The influence of the ulema, the official Sunni Muslim religious scholars of the Ottoman Empire, is commonly understood to have waned in the empire's last century. Drawing upon Ottoman state archives and the institutional archives of the ulema, this study challenges this narrative, showing that the ulema underwent a process of professionalisation as part of the wider Tanzimat reforms and thereby continued to play an important role in Ottoman society. First outlining transformations in the office of the Sheikh ul-islam, the leading Ottoman Sunni Muslim cleric, the book goes on to use the archives to present a detailed portrait of the lives of individual ulema, charting their education and professional and social lives. It also includes a glossary of Turkish-Arabic vocabulary for increased clarity. Contrary to beliefs about their decline, the book shows they played a central role in the empire's efforts to centralise the state by acting as intermediaries between the government and social groups, particularly on the empire's peripheries.

The present edited volume offers a collection of new concepts and approaches to the study of mobility in pre-modern Islamic societies. It includes nine remarkable case studies from different parts of the Islamic world that examine the professional mobility within the literati and, especially, the social-cum-cultural group of Muslim scholars ('ulama') between the eighth and the eighteenth centuries. Based on individual case studies and quantitative mining of biographical dictionaries and other primary sources from Islamic Iberia, North and West Africa, Umayyad Damascus and the Hejaz, Abbasid Baghdad, Ayyubid and Mamluk Syria and Egypt, various parts of the Seljuq Empire, and Hotakid Iran, this edited volume presents professional mobility as a defining characteristic of pre-modern Islamic societies. Contributors Mehmetcan Akpinar, Amal Belkamel, Mehdi Berriah, Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Adday Hernandez Lopez, Konrad Hirschler, Mohamad El-Merheb, Marta G. Novo, M. A. H. Parsa, M. Syifa A. Widigdo.

From Ancient Egypt to the Arab Spring, iconoclasm has occurred throughout history and across cultures. Both a vehicle for protest and a means of imagining change, it was rife during the tumultuous years of the French Revolution, and in this richly illustrated book Richard Clay examines how politically diverse groups used such attacks to play out their own complex power struggles. Drawing on extensive archival evidence to uncover a variety of iconoclastic acts - from the beheading or defacing of sculptures, to the smashing of busts, slashing of paintings and toppling of statues - Clay explores the turbulent political undercurrents in revolutionary Paris. Objects whose physical integrity had been respected for years were now targets for attack: while many revolutionary leaders believed that the aesthetic or historical value of symbols should save them from destruction, Clay argues that few Parisians shared such views. He suggests that beneath this treatment of representational objects lay a sophisticated understanding of the power of public spaces and symbols to convey meaning. Unofficial iconoclasm became a means of exerting influence over government policy, leading to official programmes of systematic iconoclasm that transformed Paris. Iconoclasm in revolutionary Paris is not only a major contribution to the historiography of so-called 'vandalism' during the Revolution, but it also has significant implications for debates about heritage preservation in our own time.

The English Bible in the Early Modern World addresses the most significant book available in the English language in the centuries after the Reformation, and investigates its impact on popular religion and reading practices, and on theology, religious controversy and intellectual history between 1530 and 1700. Individual chapters discuss the responses of both clergy and laity to the sacred text, with particular emphasis on the range of settings in which the Bible was encountered and the variety of responses prompted by engagement with the Scriptures. Particular attention is given to debates around the text and interpretation of the Bible, to an emerging Protestant understanding of Scripture and to challenges it faced over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Was pre-Famine and Famine Ireland a violent society? The dominant view among a range of commentators at the time, and in the work of many historians since, is that violence was both prevalent and pervasive in the social and cultural life of the country. This book explores the validity of this perspective through the study of homicide and what it reveals about wider experiences of violence in the country at that time. The book provides a quantitative and contextual analysis of homicide in pre-Famine and Famine Ireland. It explores the relationship between particular and prominent causes of conflict - personal, familial, economic and sectarian - and the use of lethal violence to deal with such conflicts. Throughout the book, the Irish experience is placed within a comparative framework and there is also an exploration of what the history of violence in Ireland might reveal about the wider history of interpersonal violence in Europe and beyond. The aim throughout is to challenge the view of nineteenth-century Ireland as a violent society and to offer a more complex and nuanced assessment of the part played by violence in Irish life.

Historical Studies in Industrial Relations was established in 1996 by the Centre for Industrial Relations, Keele University, to provide an outlet for, and to stimulate an interest in, historical work in the field of industrial relations and the history of industrial relations thought. Content broadly covers the employment relationship and economic, social and political factors surrounding it - such as labour markets, union and employer policies and organization, the law, and gender and ethnicity. Articles with an explicit political dimension, particularly recognising divisions within the working class and within workers' organizations, will be encouraged, as will historical work on labour law.

Eight studies examine key features of Chinese visual and material cultures, ranging from tomb design, metalware, ceramic pillows, and bronze mirrors, to printed illustrations, calligraphic rubbings, colophons, and paintings on Buddhist, landscape, and narrative themes. Questions addressed include how artists and artisans made their works, the ways both popular literature and market forces could shape ways of looking, and how practices and imagery spread across regions. The authors connect visual materials to funeral and religious practices, drama, poetry, literati life, travel, and trade, showing ways visual images and practices reflected, adapted to, and reproduced the culture and society around them. Readers will gain a stronger appreciation of the richness of the visual and material cultures of Middle Period China.

The political diaspora played a major part in the history of the international anarchist movement: in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries hundreds of militants, escaping from domestic persecution and following their internationalist ideals, took the path of exile and established colonies in European and non-European countries. This book unveils the intriguing world of anarchist refugees in London from the second half of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War. It is the first book to combine an investigation of anarchist political organisations and activities with a study of the everyday life of militants through identifying the hitherto largely anonymous Italian anarchist exiles who settled in London. Central to the book is an examination of the processes and associations through which anarchist exiles created an international revolutionary network which European and American governments and police forces esteemed to be an extremely dangerous threat. By investigating political, social and cultural aspects of the colony of Italian anarchist refugees in London, the nature of the transnational anarchist diaspora and its relevance in the history of the anarchist movement will be made evident. This monograph will also be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the fascinating history of social and political radicalism in immigrant communities in Britain.

This book explores commemoration practices and preservation efforts in modern Britain, focusing on the years from the end of the First World War until the mid-1960s. The changes wrought by war led Britain to reconsider major historical episodes that made up its national narrative. Part of this process was a reassessment of heritage sites, because such places carry socio-political meaning as do the memorials that mark them. This book engages the four-way intersection of commemoration, preservation, tourism, and urban planning at some of the most notable historic locations in England. The various actors in this process-from the national government and regional councils to private organizations and interested individuals-did nothing less than engineer British national memory. The author presents case studies of six famous British places, namely battlefields (Hastings and Bosworth), political sites (Runnymede and Peterloo), and world's fairgrounds (the Crystal Palace and Great White City). In all three genres of heritage sites, one location developed through commemorations and tourism, while the other 'anti-sites' simultaneously faltered as they were neither memorialized nor visited by the masses. Ultimately, the book concludes that the modern social and political environment resulted in the revival, creation, or erasure of heritage sites in the service of promoting British national identity. A valuable read for British historians as well as scholars of memory, public history, and cultural studies, the book argues that heritage emerged as a discursive arena in which British identity was renegotiated through times of transitions, both into a democratic age and an era of geopolitical decline.