This volume explores the changing place of Islam in contemporary Central Asia, understanding religion as a "societal shaper" - a roadmap for navigating quickly evolving social and cultural values. Islam can take on multiple colors and identities, from a purely transcendental faith in God to a cauldron of ideological ferment for political ideology, via diverse culture-, community-, and history-based phenomena. The volumes discusses what it means to be a Muslim in today's Central Asia by looking at both historical and sociological features, investigates the relationship between Islam, politics and the state, the changing role of Islam in terms of societal values, and the issue of female attire as a public debate. Contributors include: Aurelie Biard, Tim Epkenhans, Nurgul Esenamanova, Azamat Junisbai, Barbara Junisbai, Marlene Laruelle, Marintha Miles, Emil Nasritdinov, Shahnoza Nozimova, Yaacov Ro'i, Wendell Schwab, Manja Stephan-Emmrich, Rano Turaeva, Alon Wainer, Alexander Wolters, Galina M. Yemelianova, Baurzhan Zhussupov

Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History revolutionizes the study of modern Israeli art music by tracking the surprising itineraries of Jewish art music in the move from Europe to Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Leaving behind cliches about East and West, Arab and Jew, this book provocatively exposes the legacies of European antisemitism and religious Judaism in the making of Israeli art music.
Shelleg introduces the reader to various aesthetic dilemmas involved in the emergence of modern Jewish art music, ranging from auto-exoticism through the hues of self-hatred to the disarticulation of Jewish musical markers. He then considers part of this musics' translocation to Mandatory Palestine, studying its discourse with Hebrew culture, and composers' grappling with modern and Zionist images of the self. Unlike previous efforts in the field, Shelleg unearths the mechanism of what he calls "Zionist musical onomatopoeias," but more importantly their dilution by the non-western Arab Jewish oral musical traditions (the same traditions Hebrew culture sought to westernize and secularize).
And what had begun with composers' movement towards the musical properties of non-western Jewish musical traditions grew in the 60s and 70s to a dialectical return to exilic Jewish cultures. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, which reaffirmed Zionism's redemptive and expansionist messages, Israeli composers (re)embraced precisely the exilic Jewish music that emphasized Judaism's syncretic qualities rather than its territorial characteristics. In the 70s, therefore, while religious Zionist circles translated theology into politics and territorial maximalism, Israeli composers deterritorialized the national discourse by a growing return to the spaces shared by Jews and non-Jews, devoid of Zionist appropriations."

Medieval Arab Music and Musicians offers complete, annotated English translations of three of the most important medieval Arabic texts on music and musicians: the biography of the musician Ibrahim al-Mawsili from al-Isbahani's Kitab al-Aghani (10th c), the biography of the musician Ziryab from Ibn Hayyan's Kitab al-Muqtabis (11th c), and the earliest treatise on the muwashshah Andalusi song genre, Dar al-Tiraz, by the Egyptian scholar Ibn Sana' al-Mulk (13th c). Al-Mawsili, the most famous musician of his era, was also the teacher of the legendary Ziryab, who traveled from Baghdad to al-Andalus and is often said to have laid the foundations of Andalusi music. The third text is crucial to any understanding of the medieval muwashshah and its possible relations to the Troubadours, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and the Andalusi musical traditions of the modern Middle East.

Women and Democracy in Cold War Japan offers a fresh perspective on gender politics by focusing on the Japanese housewife of the 1950s as a controversial representation of democracy, leisure, and domesticity. Examining the shifting personae of the housewife, especially in the appealing texts of women's magazines, reveals the diverse possibilities of postwar democracy as they were embedded in media directed toward Japanese women. Each chapter explores the contours of a single controversy, including debate over the royal wedding in 1959, the victory of Japan's first Miss Universe, and the unruly desires of postwar women. Jan Bardsley also takes a comparative look at the ways in which the Japanese housewife is measured against equally stereotyped notions of the modern housewife in the United States, asking how both function as narratives of Japan-U.S. relations and gender/class containment during the early Cold War.

Long believed to be the cradle of Vietnamese civilization, the Red River Delta of Vietnam has been referenced by Vietnamese and Chinese writers for centuries, many recording colorful tales and legends about the region's prehistory. One of the most enduring accounts relates the story of the Au Lac Kingdom and its capital, known as Co Loa. According to legend, the city was founded during the third century BC and massive rampart walls protected its seat of power. Over the past two millennia, Co Loa has become emblematic of an important foundational era for Vietnamese civilization. Today, the ramparts of this ancient city still stand in silent testament to the power of past societies. However, there are ongoing debates about the origins of the site, the validity of legendary accounts, and the link between the prehistoric past with later Vietnamese society. Recent decades of archaeology in the region have provided a new dimension to further explore these issues, and to elucidate the underpinnings of civilization in northern Vietnam. Nam C. Kim's The Origins of Ancient Vietnam explores the origins of an ancient state in northern Vietnam, an area long believed to be the cradle of Vietnamese civilization. In doing so, it analyzes the archaeological record and the impact of new information on extant legends about the region and its history. Additionally, Kim presents the archaeological case for this momentous development, placing Co Loa within a wider archaeological consideration of emergent cities, states, and civilizations.

Hua Yan (1682-1756) and the Making of the Artist in Early Modern China explores the relationships between the artist, local society, and artistic practice during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Arranged as an investigation of the artist Hua Yan's work at a pivotal moment in eighteenth-century society, this book considers his paintings and poetry in early eighteenth-century Hangzhou, mid-eighteenth-century Yangzhou, and finally their nineteenth-century afterlife in Shanghai. By investigating Hua Yan's struggle as a marginalized artist-both at his time and in the canon of Chinese art-this study draws attention to the implications of seeing and being seen as an artist in early modern China.

In the Medieval Ages, there existed an oral tradition that already circulated in the British Isles and Scandinavia before the Christian era. It was the origin of the Arthurian legends as the latter was re-written in the 12th century. Many parchments existed after it was put in writing but they were destroyed by Christian missionaries between the 6th and 8th centuries AD. One that belonged to people who journeyed to Iceland was rediscovered in 1643. It is called "Codex Regius" and scholars have named it the "Elder Edda," to distinguish it from Snorri Sturluson's prose Edda. L. A. Waddell theorised that the sibyls who recited this tradition in the Medieval Ages had forgotten that the stories of this tradition were about the creation of civilization in Cappadocia, and had originated from the land that is now suspected to have been the cradle of the Sumerian civilization and the "Garden of Eden" of Genesis, as it is where the oldest temple in the world (that is presently excavated at Gobekli Tepe, near Urfa in Turkey) has been discovered. Waddell contended that the fort at Boghazkoy (Hattusha) had been built by Aryan architects of the first civilization who eradicated a Serpent-Dragon cult in this region c. 3,000 BC, and that King Arthur (who, on the basis of the Arthurian legends, is associated with idealist concepts of civilization) was the Her-Thor of the Codex and Scandinavian mythology. The tradition could have been brought to Europe by Phoenicians in 2,400 BC or Trojan Greeks of Hittite origin in 1,000 BC on the basis of Geoffrey of Monmouth records about the kings of Britain. Chapter 5 of Waddell's biography discusses his discovery of geographical place-names in the Codex. They support the view that the Scenes of the Edda are about events taking place in Cappadocia. ...Lieut.-Col. Laurence Austine Waddell (1854-1938) was a British Army officer with an established reputation mainly due to a work on the 'Buddhism' of Tibet, his explorations of the Himalayas, and a biography which included records of the 1903-4 military expedition to Lhasa (Lhasa and its Mysteries). Waddell was also in the limelight due to his acquisition of Tibetan manuscripts which he donated to the British Museum. His overriding interest was in 'Aryan origins'. After learning Sanskrit and Tibetan, and in between military expeditions together with Col. Younghusband, and gathering intelligence from the borders of Tibet in the Great Game, Waddell researched Lamaism. He extended his activities to Archaeology, Philology and Ethnology, and was credited with discoveries in relation to Buddha. His personal ambition was to locate records of ancient civilization in Tibetan lamaseries. ... Waddell is little known as an archaeologist and scholar, in contrast with his fame in the Oriental field, due to the controversial nature of his published works dealing with 'Aryan themes'. Waddell studied Sumerian and presented evidence that an Aryan migration flee- ing Sargon II carried Sumerian records to India. He interrupted his comparative studies of Sumerian and Indian king-lists to publish a work on Phoenician origins and decipherment of Indus Valley seals, the inscriptions of which he claimed were similar to Sumerian pictogram signs cited from G. A. Barton's plates, which are reproduced in this volume. ... Waddell's life is reconstructed from primary sources, such as letters from Marc Aurel Stein at the British Museum and Theophilus G. Pinches, held in the Special Collections at the University of Glasgow Library. Special attention is paid to the contemporary reception of his theories, with the objective of re-evaluating his contribution; they are contrasted to past and present academic views, in addition to an overview of relevant discoveries in Archaeology.

In The Price and Promise of Specialness, Jin Li Lim revises narratives on the overseas Chinese and the People's Republic of China by analysing the Communist approach to 'overseas Chinese affairs' in New China's first decade as a function of a larger political economy. Jin Li Lim shows how the party-state centred its approach towards the overseas Chinese on a perception of their financial utility and thus sought to offer them a special identity and place in New China, so as to unlock their riches. Yet, this contradicted the quest for socialist transformation, and as its early pragmatism fell away, the radicalising party-state abandoned its promises to the overseas Chinese, who were left to pay the price for their difference.

During the early medieval Islamicate period (800-1400 CE), discourses concerned with music and musicians were wide-ranging and contentious, and expressed in works on music theory and philosophy as well as literature and poetry. But in spite of attempts by influential scholars and political leaders to limit or control musical expression, music and sound permeated all layers of the social structure. Lisa Nielson here presents a rich social history of music, musicianship and the role of musicians in the early Islamicate era. Focusing primarily on Damascus, Baghdad and Jerusalem, Lisa Nielson draws on a wide variety of textual sources written for and about musicians and their professional/private environments - including chronicles, literary sources, memoirs and musical treatises - as well as the disciplinary approaches of musicology to offer insights into musical performances and the lives of musicians. In the process, the book sheds light onto the dynamics of medieval Islamicate courts, as well as how slavery, gender, status and religion intersected with music in courtly life. It will appeal to scholars of the Islamicate world and historical musicologists.

Edmund Allenby, Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe, as he became later, was the principal British military figure in the Middle East from 1917 to 1919. He fulfilled a similar proconsular role in Egypt from the latter year until 1925. In these two roles Allenby's eight years in the Middle East were of great impact, and in probing his life an especially revealing window can be found through which to observe closely and understand more fully the history that has resulted in the terminal roil afflicting the Middle East and international affairs today. In this biography Brad Faught explores the events and actions of Allenby's life, examining his thinking on both the British Empire and the post-World War I international order. Faught brings clarity to Allenby's decisive impact on British imperial policy in the making of the modern Middle East, and thereby on the long arc of the region's continuing and controversial place in world affairs.

The fifth in the CAIW series, this title reflects 50 years of experience of Cambridge (UK)-based World of Information, which since 1975 has followed the region's politics and economics. In the period following the Second World War, Saudi Arabia - a curious fusion of medieval theocracy, unruly dictatorship and extrovert wealth - has been called a country of 'superlatives.' The modernisation of the Kingdom's oil industry has been a smooth process: its oilfields are highly sophisticated. However, social modernisation has not kept pace. 'Reform', long a preoccupation among the Peninsula's leaders does not necessarily go hand in hand with religion.

In Arthur Upham Pope and A New Survey of Persian Art, fourteen scholars explore the legacy of Arthur Upham Pope (1881-1969) by tracing the formation of Persian art scholarship and connoisseurship during the twentieth century. Widely considered as a self-made scholar, curator, and entrepreneur, Pope was credited for establishing the basis of what we now categorize broadly as Persian art. His unrivalled professional achievement, together with his personal charisma, influenced the way in which many scholars and collectors worldwide came to understand the art, architecture and material culture of the Persian world. This ultimately resulted in the establishment of the aesthetic criteria for assessing the importance of cultural remains from modern-day Iran. With contributions by Lindsay Allen, Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan M. Bloom, Talinn Grigor, Robert Hillenbrand, Yuka Kadoi, Sumru Belger Krody, Judith A. Lerner, Kimberly Masteller, Cornelia Montgomery, Bernard O'Kane, Keelan Overton, Laura Weinstein, and Donald Whitcomb.

The studies in this volume explore central topics characterizing the political, social and economic systems of Egypt and Syria under Mamluk rule (1250-1517). Drawing on Arabic sources including archival material, poetry and chronicles as well as modern research literature, twelve leading scholars in the field analyze a vast range of issues in Mamluk history and provide new perspectives on pivotal features such as European-Mamluk diplomacy, social relationships and identity in Mamluk society, rural and urban economy and water management in late medieval Egypt and Syria, reflecting major research trends in Mamluk history over the last four decades. With contributions by Frederic Bauden, Stuart J. Borsch, Joseph Drory, Kurt Franz, Yehosua Frenkel, Daisuke Igarashi, Yaacov Lev, Amalia Levanoni, Li Guo, Carl F. Petry, Jo Van Steenbergen, Koby Yosef.

Michael Loewe calls on literary and material evidence to examine three problems that arose in administering China's early empires. Religious rites due to an emperor's predecessors must both pay the correct services to his ancestors and demonstrate his right to succeed to the throne. In practical terms, tax collectors, merchants, farmers and townsmen required the establishment of a standard set of weights and measures that was universally operative and which they could trust. Those who saw reason to criticise the decisions taken by the emperor and his immediate advisors, whether on grounds of moral principles or political expediency, needed opportunities and the means of expressing their views, whether as remonstrants to the throne, by withdrawal from public life or as authors of private writings.

This book comprehensively investigates the position of China's working class between the 1980s and 2010s and considers the consequences of economic reforms in historical perspective. It argues the case that, far from the illusion during the Maoist period that a new society had been established where the working classes held greater political and economic autonomy, economic reforms in the post-Mao era have led to the return of traditional Marxist proletariats in China. The book demonstrates how the reforms of Deng Xiaoping have led to increased economic efficiency at the expense of economic equality through an extensive case study of an SOE (state-owned enterprise) in Sichuan Province as well as wider discussions of the emergence of state capitalism on both a micro and macroeconomic level. The book also discusses workers' protests during these periods of economic reform to reflect the reformation of class consciousness in post-Mao China, drawing on Marx's concept of a transition from a 'class-in-itself' to a 'class-for-itself'. It will be valuable reading for students and scholars of Chinese economic and social history, as well as political economy, sociology, and politics.