K. al-Anwar al-bahiyya fi ta'rif maqamat fusaha' al-bariyya is a work of adab attributed to the renowned litterateur and historian of literature Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi. The work consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first three chapters are concerned with knowledge ('ilm): Chapter One discusses the merit and application of knowledge, Chapter Two the definition of knowledge and its true meaning, and Chapter Three the conditions of knowledge. The fourth chapter, which constitutes the bulk of the book, is concerned with occasions on which scholars and sages made speeches in the presence of rulers. It is divided into two parts: Part One presents pre-Islamic (jahiliyya) speeches, incorporating Arab, Greek, Byzantine, Persian, and Indian traditions, and Part Two presents Islamic speeches. The work is introduced by an analytical study discussing the attribution of the work, its relation to the Maqamat genre, and the manuscripts used.

Nahr has been confined to the Cube: nine square metres of glossy grey cinderblock, devoid of time, its patterns of light and dark nothing to do with day and night. Journalists visit her, but get nowhere; because Nahr is not going to share her story with them.

The world outside calls Nahr a terrorist, and a whore; some might call her a revolutionary, or a hero. But the truth is, Nahr has always been many things, and had many names. She was a girl who learned, early and painfully, that when you are a second class citizen love is a kind of desperation; she learned, above all else, to survive. She was a girl who went to Palestine in the wrong shoes, and without looking for it found what she had always lacked in the basement of a battered beauty parlour: purpose, politics, friends. She found a dark-eyed man called Bilal, who taught her to resist; who tried to save her when it was already too late.

Nahr sits in the Cube, and tells her story to Bilal. Bilal, who isn't there; Bilal, who may not even be alive, but who is her only reason to get out.

In the past decades, the world has watched the rise of China as an economic and military power and the emergence of Chinese transnational elites. What may seem like an entirely new phenomenon marks the revival of a trend initiated at the end of the Qing. The redistribution of power, wealth and knowledge among the newly formed elites matured during the Republican period. This volume demonstrates both the difficulty and the value of re-thinking the elites in modern China. It establishes that the study of the dynamic tensions within the elite and among elite groups in this epochal era is within reach if we are prepared to embrace forms of historical inquiry that integrate the abundant and even limitless historical resources, and to engage with the rich repertoire of digital techniques/instruments available and question our previous research paradigms. This renewed approach brings historical research closer to an integrative data-rich history of modern China.

Today, teachers and performers of Turkish classical music intentionally cultivate melancholies, despite these affects being typically dismissed as remnants of the Ottoman Empire. Melancholic Modalities is the first in-depth historical and ethnographic study of the practices socialized by musicians who enthusiastically teach and perform a present-day genre substantially rooted in the musics of the Ottoman court and elite Mevlevi Sufi lodges. Author Denise Gill analyzes how melancholic music-making emerges as pleasurable, spiritually redeeming, and healing for both the listener and performer. Focusing on the diverse practices of musicians who deploy and circulate melancholy in sound, Gill interrogates the constitutive elements of these musicians' modalities in the context of emergent neoliberalism, secularism, political Islamism, Sufi devotionals, and the politics of psychological health in Turkey today. In an essential contribution to the study of ethnomusicology and psychology, Gill develops rhizomatic analyses to allow for musicians' multiple interpretations to be heard. Melancholic Modalities uncovers how emotion and musical meaning are connected, and how melancholy is articulated in the world of Turkish classical musicians. With her innovative concept of "bi-aurality," Gill's book forges new possibilities for the historical and ethnographic analyses of musics and ideologies of listening for music scholars.

Documents open up another an approach complementary to the overwhelming richness of literary tradition as preserved in manuscripts. This volume combines studies on Greek, Sogdian and Arabic documents (letters, legal agreements, and amulets) with studies on Arabic and Judeo-Arabic manuscripts (poetry, science and divination).