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 wider social) responsibilities. Her advice—which often took the form of ‘homespun’ homilies—consistently flagged up the crucial role of women, whose duties included not simply overseeing their children's behaviour but teaching their offspring, through their own emotional responses, how to feel. In their capacity as mothers, women needed to exercise sabr (patience and perseverance) when providing all-important emotional training for future Pakistani citizens who—like the state—were still in the process of being made. Accordingly, this article discusses the spatially defined context in which ‘Between ourselves’ appeared—that is, Dawn itself and the fast-expanding city of Karachi which was rife with uncertainties—before turning to the emotional ‘good practice’ that Hamidullah promoted.

This article examines the relationship between the manuscript translation of Mingxin baojian 明心寶鑑 (Precious Mirror for Enlightening the Mind) (circa 1590) by Juan Cobo (circa 1546–1592) and the Fujian book market in China. It explores the cultural implications of Cobo's translation by focusing on the commentary he provided in the marginalia of the manuscript. By investigating Cobo's translation and marginalia notes on three Chinese concepts—Chinese monks, dragons, and reincarnation—this article highlights the complex cultural issues present when the early Spanish missionaries in the Philippines negotiated with Chinese culture in their writings and publications.

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 scholar and Sūfī shāykh Rashīd Ahmad Gangōhī. It argues that such life-histories of ‘ulamā were written not merely as historical records but as ‘lessons’ to their readers. This article illustrates how the tazkira appropriated Gangōhī's life and teachings to provide an indispensable repository of Dēōbandī understanding on issues such as tarīqah (the Sūfī path), sharī‘ah (religious law), pīrī-murīdī (the master-disciple relationship), religious and social conduct, and relations with the state. The article thus makes a case for understanding the tazkira as an important vehicle for informing and shaping the religious behaviour of a Muslim public, which was employed ultimately by both the Dēōbandī and other Islamic revivalist movements.

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 life as well as the dynamics animating the Mughal court and the inner palace. As is shown in both textual and visual materials, enslaved, castrated men appear as figures both marking and mediating the perimeters of such spaces. In the process they played an important part in the spatial formation of access, intimacy, and hierarchical relations. However, their formative role in mediating elite social interactions at times entangled eunuchs in political conflict. The article concludes with an examination of a particularly dense archive of evidence from the reign of Aurangzeb dealing with royal princes. This material underlines the sometimes-precarious situation of eunuchs in moments of intrafamilial struggle, a fact which suggests the complicated reality of these kinds of intimate roles not only in Mughal princely households but wherever they took on such proximate positions.

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 his presence in the hymn, has to date not been seriously studied. This article first examines the context in which Gaōtəma is presented in the hymn. Building upon this, it then evaluates four potential identities for Gaōtəma: Avestan, Turanian, Buddhist, and Vedic. Conducting a multidisciplinary and comparative assessment, the article eventually argues in favour of a Vedic identity for Gaōtəma, specifically that of a poet-sage who was a proponent of the Rig Vedic divinity Indra. This investigation into Gaōtəma's identity concomitantly provides important perspectives on certain aspects of the Zoroastrian religion, and often in a comparative context.

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 to find relief from their crushing living conditions. By doing so, they would have transgressed Islamic law of that time, which forbade the enslavement of free inhabitants of the Realm of Islam. The letter is a unique source for the social history of slavery, especially self-enslavement, in Abbasid society. This article presents, translates, and annotates this letter and offers a detailed study of its contents.

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.

Dogs have played a vital and varied role in the social history of early China. Whether used as a source of food, a hunting-aid, or a sacrificial victim, dogs were intimately connected with human life and death. The placement and significance of dismembered and slaughtered dogs in human tombs have been a source of scholarly interest across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. However, less attention has been paid to sources which present us with a spectrum of concerns surrounding the treatment of dogs after their death. Should they be consumed, discarded, or buried? Which dogs were deserving of burial, and how were such burials viewed by human commentators? By analysing textual, archaeological, and material sources, this article explores the changing conceptualisation of dogs in life and in death through the medium of the tomb, showing how the transition from tomb-keeper to tomb-occupant reflects an increasingly anthropomorphic view of canine potential and moral fibre by the early medieval period.

The Qara Khitai or Western Liao dynasty (1124–1218) is one of the most fascinating polities in medieval Eurasia, but also one of the least documented in terms of both literary sources and material culture. Founded by Khitan refugees who escaped from North China when the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) vanquished the Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125), the Qara Khitai soon established a multicultural empire in Central Asia, combining Khitan, Chinese, and Muslim elements. The Buddhist Qara Khitai ruled over their mostly Muslim population in rare harmony until the rise of Chinggis Khan (r. 1206–1227). Hitherto only a few objects—and not a single structure—have been associated with this powerful empire. We argue that the Kök-Tash mausoleum, excavated in 2017–2018 and originally interpreted as a unique subterranean Muslim mausoleum, is actually the first-ever identified Qara Khitai elite tomb.

This unique tomb, located in the Kochkor valley of north-eastern Kyrgyzstan, about a day's ride from the Qara Khitai capital of Balāsāghūn, shares many similarities with the Liao tombs in North China, notably the typical Khitan mesh-wire burial suit. Yet it also uses local Central Asian materials and techniques, thereby manifesting how the Qara Khitai managed to retain their cultural identity in their new Central Asian and mostly Muslim environment. Moreover, identifying the Kök Tash mausoleum as a Qara Khitai tomb allows us to reassess several other unusual tombs excavated in the region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to suggest attributing them, too, to the Qara Khitai.

‘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 that, in addition to their everyday meanings, have a technical or typical usage in the ascetic traditions of Ancient India. Moreover, the conversation between the cat and the mouse resembles that between a teacher and a disciple, rather than a discussion of a possible alliance between two kings. The hunter of the Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda can be identified with the Buddhist Māra. To support the plausibility of this soteriological reading, the article includes a discussion of Buddhist jātakas with a similar plot.

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 of Maulana Muhammad Anwar Shopiani (d. 1940) in the Kashmiri, Persian, and Urdu languages. Through a close analysis of Shopiani's biography and poetry, the article complicates the hitherto available picture of the Ahl-i Hadith movement which Shopiani helped to take root in Kashmir. Doing so draws attention to the movement's novel literary aspect that engages with regional Sufi and sympathetic Hanafi thinking as well as with the broader Persianate literary traditions and transregional currents of revivalist thinking on the basis of the principle of taḥqīq, research. Even as Shopiani's message remains committed to a ‘factual’ iteration based upon Quran and Hadith sources, it is the concept of love, both in its spiritual and worldly manifestations, that emerges as central to his thought. It is through this that the paradox between the actual historical distance from Prophet Muhammad's time and the Ahl-i Hadith's ideological desire to revive that time by a literal enactment of the sunnah is resolved. In doing so, the article makes a methodological case for employing poetry as a source for writing an intellectual history from below which examines Islamic movements on their own terms.

The aim of this article is to show that in Achaemenid Elamite the sign <MAN> 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/.

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 consequential political and military actions, beginning with the foundation of a theocratic emirate in Dirʿiyya and culminating in the conquest of much of Arabia. However much Wahhabi doctrines might have motivated warfare and state expansion, this article contends that the rise of the Saudi state depended on the spread of a new weapon—the matchlock gun. It considers the significance of firearms in regional warfare and, after making the case that they were likely to have been imported, builds up the revisionist argument that Najd had significant connections to world trade.

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. This epigraphic corpus is truly unique in the sense that this is the only surviving data that allow the undertaking of such a quantitative reconstruction of pre-modern Central Asian demography. A close analysis of the corpus, based on the ‘excess mortality’ method, reveals rapid demographic growth between circa 1270 and 1330, despite frequent short-term mortality crises, caused, most likely, by a combination of environmental and political factors. The population growth came to a sudden halt because of a major plague outbreak in 1338–1339, killing about three-quarters of the local population, and initiating what was known as the Black Death of 1347–1353 in West Eurasia and North Africa. The analysis of sex and age ratios indicates that the local population regime was heavily male-dominated. The plague of 1338–1339 targeted primarily younger women, most likely due to pregnancy-related hazards; conversely, in other crisis years, adult males were more susceptible. The findings of the article are wrapped into the wider context of the ‘Late-medieval Crisis’.

This article explores the Central Asian adaptation of the ʿAqāʾid al-nisāʾ which has survived as a single copy within a manuscript codex located at the Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Not only does the Central Asian adaptation of the ʿAqāʾid al-nisāʾ lift ‘the iron curtain’ from the little-known world of rituals and customs practised by women in early modern Central Asian societies, it also serves as an important source to balance the androcentric view of gendered history of the early modern Persianate world, while challenging the preconceived notions of women's agency and authority in pre-modern Muslim societies.

The Rare Books department at the Free Library of Philadelphia owns a deluxe manuscript of Sa'di's Kulliyat, originally produced in mid-sixteenth century Shiraz and substantially modified in more modern times. Among the alterations was the insertion of a copy of the famous Timurid painting “Humay and Humayun in a garden”, belonging to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. The Philadelphia version of the Paris painting was likely based on either a published reproduction or a photograph taken of the original composition when it was on view at the ground-breaking 1910 exhibition “Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst” in Munich. That photographic reproductions could result in pictorial replicas reveals once again the market forces behind the great interest in, demand for, and production of classical Persian painting during the early twentieth century.

The libraries of the Fatimid caliphs in Egypt (r. 969–1171) are known to have been extraordinarily large, containing hundreds of thousands of volumes on all branches of knowledge. Of these fabled manuscripts, only a handful are known to survive. It has long been assumed that a substantial number of the secular manuscripts would have been illustrated, as many later Islamic manuscripts are illustrated, but no examples are known to have survived, although somewhat more than 150 paper fragments bearing images have been attributed to the period, as well as representations in other media, ranging from carved ivories to ceramics. In the absence of surviving illustrated manuscripts, scholars have deployed several strategies to attempt to reconstruct the lost art of painting in the Fatimid period, most notably Richard Ettinghausen in his seminal 1942 article “Painting in the Fatimid Period” and Ernst Grube in a subsequent series of articles and chapters. This article examines the evidence and explores how scholars have interpreted it within the broader contexts of representation and manuscript illustration in Islamic art.

Between 1562 and 1579, the third Mughal emperor Akbar undertook 17 pilgrimages to the Sufi shrine of Muinuddin Chishti in Ajmer in western India. This article analyses them as a form of peripatetic kingship. It studies specific actions of the emperor in and around Ajmer to show how they articulated a specific understanding of monarchy, one that derived legitimacy from the spiritual authority of Sufi masters and sacred sites. It then shows how the strategic location of the town of Ajmer allowed the young emperor to use it as a base for military expansion and political consolidation in western and central India. It also discusses how the journeys allowed Akbar to carry out vital facets of imperial governance, like exploring the realms, forging alliances with local chieftains, and creating public infrastructure. They also served as a public site for the performance of kingship and sovereignty. The final portion of the article explains how a paradigmatic shift in the conceptualisation and performance of Mughal kingship—whereby the ideal of monarchy as a product of Sufi charisma and Islamic piety made way for more universalist and millenarian ideals—brought a sudden end to the pilgrimages after 1579.

The double-page frontispiece to the manuscript of Saʿdi's Būstān transcribed for the penultimate Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn (r. 1469–1506) and now in the National Library of Egypt (Adab Farisi 22) is well-known and oft-published. Reproduced repeatedly since the turn of the twentieth century, it has become part of the canons of Persian painting, Timurid art, the oeuvre of Bihzad and his circle, masterpieces of the Cairo Library, and more. Connoisseurs and scholars have repeatedly discussed its period details. Barbara Brend, the scholar we honour in this volume, who has written so mellifluously about Persianate painting, analysed the identity and pose of several figures in it. Here I should like to continue the lengthy isnād, suggesting three ways of examining the frontispiece in the context of the manuscript to which it belongs, first structurally as the opening spread in a codex, then literarily as the introduction to a specific text, and finally, historically as a pictorial encomium to the princely patron for whom the manuscript was produced. Altogether, the article looks at three different ways of reading this and other pictorial frontispieces.