Romanisation has not been studied from a comparativeperspective so far, although there are a number ofcase studies that focus on particular speechcommunities. In order to fill this gap in theliterature, the articles in this special issue werefirst presented at a workshop, entitled“Romanisation in Comparative Perspective: ExplainingSuccess and Failure”, held at Bilkent University,Ankara, 5–6 September 2007. The workshop addressedthis theme with the specific aim of explaining whyromanisation has been implemented successfully incertain cases and why it has failed in others.Hailing from diverse disciplines, workshopparticipants brought together a variety ofmethodological approaches, which represented achallenge and an opportunity at the same time. Eachparticipant reassessed the story of a success orfailure within the socio-political and historicalcontext of a particular country or region.

During the reign of Patriarch Timothy I (780–823), theChurch of the East continued to expand into Asia.Metropolitans were consecrated for various places tothe east of the Patriarchal see in Baghdad. One ofthese was the enigmatic Metropolitan of the Turks,about whose location scholars have disagreed fordecades. This article seeks to answer the question“Which Turks received the Metropolitan appointed byTimothy?” by systematically examining the differentTurkic groups living in Central Asia at the time.Textual and archaeological evidence is considered insupport of the conclusion and the various motivesand external factors that may have played a role inthe conversion are discussed.

The reconstruction of the library of Eastern medievalJewish scholars and medical practitioners accordingto the Cairo Genizah is a long-term project. In thecourse of the work a Judaeo-Arabic fragment of aunique tabular medical book by Ibn Biklārish (T-SAr.44.218) was identified by the authors of thisarticle.

The fragment is unique in several respects,particularly (a) very few medieval Arabic tabularmedical works are known, (b) only few works byAndalusian Jewish authors of the late 11th or early12th century have been found in the Genizah so far,(c) only one Judaeo-Arabic fragment of IbnBiklārish's Kitāb al-Mustaʿīnī isknown to date.

The main importance of our find is that it is the firsttime that a rare Spanish medical book has appearedin the Cairo Genizah collection. Dozens of theGenizah's fragments have been identified as medicalbooks, but none by a Spanish Jewish author, writtenin Judaeo-Arabic, and tabulated!

Arabic biographical writing is much used as a historical source, and scholars agree that its textuality must be taken into account in evaluating its content. There is less agreement, though, on the importance of thoroughly understanding the range of processes of literary composition used by biographers. This article approaches three sets of biographies from a purely literary viewpoint: two medieval sketches of women, a Sufi and a songstress respectively; three seventeenth-century hagiographies of the physician and theosopher Dāwud al-Anṭākī; and a thirteenth-century portrait of one man of letters, al-Qifṭī, by another, Yāqūt. It concludes that the art and care devoted to shaping such commemorations of individuals is evidence of the aesthetic and cultural importance of biography as an Arabic literary genre.

In this article the author presents an overview of the British Library's Manichaean Turkish text fragments (written in Runic, Manichaean and Sogdo-Uigur script). Besides information on all fragments published so far several pieces of a confession text on the Blessed Small Feast Day are edited in full and compared to parallels in other collections.

This article criticises the conventional interpretationof the first English translation of the Qing penalcode by George Thomas Staunton, and proposes adifferent reading that stresses its role inpromoting a positive image of the legal order inCanton on behalf of the East India Company. Itsuggests that in viewing the translation as aproduct of growing confrontation between twoincompatible legal and cultural systems, ourhistorical literature has radically diminished thescope of Staunton's comparative enterprise and hismethod of translation. Not only did Staunton exploitcontemporary debates on penal reform to emphasisepractical arrangements which overlapped acrossChinese and British jurisdictions, he moreimportantly sought to valorise the Company's role inmaintaining the jurisdictional status quo in whatwas patently an unstable and hybrid legalenvironment in Canton. However, the latterprerogative promoted a flattering and partialconception of jurisdictional ambiguity in Canton. Itelided the Company's role in proliferatinginstability in Canton, and presented legalaccommodation as a unilateral concession by the Qingfrom the severity of their own laws. This articleaddresses the intimate connections between thepluralist and pragmatic aspects of Staunton'sproject. It shows how, even though its pluralism hasbeen forgotten, its pragmatic conceits concerningthe origins of extraterritoriality have left alasting impact on the historiography of Sino-Westernrelations.

This paper explores the varied reactions of the Turkishliterati and intelligentsia to the adoption of theRoman script imposed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in1928. Though alphabet reform had been on the agendafor almost 75 years, few intellectuals andbureaucrats had been supportive of romanisation inthe years preceding the move. However after theimplementation of the reform, opponents remainedsilent or were seemingly converted. This articlediscusses the reasons behind the silence andconversion of the elites and the strategies ofopposition developed by more radical defenders ofthe Ottoman script. Finally it records the impact ofthe reform on the literary world and literaryhistoriography.

In post-revolution Iran, the sacred notion of martyrdomhas been transformed into a routine act ofgovernment – a moral sign of order and statesovereignty. Moving beyond the debates of thesecularisation of the sacred and the making sacredof the secular, this article argues that the momentof sacralisation is realised through co-productionwithin a social setting when the object ofsacralisation is recognised as such by others. Incontemporary Iran, however, the moment ofsacralising bodies by the state is also the momentof its own subversion as the political-theologicalfield of martyrdom is contested and challenged fromwithin. This article traces the genealogy ofmartyrdom in contemporary Iran in order to exploreits institutionalised forms and governmentalpractices. During the revolution, the Shi'atradition of martyrdom and its dramatic performancesof ritual mourning and self-sacrifice became centralto the mass mobilisation against the monarchy. Oncethe revolutionary government came into existence,this sacred tradition was regulated to create‘martyrs’ as a fixed category, in order toconsolidate the legacy of the revolution. In thispolitical theatre, the dead body is a site oftransformation and performance upon which theoriginal narrative of martyrdom takes place even asit displaces it and gives new meanings to the act.

This paper investigates the nature of the British andForeign Bible Society's (BFBS) patronage of thetranslation of the Chinese Union Versions(CUVs), the largest Chinese ProtestantBible translation project initiated by the westernProtestant churches in the nineteenth century.Drawing on André Lefevere's concept of patronage, itdelves into how the BFBS served as a controllingfactor of the translation of theCUV by examining the BFBS'sfinancial support to the translation project,conferment of honorary titles to the translators andideological influence on the translators’ choice ofGreek text as the basis for theCUVs New Testamenttranslation.

Patronage by the royal court of religious institutionsand foundations is one of the hallmarks of thedevelopment of India under the rule of the Gupta andVākāṭaka kings (4th–5th centuries). This patronagewas extended also to religious movements other thanthe king's own persuasion. The evolving culture ofreligious tolerance and enthusiasm is apparent inthe temple monuments of the time. In this article wefocus on four archeological sites where thesedevelopments become best visible: Udayagiri,Māṇḍhaḷ, Rāmagiri (Ramtek), and Mansar. The closerelationship of the Gupta and Vākāṭaka realms isinvestigated in its local settings. Renewedattention is given to the ‘Mandhal Inscription, Year5’ of the Vākāṭaka king Rudrasena II and the deityon whose authority the charter was issued:Muṇḍasvāmin. It is argued that the name Muṇḍa refersto no one else than the Gupta queen of Rudrasena II,Prabhāvatī Guptā. During the last decade,excavations in Mansar (5 km west of Ramtek) havebrought to light the state sanctuary of the youngestson of Prabhāvatī, Pravarasena II. The findingsthere are placed within the tradition that can betraced back, through Rāmagiri and Māṇḍhaḷ, to thereligious foundations in Udayagiri.

Like other elements of culture, alphabets have bothpractical and ethnopolitical integrating ordifferentiating significance. Hence, any alphabetchange has serious political implications. Thisarticle will briefly consider the process ofromanisation undertaken in the six newly independentMuslim states that were part of the Soviet Union(Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,Turkmenistan and Tajikistan); and then evaluate itssuccess or failure and attempt to explain the causesfor these phenomena.

This article describes in detail the beginning of aviation in Egypt, with special reference to the Great Week of Aviation at Heliopolis in 1910, and the effect of this new technology on Egyptians. With the exception of a few flights in North Africa made by French pilots in late 1909, it also describes the first flights in the Arab world. Based primarily on contemporary Egyptian Arabic newspapers, it recounts how a group of colonial entrepreneurs sponsored a great aviation meeting at Heliopolis in order to promote their development of the ‘Oasis of Heliopolis’, or ‘Ayn Shams/Misr al-Jadida, as a new suburb of Cairo. The article focuses on the concept for the meeting, the first flights in Egypt before the meeting, the promotion of the meeting, and the international competitors and their performances. It then summarises the consequences of the meeting for aviation in general, aviation in Egypt – including the reaction of Egyptians to aviation – and the development of Heliopolis.

One of the features of the Gupta-Vākāṭaka age is thegrowth of Śaivism. In this article some of theepigraphical evidence for this process is assembledand discussed. While the direct evidence for theadoption of Śiva worship among the Guptas is limitedto ministers of the Gupta court, it is clear thatthe Vākāṭaka kings were predominantly Māheśvaras.New fragmentary wall inscriptions uncovered fromMansar, the site of Pravarasena II's palace, hint ata possible connection with the teachings of theŚvetāśvatara-Upaniṣad. Twopost-Gupta inscriptions from the area aroundMandasor are discussed in the light of a tendencytowards religious hierarchisation, an attitude whichcame to be increasingly characteristic of earlymedieval Śaivism. In the second part attention isdrawn to the variety of Pāśupata and Māheśvaraworship in the Gupta-Vākāṭaka age, as well as to thetrifold organisation of the Pāśupata movement. Thearticle ends with a note on the interaction withnon-Śaiva traditions, in particular Buddhism, andits possible impact upon the formation of thePāśupata movement.

The problem tackled in this article is ambitious.Through examination of how certain fundamentalteachings of the Buddha originated – the authorargues that those teachings must indeed go back tothe Buddha himself. Thus the author builds a chainof argument which creates hypothetical links ratherthan declaring ‘a priori’ that links and connectioncannot be established.

This article argues that the Alagaddūpama Sutta, animportant early Buddhist text, portrays the Buddhain the process of formulating his thoughts. If so itcontradicts the myth that the Buddha awakened to theentire Buddhist Dharma on one occasion, and shouldbe dated to the fourth century bce. Such anantiquity, and peculiar didactic structure suggeststhat the text contains authentic teachings of theBuddha.

Writing systems are used as, and considered to be,important tools and symbols of political discoursesof their time. This article presents a historicaloverview of the alphabet changes in Azerbaijan andshows how the alphabets were associated with thediscourses of modernisation, nationalism andnational identity construction. In the earlytwentieth century, the discussion on the need toshift from the Arabic alphabet to the Roman wasactually an extension of the wider debate onnational identity and language coupled with the willto modernise and progress. In 1940, the Sovietregime imposed the shift from the Roman alphabet tothe Cyrillic in a top-down manner. This change wasneither negotiated nor discussed among theintellectuals and there was almost no room for theexpression of critical views. With the introductionof glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s,intellectuals started to question to what extent theCyrillic alphabet and the Russian language couldrepresent the Azerbaijani language, civilisation,and national identity. In 1991, Azerbaijan adoptedthe Roman alphabet. The case of Azerbaijan showsthat alphabet changes are symbolic acts to denyand/or reject the previous political and culturalheritage and its legitimacy and tools forundermining its prominence in the new processes oftransformation and change.

The overwhelming importance of Kurdish, both language and literature, in Turkish Kurdistan has tended to push all other languages into the background, though some of them are spoken by large and important populations. Zazaki and its literature is one of these that has received far less attention than it deserves, many educated people outside of Turkish Kurdistan being hardly aware of its existence. In this article I have presented the content of fragments from a new Zazaki source. These fragments were fortunately preserved in the binding cover of an old book, which seems to give us at least one of the neglected sources from which the Zazaki writers drew, and carries us back into the memories and the doctrines of the Zazaki community. It has great value as a document of the history of Alevism in Eastern Anatolia.

The Rev. Dr A.A. Führer lived to the age ofseventy-seven. Herein is examined his first fortyyears. Trained as an Oriental Linguist, Führereventually found employment as a fieldarchaeologist. Three years after his appointment,the Archaeological Survey of India entered the worstcrisis of its existence. Führer reacted in waysincompatible with scholarly integrity. It remains tobe seen whether he committed further transgressionsand or forgeries during his final thirty-sevenyears.

The aim of this article is to describe and explainmultiple processes of alphabet reform andromanisation with which Uzbekistan has experimentedsince the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. These reforms,which were debated and implemented in differentsocio-political and cultural contexts, illustrateessentially different stages of politicaldevelopment and experiences. While in the pastreformers tended toward more complicated and rapidreforms, today the scope of change is much moremodest and we meet with changes which are simplerand extended over the long term.

Both interdenominational co-operation and denominational competition featured in the Protestant missionary literary enterprise in nineteenth-century China. The interdenominational Religious Tract Society in London became the most vital link between the missionary translators, printing presses and target audiences in the production, publication and distribution of Christian tracts. Ideally, interdenominational missions would pool resources and promote cooperation among missionaries with different denominational affiliations. Doctrinal disputes, however, seem to have been inevitable among them in the everyday operation of missions. The first tract committee established in China, the Shanghai Tract Committee in the 1840s is a case in point. Unequal denominational representation resulted in heated doctrinal controversies and the resignation of a Committee member over the publication of a problematic tract in Chinese.