interpreter on Amherst's subsequent embassy of 1816. This article conclusively attributes these paratexts to the second secretary of the Admiralty, Sir John Barrow. Records from the East India House library, the John Murray Archive, and back-numbers of The Quarterly Review reveal how Barrow exploited Davis's translation to promote British diplomatic engagement with China and celebrate the embassy on which he had staked his own reputation as a China expert. Though Laou-Seng-Urh achieved few of its political objectives, it nevertheless inadvertently influenced the trajectory of nineteenth-century academic sinology in Europe.
This study explores the intricate design of title pages in nineteenth-century Persian lithographed books, comparing the Eastern-style title pages prevalent in Indian publications with the Western-influenced designs found in Iranian lithographed books. Rooted in Indian publishing traditions, the Eastern model emphasised structured bibliographic details, refined calligraphy, and floral ornamentation. In contrast, the Western-style Iranian model drew inspiration from Persian manuscript and bookbinding traditions, a broader ornamental vocabulary shared across media, particularly the lachak va turanj (medallion-and-corner) compositional scheme. While Iranian designers rarely adopted the Eastern model in books published in Iran, Indian publications occasionally incorporated Persian design elements, demonstrating selective cross-regional exchanges in Persianate book design. Rather than developing a standardised informational layout, Iranian title pages prioritised visual composition and ornamental hierarchy, often relegating bibliographic information to colophons or extended dedicatory texts. Accordingly, the Western style is defined less by informational structure than by visual organisation, which distinguishes it fundamentally from the Eastern model. This study focuses on Iranian and Indian examples, drawing on rare Persian lithographed books to examine how differing conceptions of the book shaped title page design in the nineteenth century.
This article examines how the Ban & umacr; Fahd of Mecca successfully established and maintained a scholarly dynasty specialising in hadith transmission across multiple generations during the Mamluk and early Ottoman periods (eighth/fourteenth-eleventh/seventeenth centuries). Drawing on social reproduction theory, the study analyses the deliberate strategies through which this family transformed itself from judge-merchants into 'the hadith transmitters of the Hijaz'. The analysis focuses on Taq & imacr; al-D & imacr;n Muhammad (d. 871/1466) as the pivotal figure who systematically forged the family's scholarly identity through multiple interconnected strategies: intensive early education of children and relatives, strategic exploitation of Mecca's position as a pilgrimage centre to build networks with visiting scholars, creation of a family library that became a regional resource, development of sophisticated information management tools (indexes, notebooks, summaries), cultivation of excellence in manuscript copying, and elaboration of genealogical claims linking the family to 'Al & imacr; ibn Ab & imacr; T & amacr;lib. These practices were consciously transmitted across several generations, creating a cumulative effect that sustained the family's reputation into the early eleventh/seventeenth century. The study demonstrates that this scholarly dynasty succeeded not through passive inheritance but through active, systematic cultivation of multiple forms of capital-economic, social, cultural, and symbolic-deployed strategically to reproduce elite status across generations.
This article examines the endurance of timbering and rafting along the upper Yellow River in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a case study of Fernand Braudel's 'social time' of that critical section of the waterway, marked by intensified commerce and shifting political dynamics. The Muslim consolidation of midstream Ningxia, anchored in upstream Linxia, exemplified how Hui economic dominance intertwined with territorial control. These networks, later repurposed to support China's resistance against Japanese imperialism, were abruptly disrupted by mid-twentieth-century dam construction and socialist collectivisation. Beyond economic history, the article interrogates historiographical silences surrounding Hui economic territorialisation. While external observers, including Republican officials and Japanese strategists, acknowledged Hui commercial monopolies, state historiography under the People's Republic of China has often downplayed them to maintain narratives of ethnic harmony. Analysing cinematic representations across different eras of the twentieth century, the article further argues that film serves as a counterpoint to official narratives, offering an alternative medium where Hui agency and economic territoriality are articulated and contested. By bridging economic history, historiography, and visual culture, this study highlights the political stakes of ethnic commerce and the ways in which Hui identity has been shaped and reshaped across different political regimes.
This article shows that the Qar & amacr;mita (a Muslim group) strategically adapted the Islamic concept of the Mahd & imacr; to align with the spiritual figure of Jesus in order to render their eschatological message more acceptable within the Christian milieu of Syria. More broadly, however, it argues that the Qar & amacr;mita's discourse engaged with Christian theology, which also involved ideas of divine manifestation, the identification of the Qar & amacr;mita's leader Yahy & amacr; b. Zikrawayh (d. 290/903) with John the Baptist, and even the symbolic redirection of the qibla and hajj towards Jerusalem. The article examines what may be described as a pseudo-Christian discourse surrounding the figure of Yahy & amacr; b. Zikrawayh in Syria. The study considers two pathways leading to the establishment of such pseudo discourse. First, such Christianised motifs may have been deliberately employed by the Qar & amacr;mita themselves as a strategy to attract wider audiences and reinforce the legitimacy of their movement. This examination will offer a new perspective on the probability of how the Qar & amacr;mita sought legitimacy via adapting their so-called Mahd & imacr;ist discourse for a non-Muslim society and ideology. Second, this Christian colouring was later reinforced by sources seeking to demonise and marginalise those who stood outside the authorities' official position. This article critically examines the development of this syncretic Mahd & imacr;ist narrative by analysing the problematic nature of these sources that document these adaptations. The analysis therefore moves between the rhetoric of the preachers and the historiographical framing by their opponents, showing how both contributed to shaping the image of a pseudo-Christian Mahd & imacr;ist movement in Syria.
This article examines the cyclical nature of monetisation and demonetisation in Taizhou ((sic)(sic)) during the Song and Yuan dynasties. By analysing local fiscal policies, taxation systems, and economic structures, it reveals a complex process of monetary evolution. The Song Dynasty saw significant fiscal monetization, driven by military needs and implemented through innovative tax systems. However, the Yuan Dynasty witnessed a partial reversal, with a shift towards physical taxation and reduced monetary demands. This research highlights the interplay between central government policies, local fiscal structures, and broader economic trends. It challenges linear models of economic development and emphasises the importance of regional variations in understanding historical monetisation processes.
While the social and political contributions of Iranian Shii emigre scholars to the early modern Deccan have attracted some scholarly attention, the actual contents of their intellectual production remain understudied. An important reason for this is the broader neglect of the corpus of commentaries and translations in the early modern Islamicate world. To address this gap, this article analyses the ways in which Ibn Khatun al-'amili (d. 1059/1649) combines the genres of translation and gloss in his Persian rendition of a hadith collection by Baha' al-Din al-'amili (d. 1030/1621). After providing an overview of translation projects of Shii texts in the Deccan and a biographical sketch of Ibn Khatun, I examine the latter's translation and commentarial strategies. I show how, by merging elements of translation and gloss into his text, the author addresses the needs of an intellectual milieu characterised by a high level of pedagogical engagement in the transmission of Shii knowledge.
According to Islamic geographical texts, the route that passed along the southern bank of the Gamasiab River on the current Bisotun-Sahneh plain, connecting Kermanshah (Qarmisin) and Bisotun (Behistun) to Madharan, Kangavar (Qasr al-Lusus), and Nahavand, was very significant during the early Islamic centuries. However, based on archaeological evidence, it seems that a major part of this importance was attributed to the construction projects of the Sassanids, especially the later kings of the Sassanian Dynasty, such as Khosrow II, who focused on developing the current Kermanshah province, especially the Kermanshah-Bisotun region, and built extensive constructions including communication roads, bridges, palaces, and magnificent mansions along the southern bank of the Gamasiab River. The present research specifically and comprehensively investigates, for the first time, the southern route of the Gamasiab River in the southern part of the Bisotun-Sahneh plain and localises seven historical toponyms along this route. This research is mainly based on the analysis of Islamic geographical texts, especially those from the ninth and tenth centuries. Additionally, archaeological evidence such as the remains of old bridges, buildings, and sites, as well as the topographical and geographical features of the region, have been taken into consideration.
This article explores the evolving relationship between li (rites) and fa (law) in early China amidst social transformations. It demonstrates that although li and law initially existed in tension following the publication of penal law in the late Spring and Autumn period, they gradually moved towards the process of reconciliation through Shang Yang's legal reforms in Qin and Xunzi's theoretical synthesis during the Warring States period. Ultimately, the integration of li into Qin's legal framework marked the culmination of this process, with li and law collectively structuring the state's social and familial hierarchies. The article demonstrates that the convergence of li and law was based on their shared nature as impersonal and authoritative rules regulating socio-political life beyond specific circumstances, while their differing scopes and methods of enforcement were gradually harmonised.
This article examines the transregional life and typographic legacy of a 24-point Ottoman naskh printing type (MI-24), developed in 1867 by the Ottoman-Armenian punch-cutter Ohannes M & uuml;hendisyan in collaboration with the court calligrapher K & amacr;& zdot;& imacr;'asker Mustaf & aacute; '& Idot;zzet Efendi. Celebrated for its exceptional calligraphic fidelity and mechanical refinement, MI-24 emerged as the pinnacle of Arabic-script typography in the Ottoman empire. Drawing on previously unexamined archival materials, this study reconstructs MI-24's production, dissemination, and adaptation across a wide geography-from Istanbul to Beirut, Cairo, Tehran, Kabul, and even Chicago, London and Oxford. It explores how regional actors including Jesuit missionaries, Armenian type-founders, Arab Nahda intellectuals, and European Orientalists engaged with and modified this typographic model to suit diverse cultural, religious, and technological needs. In tracing these typographic networks, the article situates MI-24 at the intersection of Islamic visual culture, print modernity, and global knowledge circulation. Far from being a product confined to Istanbul's imperial presses, MI-24 became a mobile and malleable artefact-reshaped by local aesthetics and political agendas. Ultimately, this article reframes Arabic-script typography as a dynamic site of visual negotiation and transimperial collaboration, contributing to broader discourses on print culture, design history, and the materialities of Islamicate text production.
Village India, edited by McKim Marriott and included in a series on cultures and civilisations edited by Robert Redfield and Milton Singer, was a widely read and influential book published in 1955 at the beginning of the 'village studies era' in modern Indian anthropology. For Redfield and Singer, the two main questions were whether the Indian village as a 'little community' was 'isolable', and how Indian culture and civilisation could be understood through village studies. But for several of the eight contributing authors to Village India, especially M. N. Srinivas-who edited India's Villages, also published in 1955-the principal subject matter was the structure of the village community itself, together with its unity and autonomy, and most readers tended to take the same view. There were various reasons for this, including Redfield and Singer's failure to explain the book's aims and objectives clearly in their foreword. Moreover, only Marriott seriously discussed their question about understanding Indian civilisation. Also important was Louis Dumont and David Pocock's article reviewing both Village India and India's Villages. Dumont and Pocock's insistence that the village is not a crucial 'social fact' in India, together with Srinivas's later response, strengthened the belief that the village's 'sociological reality' and unity, rather than its relationship with Indian civilisation, was the key question discussed in Village India. This retrospective analysis of Village India sheds new light on its production and reception, and on its role in the development of modern Indian anthropology.
This article analyses the fifteenth-century Arabic panegyric for Sultan Jaqmaq (r. 1438-1453), Ta'l & imacr;f al-t & amacr;hir f & imacr; shiyam al-Malik al-Z & amacr;hir (The pure composition on the character of the King al-Z & amacr;hir), by the Syrian poet-historian Ahmad ibn 'Arabsh & amacr;h (1389-1450). It focuses on how the author engages with the Dulgadirid and Aqquyunlu T & uuml;rkmen in the context of the new sultan's attempts to repair fraught, decades-long relationships with these groups. Challenging the expectations of a highly literary text praising the ruler, Ibn 'Arabsh & amacr;h's writing offers sophisticated engagement with the political tensions of the time and provides insight into how the Cairo Sultanate navigated the complex networks of its northern frontier through rhetoric and realpolitik. By examining layered political commentary on the former rivals, allies, and antagonists of fifteenth-century Cairo-the article argues that Ibn 'Arabsh & amacr;h utilised the previous 60 years of T & uuml;rkmen-sultanate relations to stage a narrative of closure and reconciliation, in the wake of Barsb & amacr;y's disastrous frontier campaigns, to better present Jaqmaq as a sovereign capable of reversing past missteps and ushering in a revitalised and prosperous geopolitical order.
In 1897, an Indian dancer named Piaree Jehan petitioned the Bombay government seeking justice for her two granddaughters-Begum Jehan and Vajir Jehan-who died and allegedly disappeared, respectively, during their 1895-1896 England tour. As traditional sources of patronage for the performers declined owing to the colonial criminalisation of prostitution and rising anti-nautch sentiment in the second half of the nineteenth century, certain groups of Indian women performers started travelling to the British metropole for contractual performances. Despite promises of lucrative salaries and foreign travel, life in the imperial exhibitory spaces proved to be quite precarious. Through a close reading of Piaree's petition and contemporary British newspaper reports, this article presents a microhistory of Indian women performers' experience in the racialised and sexualised imperial circuits of performance. It shows how the British imperial government adopted a certain 'politics of convenience' to selectively sexualise Indian women performers to erase their contributions as transcultural workers for the empire. By doing so, the empire continued to economically and culturally benefit from the dancers' labour while avoiding any responsibility towards remedying their working conditions. At the same time, focusing on Piaree's affective argumentation, the article also demonstrates how the performers used the British legal system to make their voices heard. By writing petitions, demanding unpaid wages, refusing sexual offers, and forging kinship ties, Indian women performers repeatedly foregrounded their identities as professional creative workers. In doing so, they disrupted narratives of passive victimhood, challenged their hypersexualised colonial representations, and brought their overlooked contributions to the late nineteenth-century British stage to the fore.
Most literature on tawa'ifs remains confined to specific princely states or cities in colonial India. Making 'travel' its central framework, this article tries to bring the movement and mobilities of tawa'ifs into sharper focus. Engaging with the formidable research that has emerged since the publication of Veena Oldenburg's essay on the Lucknow tawa'ifs in 1990, I propose we approach their travels as itinerant subjects through a nuanced framework that distinguishes between the different types of journeys they undertake. Turning our focus on the trajectories and movements of tawa'ifs, I shall argue, makes room for more embedded and rigorous histories of women performers in late colonial India. A conceptual attempt, this article explores the possibilities of locating performers as subjects within complex networks of travel and mobilities. This peripatetic aspect of tawa'ifs' lives will hence become visible as distinct types of mobilities-journeys of migration; travel in search of sustenance and patronage; types of displacement; exploitative circuits of exhibitions and displays; and in most cases, a crucial means of identity-making. In this article, tawa'ifs' travels will thus move between princely courts, towns, cities, and regions, and even across continents.
Focusing on the late eighteenth-century kulliyat by Lutf un-Nisa 'Imtiy & amacr;z' (1733?-?), arguably the first published Urdu poetess, this article seeks to explore the mobility-primarily metaphorical rather than physical-of a remarkable woman overlooked in historical accounts dominated by the male gaze. This mobility is enacted through her metaphysical, emotional, and literary navigation of time and space, rather than through geographic movement. Imtiy & amacr;z's masnav & imacr;, functioning as an autobiography, employs time and space metaphors to offer a counter-archive for early women's writing, providing a unique perspective into early modern feminine subjectivities. The examination underscores Imtiy & amacr;z's agency in shaping her narrative, intertwining religious intercessions, canonical compositions, and literary sophistication. The metaphoric navigation through space and time illustrates the resilience and creativity of this woman, transcending her geographical and temporal constraints. At its core, Imtiy & amacr;z's masnav & imacr; stands as a testament to her innovation, interwoven with convention through life-writing, crafting a rich narrative tapestry resonating within and beyond South Asian realms.
This article offers a detailed analysis of a Kachchhi-Gujarati manuscript chart of the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden dating probably from the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries and held at the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers in London (mr Asia S.4.). The origins and possible dating of the manuscript are examined. Astronomical data inscribed on the chart, establishing latitude and providing sailing directions, are identified, interpreted, and projected. Its Devanagari toponyms are transcribed and identified with real-world locations. Coastal profiles and unnamed features representing significant navigational landmarks are individuated. Islamic buildings depicted on the chart are identified as specific regional mosque-shrines. The presence of Ottoman and other regional polities are inferred. The place of the chart within an early modern tradition of western-Indian navigational manuscripts and a wider Indian Ocean tradition is explored. Our analysis establishes the chart as a detailed and highly practical navigational work-countering earlier scholarly denigrations of its accuracy. In contrast, we show it to be one of the most detailed surviving indigenous navigational charts produced in an Indian Ocean tradition.
This article explores the changing trajectories of tawa'ifs-highly trained female performers of music and dance-in colonial North India, with a focus on their mobility and evolving patronage relationships. As British colonial policies and reformist moral discourses shattered long-standing networks of courtly support, tawa'ifs increasingly travelled between regional centres in search of livelihood and artistic relevance. Focusing on the princely state of Rampur, this study explores the complex interactions, power dynamics, and social hierarchies between Muslim female performers, middlemen, and elite patrons, particularly in the context of public festivals and fairs. Based on handwritten petitions, letters, and poems in Urdu and Persian, as well as vernacular print sources, the article argues that princely patronage was not static but adapted to the pressures of colonial modernity and wider pan-regional transformations. It also shows that post-1857 Lucknow remained a vital hub for recruitment, training, and trade. By tracing female performers across princely and colonial contexts, the article illuminates how their mobility and professional flexibility expanded alongside rising social stigmatisation and the intensifying conflation of courtesans with sex workers.
From the 1870s through the 1930s, Parsi entrepreneurs based in Bombay financed large professional theatre companies. Their extensive tours brought live stage entertainment to all parts of the subcontinent. Female performers were one of Parsi theatre's chief attractions. This article focuses on three celebrated women whose trajectories took them in different directions. Jamila Begam came from Iraq to India but achieved her ambition of running a theatre company in colonial Burma. Mary Fenton, 'the English actress', was born in India and escaped poverty by performing in Urdu and Gujarati on stages across North India. Nanhi Jan worked in Parsi theatre, recorded art music on phonographs, and yet was best known for her postcard image as a quintessential 'nautch girl'. Each actress can be verified from memoirs, newspaper ads, official records, or photographs. Their experiences underscore the hazards of mobility as well as the ways in which travel enabled performing women to occupy a larger world professionally, socially, and economically.
The emergence of female performers in the public sphere from the early twentieth century changed the contours of performance arts in colonial Assam. By studying the lived experiences of female performers in conjunction with their portrayals on-screen and on-stage, questions of mobility and agency are explored with a focus on Aideu Handique, the first heroine of Assamese cinema, along with women performers from selected mobile theatre groups. This article traces the shifts and continuities in the representations of the eponymous female protagonist in the first Assamese talkie, Joymoti (1935) by Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, and the recent stage adaptation, Awahan Theatre's Joymoti (2021-2022). While mediated images popularised an idea of womanhood that travelled from the colonial to the contemporary stage, the mobility of the female performer enacting the role in the colonial context was severely restricted. Using feminist ethnography, oral history, and archival materials, this article brings the subjective narratives of the travelling female performers to the fore. It reveals the power hierarchies that exist between male and female performers-for instance, how gender affects decision-making processes as well as the modes and destinations of travel-thus highlighting the politics of mobility.
