The revival of Confucianism in China reflects an effort to infuse soft power with moral authority and signals an attempt to turn ethical credibility into political legitimacy amid strategic ambition. This study examines the reception of China’s Confucian moral diplomacy in Southeast Asia, a region shaped by diverse ethical and religious traditions. Drawing on data from the sixth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey, the analysis explores how Confucian social ethics and political values affect perceptions of China’s influence at domestic, regional, and global levels, and how these relationships vary with democracy, economic ties, and territorial disputes. The results show that moral integrity, not cultural familiarity, sustains acceptance. Social ethics foster approval only when China’s actions demonstrate reciprocity and sincerity, whereas political Confucianism, rooted in hierarchy and competence, gains traction under conditions of stability and cooperation. Across contexts, Confucianism functions less as a cultural export than as a moral framework guiding how publics interpret conduct. The findings reveal a broader transformation in international politics, suggesting power now depends more on the integrity of behaviour than on the allure of culture.

Although battles have usually been analysed to study state formation, they can also be examined to understand socio-cultural processes in the empire. The Battle of Dharmat (26 April 1658), which occurred during the famed Mughal War of Succession (1657–1659) that led to the accession of Aurangzeb Alamgir (r. 1658–1707), was a landmark moment in Rajput history and memory. Rajput clans serving in the Mughal army at Dharmat commissioned vernacular literary-historical works to put forward competing claims to martyrdom, bravery, clan, and caste pride. Particularly, Dharmat provided an opportunity for minor clans to establish their fallen leaders, like Ratan Rathor, as heroes, especially after the prominent Rajput king Jaswant Rathor fled the battlefield. The Rajput retellings of the battle deliberated questions surrounding masculinity, loyalty, sacrifice, and qualities underpinning the ideal martial Rajput identity. The contrasting portrayals of the ‘martyr’ and the ‘deserter’ at Dharmat represented a conflict between personal virtue and failure, capturing the chasm between honour and disgrace in the Rajput socio-political and cultural sphere. By drawing on Dingal poetry, Marwari chronicles, Persian literature, and the accounts of foreign travellers, this article unravels how a Mughal battle became a site for rehearsing normative Rajput caste ideals in seventeenth-century India.

Following the Sasanian conquest of Bactria-Tukhāristān in the third century CE, Kushan cultic traditions centred on the veneration of anthropomorphic divine images continued to thrive under the new Persian rulers. Rather than imposing aniconic Zoroastrian practices, the Sasanians actively patronised local religious customs, commissioning statues of Persian deities such as Anāhitā while incorporating Bactrian gods into their visual and ritual repertoire. Numismatic and architectural evidence reflects this synthesis: Kushano-Sasanian coinage preserves the Kushan pantheon, with deities depicted in novel forms, including enthroned figures and busts emerging from fire altars, while temples at Surkh Kotal and Dilberjin combined divine statues with the veneration of the sacred fire. The coexistence of Bactrian and Middle Persian in inscriptions suggests a broader process of cultural adaptation. The persistence of these practices under subsequent Hunnic rule, and their later diffusion into Sogdiana, demonstrates their long-term impact on the religious landscape of Central Asia. The Kushano-Sasanian period thus marks the emergence of a distinctive cultic tradition, shaped by the cultic fusion, which continued to influence the region long after the decline of Sasanian rule.

This article examines the Tangchaodun bema—a liturgical structure dating to the Gaochang Uyghur Kingdom in Xinjiang—as a regional manifestation of the architectural and theological tradition of the Church of the East, shaped over centuries of transmission and adaptation. Through comparative analysis of archaeological remains and liturgical texts from Syria, Mesopotamia, and Central Asia, the study argues that the Tangchaodun bema follows the ‘eastern-type bema’ model rooted in the East Syrian tradition. Its spatial configuration and ritual function reflect established Mesopotamian patterns, particularly in the mirroring of bema and sanctuary, while also incorporating localised features shaped by visual adaptation and intercultural contact. Bilingual inscriptions and iconographic traces further attest to this integration of tradition and regional context.

Rather than existing in isolation, the Tangchaodun bema forms part of a broader historical development in East Syriac ecclesiastical architecture. By positioning the site within this extended line of transmission, the article shows how sacred space operated as a medium of both theological continuity and cultural dialogue across Asia. In so doing, it offers new perspectives on the role of Christian architecture in the Tang to Yuan Dynasties and contributes to a more integrated understanding of the Church of the East in its easternmost reaches.

The Qabus-nama (AD eleventh century) has been translated into Turkish many times by different translators. While one of the Chagatai Turkish translations of the work was completed by Âgehî (1809–1874) and is located in Uzbekistan, the other, by an unknown translator, is in the British Library (BL) (Or. 9661), but its beginning and end are missing. This article evaluates the Lund University Library (LUL) copy of the translation (Jarring Prov. 342), for which, unlike the other copies, the translator and translation date can be identified, as its beginning and end are intact. In this article, introductory information will be provided about Muhammad Siddiq al-Muqallib (Rushdie), the translator of the work, as well as Khoja Kefek Bey, who was instrumental in its translation. Additionally, the BL and LUL copies of the Qabus-nama will be compared using different criteria.

Scholars of nationalism in the Arab Middle East in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have focused mainly on its spokespeople from among state officials, military officers, and intellectuals. These groups were shaped by European colonialism, modernization, the expansion of education, and state formation, and aspired to achieve national independence and constitutionalism. Little attention was paid to religious scholars (ulema) because they were largely perceived as gatekeepers of the traditional imperial order who had, in the modern era, lost their influence and status. Focusing mainly on Egypt and Syria, this article seeks to contest the prevailing paradigm by highlighting the contribution of ulema to the fostering of ethnic identities in premodern times, and re-examining their place in the emerging national discourse in the Arab Middle East.

On both sides of the Mediterranean, the first substantial attempts at distinguishing Salafis from Wahhabis took place in the aftermath of the First World War. Examining why this process occurred and how it unfolded provides valuable historical insights, especially into the initial conceptualisations of Salafism. In post-war Europe, the newly invented notion of a so-called Salafi movement emerged for intellectual and political reasons as a foil to the Wahhabi movement—of which it was supposed to represent the good twin. In Arab societies, it was the popularisation and conceptual expansion of the word ‘Salafi’ that eventually caused some Muslims to distinguish it from ‘Wahhabi’ in the late 1920s and allowed others to use ‘Salafi’ as a synonym for ‘Wahhabi’. In each of these cases, the criteria that past intellectuals employed to demarcate the two categories (or not) help us to infer how they understood Salafism and why they outlined its history or its genealogy in the way that they did.