Many classical Islamic sources argue that it is not permissible for non-Muslims to reside in the Ḥijāz, especially Mecca and Medina. Such arguments are usually based on a famous Prophetic saying, “Two religions should not join/remain in the peninsula/land of the Arabs”, and on the reported action taken by the second caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb to remove non-Muslims from settlements in western Arabia. In this article, it is argued that the contradictory nature of the evidence for this expulsion casts serious doubt on whether such a widespread action actually took place, certainly not in the decades immediately following Muḥammad's death. It concludes that the widely attested classical prohibition on non-Muslims residing in the Ḥijāz rather had much more to do with the gradually evolving need to draw up firmer communal boundaries, which could help distinguish Muslims from others, and the role played by sacred spaces in doing so.

From medieval times until today ideas of heredity through lineage and of merit through slave status have jostled for pre-eminence as explanations for transitions of Mamluk royal authority. This article contributes to this debate through an analysis of events in late 1341 marking the transition from the reign of one of the sultanate's most successful rulers, al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn, to that of his sons. This is achieved by focusing on the whereabouts of one of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad's most powerful agents, Qūṣūn al-Sāqī al-Nāṣirī, and on how this amir monopolized power in Egypt and Syria in such a way that his accession to the sultanate seemed inevitable. The article then demonstrates how things went wrong for Qūṣūn and how his failed attempt to obtain the sultanate triggered a Qalāwūnid dynastic succession practice that was to remain dominant for many decades.

This article analyses the teaching of international law in the late Ottoman Empire. It argues that the Ottomans were interested in teaching European international law to equip Ottoman bureaucrats with the skills necessary for evaluating and regulating the complex interrelation between the Ottoman Empire and the European states, to defend the vital interests of the Empire against European legal penetration via extraterritoriality, and to understand the legal basis of the European system of which the Empire had officially been accepted as a part by the European Great Powers since the conclusion of the Treaty of Paris in 1856. The article focuses on the courses, scholars and textbooks in the field of international law in the Ottoman Empire during three periods. The preliminary period (1859–76), witnessed the emergence of the first courses, scholars and literature on international law; in the Hamidian period (1876–1908) these courses were stabilized and systematized in line with higher education reforms in the Ottoman Empire; and finally, in the post-Hamidian period, the opening of new schools of law in the countryside and the reformation of existing schools allowed the teaching and literature of international law to flourish.

In 688/1289 Nawrūz Aqa, a leading Mongol magnate, began a rebellion in Khurasan to resist the Ilkhan Arghun's attempts to centralize power and loosen the Mongol aristocracy's grip on provincial government. The rebellion of Nawrūz was significantly different from any Mongol uprising that had occurred in the Ilkhanate to that date: it was distinguished by the successful fusion of Chinggisid and Islamic traditions of political and spiritual authority to support Nawrūz's challenge against the Hülegüid monarchy. This new hybrid political philosophy allowed Nawrūz to mobilize both the sedentary and nomadic populations of Khurasan to overhaul the power structure of the Ilkhanate. The present study of the early career and rebellion of Amīr Nawrūz will reveal how his movement forced the Turco-Mongolian leadership to reconfigure its political, social and religious relationships, among themselves and with the sedentary Muslim population they ruled.

The term aṣ̌a- stands in the centre of ancient Iranian thought. It is a pivotal concept in Zoroastrian religious lore, but is not, in its significance, coeval with Zoroastrianism. As an object of eschatological longing, aṣ̌a- has Indo-Iranian roots. It is, in Old and Middle Persian texts, primarily understood as a synecdoche for the divine sphere where the religiously dutiful expect to lead a blessed mental existence after death. Aṣ̌a- is also a deity of the Old Avestan pantheon, thus a deified concept. Finally, the term is regularly used in the Gāthās as both the authoritative instance of measuring human (religious) conduct, and the normative goal of therapeutic (eschatological) activity. In this latter usage, too, and in agreement with its form and etymology, aṣ̌a- signifies a concrete phenomenon. There are good reasons to think that this phenomenon is the world as it was “put together” by Ahura Mazdā, and only subsequently sickened by the forces of deception. Translations to date, such as “truth” and “order”, are examined, all of which are shown to have serious problems. In conclusion I propose to translate aṣ̌a- as “cosmos”.

The valley of Dantig in Amdo plays a central role in Tibetan Buddhist historical literature as the place where the monastic code was maintained during the tenth century after the dissolution of the monasteries in central Tibet. This article shows that a manuscript (now kept at the British Library) carried by a Chinese pilgrim monk through this region in the 960s, which mentions Dantig, is the only direct documentary evidence of Tibetan monastic culture in this region at this time. The authors also show how the name Dantig, which has been previously unexplained, derives from the Sudāna Sūtra, a Buddhist narrative of exile and return that is directly relevant to the aspirations of the refugee monks from central Tibet who settled in the region.

This paper argues that sura 53 contains a number of problems, of which the most intractable is the question: who is speaking in the oracular, part I? The answer is not God, nor is it easy to see how it could be the Prophet. Since the Prophet is undoubtedly responsible for the sura as a whole, the solution tentatively proposed here is that he found part I in an earlier text current among his people, such as a collection of oracular verdicts.

This article examines philological problems relating to descriptions defining the tathāgatagarbha, or “buddha-nature”, in Sanskrit sūtras and exegetical literature, together with the variant Tibetan translations of these descriptions in the bKa’ ’gyur and bsTan ’gyur. Attention is called also to some possible philosophical implications of these variant descriptions.

The mid-fifteenth-century Taoist Canon (Zhengtong daozang 正統道藏) contains five specimens of a religious artefact called “Great Peace Symbol” (“Taiping fu” 太平符), dispersed between five texts spanning about a millennium. The introduction to this paper discusses the meaning of the Chinese word fu 符 and its most widely used English rendition, “talisman”. The article briefly presents the source of each specimen, attempts a deconstruction of its morphology, and analyses its modus operandi, thus providing a basic methodological model to outline the historical evolution of the category of “fu” artefacts from early medieval portable devices endowed with specific apotropaic functions – like charms and amulets – to multipurpose ritual implements designed for use within the framework of early modern Taoist liturgy. The epilogue introduces a sixth specimen, differently named but morphologically and functionally related to the latest three “Great Peace Symbols”.

In Quran 7:163–6, God punishes the inhabitants of “a town by the sea” who have collected fish from the sea on a Sabbath by transforming them into apes (qirada). Almost none of the attempts to find a precedent for this punishment in pre-Islamic texts have been plausible. This article argues that this scene reflects post-biblical traditions referring to Numbers 11:19–20. This biblical passage deals with the Israelites who consumed quails that had come from the sea; they were doomed to partake of the meat until it came out of their nostrils and became loathsome to them. This was their punishment after having expressed their discontent with the manna, while craving for meat and fish and vegetables. The midrashic sources describe various obnoxious bodily effects which the meat of the quails had on their unrestrained eaters. It will be suggested that the punitive transformation into apes, suffered by the people of the town by the sea who ate fish, represents the Quranic reshaped version of the bodily infliction which the quail eaters suffered as a result of eating the quails that came from the sea. In support of this suggestion, several points common to the biblical quail eaters and the Quranic people of the “town by the sea” will be highlighted.

This paper investigates the belated formation of the China Bible House, the first national Bible society in China, as a result of the interplay between the politics of foreign Bible societies and the indigenizing Chinese church in relation to rising nationalism during the Republican era. The challenge of Chinese nationalism to Christianity drove foreign Bible societies and Chinese Protestants to work towards the indigenization of Bible work. However, distrust and conflicts hindered foreign Bible societies' co-operation among themselves and also with Chinese Protestants. While Chinese church leaders saw the founding of a Chinese Bible society as a manifestation of the Chineseness of the Protestant church in China, they agreed with foreign Bible societies on the global identity of Bible work, which justified the latter's continuing presence in China. This understanding, together with the need for foreign financial support and expertise, explains why Sino-foreign co-operation existed in Bible work in China.

Ban Gu's compilation of the Han shu may be seen in the context of a number of intellectual and religious developments. By his time the idea of the Tian ming and the theory of the Wu xing were being applied to imperial times. Officials were quoting the sayings of Kongzi to support their arguments, and the writings of distinguished scholars such as Jing Fang, Liu Xiang, Liu Xin and Yang Xiong were well known. The religious controversies that had begun in the reign of Chengdi had died down. The pursuit of scholarship had received a new impetus thanks partly to the discussions held in 79 ce. Ban Gu drew somewhat freely on existing literature, being prudent to select material that would not arouse enmity; his sister called on official documents to complete her part of the history. As an innovator Ban Gu introduced chapters on subjects that had not been treated in the Shi ji, such as bibliography and the laws. Ready to criticize the actions of officials or the character of an emperor openly, he also contrived to do so implicitly.

The mark known as the “trace of prostration” (sīmā) that is mentioned in the Quran is well established in Islam as being a physical blemish on the forehead. Such marks on the forehead are widespread in religious traditions, often denoting community membership and piety. The Quranic instance fits this tendency. The forelock is also a symbol associated with the forehead that the Quran mentions, although that piece of hair carries negative connotations. This common feature of a person's appearance can, in other cultural situations, denote membership and piety just like a mark on the forehead. The vocabulary of the Quran incorporates images from the past, although the evidence is too slight to allow origins to be traced; popular religious ideas and practices have many sources beyond scripture.

Many scholars have stressed that regional dynamics led to the outbreak of the Musin Rebellion, the largest rebellion in eighteenth-century Korea. Scholars have examined the economic and political situation leading up to the violence and concluded that political marginalization caused Kyŏngsang Province elites (from the Southerner faction) to launch the rebellion. This paper analyses evidence from official sources about rebel motivations, rebel geographical associations and the court view of the causes. Although post-rebellion government statements acknowledge tensions between the court and many Kyŏngsang Province elites, rebel testimony showed no evidence of any anger about discrimination against elites from a single region. There is also inconsistent evidence of regional concerns in the membership of the rebel organization, which was drawn from three southern provinces and mainly concentrated around the capital. My findings challenge the conclusions of regionalist scholars and place the Musin Rebellion in a trajectory of late Chosŏn rebellion that was attempting to redress factional political discrimination and was not caused by regional concerns.

Berber in the Sahara and southern Morocco, and several West African languages including Soninké, Mandinka and Songhay, all refer to the five Islamic daily prayers using terms not derived from their usual Arabic names, and showing striking mutual similarities. The motivation behind these names has not hitherto been explained. An examination of Islamic sources reveals that many correspond to terms attested within Arabic from an early period but which have passed out of use elsewhere. Others, with a more limited distribution, reflect transfer from a time-keeping system widely attested among Berber-speaking oases of the northern Sahara. These results demonstrate that the variant prayer terminologies attested in the ḥadith reflect popular usages that were still commonplace at the time when North Africa was conquered, and underscore the conservatism of non-Arabic Islamic religious terminology in and around the Sahara.

Digitized text repositories (such as al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr, al-Maktaba al-Shāmila and Maktabat Ahl al-Bayt) open new horizons in the study of early Islamic history. By employing them it was found that ʿAbdallāh ibn Masʿūd had at least four courts, two in Kūfa and two in Medina, and at least two estates cultivated by sharecroppers, one in Rādhān near Kūfa and another in Saylaḥīn near Qādisiyya. His situation is comparable to that of a member of the pre-Islamic Sassanian landed aristocracy of absentee landlords. He also had three households in three different places. The desire for control and worldly assets is human, and those who lack it never make it to the highest echelons of power. Put differently, hagiography should not be mistaken for historiography. Whether or not Ibn Masʿūd's Rādhān should be linked with the Rādhānite Jewish merchants remains an open question.

Almost five decades ago the late Stanislaw Chojnacki, one of the founding fathers of Ethiopian art history, began the task of describing the themes in Christian Ethiopian painting. Since then, others have contributed to the study of different subjects in Ethiopian art. Yet there are still gaps in our understanding of Ethiopian iconography. The aim of this study is to help fill these gaps by offering some remarks on the iconography of the Holy Women at the Tomb in fourteenth-century Ethiopian manuscript illumination.