The first half of the fourteenth century was a discrete period in Ilkhanid Iran during which paintings that pictured elite Mongol women in their true courtly milieu, participating in courtly life and in their contemporary place within societal hierarchies, were produced. It will be argued that a correlation existed between the power wielded by these women in Mongol socio-economic and political spheres and their depictions as formative, important members of the ruling elite; and that the decrease, and ultimate halting, of such representations coincided with changes in their political, cultural and social power. Using Ilkhanid enthronement scenes in the Diez and Istanbul albums to illustrate how visible and prominent the Khātūns were, a fact corroborated by written testimonials of visitors to the Mongol courts, this paper then examines how such images became symbols of legitimacy for later Il-Khans as well as later Persianate rulers in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. It will be argued that the image of an enthroned royal Ilkhanid couple carried the weight of political and dynastic legitimacy, and that the inclusion of the Mongol Khātūn was integral to this symbolic importance.

The stabilisation of Delhi as the centre of power in the subcontinent reorganised not only political and military structures in north India but also opened up new connections for trade and traders. This article traces the journey of one Hindu merchant family from their ancestral home in the Indus Valley to new prominence in the Sultanate capital. A close reading of a Sanskrit donative inscription written in ornate poetry from the Delhi hinterland shows the changing imagination of politics, religion and space among elite merchants. Uḍḍhara Ṭhakkura adapts the linguistic heritage of Sanskrit public presentation and creates a new and self-aware ideational language to express geography, politics and piety. Uḍḍhara's model was powerful; over the next century, other merchant families adapt it to present their own donative largess. While F. Flood has highlighted the role of Hindu traders through material culture in his magisterial work Objects of Translation (2005), the Sanskrit literary production patronised by mobile mercantile groups can advance and nuance the picture, showing the complex negotiations in creating and presenting a public identity for Hindu groups in the Sultanate period.

This article explores the engagement of the Pakistani Jamaʿat-i Islami (JI) with the Iranian Revolution. I argue that the Islamist JI was drawn to the events because it reflected a core concern and signature idea of Abu ’l-Aʿla Maududi, namely to establish the sovereignty of God (hakimiyya) on earth. My analysis of various travelogues and JI publications from the 1980s demonstrates that JI observers were deeply familiar with internal revolutionary dynamics and Iran's Shiʿi identity. The prospect of seeing a proper Islamic system in action, with potentially global consequences for their cause, initially crowded out any sectarian concerns for the JI. At the same time, certain JI leaders began to voice criticism of what they perceived as rash revolutionary policies that differed from Maududi's careful, irenic understanding of a proper Islamic revolution. They also took note of sectarian messages that damaged Iran's ecumenical outreach. It was, however, the more general geopolitical climate in the Middle East and South Asia which forced the JI to publicly downplay its ties with Iran. By the late 1980s, being accused of harbouring affinities for the ‘deviant Islam’ of Shiʿism was a charge that had to be avoided at all costs in Pakistan and beyond.

This article discusses the career of three historical figures who had a position of authority in the courts of the Ilkhans and the Great Khans of the Mongol Empire in China: Rashid al-Din Tabib (d. 1318), the Persian statesman and historian; Liu Bingzhong (d. 1274), Qubilai Khan's (r. 1260-94) Chinese counsellor; and Bolad Aqa (d. 1313), the famed Mongol tribesman. This study raises the question of whether Rashid al-Din's policies, when he was in office as the vizier of Ghazan Khan (r. 1295-1304), were modelled in some respects on the approach of the Chinese nobles—Liu in particular—to the Mongols during the early stages of the Mongol rule over China. In addition, taking into account Bolad's noticeable presence in the courts of the Mongols in Ilkhanid Iran and Yuan China, it seeks to shed light on his role as an intermediary and a possible conduit for Chinese political thoughts to reach Rashid al-Din.

This article looks at all the known seals of Tipu Sultan of Mysore (r. 1782-1799) particularly those found in the manuscripts which formed his Library collection, disbanded in 1799 after the fall of Seringapatam and subsequently divided between the East India Company London (now in the British Library), and the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Kolkata. By focussing on the British Library collections certain patterns of usage have come to light, possibly indicating Tipu Sultan's linguistic and literary preferences.

It gives me great pleasure to dedicate this article to Barbara Brend as a mark of appreciation for her patience and help, whose knowledge and advice has been of such benefit to a non-art historian. At the end of this article I highlight an important manuscript from the Royal Asiatic Society's collection which thanks to her sponsorship has now been digitised and is available on the web as part of the RAS digital collections.

The concept of ḥākimiyya (sovereignty), as understood by its leading proponents, refers to the notion that it is God, rather than humans, Who possesses the prerogative to make laws. A concomitant of this is that Muslims with political power and authority must recognise the supremacy of Islamic law. This notion, perhaps most notably articulated in modern times by Abū al-Aʿlā Mawdūdī, may be viewed as the rearticulation of ideas latent in the premodern Islamic juristic tradition, but whose modern incarnation as ḥākimiyya emerged in response to the legislative norms of the liberal colonial state. Despite its modern articulation, and against the views of several scholars, I argue that ḥākimiyya qua sovereignty finds its antecedents quite clearly in the Islamic scholarly tradition. Such an understanding leads into a discussion of how Islamic conceptions of sovereignty can help us reassess influential Western articulations of the concept. I also show that Mawdūdī's influential younger contemporary, the Islamist alim Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī Nadwī, upholds ḥākimiyya despite his critique of Mawdūdī and Sayyid Quṭb's conceptions of it. I conclude with a brief reflection on how our understanding of ḥākimiyya as sovereignty can help us provincialise Europe in global historical studies.

This article examines how the introduction of western European crusaders and settlers to northern Syria from 490/1097 onwards impacted upon two important mechanisms of regional diplomacy; the ransom of prominent political prisoners and tributary relationships. Discussion begins with a comparison of the capture and ransom of high-ranking captives in northern Syria between 442-522/1050-1128, where it is argued that the establishment of the crusader states led to an increase in both the rate at which prisoners of elite status were ransomed and the financial sums involved in these interactions. This is followed by a reassessment of the various peace treaties, tributary arrangements and condominia or munāṣafa agreements concluded between the rulers of Antioch and Aleppo during the late fifth/eleventh and early sixth/twelfth centuries. Ultimately, this article seeks to place key features of northern Syrian diplomacy from the early crusading period within the context of regional norms in the decades preceding the crusaders’ arrival.

This essay offers a codicological analysis of three manuscripts—Bühler 70a (Ms. 7089), Bühler 70b (Ms. 7304) and Bühler 70c (Ms. 7303)—of the British Library, which contain some panegyrics composed by Rudra Kavi (fl. 1570s–1650s). Based on a critical appraisal of handwriting, colophons, watermark and other textual attributes, this essay shows that the three Bühler manuscripts constitute a composite volume of an incomplete anthology of Rudra's panegyric poems. Furthermore, it corroborates how deftly and faithfully all three manuscripts were copied by just one scribe sometime between 1840 and 1880. His exemplar, however, was a draft edition of a few unfinished panegyrics that the poet had been composing simultaneously in praise of some prominent members of the Mughal elite. These findings about the material production and reception history of the Bühler manuscripts illuminate both the craft of an adept scribe and the creative imaginings of a court-poet. For want of a rigorous codicological analysis, previous scholarship has held the scribe responsible for the ‘fragmentary’ and ‘corrupt’ condition of these manuscripts and applauded the Brahmin poet for his literary prowess. This essay distances itself from such unwarranted privileging of a court-poet and marginalisation of a skilled scribe. Instead, it seeks codicological and textual evidence in determining the roles played by poets and scribes in the production of literary manuscripts. This essay ultimately reaffirms the value of codicological reflections in the fields of South Asian historiography and literary studies.

Within the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, is a small, but especially interesting anthology of Persian poetry. Although the manuscript's colophon is missing, the stylistic evidence of its badly damaged illustrations and illuminations indicates that it was produced in Shiraz in the 1430s or 1440s. The discussion considers two unusual features of the manuscript, the first of which is that seven folios of a type of paper, generally thought to be of Chinese manufacture, are included among its 171 folios of otherwise Islamic paper. As is typical of this so-called Chinese paper, the folios are coloured—in this case an olive green—and one is decorated with a gold painted design of what appears to be an immature fruit of some sort, along with lobed leaves on a curling vine. Equally intriguing are the scenes and patterns, painted exclusively in gold, that fill the margins of the folios throughout the manuscript. No other such margins are known in any other contemporary manuscript.

Some of the earliest narratives of meetings between leaders of an Indian community and their Muslim ruler appear in the Vividhatīrthakalpa (Chapters on Many Sacred Places) of the Jain monk Jinaprabhasūri (c. 1261–1333 ce). The text depicts the monk's relationship with Sultan Muḥammad bin Tughluq (r. 1325–51) in the years 1328–33, which resulted in the sovereign issuing a number of edicts (farmāns) to protect Jains and Jain temples and which led to the return of a Jina icon (Pkt. paḍima, Skt. pratimā) and the establishment of a Jain quarter in Delhi. Over the next two-and-a-half centuries, Jinaprabhasūri's story would be retold several times, with fifteenth-century narrators shifting his interlocutor to Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq (r. 1351–88). In the process of making Jinaprabha an object of memory, Jain authors of both the monk's own and rival monastic orders (gacchas) depicted the sultans as benefactors of the Jain community. While these narratives were attempts to delineate the proper relationship between Jain monastic leaders and Muslim rulers, they also constituted a Jain memory of the Tughluq sultans that is often at odds with modern historical representations of them. Reading these narratives alongside other evidence of Jains’ relations with the Tughluqs offers historians an alternative view of these figures and their relations with their Indian subjects, helping to de-centre modern historical narratives based on selective readings of Persian and Arabic sources and a privileging of Brahmanical or colonial viewpoints of the period. However, these narratives require historians to theorise this ‘memory’ to understand them productively as historical sources.

I offer some reflections here on the set of articles gathered in this special issue on divine sovereignty and further develop some thoughts first adumbrated in a piece published in JRAS 25/3 (2015).

In medieval Islamic times and afterwards, the kuttāb was a modest institution for elementary education, with most emphasis being placed on learning the Qurʾān by heart―hence a ‘Qurʾānic school’ in English. Thus far, the topic of the kuttāb has been addressed by only a few modern works, leaving inadequately researched a number of critical related issues. This article is an attempt to give insights into the intellectual development of Muslim pedagogy in such archetypal primary schools. It looks into the teaching programmes and methods adopted for that intellectual preparation as well as their assumptions, rationales, implications, and consequences. The kuttāb's objectives are usually thought of as being universally identical, to help in the formation of a good Muslim. The picture, however, was more multifaceted, and the objectives, as well as means of their realisation, were moulded based on what a ‘good Muslim’ would mean according to those in command. Administrating the katātīb was a source, and a symptom, of competitive rivalry between the different intellectual tendencies in medieval Islam, who jostled for control over these critically significant institutions. The article thus delves into the intellectual, cultural, and socio-economic contexts in which primary education materialised and was practiced in pre-modern Islam.

The main scheme of creation in Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature is adopted from the Young Avesta. In this scheme Ohrmazd creates the world in the manner of a skillful craftsman who conceives of the form of his product and then fashions it in matter. The number of the constituents of the world and the sequence in which they are created are already fixed in the Avesta. Pahlavi authors draw on Greek philosophical tradition to rationalise their account of the creation of the world. The article also explores some of the complications that their philosophical elaboration of the Avestan scheme occasions.

The article discusses a little-known lost Persian tale, The Story of Sharwin of Dastabay, and traces references to it in Arabic, Persian, and Byzantine sources. The earliest references to the story come from the mid- to late eighth century, and it seems to have remained well known in Arabic and Persian literature until the early twelfth and possibly the early fourteenth century, while Byzantine literature shows that at least some of its elements circulated already in the mid-sixth century. The article also discusses how the story may have been transmitted both in Iran and, crossing the linguistic boundary, in an Arabic context. Though much of the story remains unknown, it is clear that it relates to later epics and reveals something of the literary context of Firdawsi and his Shahname.

This article offers a new perspective on the relationship between manuscript production in Shiraz under the Timurids and in the Sultanate states of South Asia. During the so-called long fifteenth century, between Timur's invasion in 1398 and Humāyūn's return to India in 1555, there was a surge of creativity in the arts, despite the fractured political landscape of multiple courts. The resulting material culture is vibrant and diverse and belies prevalent historiography, which often portrays this period as culturally barren. The discussion will focus on an illustrated copy of the Shāhnāma of Firdausi dated 843/1440, currently in the Khuda Bakhsh Library in Patna, once owned by Muḥammad Shāh, Sultan of Gujarat. A study of this manuscript and its cultural context challenges the notion that ‘outmoded’ traits are the key criteria of a Persian manuscript's possible Sultanate origin. This article further aims to initiate a re-examination of the reception and dispersal of Persian manuscripts in the Indian Sultanates and the future lives of a particular group of manuscripts made in Shiraz.

The collections of the Royal Asiatic Society hold an illustrated pilgrimage scroll apparently dating from the first half of the nineteenth century. The scroll's hand painted images relate to the journey that a pious Shiʿi Muslim would have undertaken after the performance of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Its visual narrative continues, first to Medina and then to the Shiʿi sanctuaries in present-day Iraq, concluding in the Iranian city of Mashhad at the sanctuary of the eighth imam of the Twelver-Shiʿi creed, imam Riḍā (d. 818). The scroll was likely prepared in the early nineteenth century and acquired by the Royal Asiatic Society from its unknown previous owner sometime after 1857. In terms of chronology the pilgrimage scroll fits neatly into the period between the Niebuhr scroll, bought in Karbala in 1765, and a lithographed item most likely dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century, both of which depict a corresponding journey. The present essay's initial survey of the scroll's visual dimension, by Ulrich Marzolph, adds hitherto unknown details to the history of similar objects. The concluding report, by Mathilde Renauld, sheds light on the scroll's material condition and the difficulties encountered during the object's conservation and their solution.

Literary sources of the classical era (first-fifth centuries), both Greco-Roman and Jewish, indicate that snakes were used for different purposes, such as for medicine, as raw materials for manufacturing objects, and as pets. This article discusses the use of snakes to deal with pests in the ancient homes as reflected in the Talmudic sources as well as in classical literature. The Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi) brings a story of how a house snake helped a family locate a wild snake that entered the house and left its venom in the food. The impression is that the origin of the story is from a non-Jewish environment, and not necessarily from Eretz Israel. It is not impossible that the story is one version of stories about Aesculapian snakes that helped exterminate and drive away pests, as related by Pliny. This narrative variation was absorbed by the sages from their own non-Jewish environment, who adapted the story to the religious-educational messages that they sought to convey. It seems that the practice of using snakes to exterminate domestic pests was relatively limited and less common than that of small predators, such as cats, mongooses or weasels.

The Shahnamah (RAS 239) copied for the Timurid prince, Muhammad Juki (1402–1445) in Herat, has long been considered one of the finest surviving, illustrated Timurid manuscripts. It was presented to the RAS in 1834 by Lieutenant Colonel Doyle (1787–1848), but attracted little scholarly attention until Barbara Brend published her monograph in 2010. The manuscript contains 31 exquisite miniature paintings, two of which (fol. 430v and fol. 531r) were added later during the Mughal period (1526–1761). This article will examine the sumptuous, jewel-like colours employed to depict scenes from the epic and the metals, pigments, and dyes from which they were derived. Precious metals and organic colours made from plants such as indigo and lac extracted from female insects are examined in detail: the methods of their production and extraction, the techniques used for their application, their commercial value, and the prestige they afforded their patrons all contribute to an understanding of what constituted the miniature painters' palette in the Timurid period.

This article establishes that the tümens which took part in Jebe and Sübedei's Raid to Europe were not merely conducting a reconnaissance mission, as it is usually described. The campaign was part of Chinggis Khan's conquering strategy aimed at the complete subjugation of the Kipchak and the conquest of the steppe territories not only in Asia but also in Europe. The task of implementing this strategic plan was given to Prince Jochi as the ruler of the western ulus of the Mongol Empire. Jochi was to bring his main military force to Europe while Sübedei, together with Jebe, advanced with their corps to defeat the Kipchak. The Grand Prince of Kiev and other princes of Southern Rus’, being allies and relatives of the Kipchak rulers, gave them military support. Therefore, the Mongols retaliated against the Rus’. After defeating the allied Rus’ and Kipchak forces at the Kalka River, the Mongols succeeded in crossing the Dnieper and went as far as Kiev. However, the refusal of Jochi to bring his main forces to assist the Mongol vanguard forces nullified the achievements and victories of Jebe and Sübedei. Jochi's reluctance to participate in the Western Campaign of 1221–23 was related to his conflicts with his younger brothers and Chinggis Khan himself, which, in its turn, brought about Jochi's loss of his former status in the empire, a severe illness and untimely death. As a result, Chinggis Khan had to reconsider his general conquest strategy; the conquest of Kipchak and Rus’ was postponed for one and a half decades.