In English Explorers in the East (1738-1745). The Travels of Thomas Shaw, Charles Perry and Richard Pococke, Rachel Finnegan offers an account of the influential travel writings of three rival explorers, whose eastern travel books were printed within a decade of each other. Making use of historical records, Finnegan examines the personal and professional motives of the three authors for producing their eastern travels; their methods of researching, drafting, and publicising their works while still abroad; their relationships with each other, both while travelling and on their return to England; and the legacy of their combined works. She also provides a survey of the main features (both textual and visual) of the travel books themselves.

This study is the first book that explores how the Catholic Mass was introduced and propagated in late Imperial China. Its dynamic exploration reveals the tension between localized and global forms of Catholic rituals, especially the tension faced by missionaries and Chinese Catholics, who were caught up between the Chinese tradition and the Catholic one. Drawing on rich primary sources, some of which are rarely noticed in the field, this book unfolds the intriguing interactions between the Mass and various cultural expressions of Chinese society, including traditional religion, architecture, art, literature, government, and theology.

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.

In Histoires hafsides, Sebastien Garnier studies the ifriqiyan historiography of the Restoration (1370-1488). He provides the translation of key-texts, then explores the polity and the discourses generated to its legitimisation. Dans Histoires hafsides, Sebastien Garnier etudie l'historiographie ifriqiyenne de la Restauration (1370-1488). Il fournit la traduction de textes-clefs, puis examine le pouvoir politique et les discours suscites pour le legitimer.

Circa AD 750, both the Islamic world and western Europe underwent political revolutions; these raised to power, respectively, the 'Abbasid and Carolingian dynasties. The eras thus inaugurated were similar not only in their chronology, but also in the foundational role each played in its respective civilization, forming and shaping enduring religious, cultural, and societal institutions. The 'Abbasid and Carolingian Empires: Studies in Civilizational Formation, is the first collected volume ever dedicated specifically to comparative Carolingian-'Abbasid history. In it, editor D.G. Tor brings together essays from some of the leading historians in order to elucidate some of the parallel developments in each of these civilizations, many of which persisted not only throughout the Middle Ages, but to the present day. Contributors are: Michael Cook, Jennifer R. Davis, Robert Gleave, Eric J. Goldberg, Minoru Inaba, Jurgen Paul, Walter Pohl, D.G. Tor and Ian Wood.

The "Bidun" ("without nationality") are a stateless community based across the Arab Gulf. There are an estimated 100,000 or so Bidun in Kuwait, a heterogeneous group made up of tribes people who failed to register for citizenship between 1959 and 1963, former residents of Iraq, Saudi and other Arab countries who joined the Kuwait security services in '60s and '70s and the children of Kuwaiti women and Bidun men. They are considered illegal residents by the Kuwaiti government and as such denied access to many services of the oil-rich state, often living in slums on the outskirts of Kuwait's cities. There are few existing works on the Bidun community and what little research there is is grounded in an Area Studies/Social Sciences approach. This book is the first to explore the Bidun from a literary/cultural perspective, offering both the first study of the literature of the Bidun in Kuwait, and in the process a corrective to some of the pitfalls of a descriptive, approach to research on the Bidun and the region. The author explores the historical and political context of the Bidun, their position in Kuwaiti and Arabic literary history, comparisons between the Bidun and other stateless writers and analysis of the key themes in Bidun literature and their relationship to the Bidun struggle for recognition and citizenship.

This volume offers a comprehensive overview of the Lifanyuan and Libu, revising and assessing the state of affairs in the under-researched field of these two institutions. The contributors explore the imperial policies towards and the shifting classifications of minority groups in the Qing Empire. This volume offers insight into how China's past has continued to inform its modern policies, as well as the geopolitical make-up of East Asia and beyond.

In 'Ala' al-Dawla al-Simnani between Spiritual Authority and Political Power: A Persian Lord and Intellectual in the Heart of the Ilkhanate, Giovanni Maria Martini investigates the personality of a major figure in the socio-political and cultural landscape of Mongol Iran. In pursuing this objective, the author follows parallel paths: Chapter 1 provides the most updated reconstruction of Simnani's (d. 736/1336) biography, which, thanks to its unique features, emerges as a cross-section of Iranian society and as a microhistory of the complex relationships between a Sufi master, Persian elites and Mongol rulers during the Ilkhanid period; Chapter 2 contains a study on the phenomenon of Arabic-Persian diglossia in Simnani's written work, arguing for its socio-religious function; in Chapters 3 to 6 the critical editions of two important, interrelated treatises by Simnani are presented; finally, Chapter 7 offers the first full-length annotated translation of a long work by Simnani ever to appear in a Western language.

Traditionally, humanitarianism is considered a nonpolitical urgent response to human suffering. However, this characterization ignores the politics that create and are created by the crises and the increasingly long-term dimension of relief. In The Politics of Crisis-Making, by shedding light on how humanitarian practice becomes enmeshed with diverse forms of welfare and development, Estella Carpi exposes how the politics of defining crises affect the social identity and membership of the displaced. Her ethnographic research in Lebanon brings to light interactions among aid workers, government officials, internally displaced citizens, migrants, and refugees after the 2006 war in Beirut's southern suburbs and during the 2011-2013 arrival of refugees from Syria to the Akkar District (northern Lebanon). By documenting different cultures, modalities, and traditions of assistance, Carpi offers a full account of how the politics of crisis-making play out in Lebanon. An important read, The Politics of Crisis-Making reveals that crisis, as an official discourse and framework of action, has the power to shape the social membership of forced migrants and internally displaced people, engendering unequal political, ethnic, and moral economies.

An important new cultural study of the Cold War, Guolin Yi's The Media and Sino-American Rapprochement, 1963-1972 analyzes how the media in both countries shaped public perceptions of the changing relations between China and the United States in the decade prior to Richard Nixon's visit to Beijing. This book offers the first systematic study of Cankao Xiaoxi (Reference News), an internal Chinese newspaper that carried relatively objective stories the Xinhua News Agency translated from world news media for circulation among Communist cadres. As the main channel for the cadres to learn about the outside world, this newspaper provides a window into China's evolving foreign policy, including the reception of signals from the Nixon administration. Yi compares this internal communications channel with the public accounts contained in the more widely circulated newspaper People's Daily, a chief propaganda outlet of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) directed at its own people and China watchers all over the world. A third level of communication emerges in classified CCP instructions and government documents. By approaching the Chinese communication system on three levels - internal, public, and classified - Yi's analysis demonstrates how people at different positions in the political hierarchy accessed varying types of information, allowing him to chart the development of Beijing's approach to the U.S. government. In a corresponding analysis of the defining features of American reporting on China, Yi considers the impact of government-media relationships in the United States during the Cold War. Alongside prominent magazines and newspapers, particularly the New York Times and the Washington Post in their differing coverage of key events, Yi discusses television networks, which proved vital for promoting the success of Ping-Pong Diplomacy and the impact of Nixon's visit in 1972. With its comparative study of news outlets in the two countries, The Media and Sino-American Rapprochement, 1963-1972 presents a thorough and comprehensive perspective on the role of the media in influencing domestic Chinese and American public opinion during a critical decade.

This volume explores some of the many different meanings of community across medieval Eurasia. How did the three 'universal' religions, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, frame the emergence of various types of community under their sway? The studies assembled here in thematic clusters address the terminology of community; genealogies; urban communities; and monasteries or 'enclaves of learning': in particular in early medieval Europe, medieval South Arabia and Tibet, and late medieval Central Europe and Dalmatia. It includes work by medieval historians, social anthropologists, and Asian Studies scholars. The volume present the results of in-depth comparative research from the Visions of Community project in Vienna, and of a dialogue with guests, offering new and exciting perspectives on the emerging field of comparative medieval history. Contributors are (in order within the volume) Walter Pohl, Gerda Heydemann, Eirik Hovden, Johann Heiss, Rudiger Lohlker, Elisabeth Gruber, Oliver Schmitt, Daniel Mahoney, Christian Opitz, Birgit Kellner, Rutger Kramer, Pascale Hugon, Christina Lutter, Diarmuid O Riain, Mathias Fermer, Steven Vanderputten, Jonathan Lyon and Andre Gingrich.

From the early phases of modern missions, Christian missionaries supported many humanitarian activities, mostly framed as subservient to the preaching of Christianity. This anthology contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex relationship between Christian missions and the roots of humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern context. Contributions focus on ideologies, rhetoric, and practices of missionaries and their apostolates towards humanitarianism, from the mid-19th century Middle East crises, examining different missionaries, their society's worldview and their networks in various areas of the Middle East. In the early 20th century Christian missions increasingly paid more attention to organisation and bureaucratisation ('rationalisation'), and media became more important to their work. The volume analyses how non-missionaries took over, to a certain extent, the aims and organisations of the missionaries as to humanitarianism. It seeks to discover and retrace such 'entangled histories' for the first time in an integral perspective. Contributors include: Beth Baron, Philippe Bourmaud, Seija Jalagin, Nazan Maksudyan, Michael Marten, Heleen (L.) Murre-van den Berg, Inger Marie Okkenhaug, Idir Ouahes, Maria Chiara Rioli, Karene Sanchez Summerer, Bertrand Taithe, and Chantal Verdeil

The Bhagavata Purana is one of the most important, central and popular scriptures of Hinduism. A medieval Sanskrit text, its influence as a religious book has been comparable only to that of the great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Ithamar Theodor here offers the first analysis for twenty years of the Bhagavata Purana (often called the Fifth Veda ) and its different layers of meaning. He addresses its lyrical meditations on the activities of Krishna (avatar of Lord Vishnu), the central place it affords to the doctrine of bhakti (religious devotion) and its treatment of older Vedic traditions of knowledge. At the same time he places this subtle, poetical book within the context of the wider Hindu scriptures and the other Puranas, including the similar but less grand and significant Vishnu Purana. The author argues that the Bhagavata Purana is a unique work which represents the meeting place of two great orthodox Hindu traditions, the Vedic-Upanishadic and the Aesthetic. As such, it is one of India s greatest theological treatises. This book illuminates its character and continuing significance."