""Is there jazz in China?"" This is the question that sent author Eugene Marlow on his quest to uncover the history of jazz in China. Marlow traces China's introduction to jazz in the early 1920s, its interruption by Chinese leadership under Mao in 1949, and its rejuvenation in the early 1980s with the start of China's opening to the world under Premier Deng Xiaoping. Covering a span of almost one hundred years, Marlow focuses on a variety of subjects--the musicians who initiated jazz performances in China, the means by which jazz was incorporated into Chinese culture, and the musicians and venues that now present jazz performances. Featuring unique, face-to-face interviews with leading indigenous jazz musicians in Beijing and Shanghai, plus interviews with club owners, promoters, expatriates, and even diplomats, Marlow marks the evolution of jazz in China as it parallels China's social, economic, and political evolution through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Also featured is an interview with one of the extant members of the Jimmy King Big Band of the 1940s, one of the first major all-Chinese jazz big bands in Shanghai. Ultimately, Jazz in China: From Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression is a cultural history that reveals the inexorable evolution of a democratic form of music in a Communist state.

The book analyses all extant works by Ibn Jarir al-Tabari (d. 224/839-310/923), referring to their individual methodologies; their legacy as al- madhhab al-jariri; and their scholarly and socio- political context. Through the study of al- Tabari's works, the book addresses research debates over dating the legal and scholarly institutions and their disciplines; authorship and transmission of scholarly writings; political theory and administration; and 'origins' of the Qur'an and Islam. Al-Tabari defined the Qur'an in linguistic and legal terms. The linguistic terms refer to rhetoric and semiotics, and the legal to theories of social contract, 'natural law', and rule of law. Both sets of terms go into al-Tabari's theory of prophecy and administration, including of 'minorities'. By engaging current debates about the usefulness or not of the medieval Muslim scholars in research on the Qur'an and early Islam, this book argues that the - 2 - 20:59 contribution of each medieval scholar be assessed on an individual basis. Al-Tabari's philosophical, ethical, historical, linguistic, and legal education produced analysis of the Qur'an and 'origins' of Islam that stands up to some fronts in contemporary research. The book thus adds to research on al-Tabari; early Islamic disciplines and institutions; and the Qur'an and early Islam.