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, a layered series of images of multiple world conquerors, from Alexander to Napoleon. The latter, who shared Nader's humble background and evoked a similar ambivalence, represented the closest analogue, turning him into the European Nader Shah. In the modern West, Nader no longer speaks to the imagination. Modern Iranians, by contrast, have come to see him as the Iranian Napoleon. While still ambivalent about him, they admire him as the ruler who regenerated the nation and ended foreign occupation, yet his undeniable cruelty and imperialism make him an awkward national hero.

This article sets out to delineate the process that led to the establishment of Mayo School of Arts in Lahore in 1875. It lays down the context within which the plan to set up art institutions in India was conceived. Contrary to Krishnan Kumar's view whereby the coloniser and the colonised constituted an adult-child relationship the coloniser, in that particular relationship took the role of the adult whereas the native became the child which had been a salient feature of the educational and academic landscape of British India. By challenging Krishna Kumar, this article while drawing on the inferences of Partha Mitter and Hussain Ahmad Khan, argues that in the realm of art instruction the analysis of colonial strategies of adjustment and readjustment provide useful insights about the administrative constraints and cognitive failures of the colonial administrators in the nineteenth-Century Punjab. Challenges like space-selection for MSA campus, appropriate Curriculum for the students and their inadequate language skills stared its founder Principal Lockwood Kipling (1837–19011) in the face. This forms the major focus of the article.

The dialogism of the Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), that is, the study of cultural interaction and the acknowledgment of the value or at least of the objective existence of other cultures, corresponds to one of the most significant aspects of Renaissance Humanism.1 In his turn, the Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov (born 1939) has stressed the Humanists’ quest for “cultural relativism”, as exemplified by Amerigo Vespucci, who sought to evaluate the arrival of Europeans from the standpoint of American Indians, in total contrast to the monological approach of Christopher Columbus.2 The emphasis was on a two-way process. Similar attitudes to those of Vespucci can be found in Thomas More's Utopia, in Michel de Montaigne's celebrated essay on the cannibals he encountered in Rouen, and in the Fides, religio moresque aethiopum of Damião de Góis (to mention but three prominent cases). Finally, it was the Palestinian-American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said (1935–2003) who throughout Orientalism (New York, 1978) propounded the widely accepted (though often hotly debated) theory that westerners’ analyses of eastern cultures were (and are) predominantly condescending, racist and imperialistic.

The Babylonians divided the night into three watches, to which they gave the names maṣṣartu bararîtu, evening watch, maṣṣartu ḳablîtu, midnight watch, maṣṣarti šat urri, morning watch. Bararîtu and kablîtu are adjectives in this construction. The full forms occur rarely as in Ebeling, Religiöse Keilschrifttexte aus Assur, No. 58, Rev. 7 ; No. 91, Rev. 21–2. Ordinarily maṣṣartu is omiṭted in the Semitic texts and bararîtu, ḳablîtu are treated as nouns. So in the syllabars, where the Sumerian equivalents contain the word ennun = maṣṣartu, the noun for “ watch ” is invariably omitted.

In the course of an article I published in this Journal (October, 1924) entitled ‘ Rūdakī and Pseudo-Rūdakī ’ I referred to a long qaṣīda beginning with the words ‘ mādar-i-may’, which has been commonly attributed to Rūdakī, but could not be definitely assigned to that poet until the identity of the mamdūḥ Abū Ja‘far Aḥmad b. Muḥammad had been established. Moreover, Riẓā Qulī Khān, who quotes a few verses from it, was persuaded that the poem was not the work of Rūdakī but of Qaṭrān. I pointed out that I had not found it anywhere else attributed to Qaṭrān, and that the mamdūḥ was certainly not among the patrons of this poet. Thanks to my learned friend Mīrzā Muḥammad Khān of Qazwīn, the question has now been finally disposed of, and the qaṣīda is proved beyond doubt to be the work of Rūdakī. This discovery is of the highest importance for the history of Persian literature, as the qaṣīda represents the only genuine long poem of the “ Father of Persian Poetry ” which has hitherto been found. I naturally wish to disclaim any credit for the discovery, and the notes I now give and the edition of the poem which I print below are due entirely to the learned Mirza Muhammad.

The rediscovery, conservation and repositioning of an ancient stone carved Buddha in Leh, Ladakh is one of the most important events in recent years for students of early Tibetan history and religion. Uncovering an inscription next to the carving has made it possible to date this artefact to the eleventh century or even earlier, while deciphering the inscription has confirmed that the figure should be identified as the Buddha Maitreya. This identification permits a better understanding of how the cult of Maitreya among of the emperors of imperial Tibet extended to western Tibet, and how the Maitreya images of western Tibet represent a specific local iconography.

This article examines seemingly monotheistic, polytheistic and dualistic features of Zoroastrianism from the point of view of the Zoroastrian creation myth. Exploring the personality of the principal deity, Ahura Mazdā, the origin of the spiritual and material worlds and the worship of the Yazatas, it is argued that Zoroastrianism has its own particular form of monotheism.

Inhabitants of the Mongolian Plateau have been staunchly nomadic. Cities rarely existed before the Russian hegemony, and at that point they first attached themselves to pre-existing Buddhist monasteries. The exception to this general pattern was the Uighurs, who had an empire in the eighth and early ninth centuries. They built several cities, extended and maintained a flourishing trade network, established sufficient agriculture and developed urban manufacturing. Although historians have pointed out these significant distinctions, few have fully considered the thoroughly revolutionary impact of this Turkish group on steppe culture. One result in the Orkhon Valley was the foundation for Karakorum, the only permanent seat of the imperial Mongols in the thirteenth century. That city occupied the same site and, in the early seventeenth century, served as building material for the major religious centre of Erdene Zuu accompanying the re-introduction of Buddhism. Therefore, the Uighurs affected the physical heartland of their empire for a millennium and the habits of the people to this day.

A Glance at the recently published African Native Music: An Annotated Bibliography (London, 1936), will reveal the fact that early references to the music of negro and negroid peoples are rare. Indeed, in this very useful bibliography no work earlier than the seventeenth century is quoted. The truth is that many early references have been neglected. It may be admitted that these neglected references occur in Arabic works, but most of these have been translated into European languages, so that they are available to the general musicographer.

Know that the first step in Hearing is understanding what is heard, and applying it to an idea which occurs to the hearer. Then this understanding has as fruit ecstasy, and ecstasy moving of the members. Let there be a consideration, then, of these three stages.

The al-Jawf oasis lies at the northern extremity of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and although closer to ‘Ammān than to al-Riyāḍ, it is nevertheless reckoned by some to be a part of geographical Najd. Within the oasis is the settlement known as al-Jawf or Jawf 'Amīr, which is the ancient town of Dūmat al-Jandal, famous in early Islamic history. In the district, the town of al-Jawf is still referred to by the local people as Dūmat al-Jandal. Dūmat al-Jandal is no longer the main town of the area, having declined when Sakāka to the north-east became the seat of the amīrate. Today much of Dūmat al-Jandal appears to be deserted and the houses ruined, although it was clearly formerly a large settlement whose extensive farms and gardens are still cultivated (Plate I). The whole al-Jawf oasis and Wādī Sirḥān to the north are rich in pre-Islamic monuments and inscriptions which have been documented to some extent and standing on the acropolis of Dūmat al-Jandal is the largest of all these monuments, Qaṣr al-Mārid, dated to the 3rd century A.D., but with later additions (Plate II).