The Khojas are a caste-based community that emerged in the fourteenth century across Sindh, Kutch, and Kathiawar.* For centuries, they maintained a distinct identity that blended Hindu and Islamic traditions, which resisted rigid classification within either religious framework. The nineteenth century, however, brought profound change through two major schisms that reshaped their religious and social identity. The first, rooted in disputes over the authority of the Aga Khan, culminated in the 1866 Aga Khan Case and prompted some to align with Sunni Islam. The second, a theological rupture, led to the rise of Isna Ashari Khojas. This shift was influenced by Twelver Shiʿi mujtahids in Najaf and Karbala, who, through Indian Shiʿi ʿulamāʾ and mullās, reshaped Khoja religious identity. This article explores the central role of Twelver Shiʿi networks and their transregional reach in shaping this transformation. It focuses on how changes in legal identity, religious authority, and migratory patterns across Bombay, Zanzibar, and the shrine cities of Iraq contributed to the emergence of a distinct Isna Ashari Khoja identity. In doing so, it situates Khoja transformations within a wider historical context of religious affiliation and social organisation across South Asia and East Africa.

Towards the end of his al-Ghayth al-Musajjam fī Sharḥ Lāmīyat al-ʿAjam, Khalīl ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī (d. 1363/764) aims a peculiar slight at his sometime teacher Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328/728), likening him to two famous executed heretics, al-Suhrawardī (d. circa 1191/587) and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 759/142), in their shared ‘lack of reason’. Though often cited as evidence that al-Ṣafadī held his famous contemporary’s intelligence in low regard, the insult is more specifically aimed at his lack of discretion. In this article, I examine how Ibn Taymiyya is portrayed across the Sharḥ and argue that, when paired with insights from the book about al-Ṣafadī’s own language-centred hermeneutics, we gain a number of interesting insights into this prolific historian and adīb. The first is that he was closely familiar with and even mimicked aspects of the culture of ‘esoteric disclosure’, including in his criticism of Ibn Taymiyya and his indiscretion. Al-Ṣafadī also emerges as something of an exemplar of what Thomas Bauer has called Islam’s ‘cultural ambiguity’, whose final criticism of Ibn Taymiyya and of the heretics to whom he is likened is not any specific one of their beliefs, but rather their inability to exercise discretion in expressing them.

The Dengjue Si 等覺寺 (Dengjue Temple) may be regarded as the most significant Buddhist temple in the Menghua region of Yunnan Province during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The building dates back to the Nanzhao Kingdom (738–902), underwent significant expansion during the Ming Dynasty, and housed the Menghua prefectural Buddhist registry in both the Ming and Qing (1644–1912) periods. The article analyses an important inscription—Chongxiu Dengjue si beiji 重修等覺寺碑記 (Stele of the restoration of the Dengjue Temple)—which meticulously records the historical context of the temple’s construction and restoration, the individuals involved, its architectural layout, and its rise and fall during the early to mid Ming Dynasty. What distinguishes this case is Menghua’s unique status as the reputed birthplace of the Nanzhao royal lineage. The Ming Dynasty conquered Yunnan in 1382, after which it introduced new Confucian ideologies and Buddhist practices, and gradually initiated a programme of social reconstruction. The Zuo family, who claimed descent from the Nanzhao royal family to legitimise and consolidate their authority as native officials (tusi 土司) in Menghua, became the temple’s principal benefactors. Within this context, the restoration of the Dengjue Temple was the result of collaborative efforts among the Ming government, local officials, regional elites, and monastic leaders. By tracing the temple’s history with reference to the roles of these actors, this study presents the Dengjue Temple as a microcosm of Ming frontier governance, religious adaptation, and cultural negotiation.

Wang Yuanlu 王圓籙—the individual who accidentally stumbled upon the ‘library cave’ or Cave 17 at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang in June 1900—is behind one of the world’s most significant discoveries. Yet, in the years that followed, he was also responsible for the scattering of the cave’s contents and selling large chunks to Marc Aurel Stein in 1907 and to Paul Pelliot in 1908. How could the self-appointed guardian of this major Buddhist complex part with one of what is often described as its crowning jewels? This article delves into Wang Yuanlu’s motivations and highlights his agency, demonstrating that he was instrumental in shaping the now so-called Stein collection. One of the key sources for this investigation are the published writings of Marc Aurel Stein, which provide the most detailed descriptions of Wang and his activities during the period of the dispersal of the contents of Cave 17. These are supplemented by information drawn from the relevant parts of Stein’s diaries, Paul Pelliot’s writings, and primary sources and recent scholarship in Chinese that shed a different light on Wang’s doings. The article starts by studying Wang’s relationship with the Mogao Caves and their wider ecosystem. It then looks at the subsequent dispersal of the newly found hoard through his transactions with Stein in 1907 and 1914, which are contrasted with his dealings with Pelliot.

This article traces the figure of the lūṭī in the writings of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (d. 1350) and Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373). These two fourteenth-century scholars adopted a harsh and uncompromising view of the lūṭī as a sexual actor, repeatedly depicting the horrific afterlife punishments awaiting him in Hell. As part of their hyperbolic and extreme depiction of the lūṭī as a damned sexual figure, they imagine him through his communal relationship to his forebears, both among the Qur’anic People of Lūṭ and those like him in his present day. They thereby construct a sexual community of sorts, framing the lūṭī through a parodic repurposing of a strikingly Islamic idiom of belonging and community-building. In doing so, I argue, these texts open up broad possibilities for us to rethink how medieval authors theorised what we might call ‘sexual identity’ and understood sex to construct ways of being in the world around them.

Considerable evidence survives of the cooking and eating of kebabs as a major form of meat consumption in early China. Not only are there numerous artistic depictions in both painting and low-relief stone sculpture of this practice, but there are also some very early excavated skewers, grills, and indeed preserved meat kebabs, not to mention references in contemporary literature, and this evidence significantly predates any documentation of kebabs in the Middle East. However, in spite of this wealth of documentation, this tradition has gone largely unexplored, partly due to scholars failing to understand the relevant terminology and partly due to an unjustified belief that all kebab cooking must derive from the Middle East. This article explores the indigenous ancient Chinese tradition of kebab cooking, focused on grilling and roasting of smaller (luan) or larger (zi) pieces of meat seasoned with soybean pastes and sauces, which developed independently of other similar culinary practices elsewhere. This analysis is focused on literary evidence of the Chinese kebab, with particular reference to the contents of a recently discovered very early cookbook, dating to the Han Dynasty, excavated from the tomb of Wu Yang, first marquis of Yuanling, who died in 162 BCE.

This article attempts to map some of Vietnam’s national identities that were constructed in the early twentieth century (1900s-1930s). Instead of treating Vietnamese national identity either as a monolithic entity or as too fragmented to be considered a useful concept, it shows that at least three interactive and overlapping national identities emerged, each with its own political significance and state institutionalisation. To map them, this article re-traces several key nationalists in the early twentieth century. It situates each of their national imaginations within interconnected global relations, namely, Civilisational relations of hierarchy, cultural relations of equality, and radical relations of exploitation and oppression. This analytical approach to mapping national identity offers a framework that may prove valuable for cross-national comparative studies.

This article recovers the history of the first systematic British attempts to survey the languages of India. Long before George Abraham Grierson proposed his monumental survey of Indian languages at the end of the nineteenth century, the Scottish judge James Mackintosh suggested a similar undertaking to the Literary Society of Bombay in 1806. This article follows those who pursued the project over the next several years. Their efforts stretched across India, the north-west frontier into Afghanistan, east into Burma, as far north as Nepal, and all the way south into Ceylon. Almost all of those involved in these efforts were Scots who were educated at the University of Edinburgh and so, as well as reconstructing a forgotten chapter in the history of British imperialism, this article supplements our pictures of the histories of imperial knowledge production and Scottish orientalism.

In 1770, the Rohilla chief Ḥāfiz̤ Raḥmat Ḵẖān wrote a text called Ḵẖulāṣat ul-Ansāb, focusing on the genealogical and ancestral history of the Rohilla Afghans. This article analyses the text as a glimpse into the emotions he went through—such as anxiety, uncertainty, confidence, determination, and strength—as the ruler of a small principality founded by a new political group in the competitive political milieu of eighteenth-century South Asia. It studies the textual expression of these emotions he experienced during a period that brought both challenges and opportunities for the Rohilla Afghans. It firstly shows how the text served as a means of creating unity among the Rohilla Afghans by elaborating an origin story, adapting them to new circumstances, and legitimising the emerging Rohilla state. Secondly, it discusses how Ḥāfiz̤ Raḥmat aimed to rectify the negative portrayals of the Afghans by Mughal chroniclers and enhance Afghan prestige in northern India by creating a haloed genealogy. Finally, it explains how the text claimed religious legitimacy for the Rohilla Afghans by linking them to the prophets, Muslim invaders of the past, and local religious figures. Overall, this textual analysis contributes to the historiography of eighteenth-century South Asia by studying the political anxieties associated with Rohilla Afghan state formation.

This study argues that trans-contextual migration experiences can lead to various changes in self-identification among multiethnic and multiracial Japanese individuals. This case study examines in-depth interviews with six participants with roots in Japan, Thailand, and Germany through a narrative-based approach. The author discusses the dynamic relationship between contextual and individual factors in influencing self-identification. Through thematic analysis of participant narratives, this exploratory case study identifies four recurring themes; migration can trigger significant changes in self-identification; migration can lead to unresolved mismatches between self-identification and societal categorisation; migration can result in the development of hybrid identifications that transcend rigid ethnic boundaries; and migration to a third cultural context can validate self-identifications in new ways. By examining themes that emerged from participant narratives, this case study illuminates the fluid and complex nature of multiethnic and multiracial self-identifications, particularly how racialisation processes intersect with ethnic identity formation across different national contexts. The study contributes to the growing scholarship on mixedness by emphasizing the importance of a biographical understanding of multiethnic and multiracial self-identifications through the lens of trans-contextual migration experiences.