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Antinomianism as a way to God in nineteenth-century Java: the Suluk Lonthang between Islamic and pre-Islamic religious discourse Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-05-20 Andrea Acri, Verena H. Meyer, Zakariya P. Aminullah
This article presents the first complete critical edition and annotated English translation of the nineteenth-century Javanese mystical poem Suluk Lonthang. Combining different disciplinary expertise in old and modern Javanese philology, Tantric Studies, and Islamic Studies, it interprets the protagonist of the poem as an expression of the multifaceted and multivocal Javanese religious landscape of
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‘Blown from a gun’: situating the British practice of execution by cannon in the context of southern and western Asia Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-05-17 N. R. Jenzen-Jones, Charles Randall, Jack Shanley, Omer Sayadi
In parts of southern and western Asia, as elsewhere, the cannon once served as one of the most dramatic tools in the inventories of state executioners. The practice of ‘blowing from a gun’, by which the condemned was bound to the front of a cannon and quite literally blown to pieces, was most infamously employed in British India and the Princely States, and the vast majority of English-language scholarship
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Princely prisons, state exhibitions, and Muslim industrial authority in colonial India Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-05-17 Amanda Lanzillo
This article analyses the prison industries and state industrial exhibitions of three Indian princely states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tracing how princely elites sought to develop distinct labouring and industrial cultures. Drawing on examples from three Muslim-led princely states, namely Rampur, Bhopal, and Hyderabad, the article argues that state elites distinguished
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The emergence of Gaza as a provincial intellectual centre during the Mamluk period Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-04-25 Or Amir
During the Mamluk period (1260–1516), Gaza developed from a minor town into an important city in southern Bilād al-Shām, the capital of an administrative province. This prosperity was the product of substantial and continuous Mamluk investment in the town, the security and stability maintained by this regime, and Gaza's strategic location as the bridge connecting Egypt and Bilād al-Shām. This article
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Mobilising human resources to build a national communications network: the case of Japan before the Pacific War Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Janet Hunter
This article analyses labour-intensive workforce strategies in Japan's government-run informational infrastructure (post, telegraph, and telephone) and in the adjunct services associated with their administration in the decades up to the Pacific War. It asks to what extent the growing scale of employment in Japan's communications infrastructure in this period confirms the existence of labour-intensive
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New dawn in Mughal India: longue durée Neoplatonism in the making of Akbar's sun project Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Jos Gommans, Said Reza Huseini
In this article, we explore the longue durée philosophical background of Mughal Emperor Akbar's sun worship. Although Akbar's sun project may have been triggered by contemporary Hindu and Zoroastrian ideas and practices, we argue that Akbar's Neoplatonic advisers reframed it as a universal cosmotheistic tradition that, at the start of the new millennium, served as the perfect all-inclusive imperial
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Divergent tracks: Korean Government Railways’ employment and training systems under Japanese colonial rule, 1910–45 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Chaisung Lim
This study employs annual reports, time-series statistics, and internal training records of the colonial-era Korean Government Railways (KGR) to conduct a quantitative analysis of its labour management practices. It addresses the colonial characteristics associated with Japanese techno-imperialism beyond ethnic discrimination, revealing a dual-pronged labour strategy that adopted a Japanese government
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Seeking employment during Japan's early industrialisation: new engineering graduates and their struggles before 1900 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Masanori Wada
This article examines the social background of engineers in Meiji Japan by analysing their employment-seeking activities and their role in fostering industrial development. In particular, it focuses on the graduates from the Imperial College of Engineering (ICE) in Tokyo. One of the most prestigious schools for technical education, the ICE was established by the Meiji government in 1871 and opened
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Trading locomotives between the USA and Japan: Okura & Co. at the beginning of the twentieth century Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Naofumi Nakamura
This article examines international transactions related to steam locomotives at the beginning of the twentieth century while focusing on Japanese trading companies. In particular, it considers in detail how Japanese trading companies acquired the knowledge and know-how of locomotive trading to carry out their business transactions through a case study of Okura & Co.'s New York branch office. The analysis
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Kṛṣṇa the Magician: metapoesis and ambivalence in Faiḍī's Mahābhārat Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Justin N. Smolin
In this article, I discuss the vilification of Kṛṣṇa as a deceitful sorcerer in the Mughal poet-laureate Shaikh Abū'l Faiḍ bin Mubārak, or ‘Faiḍī's Mahābhārat and his correspondent apotheosis as the ‘essence of the True God' in the Shāriq al-maʿrifat, a treatise also ascribed to Faiḍī. As I argue, this inconsistency, or ambivalence, is a common and overlooked facet of the elite Islamicate engagement
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‘From all quarters of the Indian world’: the temple at Rameshvaram, Hindu kings, and Dutch merchants Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-12-20 Lennart Bes, Crispin Branfoot
On Rameshvaram island in the south-east corner of India lies one of Hinduism's most important temples—the Rāmanāthasvāmi, one of the four dhams (‘holy abodes’) and the site of two Śiva-liṅgas said to have been consecrated by Rāma himself. A temple has existed here since at least the eleventh century, although most of the present temple dates to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the island
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Comparison constructions in two Northern Talyshi dialects Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Hakob Avchyan
This article examines the comparison constructions in two Northern Talyshi varieties: in Anbarāni, used in the Islamic Republic of Iran; and the Northern Talyshi dialects spoken in the Republic of Azerbaijan. These constructions have been poorly studied in previous research dealing with this North-western Iranian language and this article aims to fill that gap. In contrast with a number of Western
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Bāṇa, Vyomkesh Shastri, Stella Kramrisch: authority and authorship in Hazariprasad Dwivedi's Bāṇabhaṭṭa kī ‘ātmakathā’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-12-04 Gregory Goulding
Hazariprasad Dwivedi's 1946 novel, Bāṇabhaṭṭa kī ‘ātmakathā’, has long been considered one of the most prominent historical novels in modern Hindi literature, canonised in literary history for its progressive view of the past and for elaborating an autobiographical voice for the seventh-century Sanskrit poet, Bāṇa. However, the many layers of fictive authorship that enfold the main narrative of the
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Materials and techniques used for Portrait of Yi Bok Shin oiled paper sketches: scientific analysis and practical application Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-11-28 Doo Hee Chung
During the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), many silk portraits were made of kings and other public officials. Most of these are now lost. Silk canvases are partially transparent, which allows pigments on both sides of the canvas to be seen. Before working with a silk canvas, artists would create several drafts of their portraits on paper, which was made translucent through the application of oil. In this
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Casteist demons and working-class prophets: subaltern Islam in Bengal, circa 1872–1928 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-10-03 Layli Uddin
This article investigates the relationship between caste and Islam in Bengal at a time when they acquired heightened significance as markers of identity for the colonial state and between communities. Scholarship, mainly drawing on North India, has emphasised the contrast between the existence in practice of a hierarchical system of social stratification among Muslims and the ideals and traditions
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Letter writing as the mingling of souls: remote knowledge exchange among eighteenth-century Naqshbandis Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-10-02 Daniel Jacobius Morgan
Historians of Islamicate intellectual practices in pre-colonial South Asia have long argued that authoritative knowledge was located in persons rather than books, and that religious texts were thus typically transmitted in the context of face-to-face meetings between teacher and student. While it has been noted that some early modern Sufi networks engaged in the remote transmission of authoritative
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The scholar and administrator: personal reflections on Francis Robinson Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Norman Gowar
It is a privilege to be asked to contribute to this celebration of Francis's career and I am pleased to contribute a few comments beyond those concerned with his immense contributions to his field of study and to pay tribute to him as a major player in the intellectual and social life of Royal Holloway, University of London.
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Tokugawa Yoshimune and his healthcare projects Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Regina Huebner
In Japanese scholarship, the notion of public health is closely associated with modernisation and the adoption of Western medicine in the nineteenth century, which influenced the centralisation of medical affairs and the establishment of hospitals. This article aims to challenge this assumption. A closer look at Japan's medical history shows that government institutions caring for the sick and destitute
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Maulana Azad and his memory of the Islamic past: a study of his early writings Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Muzaffar Alam
The article is concerned primarily with Maulana Azad's early political and theological writings with a view to understanding his positions on Islam and the non-Islamic religions. It opens with a brief description of his discussion of Mughal history and religious culture, and then notes his portrayal of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624) as an exemplary political figure, who raised his voice against Akbar's
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Somnath Mandir in a play of mirrors: heritage, history, and the search for identity of the new nation (1842–1951) Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Tommaso Bobbio
The story of the Somnath temple, in the northwestern Saurashtra peninsula, has often been taken as an example of the contentious legacies of the penetration, settlement, and political establishment of Muslims in India. Its history testifies to the complex relationship between history, heritage, and the consolidation of collective memories of past events and processes. This article focuses on two key
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A way with words: Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832–1890) and the unexpected power of print Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Barbara Metcalf
The writings of Muhammad Siddiq Hasan well exemplify the argument of Francis Robinson's influential article on vernacular print publications that furthered a Protestant Reformation-like democratising of sacred knowledge. Both the number of his publications, and the personal empowerment enjoined by his Ahl-i Hadith jurisprudence, make him, in fact, an ideal exemplar of this kind of publication. He also
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A munshi discussion on religion, and the Simla Akhbār, circa 1850 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-23 Carl Ernst
As a case study of the changing mentalities that emerged in colonial India, this article analyses a discussion that took place among several munshis (secretaries trained in Persian to run the affairs of princely states), and also provides a translation and edition of the text. The subject was a short polemical letter refuting the immortality of the soul, published around 1850 in the Simla Akhbār (Simla
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Spread of bounties: culinary manuals and knowledge in Mughal South Asia Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Neha Vermani
This article identifies and examines Persian-language culinary manuals that were produced in South Asia between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. In doing so, it centres three empirical loci: the definition of food as it was conceptualised during the period under study; the impetus for the textualisation and standardisation of culinary knowledge; and core principles that undergird the cuisine
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For Francis Robinson Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-04 Masuma Hasan
Francis Robinson's academic romance with the subcontinent began when he was doing research for his doctoral thesis at Trinity College Cambridge. He has often reminded me that we were contemporaries—or near contemporaries—at Cambridge, but I do not remember having met him then. I do recall that his supervisor was my friend, the historian Anil Seal, who was a fellow of Trinity College.
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Francis Robinson: personal recollections Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-04 Peter Brown
The three years that I spent at Royal Holloway, University of London between 1975 and 1978, as professor and head of the History Department, were among the happiest and most purposive of my entire academic life. This was due, in no small part, to my instant friendship with Francis Robinson. We soon realised that our interests converged to a remarkable degree, despite the gulf of almost two millennia
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Education among Indian Muslims. Jamia Millia Islamia's journal Payām-e taʿlīm Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Margrit Pernau
The rapid changes caused by high imperialism and modernisation induced an orientation towards the future among the Indian Muslims: where was the community and the nation heading? What did the young generation need, in terms of both character and knowledge, to master the future and to shape it in such a way as to bring justice and civilisation, honour and prosperity to the country? This article aims
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A heresy inquisition in the National Assembly and the Islamisation of Pakistan Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 A. Azfar Moin
The goal of the second constitutional amendment passed in 1974 was to excommunicate the Ahmadis and establish Pakistan as a bona fide Islamic state. The Pakistani state accomplished this goal through an extraordinary process in which the National Assembly conducted a month-long examination of Ahmadi beliefs. Conducted by the attorney general of Pakistan, who was aided by the ulema members of parliament
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Rationalising ritual: worship in South Asian Islam between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Muhammad Qasim Zaman
This article examines the discussion of core Islamic rituals in the writings of the influential eighteenth-century Sufi, hadith scholar, and jurist Shah Wali Allah of Delhi (d. 1762). It brings out the implications of Wali Allah's sustained concern with demonstrating how divinely mandated rituals serve human interests, not just at the individual but also at the societal and political levels. This aspect
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Religion and the rise of magic in Urdu print culture: the case of Chīn aur Bangāl kā Jādū Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Markus Daechsel
This article offers a first survey of a novel genre of grimoires published in Urdu-reading India in the early twentieth century. It contained a wide selection of magic material from Islamicate and Tantric sources as well as Western parapsychology and spiritualism. Its applications ranged from remedies of last resort in illness, relationship troubles, and other life problems to common household cures
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Sorry for what? Asking the right questions about the Bangladeshi liberation war and Pakistan's military operation in 1971 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Ali Usman Qasmi
Three aspects of the historical memory of 1971 remain highly contentious. The first concerns the (il)legitimacy of the military operation and the description of Bengali resistance against it as ‘national liberation’. The second centres on the accusation of the Pakistani military's genocidal violence, the use of rape as a weapon, and the counter-allegation of a Bihari genocide. The third focuses on
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‘Cheek by jowl’: education as a bridge between Muslims and the British in colonial India Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Sumaira Noreen
Muslims’ education in British India is treated in the literature as something encompassing resistance, reaction, and hence emancipation from putatively exploitative British policies. This article focuses on the patterns of Muslims’ emergent knowledge traditions in British India in response to the British government's involvement in the educational matters of the Indian subcontinent. Data findings reveal
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Marshall Hodgson's ideas on cores and modernity in Islam: a critique Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-07-28 Richard Maxwell Eaton
Marshall Hodgson has been rightly admired for his vast contributions in the fields of both Islam and world history. Despite the many decades since the publication of his works on these topics, his ideas have largely survived the test of time and continue to be influential. There are two respects, however, in which Hodgson's ideas appear to have been fundamentally flawed—namely, his notion of cultural
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Wilful daughters, domestic goddesses, pious Muslims, and rebels: Islam, fashion, commodities, and emotions among upper class women in Pakistan, 1947–1962 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-07-28 Elisabetta Iob
Pakistan, 15 January 1950. Impeccably dressed, Zarina is going out to celebrate the wedding of her partner-in-gossip-crime, Fizza. Her busy life makes her feel anxious. The wrongdoings of the home helpers and her parents’ constant bickering fill her family life. Fashion magazines, get-togethers at the association she has just joined, and ladies’ glamorous parties are her only antidotes to stress. This
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Zeb-un-Nissa's ‘Between ourselves: a weekly feature for women’: learning to feel in early post-independence Pakistan Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Sarah Ansari
Pioneering Pakistani female journalist Zeb-un-Nissa Hamidullah in her ‘Between ourselves: a weekly feature for women’ columns, which appeared in Karachi's English-language daily newspaper Dawn during the late 1940s and early 1950s, encouraged her readers to stretch rather than breach the boundaries in how (educated) Pakistani women—as ‘good wives and wise mothers’—should fulfil their familial (and
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East Indian misfortunes: the Fraser brothers and the early Raj Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Gail Minault
Nothing in William Fraser's life in India is better known than his leaving of it. In March 1835, after 30 years in India, Fraser, then the East India Company's chief representative in Delhi, was gunned down by an assassin. The story of Fraser's murder is well covered in history. However, far more of Fraser's life in India—and that of his brothers—is discernible through their letters home to their family
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Region, religion, and locality: revisiting Punjab politics and the Unionist Party, 1923–1947 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-07-11 Ian Talbot
This article revisits a series of articles published in the early 1980s on Punjab politics in the pre-partition decade that grew out of my thesis ‘The Growth of the Muslim League in the Punjab’ which was supervised by Francis Robinson. It initially locates the publications in the existing literature, before assessing the extent to which subsequent research has enriched academic understanding. The article
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Remembrances of Rashīd: life-histories as lessons in the Dēōband movement Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-07-11 Justin Jones
The tazkira, a long-established genre of life-history writing in South Asian literature, was increasingly used over the course of the twentieth century to document the lives and achievements of ‘ulamā (‘learned men’, or scholars of religion). This article explores a foundational work within this genre: ‘Ashīq Ilahī Mīrutī's Tazkira't al-Rashīd (first published in 1908–1910), a life-history of the Dēōbandī
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Akbar's religious world: the two reconstructions in Mobad's Dabistān Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-07-10 Irfan Habib
In the early 1650s in Mughal India ‘Mobad’ (Kaikhusrau Isfandyār) wrote a remarkable work, titled Dabistān, devoted to a description of the world's major religions. He adopted an avowedly objective approach that he strives to maintain throughout. An account of the religious tendencies under Akbar is offered in a long concluding chapter, dedicated to Islam. The account is given in two nearly totally
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Tapeh Tyalineh: a proto-Elamite administrative institution on the Great Khorasan Road, Kermanshah, Western Iran Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Shokouh Khosravi, Sajjad Alibaigi, Mostafa Doosti, Holly Pittman, Naser Aminikhah, Ali Khayani
The Mahidasht region is a vital cultural sphere on the Great Khorasan Road that has provided substantial evidence for administrative activity, which is considered to be an indicator of economic and political complexity in late prehistoric societies. This article discusses a corpus of bureaucratic artefacts from the site of Tapeh Tyalineh in the Kouzaran plain in the north of Mahidasht, including 52
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Contending for the cosmos: a Zoroastrian poet’s mysterious rival Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Arish Dastur
The ancient Zoroastrian hymn of worship dedicated to the frauuaṣ̌i-s (affirmative choices) of righteous mortals and divinities refers to an important discourse that takes place between an unnamed Zoroastrian poet-sage and his mysterious rival, named Gaōtəma. The figure of Gaōtəma has intrigued Avestan scholars through the years, but the significance and the implications of Gaōtəma's identity, and of
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A eunuch at the threshold: mediating access and intimacy in the Mughal world Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Emma Kalb
Across the early modern Islamicate world, the phenomenon of eunuch slavery constitutes a significant aspect of courtly contexts and royal households. Although Mughal historiography has focused on the eunuch primarily in relation to the harem, this article analyses the function of such figures in regulating elite male space, in order to explore how these practices shaped both the representation of courtly
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Voluntary enslavement in an Abbasid-era papyrus letter Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-03-20 Jelle Bruning
Central to this article is an Arabic letter written on papyrus in an Egyptian prison in the late ninth or early tenth century ce. The author complains that he and his companions are being kept in terrible conditions and that they have received insufficient support from outside prison. Interestingly, he indicates that there is a strong inclination among the group to offer themselves as slaves in order
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Modelling India. Unfired clay figurines and the East India Company's collections: from devotional icons to didactic displays Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-03-16 Arthur MacGregor
A well-known series of miniature figures produced in India from unfired clay, appropriately clothed and in many instances represented carrying out their respective secular or ritual duties, enjoyed a period of particular popularity on the world stage in the nineteenth century when they were appropriated as illustrative devices in museum displays and international exhibitions. Over the previous half-century
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The wrath of God or national hero? Nader Shah in European and Iranian historiography Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-03-16 Rudi Matthee
This article examines the way in which Iran's eighteenth-century ruler Nader Shah was portrayed in contemporary Europe as well as in Iran, and how the resulting image—half national hero, half ruthless warlord—has resonated until today. In an age short on ‘great’ leaders, Nader spoke to the imagination like no other contemporary ruler, Western or Asian. Nader's subsequent record can be read as a palimpsest
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On being Orthodox renouncers: the Yuktidīpikā's establishment of the Sāṅkhya mode of life (Sannyāsa) in the name of the Veda Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Hyoung Seok Ham
Unlike other commentaries on the Sāṅkhyakārikā, the Yuktidīpikā (circa sixth to eighth centuries) problematised the Sāṅkhya tradition's equivocal attitudes toward the Veda. While submitting itself to the authority of the Veda, the Yuktidīpikā's commentary on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 illustrates how Sāṅkhya thinkers of the post-Gupta period safeguarded the identity of Brahmin renouncers. Aligning its doctrine
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‘The dialogue between a cat and a mouse’ in Mahābhārata 12.136 and narratives about spiritual liberation (mokṣa) in Ancient Indian literature Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Valters Negribs
‘The dialogue between a cat and a mouse’ (Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda) is an animal fable used in the Mahābhārata to provide instruction in statecraft (nīti). This article argues that the Mahābhārata version of this tale must be based on an earlier soteriological allegory about a brahmin who provides spiritual liberation to a king in exchange for protection. The Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda abounds in terms and phrases
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Poetry as history: Maulana Muhammad Anwar Shopiani and the Ahl-i Hadith movement in Kashmir Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-02-20 Suvaid Yaseen
The Ahl-i Hadith in South Asia has largely been studied as a textualist, puritan movement as a result of its exclusive emphasis on the Quran, Hadith sources, and connection with a variety of radical political and armed groups. In contrast, poetry has largely been associated with Sufi movements. This article questions this distinction and makes a historiographical intervention by examining the poetry
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The value /me/ of the sign in Achaemenid Elamite Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-02-02 Marco Fattori
The aim of this article is to show that in Achaemenid Elamite the sign had a secondary phonetic value /me/. The evidence collected in support of this claim consists mainly in Elamite transcriptions of Iranian words in the Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions and in the Persepolis administrative texts, which are impossible or very difficult to account for only contemplating the usual value /man/.
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Awards of the khudadad sarkar: medals from Tipu Sultan's Mysore Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Adnan Rashid, Nidhin Olikara
The collection of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, preserves a manuscript titled Risala-i-Padakah which was formerly in the library of the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan (d. 1799). This manuscript has descriptions of medals with drawings illustrating their forms. We investigate the design of these medals and assert that Tipu Sultan understood the importance of rewarding his loyal subordinates with medals
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From Yazd to Bombay—Ardeshir Mehrabān ‘Irani’ and the rise of Persia's nineteenth-century Zoroastrian merchants Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-01-27 Nasser Mohajer, Kaveh Yazdani
This article begins by surveying the commercial structure of nineteenth-century Yazd, centring on the economic activities of its Zoroastrian inhabitants. Next, we examine the house of Mehrabān, arguing that they were intermediate figures in Persia's transition from a pre-capitalist to an inchoate capitalist mode of production. Throughout the mid- to late nineteenth century, the Mehrabāns were significant
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Immodest flirt or competent governor: translating gender in colonial and post-colonial South Asian historiography Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Neelam Khoja
This article examines how an eighteenth-century woman, Mughlani Begum, is depicted in the most informative contemporary Persian auto/biography and how the descriptions, anecdotes, and analysis of her life contained therein, including the brief period she was Punjab's governor, changed as the primary source was translated into or summarised in English. The original Persian and colonial English translations
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Arabians for guns: Wahhabi matchlocks, world trade, and the rise of the first Saudi state Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2023-01-06 Leor Halevi
Historical explanations of the rise and expansion of the first Saudi state have given Wahhabism pride of place. Principally, they have dwelt on religion and ideology, emphasising the role of the eighteenth-century theologian Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and arguing that his charisma, puritanical zeal, exclusivist approach to monotheistic worship, or neo-orthodox reform programme inspired a series of
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The history of the K-suffix -ū in Shirazi Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-12-09 Maryam Nourzaei
This article investigates the use and frequency of what I refer to as the K-suffixes -ō/-ū/-o in the Shirazi dialects, namely, Old and Modern Shirazi. It shows that the use of K-suffixes as definiteness markers is more highly developed in Modern Shirazi than in Old Shirazi. In Old Shirazi, the K-suffix, with its original evaluative meaning, demonstrated some degree of multi-functionality. This has
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Was the VOC funding Mozart? The diaries of Wilhelm Buschman on Kharg Island Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Stephen Martin
This article considers the evidence for the business practices, goods traded, and accounts of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) upper merchant, Wilhelm Buschman, on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf during the 1760s. Previous scholarship indicates that his widow, Anna Maria Pack, had a large inheritance, acquired on her death by her second husband, the VOC surgeon Ferdinand Dejean, who commissioned
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Official discretion, errors, and oversights: legal bureaucracy and the question of justice in twentieth-century India Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-11-08 Javed Iqbal Wani
Late colonial juridical practice in India was prone to bureaucratic errors and shared with the police a fundamental disinterest in the liberty of ordinary people. This article tells the politically marginal but highly revealing story of how a series of errors during the arrest and subsequent detention of an elderly man called Peter Budge—an innocent bystander in a situation of heightened communal tensions—led
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Imperial wet nurses in the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-10-26 Balkrishan Shivram
Mughal chronicles frequently refer to royal Mughal infants being entrusted to wet nurses for breastfeeding and nurturing. The women chosen for this purpose were invariably the wives of important Mughal officials. It was believed that the quality of milk the baby received determined its future disposition. Therefore, these nurses needed to possess desirable psychological qualities and moral temperaments
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Notes on the Aesthetics of Medieval Islamic Art—and of Medieval Persian Painting Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-10-26 ROBERT HILLENBRAND
The article sets the discussion of Islamic art within the very animated discussions of the last few decades by many prominent scholars that have sought to pinpoint its nature and that have highlighted the twin dangers of over-generalisation and too narrow a focus. Given that the parameters of the discussion have undergone radical change, and the need to revise traditional paradigms, the article confines
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A rise and fall of a Chaghadaid community: demographic growth and crisis in ‘late-medieval’ Semirech'ye (Zhetysu), circa 1248–1345 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-10-04 Philip Slavin
This article analyses long-term population dynamics—growth, decline, sex- and age-composition—in Chaghadaid-era Central Asia in the context of the ‘Late-medieval Crisis’. It is based on a unique dataset of 630 epitaphs from two East Syriac (‘Nestorian') graveyards in the Semirech'ye region (Northwest Tian Shan, North Kyrgyzstan), boosted by archaeological and osteological evidence from the same graveyards
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The Hamadan Qur'an of Öljaytü: Vestiges of a Binding Tradition Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-09-13 ALISON OHTA
Ilkhanid rule (1256–1353) heralded a period when the arts of the book flourished, with the production of both religious and secular texts. This article examines the binding of the Hamadan Qur'an (Dar al-Kutub, Cairo, Rasid 72), which was commissioned for the Ilkhanid Sultan Öljaytü (1303–1316) and completed in 1313. The Qur'an, composed of 30 parts, has remained intact in the Dar al-Kutub in Cairo
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A Friend's Tribute: Mir ‘Ali for Hilali Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (IF 0.3) Pub Date : 2022-09-12 FIRUZA ABDULLAEVA-MELVILLE
This article will focus on a Persian manuscript of Central Asian origin of exceptional literary, historical, and artistic importance. It is a selection of poetry, which was composed in Herat and written in 1531–32 in Bukhara and now belongs to King's College, Cambridge (King's Pote 186). It is the second part of my research on this manuscript, and I shall concentrate mainly on its textual and artistic