The influence of political authorities, particularly judges, on the spread of certain schools of jurisprudence throughout Islamic history is well established. This article examines a case study of al-Andalus to explore the possibility that the choice of preferred quranic reading (qir & amacr;'a) was also influenced. The prevalence in al-Andalus of the prominent school of al-Awz & amacr;`& imacr; from Syria before the establishment of the Maliki school may have contributed to the earlier dissemination of the Sh & amacr;m & imacr; reading of Ibn `& Amacr;mir, a prominent reader associated with the al-Awz & amacr;`& imacr; school. Although historical sources are silent on which reading was predominant in al-Andalus during its early conquest, prior to the introduction of jurisprudence and authoritative readings associated with the Maliki school, analysis of early manuscripts provides evidence supporting the hypothesis that Ibn `& Amacr;mir's reading was popular during this formative period.
How to motivate soldiers to fight is a perennial question in military history. This study aims to present a picture of the development of military rewards in early imperial China, particularly focusing on the form of military bounties that were made readily available to all walks of life. Witnessing the decline of the status-oriented reward, namely, the jungong jue system, which had developed since the Warring States period, the imperial state employed monetary reward as a supplement to incentivize its subjects to strive for military merits. Military bounties quantified military achievements and granted extraordinary payment for the completion of specific tasks. By encouraging people to acquire rewards through their military services, the system helped to strengthen imperial frontier security.
This paper assembles material from the ninth and tenth centuries found in Ambasamudram, a town of the Pandya kingdom in the south of the modern state of Tamil Nadu. Through the study of architectural and epigraphical material, two significant religious structures emerge. One is a temple dedicated to & Sacute;iva, where large-scale ritual activities were conducted and which was administratively con- trolled by the Brahmin assembly of the village as well as by a group of high- rank Brahmins attached to the temple. The king himself endowed this temple while he was in the north of the country on a military campaign at the end of the ninth century; in the tenth century an assembly of officials gathered in the same temple to carry out a royal order regarding a land donation. The analysis of the epigraphy of the second temple reveals another type of institution: the two shrines it contains, one dedicated to & Sacute;iva and one to Vis & ncedil;u, may have been related to a religious school in the ninth and the tenth centuries. In contrast to the quiet town of today, Ilank & omacr;ykkuti-the ancient name of Ambasamudram was an influential religious center of the kingdom.
Mori & Omacr;gai's "Maihime" (The dancing girl, 1890) tells the story of the romantic relationship between & Omacr;ta Toyotar & omacr;, a Japanese exchange student studying constitutional law in Berlin, and a German dancer named Elis. Celebrated as a cornerstone of Japanese Romanticism, the tale reflects key aspects of the movement: pursuit of individual freedom, fascination with the exotic, reverence for national culture, and most importantly deep engagement with heightened emotion. This attention to feelings enables the short story to meet the needs of the historical moment by exploring the affective dimensions of high-stakes political, social, cultural, and intellectual transformations that were overwhelming Japan. My essay explores three Romantic themes in "Maihime": Romantic Orientalism, Romantic love, and Romantic nanshoku-a homoerotic subculture among elite Japanese students. Through analysis of the narrative and its intertextual relations to other works, I consider how these three themes shape the structure and content of & Omacr;gai's composition. I argue that their interplay not only accounts for the seeming inconsistencies in the depiction of Toyotar & omacr;'s emotional journey but also contributes to the short story's representation of the welter of conflicting feelings elicited by the experience of modernity.
Nouns like Greek pais ("child") or English "boy" have historically been applied to enslaved persons as a form of derogation: an intentional infantilization of an adult slave. This paper examines the similar Demotic Egyptian noun hl, which was used to refer both to a stage of biological development (ie., a "boy" or a "girl") in addi- tion to enslaved persons who may or may not have been adults. Demotic / may in addition have been connected etymologically to a geographic region (hr, Syria), an etymological connection reminiscent of the relationship between modern English "slave" and the ethnonym "Slav." In order to assess the manifestation of infantiliza- tion of enslaved adults in Demotic Egyptian, this analysis explores the use of hlas an infantilizing derogation, including extended uses (e.g., the compound with m *small") and the connection to the ethnonym "Syrian," as well as the application of significant personal names (e.g., Ilw, "young boy") to enslaved persons. Following the investigation of slaves as children, this discussion turns to children as slaves in contemporary evidence, with an eye to how the two practices-the infantilization of enslaved adults and enslavement of children may have worked in tandem.
This article explores the vr & amacr;7 tya, an enigmatic figure who appears throughout ancient South Asian texts and has been an important component for a number of scholars' historical theories. I argue that vr & amacr;7 tya identity in the Atharvaveda is constructed over and against kingship, using the solar symbols of royalty. Moreover, the vr & amacr;7 tya is divinized in contrast to human kings as an attempt to subjugate kings to vr & amacr;7 tya power with the aim of securing social prestige, food, water, and lodging for vr & amacr;7tyas, whose itinerant lifestyle seems to have depended upon these resources. Thus, in response to orthogenetic or heterogenetic historical theories, the vr & amacr;7 tya chapter (k & amacr;7nda) of the Atharvaveda presents us not so much with a figure who is the representative of a more ancient proto-Indo-European time or a distinct Indo-Aryan culture clashing with Rgvedic culture, but one whose identity is rhetorically constructed in relation to social and economic contexts that were contemporaneous with its composition.
This article reassesses the narrative that the Fatimid caliph al-H & amacr;kim bi-Amr All & amacr;h (d. ca. 1021) intended to reinter the bodies of the Prophet Muhammad and the caliphs Ab & umacr; Bakr and `Umar in three shrines (mash & amacr;hid) outside the walls of Cairo. Prior critical assessments have treated this report with skepticism or dismissed it as nonsensical. This article draws on evidence fromMa'& amacr;sim al-hud & amacr;, an understudied work of Hamid al-Din al-Kirm & amacr;ni, the contemporary Isma`ili theologian and servant of al-H & amacr;kim, to substantiate the claim that the caliph embarked upon a well-attested but largely overlooked initiative to rehabilitate the status of Ab & umacr; Bakr and `Umar to the Isma`ili community, and that the likeliest construction date of al-H & amacr;kim's three shrines-Ramadan 402h (April 1012)-coincides both with this initiative and an outbreak of war between the Fatimid state and the `Alids of the Hijaz. It concludes that, while al-H & amacr;kim's intent to re-entomb the Prophet in Cairo cannot be conclusively proven, the theory is far more plausible than prior academic assessments have recognized.
This article is a reevaluation of the Old Babylonian Sumerian hymn Ninisina B, which praises the healing goddess Ninisina. Distinct from other literary portrayals of the goddess, Ninisina B features unusual imagery including anointing oils, beer, and swallows. I propose a new approach to this enigmatic composition that interprets Ninisina B not as a straightforward hymn or praise poem of the goddess, but as an example of a literary text built upon scribal wordplays. Drawing on lexical, literary, and ritual sources, I argue that the peculiarities of Ninisina B reflect deliberate phonetic and semantic play involving Ninisina's name, attributes, and associations with other goddesses. This reading situates Ninisina B within broader scribal traditions of analogical hermeneutics, revealing it as an exercise in linguistic creativity. Ultimately, I demonstrate how even superficially opaque Sumerian literary compositions may encode complex meanings beneath their surfaces.
Bone, Bronze, and Bamboo: Unearthing Early China with Sarah Allan. Edited by Constance A. Cook, Christopher J . Foster, and Susan Blader. State University oF New York Press, 2024. Pp. xviii + 332. $198.
Rumi: A Life in Pictures. By John Renard. Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art. Edinburgh University Press, 2021. Pp. xv + 276, illus. $140 (cloth); $129 (ebook).
This article examines the three Neo-Babylonian chronicles ABC 3–5, arguing for their completeness as a trilogy (with no missing sections). Focused on the final twelve years of Nabopolassar, the transition, and the initial twelve years of Nebuchadnezzar, the chronicles establish a symmetrical narrative framework. Among the three tablets, it is submitted that ABC 5 displays the highest literary sophistication and may be considered the centerpiece of the series. It is further suggested that the composition of the trilogy likely occurred shortly after the final events recorded in ABC 5, around the late 590s BCE.
The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction: Farid al-Din ʿAttar and Persian Sufi Didacticism. By Austin O’Malley. Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture. Edinburgh University Press, 2023. Pp. ix + 290. $120.
The Book of the Cow: An Early Qurʾānic Codex on Papyrus (P. Hamb. Arab. 68). By Mathieu Tillier and Naïm Vanthieghem. Documenta Coranica, vol. 3. Brill, 2024. Pp. xv + 198. $239.
Political Thought in the Mamluk Period: The Unnecessary Caliphate. By Mohamad eE-Merheb. Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture. Edinburgh University Press, 2022. Pp. viii + 216. $120, £90 (cloth); $29.95, £24.99 (paper; ebook).
Saved from Desert Sands: Re-Discovering Objects on the Silk Road. Edited by Kelsey Granger and Imre Galambos. Brill, 2024. Pp. xvii + 299. $132; open access.
Embracing a structural approach and applying modern narratological theory is a useful tool for exploring the poetics of Ugaritic epic and can account for various effects that the text exercises upon listeners. The relationship between the three layers of a narrative (fabula, suzjet, and text) affect inter alia the focus, tempo, and order of the delivered information in a narrative, as well as the narrative’s reception by its intended audience, whether it is a reading or listening audience. Armed with this theoretical frame, the present article explores a significant aspect of the narrative design in the Epic of Aqhat—the design of time. This analysis yields new insights regarding the functions of the design of time in the Epic of Aqhat and serves as a methodological frame for exploring other epic works from Ugarit.
The Buddhist “monastery” in early India is still commonly represented as a quiet place of calm retreat and withdrawal cut off from the commotion of ordinary life, from economic and social interactions. The archeology of these places, however, indicates, for example, that there must have been almost constant and continuous construction activity going on at the sites we know, with all the noise and disruption that the presence of large numbers of workmen would have involved. Monastic codes or vinayas also do not support the typical view. They suggest that there would have been a constant traffic in and out of these places, both day and night. These codes have yet to be thoroughly studied from this point of view, but one of the fullest of them will be the focus here, and this focus will in particular be on what is presented as the daily round of activities, and who and why all sorts of people are said to come and go at what appear to have been very busy places.
1800 Years of Encounters with Mandaeans. By Jorunn J . Buckley. Gorgias Mandaean Series, vol. 5. Gorgias Press, 2023. Pp. xxxiv + 112. $114.95.
The Shape of Stories: Narrative Structures in Cuneiform Literature. Edited by Sophus Helle and Gina Konstantopolos. Cuneiform Monographs, vol. 54. Brill, 2023. Pp. xi + 354. $155.
Early Chinese autobiographical writings tend to paint a still portrait of who the author is: his temperament, personality, and achievements. They operate on a model of being and, at best, of a continuous, lifelong self-cultivation and a gradual process of self-actualization. In the fourth century, we see an emphasis on transformation in an author’s life writing. A moment that sheds light on the past and points to the future is singled out as a turning point, and this turning point creates a new possibility for autographical writings. This article suggests that in early medieval Chinese autobiographical writings, instead of a model of being, we have a model of becoming; instead of a depiction of what is, we see a narrative of change. The narrative of change owes a profound debt to Buddhist stories of conversion and enlightenment.
