Nobuaki Kondo: Islamic Law and Society in Iran. A Social History of Qajar Tehran. (Royal Asiatic Society Books.) xii, 196 pp. London: Routledge, 2017. ISBN 978 0 415 71137 1.

2018 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 548-550
Author(s):  
Saïd Amir Arjomand
Author(s):  
ULRICH MARZOLPH ◽  
MATHILDE RENAULD

Abstract The collections of the Royal Asiatic Society hold an illustrated pilgrimage scroll apparently dating from the first half of the nineteenth century. The scroll's hand painted images relate to the journey that a pious Shiʿi Muslim would have undertaken after the performance of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Its visual narrative continues, first to Medina and then to the Shiʿi sanctuaries in present-day Iraq, concluding in the Iranian city of Mashhad at the sanctuary of the eighth imam of the Twelver-Shiʿi creed, imam Riḍā (d. 818). The scroll was likely prepared in the early nineteenth century and acquired by the Royal Asiatic Society from its unknown previous owner sometime after 1857. In terms of chronology the pilgrimage scroll fits neatly into the period between the Niebuhr scroll, bought in Karbala in 1765, and a lithographed item most likely dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century, both of which depict a corresponding journey. The present essay's initial survey of the scroll's visual dimension, by Ulrich Marzolph, adds hitherto unknown details to the history of similar objects. The concluding report, by Mathilde Renauld, sheds light on the scroll's material condition and the difficulties encountered during the object's conservation and their solution.


1835 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 248-275
Author(s):  
James Low

The following abstract is taken from Captain Low's history of the provinces wrested from the Burmese during the late war, which, through his friend in this country, was presented to the Royal Asiatic Society. Several portions of it have already been read at the general meetings of the society, and it is intended to continue to give abstracts from it in the successive numbers of this journal, in the confident hope that the British public will speedily call for the entire publication of a work containing the most authentic information respecting a country, our relations with which are daily increasing in value and importance.


1883 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-482
Author(s):  
H. H. Howorth

In tracing out the very crooked story of the history of Central and Eastern Asia, in which we have to deal with a succession of empires founded by a number of races, which have necessarily overrun its more desirable areas, there is only one method of inquiry which seems to be at once safe and fertile. This is to commence with the latest revolutions. To gradually unravel the tangle into which the story has been twisted, by first understanding the latest changes, about which we have abundant evidence, and then to work back to that earlier and more obscure period which must always have a great interest and romance for those who speculate on the origin and early history of our race. This is the method I have ventured to adopt in the series of papers on the Northern Frontagers of China, which I have been permitted, by the favour of the Royal Asiatic Society, to commence in the pages of its Journal, and in which I hope, if allowed, to pass in review the different races who have dominated over Central Asia and China from the earliest times.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-118
Author(s):  
Syaukani Syaukani

An effort to preserve and utilize manuscripts in this archipelago, especially religious manuscripts, is very important due to, at least, two reasons. Firstly, there has been abundant important information pertinent to religious phenomena in the manuscripts. Secondly, physical condition of the manuscripts has been increasingly fragile. Following the process of choosing the manuscript, the author has selected one of the manuscripts preserved in the State Museum of North Sumatra. This study employs the theory of philology, literature and history in analyzing the manuscript. Analyses are focused on the language used, the cultural background of the manuscript, and the social history of the region where it has been written. The findings of this study tell us that the manuscript, named Kashf al-Gharā’ib, is a classical Islamic manuscript which still has been well preserved at the State Museum of North Sumatra. It contains the scientific information of fiqh (Islamic law), especially discussing about the way of worshipping the God. The manuscript also consists of religious poems and problems of adab (ethics). Of the three topics discussed in this manuscript, I give considerable attention on worship and ethical issues.


2004 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 856-858
Author(s):  
Eric Kaufmann

Sami Zubaida's Law and Power in the Islamic World is a fascinating politico-social history of the relations between Islamic law and the procession of political masters who have ruled the Middle East since the Prophet's death. One message is clear: the notion of an omnipotent shariءa, passed from caliph to caliph for fourteen centuries, is a myth held by both Islamist radicals and their Western critics.


1835 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 378-399

The object in collecting and translating the many inscriptions to be met with in India, is, as Mr. Wathen very justly observes in his letter to the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, to elucidate the history of India previous to the Muhammedan conquest. Of that history, but little is yet known: that little to the few only who have devoted the greater part of their lives to this research, and each of those few possessing perhaps a part only of that information which, if combined and moulded into a whole, might, at no distant day, supply this desideratum in our knowledge of the East, without which no accurate notion can be formed of the true character of ancient India, as to its modes of government, laws, and usages


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