Sa‘d b. Mansūr Ibn Kammūna, a Jewish polymath whosewritings are now receiving a good deal of scholarlyattention, worked in Baghdad under the aegis of theMongol rulers and their courtiers. Born early in thethirteenth century, so it seems, he was forced toflee the capital after rioters protested against hisbook which compared the three revealed monotheisticfaiths; he died in the 1280s. His oeuvre includes atreatise on ophthalmology, no longer extant;quotations from it are however available in thewriting of another ophthalmologist, Sadaqa ibnIbrāhīm al-Shādhilī. From these we learn that IbnKammūna practiced medicine in Aleppo (Halab).

Colonial scholars and administrators in the latter half of the nineteenth century were the first to subject South Asia to modern historicist scrutiny. Using coins, inscriptions, and chronicles, they determined the dates and identities of numerous kings and dynasties within an apparently scrupulous empiricist framework. From the 1930s, with the widespread rise of nationalist sentiment, South Asian scholars began to write about their own past. The particular configurations of colonial and early nationalist historiography of South Asia have proved immensely consequential for subsequent generations of historians. Not only did this historiography value certain types of evidence, particularly Indic language epigraphy, Persian chronicles, and archaeology (while at the same time devaluing others like literature and religious texts), it set some of the enduring thematic and topical parameters which have shaped the course of the field. The initial focus was on the careers and personalities of rulers or the genius of races as the key causative forces in history, but eventually dynastic history became the dominant mode of writing about the past.

This article examines the intertwined history of local divination schools and divination instructors during the Yuan–Ming transition through a microhistory of the Zhu family—a diviner family who, as newcomers to Suzhou, carefully navigated the turbulent dynastic transition. Based on broader prosopographical research of Yuan and Ming divination school instructors, this study draws two main conclusions regarding social and institutional history during this crisis period. First, the Zhu family, representing lesser elites whose status depended on state institutions, survived the Yuan–Ming transition by building local networks, transforming their expertise, and manipulating narratives of their family history. Second, despite the Ming founder's order for the re-establishment of local divination schools, it was the diviner families, seeking to recover from the dynastic transition, who played a key role in restoring the local institution. This study extends our understanding of the scope of the fourteenth-century crisis, its diverse manifestations across social groups, and the manipulation of crisis narratives for various purposes. It also proposes a bottom-up approach to engage with the Yuan–Ming social and institutional continuity and rupture.

The present article undertakes a comprehensive study of ancient Chinese anecdotal and dialogic sources on Chunyu Kun, who is presented in a variety of roles such as trickster, sophist, envoy, jester, procurer of talent for his ruler, and erudite at the so-called Jixia academy which was allegedly established in the pre-imperial state of Qi. The article outlines how certain motifs and topics were reused and, in the process, reshaped by the narrative tradition and Chunyu Kun came to serve as a stock figure in different types of discourse.

In the aftermath of the Mongol occupations of the largest and most populoussocieties of Eurasia, greater visibility of popular religion, morewidespread vernacular language use, rising literacy, and fundamental shiftsin the structure of rulership and the relationship of state and societycould all be observed. Many historians have related these changes to abroader chronology of early modernity. This has been problematic in the caseof Iran, whose eighteenth-century passage has not been adequately exploredin recent scholarship. Our comparative review of ‘post-Mongol’ Iran andChina suggests that this period marks as meaningful a break between aschematic medieval and schematic early modern history in Iran as it does inChina. Here, we first consider both societies in the post-Mongol period asempires with secular rulerships and increasingly popular cultural trends,and look at the role of what Crossley has called “simultaneousrulership”—rulership in which the codes of legitimacy of civilisationsrecognised by the conquest authority are given distinct representation inthe rulership — in marking the transition away from religious-endorsed ruleto self-legitimating rule as a mark of comparative early modernity.

Al-Manār was an Arabic and reformist journal founded by Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā in Cairo in 1898, and its primary objectives were to examine the decadence of Muslim political institutions, underline the danger of European colonialism in the Muslim world, and promote the idea that Islam was compatible with modernity and reason. The present article attempts to examine the intellectual influence of al-Manār among the Ḥadhramī elite in the Malay-Indonesian world, and critically assess its role as the mouthpiece for the propagation of ‘Abduh's doctrines and accomplishment of his reforms. It first addresses the mission of al-Manār as a reformist journal that worked towards the promotion of social, religious and economic reforms in the Muslim world. It secondly examines the religio-cultural background of the Ḥadhramī elite who were influenced by the reformist mission of al-Manār and subscribed to its ultimate goal. The study finally highlights the impact of al-Manār on the religio-political and social structure of the Ḥadhramī diaspora in the Malay-Indonesian world, and discusses how this impact resulted in the establishment of a revivalist movement that rejected the conservative attitude of blind imitation (taqlīd ) of the four schools of Islamic law, and denounced the Sufi practices that were not in harmony with the fundamentals of Islam. Special attention will also be paid to the role of the Ḥadhramī organisations, schools and press that contributed to the propagation of al-Manār's reformist mission and its dissemination at the grass roots level of the Ḥadhramī community.

This article focuses on some representations of Aurangzeb in the Nath Yogi lore; their ambivalence appears as a signifier of the complex relationships the Nath Yogis had with Islam. Aurangzeb figures both as a powerful enemy and as a clumsy devotee, he is depicted more as a symbol than as an historical individual character.

It has been claimed that the ninth-century shipwreck found near the island of Belitung, Indonesia, is that of an Arabian ship. The evidence for this is examined in detail, and found to be less than convincing. The identifications of samples of wood from the wreck are shown to be unreliable at species level. The construction technique of the ship appears to resemble that of the eastern Indian Ocean, not the western Indian Ocean. Various items from the wreck connect it with Southeast Asia: a piloncito coin probably came from Java. Very little from the ship suggests any link at all with the western Indian Ocean. Overall, the strongest probability is that the ship was built in Southeast Asia.

In the third volume of Anquetil du Perron's translation of the Zand-Avastá, there are versions of two small liturgical works of the Pársís, entitled by him the “Lesser Si-rozé,” and the “Greater Sirozé.” There is another Sirozé, however, possessed by the Pársís, which he does not translate. It treats of the qualities of the thirty days of the month, as auspicious or inauspicious. Though its intimations are absurd in the highest degree, it exercises great influence over the whole body of Zoroastrians. It is so much regarded by them, that there is scarcely a family without a copy, and there are few individuals who have not its precepts written on the tablet of their hearts. On this account, as well as because of the brief information which it gives respecting the Amsháspands and Izads, to whom the days of the month are sacred, it is not unworthy of the attention of Europeans. It exists in the Persian language; but there are several Gujaráthí versions, which are generally used. The translation which I give is very literal, and is formed from a collation of these versions, and a careful comparison with the original. I have added a few explanatory notes. The only general remark which I would make on the Precepts of Fate which this Sirozé contains, is that its framers seem to have made such a distribution of good and evil throughout the month, and its different days, as is calculated to render those who credit it, neither much elated, nor much cast down, on account of any of its portions. Blessings and curses are made to go hand in hand during the whole journey of the moon.

The “Staël-Holstein Scroll” is a convenient name to give to the document on which are inscribed the texts recently published by Professor Thomas and Professor Sten Konow in “Two Mediaeval Documents from Tun Huang”, Oslo Etnografiske Museums Skrifter, Bind 3, Hefte 3 (Oslo, 1929). It bears on one side a Buddhist Sūtra in Chinese and on the other one document in Tibetan and one in the Śaka language (also sometimes called “Khotanese” and “Nord-Arisch”). These latter have no relation to the Chinese text and were written on it when it had become waste paper.

The image of the Buddha which is the most widely renowned and the most revered by Buddhists throughout Tibet and Central Asia is the image in the Jo-wo-Khang, the Great Temple at Lhasa. This image has been mentioned by many writers. Sarat Chandra Das says, “The image is exquisitely modelled and represents a handsome young prince. The Kunyer said that the image represented the Buddha when at the age of twelve, hence the princely apparel in which he is clothed and the dissimilarity of the image to those seen elsewhere.” The Japanese monk Ekai Kawaguchi also refers to the image, but does not describe it. But, until Sir Francis Younghusband's Mission reached Lhasa in 1904, it had not been described in detail by anyone who had seen it. It was then seen by certain of the officers on the Expedition, and has been described by Colonel L. A. Waddell, who was with the Mission as Principal Medical Officer, in his Book Lhasa and its Mysteries (1905), and by the late Mr. Perceval Landon, who was with the Mission as the Correspondent of The Times, in his book Lhasa (1905). These two descriptions differ as regards every detail and cannot be reconciled.

The general injunction in the Ḳurān to “eschew evil and do good” was held sufficiently definite to be the basis of a jurisdiction distinct both from that of the Ḳaḍi and of the police (shurṭa). Māwardi contrasts its powers with those of the Ḳaḍi's court and of the Maẓālim tribunal; but it may be that in practice the distinction was of small account, for I have found no trace of the Muḥtasib's authority ever being called in question, nor indeed much definite trace of its exercise. The wide and minute range of its duties should have made it an important factor in commercial life, but perhaps in this, as in other fields, Māwardi's work includes theory unsupported by much practice.

In JRAS, 1964, I edited an eighth-century inscription from 'Phyong rgyas known only through its survival in a collection which once belonged to Rig-'dzin Tshe-dbang Nor-bu of Ka-thog monastery, a famous lama of the 18th century (hereafter referred to as RT). The present article is concerned with his copy of another inscription described as “at Srong-brtsan Bang-so”. That is the popular name not only for the tumulus called Bang-so dMar-po and known as that of Srong-brtsan sGam-po but also of the whole burial area near 'Phyong rgyas. The inscription comes from a pillar near the tumulus attributed to Khri IDe Srong brTsan, who reigned from c. 804–815. Professor Giuseppe Tucci, the first Western visitor to examine the royal burial ground, has edited it in his Tombs of the Tibetan kings (TTK), Rome, 1950; and in CAJ, June 1963,1 have added some information about the pillar and the burial ground as a whole as the result of a visit in 1949, not long after Professor Tucci. Describing the pillar in TTK, p. 36, Professor Tucci writes “the surface of the stone is nowadays much damaged and a great part of the inscription is effaced. The lower portion is completely gone and a few lines are underground.”

The Jámi‘u’t-Tawáríkh is unquestionably one of the most important historical works in the Persian language, not only by reason of the singularly full and authentic account of the history and antiquities of the Mongols for which it is chiefly celebrated, but also by virtue of the general history, especially the history of the independent or semi-independent post-Muhammadan dynasties which held sway in Persia immediately before the rise of the Mongol dominion (i.e. between the ninth or tenth and the thirteenth centuries of the Christian era), wherewith the author, Rashídu'd-Dín Faḍlu'lláh, or ‘Rashíd the physician’ as he sometimes calls himself, supplemented his original work.

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 with religious diversity and difference in early modern Hindustan. In the case of the Mahābhārat, however, Faiḍī's portrayal of Kṛṣṇa as a deceitful illusionist reflects not only an Islamic discomfort with Vaishnavite theology, but Faiḍī's own performative insecurities as a Hindustani writer of Persian poetry and literary prose. Kṛṣṇa's so-called ‘magic’ lies in large part in his way with words: the verbal and social manipulation he uses to stoke the flames of conflict. The character thus becomes a kind of shadow or double of Faiḍī himself-a demiurgic author of the Mahābhārat upon which the poet can displace the classical Islamicate association of poetry with sorcery and deceit.

This article examines the usage and sense of hātąm ‘of beings’ and the adjective haiθiia- ‘true’, both from the present participle haṇt- ‘being’, in the Old Avestan texts. It argues that the first is a rhetorical figure that enhances the stature of its complement and does not denote any particular kind of being whether divine or mortal. haiθiia- consistently appears in contexts that may be legitimately described as eschatological. Most often it qualifies a certain type of activity that leads to or constitutes a ‘splendid’ state of existence. What truly is, the article concludes, refers to existence beyond mortal life.

“An oriental Samuel Pepys”. The phrase has been lodgedin my mind for the several decades during which Ihave been working, on and off, on this early Persianhistorian Bayhaqī. I am pretty certain that I readit originally in that monument of mid-VictorianAnglo-Indian scholarship, The History ofIndia as told by its own Historians. TheMuhammadan period, by Sir Henry Elliottand John Dowson. This multi-volume work consists oftranslated extracts, many quite lengthy, from textsillustrating the history of the Indian subcontinent,the greater part of them dealing with what was thensome eleven centuries of Muslim rule there. InVolume II, the compilers presented several passagesfrom Bayhaqī's work, The History of SultanMaʿsūd of Ghazna, which had just appearedin a printed edition at Calcutta in the BibliothecaIndica series, edited by the person who had in factproduced the pioneer catalogue of the Royal AsiaticSociety's Arabic and Persian manuscripts, William H.Morley. Elliott made many translations himself, butsometimes employed local munshis,not always with happy results. Although Persianculture was still very much alive in India in themid-nineteenth century, thesemunshis were far from beingau fait with the earlyeleventh-century Persian style of Bayhaqī and wereat times flummoxed by his idiomatic usages. One ofmy favourites here is the Persian sayingṭablī zīr-i gilīm mīzadand,translated literally and ludicrously in its contextas “they were beating a drum under a carpet”. Whyanyone should crawl under a carpet and beat a drum,in the midst of a high-level discussion betweenSultan Maʿsūd and his administrators, the equivalentof a cabinet meeting, is rather baffling; the idiom,already used by Firdawsī in the national epic, theShāh-nāma, means of course “tospread rumours clandestinely”.

The Samarāṅganasūtradhāra is an encyclopedic work, attributed by tradition to King Bhoja of the Paramāra dynasty. It collects a vast number of subjects under the general heading of vāstu, a term that refers to a dwelling or dwelling place and, by inclusion, comes to treat the many activities connected with dwellings and construction sites. Although probably incomplete in the available manuscripts, the size of the Samarāṅganasūtradhāra remains impressive: including the ‘interpolated section’ it runs for almost 7,500 Sanskrit verses. The various portions resemble, in turn, a Purāṇa, a treatise on architecture, a disquisition into dramaturgic detail and much more. Bhoja's work can be classified as belonging to the ‘northern’ Vāstu tradition; the text presents itself as such, by tracing its own origin to the divine architect Viśvakarman rather than Maya, as a southern text would do. Nevertheless, the Samarāṅganasūtradhāra contains an extensive treatment of southern temple types.