This article reconstructs and contextualizes two inscriptions commemorating the Aqquyunlu occupation of Mardin in 835/1432 at the newly built main gate linking the town to the citadel. Inscription 835 Mardin was formerly displayed on three courses of stones in a framed area surmounting the gate facing the town. The gate collapsed at some point in the twentieth century. Due to the inclusion of its former location in the active military base inside Mardin’s citadel, it is unclear whether some of the stones displaying inscription 835 Mardin still exist among the rubble below its former location. Even before the collapse of the gate, the stones of inscription 835 Mardin had been reset out of their original sequence as documented in a unique photograph taken in 1911, which enables the reconstruction presented in this article. The gate surmounted by inscription 835 Mardin was closed with an inscribed monumental lock that was commissioned immediately after the Aqquyunlu occupation of Mardin. This lock was formerly held as #378 in the collection of the Çinili Köşk of the Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi in Istanbul. Notwithstanding repeated inquiries via email and on site with the administration of the museum, it cannot currently be located and appears to have been lost. Accordingly, the edition suggested in the present article builds on an earlier edition by Halil Etem [Eldem] as checked against additional photographs published in other scholarly publications until 1952 and the reconstructed historical and epigraphic context presented in the present article. Together, both inscriptions constitute a unique and coherent epigraphic programme declaring the commitment of the newly established Aqquyunlu administration to rule in accordance with Islamic normativities and the supra-regional standard of the Timurid ruler Shāhrukh, who is named as qara ʿUthmān’s overlord in both inscriptions.

The July 2011 viral video from the University of Benin and its violent aftermath reveal how “lesbian” sex, digital voyeurism, and so-called corrective rape become public sites for contesting sexual citizenship and personhood in Nigeria. Through digital circulation, intimate queer pleasure is transformed into moral evidence, rendering embodied aliveness perilous under conditions of surveillance and communal judgment. Grounded in online commentary and Igbo moral philosophy, the concept of mmadu (personhood) illuminates how visibility authorizes discipline and extrajudicial violence, reframing queer pleasure not as transgressive resistance but as a condition of personhood itself.

Reduplication is a linguistic phenomenon whereby a segment, or a part thereof, is repeated to convey grammatical functions and as a means of lexical derivation. In Semitic, reduplication is widely attested and productive both in the nominal and the verbal systems. Modern South Arabian Languages (MSAL) are no exception, in that various reduplicated patterns are attested, among which the most common are C1C2C1C2, i.e. Soqotri ḥálḥal “gris” (Lonnet 2008: 130), Jibbali/Shehret xɔlxɔ́l “Brown-spotted grouper” (Castagna 2024: 9) from Proto-MSAL *√xl(xl) “brown/grey”, and C1C2C3C3, i.e. Mehri həźīrūr “to go pale, green, yellow” (Johnstone 1987: 163), Jibbali/Shehret šəṣ́rɔ́r “yellow” (Johnstone 1981: 265) from Proto-MSAL *√šṣ́r “(to be) yellow, green”. Another type, namely C1C2C3C2C3, has received little attention to date, despite its attestation in Modern South Arabian where it is more frequently, but not exclusively, found in the eastern branch (Jibbali/Shehret and Soqotri). This study primarily aims to provide an account of the morpho-phonological and semantic characteristics of this pattern.

Over the past decade, an increasing number of athletes of mixed Chinese and Black/African heritage have become public figures, often labeled as the “hope for the nation” by online Chinese media. By collating and analyzing online media discourses on the best-known figures among them, this paper attempts to theorize the Chinese term, “zhongfeihunxue (literally ‘China-Africa mixed blood’).” It demonstrates that underneath the seemingly positive affect of hope, the racial niche carved out for these mixed athletes by such discourses is underpinned by a complex form of Chinese racial nationalism characterized by heightened expectations, reinforced stereotypes, and intersectional anxieties.

The British invasion of the Zulu kingdom in January 1879, the imposition of British colonial rule from 1880 onwards, and the subsequent undermining of the Zulu royal family and the destruction of the kingdom from the 1880s to the early twentieth century have received attention in numerous historical publications and dissertations. While the primary focus of these studies is on how the British colonists placed the primary members of the Zulu royal family such as King Cetshwayo kaMpande and King Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo under siege, none has explored the impact of the British hostility toward other senior members of the Zulu royal family, such as Prince Ndabuko kaMpande and Prince Shingana kaMpande. Only Robert R. R. Dlomo and Jeff Guy have made brief references to these issues in their biographies of Kings Cetshwayo and Dinuzulu and Harriette Colenso. It will be shown below that the incarceration of Shingana and Ndabuko alongside their nephew, Dinuzulu, from 1889 to 1898, and the re-arrest, trial, and banishment of Shingana to kwaThoyana near Amanzimtoti from 1910 to 1911, and the re-arrest, retrial, conviction, and banishment of Dinuzulu to Middelburg from 1911 to 1913 were part of the British efforts to completely destroy the senior section of the Zulu royal family popularly known as the Usuthu.