Despite the expansion of research on South Asian courtesans, there has been no attempt at a critical historiography on courtesans alone. Within this larger gap, the specific connections between travel, mobility, and female performers in South Asia have not been adequately theorised. By making a critical intervention into the historiography of courtesans, we hope to aid in the establishment of what could be termed ‘South Asian courtesan studies’ as a recognised field of scholarship. Foregrounding the historical method for research into courtesans, the articles here show that beyond conventional ethnographic sources, there is a rich textual, visual, and material archive, largely unexplored until recently. They reveal both the transnational and local, and the spectacular and quotidian circuits of female performers’ travels. These include religious sites and participation in rites of passage like weddings but also extend beyond South Asia into the theatre spectacles and exhibitions of Europe. In the context of empire, this volume maps how female performers travelled in local, regional, and transnational contexts, and whether they were able to transcend the hypersexualised colonial trope of the ‘nautch girl’. This special issue offers a sample of the new developments in this growing field to catalyse its further expansion.

Village India, edited by McKim Marriott and included in a series on cultures and civilisations edited by Robert Redfield and Milton Singer, was a widely read and influential book published in 1955 at the beginning of the ‘village studies era’ in modern Indian anthropology. For Redfield and Singer, the two main questions were whether the Indian village as a ‘little community’ was ‘isolable’, and how Indian culture and civilisation could be understood through village studies. But for several of the eight contributing authors to Village India, especially M. N. Srinivas—who edited India’s Villages, also published in 1955—the principal subject matter was the structure of the village community itself, together with its unity and autonomy, and most readers tended to take the same view. There were various reasons for this, including Redfield and Singer’s failure to explain the book’s aims and objectives clearly in their foreword. Moreover, only Marriott seriously discussed their question about understanding Indian civilisation. Also important was Louis Dumont and David Pocock’s article reviewing both Village India and India’s Villages. Dumont and Pocock’s insistence that the village is not a crucial ‘social fact’ in India, together with Srinivas’s later response, strengthened the belief that the village’s ‘sociological reality’ and unity, rather than its relationship with Indian civilisation, was the key question discussed in Village India. This retrospective analysis of Village India sheds new light on its production and reception, and on its role in the development of modern Indian anthropology.

A few years after Singapore was founded, Lady Sophia Raffles sponsored a school for girls started by the wife of a London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary. This and several other early attempts at female education by missionary women linked to LMS or the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) were largely forgotten by historians. Then there were girls’ schools operated by the Protestant Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (SPFEE) in Britian; the secular Singapore Institution founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles; and the Catholic Convent of Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) linked to Sœurs de l’Enfant Jésus-Nicolas Barré (EJNB) in France, followed by others. As there were many pioneering schools and some better-known ones tend to overshadow others, recent studies often contain inconsistent information as to which were the earliest schools, when they started, and who and which organisations were involved. This article uses primary sources from several archives to reconstruct the stories of the first Western-style girls’ schools on the island to hopefully clarify matters and close some knowledge gaps for readers interested in the history of female education in the early decades of colonial Singapore.

This article examines the cyclical nature of monetisation and demonetisation in Taizhou (台州) during the Song and Yuan dynasties. By analysing local fiscal policies, taxation systems, and economic structures, it reveals a complex process of monetary evolution. The Song Dynasty saw significant fiscal monetization, driven by military needs and implemented through innovative tax systems. However, the Yuan Dynasty witnessed a partial reversal, with a shift towards physical taxation and reduced monetary demands. This research highlights the interplay between central government policies, local fiscal structures, and broader economic trends. It challenges linear models of economic development and emphasises the importance of regional variations in understanding historical monetisation processes.

This article discusses the official discourse that appeared in Macau’s Portuguese-language media and the documentaries that were shot there by Portuguese filmmakers in the 1960s and 1970s, especially focusing on the productions that followed the 123 Incident and which largely functioned as a response to it. These riots occurred in December 1966, when Chinese residents of Macau used Cultural Revolution-like protests to contest what they viewed as an inefficient and unfair Portuguese administration. They had a long-lasting and deep impact, weakening Portuguese colonial rule and increasing the influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and local Maoists in Macau. In an attempt to counter the image-damage caused by the incident and legitimise Portuguese sovereignty in the territory during what was its worst crisis in the post-war period, Portuguese official discourse and these films came to promote Macau as a site of ‘miraculous’ development and modernisation that had as its basis Luso-Chinese partnership. Furthermore, Macau was advocated as an exemplary case of good neighbourhood policy towards the PRC and of coexistence at all levels, particularly ethnically and politically. This, it was suggested, made it a unique place and a model for the world in a time of cold war.

Mughal historiography has primarily focused on the lives of royal women vis-à-vis the harem and the imperial court. Looking at the entanglements of power, gender, and social capital, this article attempts to study another group of women—courtesans—as cultural and economic agents in early modern North India. The aim here is to move away from an empire-centric study of women and look closely at non-royal women who normally figure peripherally in official sources. The article locates them within the monetary and non-monetary transactions of the slave trade and explores how it acted as a form of generating social capital for such women. Since possession of slaves was a mark of distinction and affluence, the article argues that a section of courtesans, by being slave owners, belonged to the upper strata of the economic class. Moreover, relaxations in taxes as well as gifts and rewards further show that these courtesans managed to gain a foothold in the socio-political sphere. In this manner, they can be considered liminal actors who belonged to mobile communities, both geographically and socially. Departing from a homogenised narrative, the article shows that courtesans functioned within a patriarchal system that simultaneously empowered and marginalised them.

This article examines the transregional life and typographic legacy of a 24-point Ottoman naskh printing type (MI-24), developed in 1867 by the Ottoman–Armenian punch-cutter Oḥannes Mühendisyan in collaboration with the court calligrapher Ḳāżīʿasker Muṣṭafá ʿİzzet Efendi. Celebrated for its exceptional calligraphic fidelity and mechanical refinement, MI-24 emerged as the pinnacle of Arabic-script typography in the Ottoman empire. Drawing on previously unexamined archival materials, this study reconstructs MI-24’s production, dissemination, and adaptation across a wide geography—from Istanbul to Beirut, Cairo, Tehran, Kabul, and even Chicago, London and Oxford. It explores how regional actors including Jesuit missionaries, Armenian type-founders, Arab Nahḍa intellectuals, and European Orientalists engaged with and modified this typographic model to suit diverse cultural, religious, and technological needs. In tracing these typographic networks, the article situates MI-24 at the intersection of Islamic visual culture, print modernity, and global knowledge circulation. Far from being a product confined to Istanbul’s imperial presses, MI-24 became a mobile and malleable artefact—reshaped by local aesthetics and political agendas. Ultimately, this article reframes Arabic-script typography as a dynamic site of visual negotiation and transimperial collaboration, contributing to broader discourses on print culture, design history, and the materialities of Islamicate text production.

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.

Focusing on the late eighteenth-century kulliyat by Lutf un-Nisa ‘Imtiyāz’ (1733?–?), arguably the first published Urdu poetess, this article seeks to explore the mobility—primarily metaphorical rather than physical—of a remarkable woman overlooked in historical accounts dominated by the male gaze. This mobility is enacted through her metaphysical, emotional, and literary navigation of time and space, rather than through geographic movement. Imtiyāz’s maṣnavī, functioning as an autobiography, employs time and space metaphors to offer a counter-archive for early women’s writing, providing a unique perspective into early modern feminine subjectivities. The examination underscores Imtiyāz’s agency in shaping her narrative, intertwining religious intercessions, canonical compositions, and literary sophistication. The metaphoric navigation through space and time illustrates the resilience and creativity of this woman, transcending her geographical and temporal constraints. At its core, Imtiyāz’s maṣnavī stands as a testament to her innovation, interwoven with convention through life-writing, crafting a rich narrative tapestry resonating within and beyond South Asian realms.

This article explores the evolving relationship between li (rites) and fa (law) in early China amidst social transformations. It demonstrates that although li and law initially existed in tension following the publication of penal law in the late Spring and Autumn period, they gradually moved towards the process of reconciliation through Shang Yang’s legal reforms in Qin and Xunzi’s theoretical synthesis during the Warring States period. Ultimately, the integration of li into Qin’s legal framework marked the culmination of this process, with li and law collectively structuring the state’s social and familial hierarchies. The article demonstrates that the convergence of li and law was based on their shared nature as impersonal and authoritative rules regulating socio-political life beyond specific circumstances, while their differing scopes and methods of enforcement were gradually harmonised.

This article seeks out the spaces and strategies through which hereditary women performers enacted mobility and articulated power in early modern South Asia. The fraught relationship between a Multan-based courtesan, Murad Bakhsh, and a Durrani aristocrat of Dera Ghazi Khan, Muhammad Raza Khan Pupalza’i, is at the heart of Raza’s Persian memoir titled Jaur-o-Jafā, which is written in a distinctive literary style and lavishly illustrated with several miniature paintings. While overtly about the romantic entanglements of Murad and Raza, the story offers us a window into the cultural history of south-western Punjab during the political tumult of the late eighteenth century. It features a range of characters, including Multan’s last Durrani ruler, Muzaffar Khan (1775–1818), and a vast retinue of courtiers, musicians, and messengers embroiled in Raza and Murad’s love–hate story. The article focuses on the many journeys Murad took during her life, highlighting her ‘courtesanly mobility’. Written by her paramour-turned-enemy, we read Jaur-o-Jafā against the grain to amplify the voice of Murad Bakhsh in order to highlight the arc of her mobility, resistance, and agency in defying the limits of both patriarchal honour and the determining social, legal, and political positionalities of women in the region.

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.

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.

While the social and political contributions of Iranian Shii émigré scholars to the early modern Deccan have attracted some scholarly attention, the actual contents of their intellectual production remain understudied. An important reason for this is the broader neglect of the corpus of commentaries and translations in the early modern Islamicate world. To address this gap, this article analyses the ways in which Ibn Khātūn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1059/1649) combines the genres of translation and gloss in his Persian rendition of a hadith collection by Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1030/1621). After providing an overview of translation projects of Shii texts in the Deccan and a biographical sketch of Ibn Khātūn, I examine the latter’s translation and commentarial strategies. I show how, by merging elements of translation and gloss into his text, the author addresses the needs of an intellectual milieu characterised by a high level of pedagogical engagement in the transmission of Shii knowledge.

This article explores the changing trajectories of tawa’ifs—highly trained female performers of music and dance—in colonial North India, with a focus on their mobility and evolving patronage relationships. As British colonial policies and reformist moral discourses shattered long-standing networks of courtly support, tawa’ifs increasingly travelled between regional centres in search of livelihood and artistic relevance. Focusing on the princely state of Rampur, this study explores the complex interactions, power dynamics, and social hierarchies between Muslim female performers, middlemen, and elite patrons, particularly in the context of public festivals and fairs. Based on handwritten petitions, letters, and poems in Urdu and Persian, as well as vernacular print sources, the article argues that princely patronage was not static but adapted to the pressures of colonial modernity and wider pan-regional transformations. It also shows that post-1857 Lucknow remained a vital hub for recruitment, training, and trade. By tracing female performers across princely and colonial contexts, the article illuminates how their mobility and professional flexibility expanded alongside rising social stigmatisation and the intensifying conflation of courtesans with sex workers.

Most literature on tawa’ifs remains confined to specific princely states or cities in colonial India. Making ‘travel’ its central framework, this article tries to bring the movement and mobilities of tawa’ifs into sharper focus. Engaging with the formidable research that has emerged since the publication of Veena Oldenburg’s essay on the Lucknow tawa’ifs in 1990, I propose we approach their travels as itinerant subjects through a nuanced framework that distinguishes between the different types of journeys they undertake. Turning our focus on the trajectories and movements of tawa’ifs, I shall argue, makes room for more embedded and rigorous histories of women performers in late colonial India. A conceptual attempt, this article explores the possibilities of locating performers as subjects within complex networks of travel and mobilities. This peripatetic aspect of tawa’ifs’ lives will hence become visible as distinct types of mobilities—journeys of migration; travel in search of sustenance and patronage; types of displacement; exploitative circuits of exhibitions and displays; and in most cases, a crucial means of identity-making. In this article, tawa’ifs’ travels will thus move between princely courts, towns, cities, and regions, and even across continents.

This article examines the endurance of timbering and rafting along the upper Yellow River in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a case study of Fernand Braudel’s ‘social time’ of that critical section of the waterway, marked by intensified commerce and shifting political dynamics. The Muslim consolidation of midstream Ningxia, anchored in upstream Linxia, exemplified how Hui economic dominance intertwined with territorial control. These networks, later repurposed to support China’s resistance against Japanese imperialism, were abruptly disrupted by mid–twentieth-century dam construction and socialist collectivisation. Beyond economic history, the article interrogates historiographical silences surrounding Hui economic territorialisation. While external observers, including Republican officials and Japanese strategists, acknowledged Hui commercial monopolies, state historiography under the People’s Republic of China has often downplayed them to maintain narratives of ethnic harmony. Analysing cinematic representations across different eras of the twentieth century, the article further argues that film serves as a counterpoint to official narratives, offering an alternative medium where Hui agency and economic territoriality are articulated and contested. By bridging economic history, historiography, and visual culture, this study highlights the political stakes of ethnic commerce and the ways in which Hui identity has been shaped and reshaped across different political regimes.

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.

This article shows that the Qarāmiṭa (a Muslim group) strategically adapted the Islamic concept of the Mahdī to align with the spiritual figure of Jesus in order to render their eschatological message more acceptable within the Christian milieu of Syria. More broadly, however, it argues that the Qarāmiṭa’s discourse engaged with Christian theology, which also involved ideas of divine manifestation, the identification of the Qarāmiṭa’s leader Yaḥyā b. Zikrawayh (d. 290/903) with John the Baptist, and even the symbolic redirection of the qibla and ḥajj towards Jerusalem. The article examines what may be described as a pseudo-Christian discourse surrounding the figure of Yaḥyā b. Zikrawayh in Syria. The study considers two pathways leading to the establishment of such pseudo discourse. First, such Christianised motifs may have been deliberately employed by the Qarāmiṭa themselves as a strategy to attract wider audiences and reinforce the legitimacy of their movement. This examination will offer a new perspective on the probability of how the Qarāmiṭa sought legitimacy via adapting their so-called Mahdīist discourse for a non-Muslim society and ideology. Second, this Christian colouring was later reinforced by sources seeking to demonise and marginalise those who stood outside the authorities’ official position. This article critically examines the development of this syncretic Mahdīist narrative by analysing the problematic nature of these sources that document these adaptations. The analysis therefore moves between the rhetoric of the preachers and the historiographical framing by their opponents, showing how both contributed to shaping the image of a pseudo-Christian Mahdīist movement in Syria.

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.