This book offers an account of the development and transformations of the discourse of ancestors' instructions in the Song period. It explains how rulers selected words and deeds of ancestors in tandem with changes in current affairs, and how they gave them different meanings to create not only an image of the ancestors that were suitable for emulation but also a talisman to safeguard their administration. Using abundant resources, exercising an economy of words and academic rigor, the author digs deep to tease apart the complex and versatile relationship between the meaning and the truth of the Song discourse on ancestors' instructions.

The Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was established in 1826. Its collection of Persian manuscripts is the most comprehensive set of its kind in Hungary. The volumes were produced in four major cultural centres of the Persianate world, the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Central Asia and India during a span of time that extends from the 14th to the 19th century. Collected mainly by enthusiastic private collectors and acknowledged scholars the manuscripts have preserved several unique texts or otherwise interesting copies of well-known works. Though the bulk of the collection has been part of Library holdings for almost a century, the present volume is the first one to describe these manuscripts in a detailed and systematic way.

This book explores the mutual constitutions of visuality and empire from the perspective of gender, probing how the lives of China's ethnic minorities at the southwest frontiers were translated into images. Two sets of visual materials make up its core sources: the Miao album, a genre of ethnographic illustration depicting the daily lives of non-Han peoples in late imperial China, and the ethnographic photographs found in popular Republican-era periodicals. It highlights gender ideals within images and develops a set of "visual grammar" of depicting the non-Han. Casting new light on a spectrum of gendered themes, including femininity, masculinity, sexuality, love, body and clothing, the book examines how the power constructed through gender helped to define, order, popularise, celebrate and imagine possessions of empire.

This textbook offers a systematic and up-to-date introduction to politics and society in the Middle East. Taking a thematic approach that engages with core theory as well as a wide range of research, it examines postcolonial political, social and economic developments in the region, while also scrutinising the domestic and international factors that have played a central role in these developments. Topics covered include the role of religion in political life, gender and politics, the Israel-Palestine conflict, civil war in Syria, the ongoing threat posed by Islamist groups such as Islamic State as well as the effects of increasing globalisation across the MENA. Following the ongoing legacy of the Arab Spring, it pays particular attention to the tension between processes of democratization and the persistence of authoritarian rule in the region. This new edition offers: - Coverage of the latest developments, with expanded coverage of the military and security apparatus, regional conflict and the Arab uprisings - Textboxes linking key themes to specific historical events, figures and concepts - Comparative spotlight features focusing on the politics and governance of individual countries. This is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students approaching Middle Eastern politics for the first time.

The Dutch scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936) was one of the most famous orientalists of his time. He acquired early fame through his daring research in Mecca in 1884-85, masterly narrated in two books and accompanied by two portfolios of photographs. As an adviser to the colonial government in the Dutch East Indies from 1889 until 1906, he was on horseback during campaigns of "pacification" and published extensively on Indonesian cultures and languages. Meanwhile he successively married two Sundanese women with whom he had several children. In 1906 he became a professor in Leiden and promoted together with colleagues abroad the study of modern Islam, meant to be useful for colonial purposes. Despite his considerable scholarly, political, and cultural influence in the first decades of the twentieth century, nowadays Snouck Hurgronje has been almost forgotten outside a small circle of specialists, since he mainly published in Dutch and German. The contributors to this volume each offer new insights about this enigmatic scholar and political actor who might be considered a classic proponent of "orientalism." Their detailed studies of his life and work challenge us to reconsider common views of the history of the study of Islam in European academia and encourage a more nuanced "post-orientalist" approach with ample attention for cooperation, exchange, and hybridization. Contributors:

In Politics of Honor, Basak Tug examines moral and gender order through the glance of legal litigations and petitions in mid-eighteenth century Anatolia. By juxtaposing the Anatolian petitionary registers, subjects' petitions, and Ankara and Bursa court records, she analyzes the institutional framework of legal scrutiny of sexual order. Through a revisionist interpretation, Tug demonstrates that a more bureaucratized system of petitioning, a farther hierarchically organized judicial review mechanism, and a more centrally organized penal system of the mid-eighteenth century reinforced the existing mechanisms of social surveillance by the community and the co-existing "discretionary authority" of the Ottoman state over sexual crimes to overcome imperial anxieties about provincial "disorder".

Body and Cosmos is a collection of articles published on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Professor Emeritus Kenneth G. Zysk. The articles revolve thematically around the early Indian medical and astral sciences, which have been at the center of Professor Zysk's long and esteemed career within the discipline of Indology. The volume is divided into three parts. The first part is devoted to the medical sciences, the second part to the astral sciences, and the third part to cross-cultural interactions between India and the West, which runs like an undercurrent throughout the work of Professor Zysk. The articles are written by internationally renowned Indological scholars and will be of value to students and researchers alike.

Best known for her Eisner Award-winning graphic novels, Exit Wounds and The Property, Rutu Modan's richly colored compositions invite readers into complex Israeli society, opening up a world too often defined only by news headlines. Her strong female protagonists stick out in a comics scene still too dominated by men, as she combines a mystery novelist's plotting with a memoirist's insights into psychology and trauma. The Comics of Rutu Modan: War, Love, and Secrets conducts a close reading of her work and examines her role in creating a comics arts scene in Israel. Drawing upon archival research, Kevin Haworth traces the history of Israeli comics from its beginning as 1930s cheap children's stories, through the counterculture movement of the 1970s, to the burst of creativity that began in the 1990s and continues full force today. Based on new interviews with Modan (b. 1966) and other comics artists, Haworth indicates the key role of Actus Tragicus, the collective that changed Israeli comics forever and launched her career. Haworth shows how Modan's work grew from experimental mini-comics to critically acclaimed graphic novels, delving into the creative process behind Exit Wounds and The Property. He analyzes how the recurring themes of family secrets and absence weave through her stories, and how she adapts the famous clear line illustration style to her morally complex tales. Though still relatively young, Modan has produced a remarkably varied oeuvre. Identifying influences from the United States and Europe, Haworth illustrates how Modan's work is global in its appeal, even as it forms a core of the thriving Israeli cultural scene.

Through most of its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call "religion." There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country has to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson's account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of "superstitions" - and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance. Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.

'There are no two things in the world more different from each other than East-Indian and West Indian-slavery' (Robert Inglis, House of Commons Debate, 1833). In Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772-1843, Andrea Major asks why, at a time when East India Company expansion in India, British abolitionism and the missionary movement were all at their height, was the existence of slavery in India so often ignored, denied or excused? By exploring Britain's ambivalent relationship with both real and imagined slaveries in India, and the official, evangelical and popular discourses which surrounded them, she seeks to uncover the various political, economic and ideological agendas that allowed East Indian slavery to be represented as qualitatively different from its trans-Atlantic counterpart. In doing so, she uncovers tensions in the relationship between colonial policy and the so-called 'civilising mission', elucidating the intricate interactions between humanitarian movements, colonial ideologies and imperial imperatives in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The work draws on a range of sources from Britain and India to provide a trans-national perspective on this little known facet of the story of slavery and abolition in the British Empire, uncovering the complex ways in which Indian slavery was encountered, discussed, utilised, rationalised, and reconciled with the economic, political and moral imperatives of an empire whose focus was shifting to the East.

The commander, or chief of staff, of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is a prominent public figure in Israel. His decisions, advice, and persona exert direct influence on force design and military strategy, and indirectly impact social, economic, and foreign affairs. This first-ever in-depth comparative study on the role and performance of the IDF chiefs of staff throughout modern Israel's history offers lessons for practitioners and students of strategy, military history, and leadership everywhere.

The Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO), that became the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in 1920 drew the Muslim elite into its orbit and was a key site of a distinctively Muslim nationalism. Located in New Dehli, the historic centre of Muslim rule, it was home to many leading intellectuals and reformers in the years leading up to Indian independence. During partition it was a hub of pro-Pakistan activism. The graduates who came of age during the anti-colonial struggle in India settled throughout the subcontinent after the Partition. They carried with them the particular experiences, values and histories that had defined their lives as Aligarh students in a self-consciously Muslim environment, surrounded by a non-Muslim majority. This new archive of oral history narratives from seventy former AMU students reveals histories of partition as yet unheard. In contrast to existing studies, these stories lead across the boundaries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Partition in AMU is not defined by international borders and migrations but by alienation from the safety of familiar places. The book reframes Partition to draw attention to the ways individuals experienced ongoing changes associated with "partitioning"-the process through which familiar spaces and places became strange and sometimes threatening-and they highlight specific, never-before-studied sites of disturbance distant from the borders.

Building on the rich scholarly legacy of Gunnar Jarring, the Swedish Turkologist and diplomat, the fourteen contributions by sixteen authors representing a variety of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences provide an insight into ongoing research trends in Uyghur and Xinjiang Studies. In one way or other all the chapters explore how new research in the fields of history, linguistics, anthropology and folklore can contribute to our understanding of Xinjiang's past and present, simultaneously pointing to those social and knowledge practices that Uyghurs today can claim as part of their traditions in order to reproduce and perpetuate their cultural identity. Contributors include: Ildiko Beller-Hann, Rahile Dawut, Arienne Dwyer, Fredrik Fallman, Chris Hann, Dilmurat Mahmut, Takahiro Onuma, Alexandre Papas, Eric Schluessel, Birgit Schlyter, Joanne Smith Finley, Rune Steenberg Jun Sugawara, AEsad Sulaiman, Abdurishid Yakup, Thierry Zarcone.