Arabs and the Middle East were among the first to embrace Christianity, leaving their print on its culture. Thus Byzantium, by geography and culture, encountered Islam at its birth. No wonder that many saw and treated Islam as a contemporary Christian "heresy" - whatever the word may connote. Radical events fill the history of Byzantium (330-1453) encountering the world of Islam: conquests, wars, cultural and diplomatic relations, manifestations of mutual admiration - and exclusion! Their story makes for a fascinating branch of either Byzantine or Islamic studies; the literature about each other forming a distinguished section in either field. This collection of studies is a sample of Byzantine perspectives of Islam offering, hopefully, expressions and solutions rather than creating impressions or illusions.

Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire examines the role of mercenary figures in negotiating relations between the United States and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Mercenaries are often treated as historical footnotes, yet their encounters with the Ottoman world contributed to US culture and the impressions they left behind continue to influence US approaches to Africa and the Middle East. The book's analysis of these mercenary encounters and their legacies begins with the Battle of Derna in 1805-in which the US flag was raised above a battlefield for the first time outside of North America with the help of a mercenary army-and concludes with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882-which was witnessed and criticized by many of the US Civil War veterans who worked for the Egyptian government in the 1870s and 1880s. By focusing these mercenary encounters through the lenses of memory, sovereignty, literature, geography, and diplomacy, Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire reveals the ways in which mercenary force, while marginal in terms of its frequency and scope, produced important knowledge about the Ottoman world and helped to establish the complicated relationship of intimacy and mastery that exists between Americans in the United States and people in Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, South Sudan, and Turkey.

Hawi l-Funun (Encompasser of the Arts) of Ibn al-Tahhan (d. ca. 1057) is a medieval Arabic music dictionary that complements other sources because of the practical knowledge of the author who was an accomplished singer, lutenist and composer. The first part in 80 chapters deals with compositions; voice production and characteristics, unison and duet singing, taking care of the voice; preludes, ornaments, tarab; the importance of tonality; approaches to teaching; musical and extra-musical behavior at the court; names of Syrian Fatimid and Ishshidid singers. The second part in 22 chapters includes lute manufacturing, frets placement, stringing and tuning; 47 rhythmic ornaments, names and definitions of rhythmic and melodic modes; types of dances; descriptions of 12 instruments.

The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere is among the first books to explore the pre-modern and early modern historical ties among such diverse regions as Anatolia, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, Western Xinjiang, the Indian subcontinent, and southeast Asia, as well as the circumstances that reoriented these regions and helped break up the Persianate ecumene in modern times. Essays explore the modalities of Persianate culture, the defining features of the Persianate cosmopolis, religious practice and networks, the diffusion of literature across space, subaltern social groups, and the impact of technological advances on language. Taken together, the essays reflect the current scholarship in Persianate studies, and offer pathways for future research.

Travel narratives and historical works shaped the perception of Muslims and the East in the Victorian and post-Victorian periods. Analyzing the discourses on Muslims which originated in the European Middle Ages, the first part of the book discusses the troubled legacy of the encounters between the East and the West and locates the nineteenth-century texts concerning the Saracens and their lands in the liminal space between history and fiction. Drawing on the nineteenth-century models, the second part of the book looks at fictional and non-fictional works of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century which re-established the "Oriental obsession," stimulating dread and resentment, and even more strongly setting the Civilized West against the Barbaric East. Here medieval metaphorical enemies of Mankind - the World, the Flesh and the Devil - reappear in different contexts: the world of immigration, of white women desiring Muslim men, and the present-day "freedom fighters."

This study uses a comparative analysis of the Malayan Emergency, the American experience in Vietnam, and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM to examine the role and effectiveness of artillery units in complex counterinsurgency environments. Through this analysis, four factors emerge which impact the employment of artillery units: the counterinsurgency effort's requirement for indirect fires; constraints and limitations on indirect fires; the counterinsurgency effort's force organization; and the conversion cost of nonstandard roles for artillery units. In conclusion, the study offers five broadly descriptive fundamentals for employing artillery units in a counterinsurgency environment: invest in tactical leadership, exploit lessons learned, support the operational approach and strategic framework, maintain pragmatic fire support capability, and minimize collateral damage. Finally, the study examines the role of education for leaders in a counterinsurgency, and its influence on these imperative fundamentals.

In the nineteenth century the Dead Sea and the Tigris-Euphrates river system had great political significance: the one as a possible gateway for a Russian invasion of Egypt, the other as a potentially faster route to India. This is the traditional explanation for the presence of the international powers in the region. This important new book questions this view. Through a study of two important projects of the time -- international efforts to determine the exact level of the Dead Sea, and Chesney's Euphrates Expedition to find a quicker route to India -- Professor Goren shows how other forces than the interests of empire, were involved. He reveals the important role played by private individuals and establishes a wealth of new connections between the key players; and he reveals for the first time an important Irish nexus. The resulting work adds an important new dimension to our existing understanding of this period.

Bulus ibn Raja' (ca. 955-ca. 1020) was a celebrated writer of Coptic Christianity from Fatimid Egypt. Born to an influential Muslim family in Cairo, Ibn Raja' later converted to Christianity and composed The Truthful Exposer (Kitab al-Wadih bi-l-Haqq) outlining his skepticism regarding Islam. His ideas circulated across the Middle East and the Mediterranean in the medieval period, shaping the Christian understanding of the Qur'an's origins, Muhammad's life, the practice of Islamic law, and Muslim political history. This book includes a study of Ibn Raja''s life, along with an Arabic edition and English translation of The Truthful Exposer.

This volume reproduces in full Mountbatten's own account of the last five months of British rule in India based on reports he sent to London at the time. Written with disarming frankness, we witness the failure of Mountbatten's initial attempts to secure independence on the basis of a united India. He then turned to some form of agreed partition and his eventual success was achieved after considerable feats of diplomacy. The figures of Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and other key leaders loom large in this account. Mountbatten provides a valuable introductory historical survey and a chapter in which he draws up his conclusions. There are thirteen appendices providing the texts of key documents and an index of the persona involved in these momentous events. Before becoming the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten played a major part in the defeat of Japan in the Second World War. He was Supreme Allied Commander, South-East Asia Command between 1943 and 1946. Here he was also responsible for preparing Burma for civilian rule. Mountbatten served as first Governor-General of the new Dominion of India and after he left India in June 1948 he held a number of senior posts. He was First Sea Lord in Britain between 1955 and 1959 and then became (until 1965) Chief of the U.K. Defence Staff.

This collection of essays offers a comprehensive study of the impact of cultural life and intellectual thought on society in Medieval India. Doubtless, if the impact of interaction between the followers of Hindu and Islamic traditions of culture under the Arab and Ghaznavid rulers remained confined, to Sind and the Panjab from the eighth to the twelfth centuries AD, the Ghurian conquest of north India led to far-reaching socio-political changes in the subcontinent. The scientific instruments and devices that found their way with the emigrants from the neighbouring countries after the foundation of the sultanate in the beginning of the thirteenth century became the accompaniments of civilised life and generated new components of elite culture. The essays in this volume shift the focus from the pre-occupation with battles and court politics that dominate the studies of the period and help us understand the complex social phenomena. The essays arranged are first concerned with intellectual life and thought and then come those that deal with literary works containing historical information of supplementary and corroborative importance. The works analysed not only cast light on currents and cross currents resulting from the role played by the elite but also open new vistas for further investigation. The discovery of new sources is of methodological significance as they provide insights into certain aspects not much known. The contributors are scholars of eminence and belong to India, England, USA and Australia.

Order and Compromise questions the historicity of government practices in Turkey from the late Ottoman Empire up to the present day. It explores how institutions at work are being framed by constant interactions with non-institutional characters from various social realms. This volume thus approaches the state-society continuum as a complex and shifting system of positions. Inasmuch as they order and ordain, state authorities leave room for compromise, something which has hitherto been little studied in concrete terms. By combining in-depth case studies with an interdisciplinary conceptual framework, this collection helps apprehend the morphology and dynamics of public action and state-society relations in Turkey. Contributors are: Marc Aymes, Olivier Bouquet, Nicolas Camelio, Nathalie Clayer, Anouck Gabriela Corte-Real Pinto, Berna Ekal, Benoit Fliche, Muriel Girard, Benjamin Gourisse, Sumbul Kaya, Noemi Levy Aksu, Elise Massicard, Jean-Francois Perouse, Clemence Scalbert Yucel, Emmanuel Szurek and Claire Visier.

The history of cosmology is often understood in terms of the development of modern science, but Asian cosmological thought and practice touched on many aspects of life, including mathematics, astronomy, politics, philosophy, religion, and art. Because of the deep pervasion of cosmology in culture, many opportunities arose for transmissions of cosmological ideas across borders and innovations of knowledge and application in new contexts. Taking a wider view, one finds that cosmological ideas traveled widely and intermingled freely, being frequently reinterpreted by scholars, ritualists, and artists and transforming as they overlapped with ideas and practices from other traditions. This book brings together ten diverse scholars to present their views on these overlapping cosmologies in Asia. They are Ryuji Hiraoka, Satomi Hiyama, Eric Huntington, Yoichi Isahaya, Catherine Jami, Bill M. Mak, D. Max Moerman, Adrian C. Pirtea, John Steele, and Dror Weil.