In The Martyrs of Japan, Rady Roldan-Figueroa examines the role that Catholic missionary orders played in the dissemination of accounts of Christian martyrdom in Japan. The work combines several historiographical approaches, including publication history, history of missions, and "new" institutional history. The author offers an overarching portrayal of the writing, printing, and circulation of books of 'Japano-martyrology.' The book is organized into two parts. The first part, "Spirituality of Writing, Publication History, and Japano-martyrology," addresses topics ranging from the historical background of Christianity in Japan to the publishers of Japano-martyrology. The second part, "Jesuits, Discalced Franciscans, and the Production of Japano-martyrology in the Early Modern Spanish World," features closer analysis of selected works of Japano-martyrology by Jesuit and Discalced Franciscan writers.

In Ordinary Jerusalem, Angelos Dalachanis, Vincent Lemire and thirty-five scholars depict the ordinary history of an extraordinary global city in the late Ottoman and Mandate periods. Utilizing largely unknown archives, they revisit the holy city of three religions, which has often been defined solely as an eternal battlefield and studied exclusively through the prism of geopolitics and religion. At the core of their analysis are topics and issues developed by the European Research Council-funded project "Opening Jerusalem Archives: For a Connected History of Citadinite in the Holy City, 1840-1940." Drawn from the French vocabulary of geography and urban sociology, the concept of citadinite describes the dynamic identity relationship a city's inhabitants develop with each other and with their urban environment.

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.

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."

The Arabo-Islamic heritage of the Islam is among the richest, most diverse, and longest-lasting literary traditions in the world. Born from a culture and religion that valued teaching, Arabo-Islamic learning spread from the seventh century and has had a lasting impact until the present.In The Heritage of Arabo-Islamic Learning leading scholars around the world present twenty-five studies explore diverse areas of Arabo-Islamic heritage in honor of a renowned scholar and teacher, Dr. Wadad A. Kadi (Prof. Emerita, University of Chicago). The volume includes contributions in three main areas: History, Institutions, and the Use of Documentary Sources; Religion, Law, and Islamic Thought; Language, Literature, and Heritage which reflect Prof. Kadi's contributions to the field. Contributors:Sean W. Anthony; Ramzi Baalbaki; Jonathan A.C. Brown; Fred M. Donner; Mohammad Fadel; Kenneth Garden; Sebastian Gunther; Li Guo; Heinz Halm; Paul L. Heck; Nadia Jami; Jeremy Johns; Maher Jarrar; Marion Holmes Katz; Scott C. Lucas; Angelika Neuwirth; Bilal Orfali; Wen-chin Ouyang; Judith Pfeiffer; Maurice A. Pomerantz; Ridwan al-Sayyid ; Aram A. Shahin; Jens Scheiner; John O. Voll; Stefan Wild.

"State, Economy and the Great Divergence" provides a new analysis of what has become the central debate in global economic history: the 'great divergence' between European and Asian growth. Focusing on early modern China and Western Europe, this book offers a new level of detail on comparative state formation that has wide-reaching implications for European, Eurasian and global history.Beginning with a comprehensive overview of the historiography, Peer Vries goes on to extend and develop the debate, critically engaging with the huge volume of literature published on the topic to date. Incorporating new insights into the case of Europe, he offers a compelling alternative to the exaggerated claims to East-West equivalence, or Asian superiority, which have come to dominate discourse surrounding this issue.This is a vital update to a key issue in global economic history and, as such, is essential reading for students and scholars interested in keeping up to speed with the on-going debates.

Understand the complexities of the most lethal insurgent group of America's longest war-the Taliban. Battle hardened, tribally oriented, and deeply committed to its cause, the Taliban has proven itself resourceful, adaptable, and often successful. As such, the Taliban presents a counterinsurgency puzzle for which the United States has yet to identify effective military tactics, information operations, and Coalition developmental policies. Written by one of the Department of the Army's leading intelligence and military analysts on the Taliban, this book covers the group's complete history, including its formation, ideology, and political power, as well as the origins of its current conflict with the United States. The work carefully analyzes the agenda, capabilities, and support base of the Taliban; forecasts the group's likely course of action to retake Afghanistan; and details the Coalition forces' probable counterinsurgency responses. Author Mark Silinsky also reviews the successes and failures of the latest U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine to extrapolate the best strategies for future counterinsurgency campaigns. Provides insights from an author with academic training in politics and economics as well as a 30-year defense intelligence community background, including serving as an Army analyst in Afghanistan Presents information recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act Analyzes the tribal, religious, political, and international elements of the greater Taliban problem

On account of its remarkable reach as well as its variety of schemes and features, migration in the Victorian era is a paramount chapter of the history of worldwide migrations and diasporas. Indeed, Victorian Britain was both a land of emigration and immigration. International Migrations in the Victorian Era covers a wide range of case studies to unveil the complexity of transnational circulations and connections in the 19th century. Combining micro- and macro-studies, this volume looks into the history of the British Empire, 19th century international migration networks, as well as the causes and consequences of Victorian migrations and how technological, social, political, and cultural transformations, mainly initiated by the Industrial Revolution, considerably impacted on people's movements. It presents a history of migration grounded on people, structural forces and migration processes that bound societies together. Rather than focussing on distinct territorial units, International Migrations in the Victorian Era balances different scales of analysis: individual, local, regional, national and transnational. Contributors are: Rebecca Bates, Sally Brooke Cameron, Milosz K. Cybowski, Nicole Davis, Anne-Catherine De Bouvier, Claire Deligny, Elizabeth Dillenburg, Nicolas Garnier, Trevor Harris, Kathrin Levitan, Veronique Molinari, Ipshita Nath, Jude Piesse, Daniel Renshaw, Eric Richards, Sue Silberberg, Ben Szreter, Geraldine Vaughan, Briony Wickes, Rhiannon Heledd Williams.

Philosophical Theology in Islam studies the later history of the Ash'ari school of theology through in-depth probings of its thought, sources, scholarly networks and contexts. Starting with a review of al-Ghazali's role in the emergence of post-Avicennan philosophical theology, the book offers a series of case studies on hitherto unstudied texts by the towering thinker Fakhr al-Din al-Razi as well as specific philosophical and theological topics treated in his works. Studies furthermore shed light on the transmission and reception of later Ash'ari doctrines in periods and regions that have so far received little scholarly attention. This book is the first exploration of the later Ash'ari tradition across the medieval and early-modern period through a trans-regional perspective. Contributors: Peter Adamson, Asad Q. Ahmed, Fedor Benevich, Xavier Casassas Canals, Jon Hoover, Bilal Ibrahim, Andreas Lammer, Reza Pourjavady, Harith Ramli, Ulrich Rudolph, Meryem Sebti, Delfina Serrano-Ruano, Ayman Shihadeh, Aaron Spevack, and Jan Thiele.

In Rule-Formulation and Binding Precedent in the Madhhab-Law Tradition, Talal Al-Azem argues for the existence of a madhhab-law tradition' of jurisprudence underpinning the four post-classical Sunni schools of law. This tradition celebrated polyvalence by preserving the multiplicity of conflicting opinions within each school, while simultaneously providing a process of rule formulation (tarjih) by which one opinion is chosen as the binding precedent (taqlid). The predominant forum of both activities, he shows, was the legal commentary. Through a careful reading of Ibn Qutlubugha's (d. 879/1474) al-Tashih wa-al-tarjih, Al-Azem presents a new periodisation of the Hanafi madhhab, analyses the theory of rule formulation, and demonstrates how this madhhab-law tradition facilitated both continuity and legal change while serving as the basis of a pluralistic Mamluk judicial system.

In this evocative study of the fall of the Mughal Empire and the beginning of the Raj, award-winning historian William Dalrymple uses previously undiscovered sources to investigate a pivotal moment in history.
The last Mughal emperor, Zafar, came to the throne when the political power of the Mughals was already in steep decline. Nonetheless, Zafar--a mystic, poet, and calligrapher of great accomplishment--created a court of unparalleled brilliance, and gave rise to perhaps the greatest literary renaissance in modern Indian history. All the while, the British were progressively taking over the Emperor's power. When, in May 1857, Zafar was declared the leader of an uprising against the British, he was powerless to resist though he strongly suspected that the action was doomed. Four months later, the British took Delhi, the capital, with catastrophic results. With an unsurpassed understanding of British and Indian history, Dalrymple crafts a provocative, revelatory account of one the bloodiest upheavals in history.