Johann Michael Wansleben’s Travels in Turkey, 1673–1676 is a hitherto unpublished version of a remarkable description of Istanbul, Izmir, and Bursa by the German scholar traveller Wansleben. Wansleben was in the Ottoman Empire to buy manuscripts, statuary, and curios for the French king, but it is his off-hand observations about Ottoman society that often make Wansleben’s account such a valuable historical source. His experiences add to our knowledge of such diverse topics as prostitution in the Ottoman Empire, taxation, and the French consular system. His visit to Bursa is also noteworthy because few Western travellers included the first Ottoman capital in their tours of the East or described it at such length.

In Supplier Dieu dans l'Egypte toulounide, Mathieu Tillier and Naim Vanthieghem provide the edition, translation and study of a booklet preserved on papyrus and dated 267/880-881. It offers a selection of some forty hadiths heard by Khalid ibn Yazid, a minor local scholar, concerning the invocations that every pious Muslim has to use when addressing God. Composed during the reign of the famous governor Ahmad ibn Tulun, the first autonomous ruler of Islamic Egypt, this manuscript bears exceptional testimony to the way traditional sciences were taught at the time. Not only does it open an unprecedented window on the milieu of ordinary transmitters, whose names soon fell into oblivion, but it also sheds new light on the Tulunids' religious policy and on the islamisation of Egypt. Dans la seconde moitie du IIIe/IXe siecle, un savant repondant au nom de Halid b. Yazid enseigna une quarantaine de hadiths sur le theme des invocations que tout pieux musulman se devait d'adresser a Dieu. Un opuscule issu de son enseignement, portant la date de 267/880-881, a survecu sur papyrus. Mathieu Tillier et Naim Vanthieghem en proposent ici l'edition, la traduction et l'etude. Compose sous le regne du fameux gouverneur Ahmad b. Tulun, premier souverain autonome de l'Egypte islamique, ce manuscrit offre un temoignage exceptionnel sur la maniere dont les sciences traditionnelles etaient alors enseignees. Il ouvre non seulement une fenetre inedite sur le milieu des transmetteurs ordinaires, dont les noms tomberent rapidement dans l'oubli, mais vient aussi eclairer d'un nouveau jour la politique religieuse des Toulounides et la dynamique d'islamisation de l'Egypte.

Threads of the Unfolding Web is essential reading for scholars, students and the general reader interested in Javanese history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Little is known about the history of Java in this period, which witnessed the beginnings of major global economic, political, cultural and religious change. It was a time when Java saw the decline of the once powerful eastern Javanese kingdom of Majapahit, the rise of Muslim kingdoms on Java's northern coast and the arrival of the first Europeans in the person of the Portuguese Tome Pires in Java's cosmopolitan ports. "Stuart Robson's expert English translation of the Tantu Panggelaran gives his readers ready access to this important work, which provides insight into how the author and his contemporary Javanese readers imagined the realities of the world in which they lived. We learn how they conceived the creation of this world and understood the relationship between the gods and men. Importantly, we learn also how they conceived a history of the foundation and spread of Bhairava Sivaite hermitages, shrines and temples. The work traces the history of this network from its origins in the vicinity of the Dieng plateau and the northern plains of Batang and Pekalongan to its subsequent expansion to the Tengger and Hyang Massifs of eastern Java. Hadi Sidomulyo's impressive commentary, an amalgam of textual analysis and the survey of archaeological sites, is a model for the way in which further research of this sort might be conducted and underlines the urgent need for further archaeological surveys and the future excavation of archaeological sites." -- Professor Emeritus Peter Worsley, Indonesian Studies, University of Sydney "Ever since the dissertation of Th. Pigeaud was published in 1926, the Tantu Panggelaran has both intrigued and perplexed scholars of the cultural history of Java. Despite Pigeaud's translation and copious notes much remained uncertain and his comments were not easily accessible except to readers of Dutch. Now, the publication of Threads of the Unfolding Web has breathed new life into studies of this rare exemplar of the literature of the "period of transition" in sixteenth century Java. This collaborative volume combines the skills of Stuart Robson, a senior in the field of translation from Old Javanese, and Hadi Sidomulyo, whose deep interest in the early history of Java combines attention to the inscriptional record with field work using GPS technology to locate and describe archaeological remains spread throughout Java. As a result you have before you a volume that illustrates the close linkages between a literary text describing the mythical foundations of the Saiva ascetic communities of the Javanese Rsi order and the geophysical coordinates of these communities as far as they can be traced today. This combination represents a giant leap forward for studies of the Tantu Panggelaran. We owe the authors a debt of gratitude for the years of work that lay behind the completion of this important volume."-- Thomas M. Hunter, Lecturer in South-Southeast Asian Studies, University of British Columbia