{"id":22496,"date":"2025-09-12T17:18:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T16:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/?p=22496"},"modified":"2025-09-13T11:07:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T10:07:15","slug":"april-edition-of-jras-available-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royalasiaticsociety.org\/april-edition-of-jras-available-online\/","title":{"rendered":"April Edition of JRAS Now Available Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am pleased to say that the April edition of the 2025 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society has now been made available online on Cambridge Core<\/a>. Fellows of our Society enjoy free access to all current and archived articles published in the Journal since 1834, so simply log in through our website with your account, head to the ‘Journal’ page via the top menu bar and click ‘Access the Journal’, which will then take you to the Cambridge Core site.<\/p>\n

This edition contains articles on a wide range of topics, from the only known Ming-era print in China to a papyrus document on the Islamic tradition of renunciant piety, and from Indian nationalism to 17th-century Ottoman\u2013Portuguese commercial agreements in the Iraqi port city of Basra. 7 out of the 10 articles are available via Open Access, so they are available to read for free for anyone. I have included below the abstracts of the articles, and links for the openly accessible ones. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/em><\/p>\n

Talf\u012bq as liberation: encountering \u2018Al\u012b al-Ghumuq\u012b and global Islam in twentieth-century Dagestan<\/strong>
\nBy Paolo Sartori, Shamil Shikhaliev<\/p>\n

An Arabic-language tract crafted in in Makhachkala in 1949 offered an abrasive critique of \u2018Al\u012b al-Ghumuq\u012b (1878\u20131943), ostensibly the father of the Dagestani modernist milieu (al-firqa al-jadidiyya<\/span>). Who was \u2018Al\u012b al-Ghumuq\u012b, what was his oeuvre, and why did the most prominent ulama of Dagestan despise him to the extent of publishing an original pamphlet cursing his legacy? In this article we set out to answer these questions and attempt to show that at the beginning of the Soviet century, the North Caucasus represented an important conduit for the circulation and further refinement of Islamic scholarship. We contend that the absorption and reproduction of modernist thinking among Dagestani ulama was not halted by the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks\u2019 takeover. Indeed, we set out to show that in the North Caucasus between the 1920s and the 1960s, scholars continued to cultivate interest in Islamic jurisprudence, in fact unencumbered by the secularist policies adopted by the Soviet state. As we shall see, in this environment \u2018Al\u012b al-Ghumuq\u012b morphed into what could be termed an epic figure and became so popular as to personify either the virtues or the evil aspects of modernist Islam.<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/em><\/p>\n

Interpreting the Qur\u2019an through the science of logic: Ibn \u02bfArafah al-War\u0121amm\u012b (d. 803\/1401) on the dynamics of tafs\u012br and man\u1e6diq<\/strong>
\nBy Tareq Moqbel<\/p>\n

One profound yet relatively understudied contribution to\u00a0tafs\u012br<\/span>\u00a0(Qur\u2019an commentary) is that of Ibn \u02bfArafah al-War\u0121amm\u012b (d. 803\/1401), a leading M\u0101lik\u012b scholar of eighth\/fourteenth-century \u1e24af\u1e63id Tunisia. Although no separate commentary by Ibn \u02bfArafah has come down to us, his commentary on the Qur\u2019an is accessible through the lecture notes that were compiled by his students. This article will examine one significant aspect of Ibn \u02bfArafah\u2019s Qur\u2019anic discourse that is barely acknowledged\u2014his understanding of the relationship between the Qur\u2019an and logic, and his use of logic in Qur\u2019anic interpretation. It suggests that Ibn \u02bfArafah conceived of logic as embedded in the fabric of the Qur\u2019an and felt a sense of urgency in using logic as an instrument for\u00a0tafs\u012br<\/span>. It also shows that the application of logic to Qur\u2019anic interpretation is dominant in Ibn \u02bfArafah\u2019s commentary to an extent that is not found in earlier works of\u00a0tafs\u012br<\/span>. Through identifying the different ways in which he intertwined the science of logic with\u00a0tafs\u012br<\/span>, this article will highlight Ibn \u02bfArafah\u2019s role in the logical hermeneutics of the Qur\u2019an and expand our understanding of how logic was used as an instrument for other sciences\u2014in particular, for the interpretation of the Qur\u2019an.<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/em><\/p>\n

Arabic literary papyri and Islamic renunciant piety: Zab\u016br and hadith in Vienna papyrus AP 1854a\u2013b<\/strong>
\nBy Ursula Hammed, David Vishanoff<\/p>\n

To the limited materials available for the study of the early Muslim tradition of renunciant piety (zuhd<\/span>) may now be added the papyrus P.Vindob. AP 1854a\u2013b of the Austrian National Library in Vienna, which is edited, translated, and annotated in this article. Its two incomplete and damaged leaves contain four texts that constitute a small anthology of meditations on the imminence of death and judgment: psalms 7\u201313 of the Islamic \u2018Psalms of David\u2019 (Zab\u016br D\u0101w\u016bd<\/span>); a collection of narratives surrounding the death of the Prophet Mu\u1e25ammad; a collection of material about grief over the deaths of the Prophet and F\u0101\u1e6dima and over the slaughter of al-\u1e24usayn’s party at Karbala; and a dialogue between God and the prophet David about the rewards of the afterlife. The papyrus confirms that the long Muslim tradition of rewriting the \u2018Psalms of David\u2019 originated in early renunciant circles. It also illustrates the process whereby a ninth-century preacher could compile a notebook of sermon material from a wide range of sources, including poetry, hadith, and an apocryphal scripture. It also shows how much the still-underdeveloped study of early Islamic piety stands to benefit from the even less-studied resource of Arabic literary papyri.<\/p>\n

[available via Open Access here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/em><\/p>\n

Sacred immigrants and travelling rituals: Malabar in the Sufi cosmopolis of the Indian Ocean<\/strong>
\nBy Parappu Kadavath Matra Abdul Jaleel<\/p>\n

This article traces how the Yemeni-origin Sufi order of \u1e6car\u012bqa \u02bfAlawiyya and its ritual litany of al-\u1e24add\u0101d, with chants and prayers for the Prophet and his descendants especially from Hadramawt, became part of everyday Muslim devotional practices in Malabar through immigrant networks of Hadrami Sayyids. Competing, sometimes rivalling, and appropriating other Sufi religiosities, the Alawi order meaningfully involved within the theo-legal Sufi discourses that have been remoulding the Sufi cosmopolis in the Indian Ocean. By focusing on two notable early immigrant Sayyids in Malabar, this article argues that the successful placement of the \u02bfAlaw\u012b order within the Sufi cosmopolis and the permeation of the ritual was a complex socio-religious project that was brought forth by various aspects of the sacred genealogy, Alawi Sufi writings, Sufi activism, and the effective utilisation of Hadrami immigrant networks.<\/p>\n

[available via Open Access here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/p>\n

Swaraj (circa 1885\u20131922): Gandhi and the early history of an untranslatable signifier<\/strong>
\nBy Ritwik Ranjan<\/p>\n

\u2018Swaraj\u2019 is perhaps the most widely known of the keywords that are associated with Indian nationalism. Although it was initially used to translate the Western concept of \u2018self-government\u2019, by the second decade of the twentieth century,\u00a0swaraj<\/span>\u00a0had become a complex term that could not be readily translated by using English expressions. Intellectual historians have extensively analysed the use of swaraj in the Gandhian oeuvre. Gandhi’s\u00a0Hind Swaraj<\/span>\u00a0has often been taken as a guide to explain the meaning of the term. However, the prior history of swaraj and the uses of swaraj by politicians who disagreed with Gandhi’s definition of that term have not been adequately explored. To fill this lacuna, in this article, a selection of instances are examined that marked the transformation of swaraj from a traditional term that was associated with the precolonial Maratha history to an untranslatable term that was used by Indian nationalists to conceptualise their anti-colonial activism. I demonstrate here that swaraj was left untranslated in a range of English-language Indian political texts and documents to shape an agenda that was opposed to the collaborationist policies of imperial liberalism. The article thus illustrates the crucial role that the question of untranslatability played in sustaining the anti-colonial agenda of mainstream Indian nationalism.<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/p>\n

Giulio Aleni’s map sheet: exploring the contents and materiality of the only known Ming-era print<\/strong>
\nBy Mario Cams, Elke Papelitzky<\/p>\n

Japan’s Kobe City Museum holds a unique yet overlooked xylographic print of an early seventeenth-century composition that centres on a Chinese-language world map, mounted as a scroll. At first glance, the scroll seems to contain a copy of a well-known composition attributed to the Jesuit Giulio Aleni that is extant at two Italian libraries. It is known in the literature as\u00a0Wanguo quantu<\/span>\u00a0\u842c\u570b\u5168\u5716, after the title of only one of three constitutive parts. Detailed comparison shows that the hitherto unstudied Kobe sheet is significantly older. This observation initiates a discussion of the contents and materiality of the Kobe sheet in three steps. First, a reconstruction of intertextual connections to late Ming books based on the introductory text illustrates the function of the sheet map. Second, the origins of the maps proper are investigated, which, unlike the introductory text, can be traced back to a collaborative book project. In a last step, the afterlife of these map sheets is discussed, further illuminating the genealogy of maps that facilitated the production of the Kobe sheet. Throughout, this article highlights the local co-creation of map artefacts and the necessity to study maps in context, beyond the analysis of their cartographic contents.<\/p>\n

[available via Open Access here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/p>\n

The Sufi shrine at Dh\u0101r in central India: documents for an economic and institutional history<\/strong>
\nBy Saarthak Singh, Muntazir Ali, Vishwa Mohan Jha, Michael Willis<\/p>\n

During the course of our exploration of the history and architecture of central India, Mukhtar Ahmad Kh\u0101n, a school teacher and local historian, directed our attention towards a collection of unpublished legal documents pertaining to the shrine of Shaykh Kam\u0101l al-D\u012bn Chisht\u012b in Dh\u0101r, Madhya Pradesh.\u00a0As a corpus, these documents are concerned with grants of land, revenue, and legal issues regarding the management of the shrine, but they give, nonetheless, incidental information about the Chisht\u012bs and the religious activities for which they were responsible. The shrine at Dh\u0101r\u2014more correctly a darg\u0101h\u2014has enjoyed a continuous history from the fourteenth century to the present and is preeminent among the many Sufi places of pilgrimage in central India. Despite its manifest importance, the institutional, religious, and social histories of this darg\u0101h await scholarly attention. The present article takes a first step in this direction by focusing on one crucial document that dates to the late seventeenth century.<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/p>\n

The discourse of travel, society, and nation in Republican China<\/strong>
\nBy Ant\u00f3nio Eduardo Hawthorne Barrento<\/p>\n

In the late 1920s and the 1930s a fully developed discourse emerged in China that linked either travel as a general concept (mostly with a primary focus on its leisure form) or tourism more specifically to the interests of society and the nation. This article analyses its development as it evolved in the first half of the twentieth century. For this purpose, it first probes into the discourse that surrounded, from the 1920s onwards, the constitution and the activity of the Travel Department of the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank and of the China Travel Service, in line with which the travel service that one and the other provided was considered to involve dimensions of service to the nation and to society. The article proceeds by looking into two separate but ultimately linked lines of discourse that came to full bloom during the Nanjing decade and after: one that linked travel to the building of society, and another that linked it to the strengthening of the nation.<\/p>\n

[available via Open Access here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/p>\n

Factories, capitulations, and the dilemmas of Ottoman-Portuguese detente in Basra, 1622-1722<\/strong>
\nBy Michael O’Sullivan<\/p>\n

This article examines Ottoman\u2013Portuguese commercial agreements in Basra during the century after 1622 and the legal ambiguities that they engendered. On two separate occasions, the Portuguese established a factory in Basra: first in 1624 during the reign of the Afr\u0101si\u0101b pasha (who governed in the name of the Ottomans from 1612 to 1667) and once again in 1690 when the city was ruled again by Ottoman governors (Ottoman direct rule was restored in 1667). Yet there were myriad issues that supplied cause for disputation between the two parties, not least the legal status of the factory itself. On the face of it, both the Portuguese and the Ottoman functionaries in Basra operated according to divergent models of extraterritorial trading privileges. After a century of expansion on the coasts of Africa and the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese had grown accustomed to the model of the factory (feitoria<\/span>), in both those places in which the Portuguese governed in their own name and those in which they traded at the sufferance of African and Asian rulers. On the other hand, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ottomans had granted so-called capitulations to European powers in the Mediterranean, which were governed by norms that were distinct from the factory model of Africa and Asia. Basra brought these two models into interaction and disrupted the straightforward implementation of either model. Frequent moments of misunderstanding and manoeuvring between the two sides were the result.<\/p>\n

[available via Open Access here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/p>\n

Popular and learn\u00e8d in Chinese dialects<\/strong>
\nBy Jerry Norman<\/p>\n

This article classifies individual lexemes in Chinese dialects into four categories: popular, learn\u00e8d, colloquial, and literary. Popular and learn\u00e8d refer to the origins of a word: whether it has been transmitted orally or learned in an educational context. Colloquial and literary refer to usage. The traditional Chinese terms for distinguishing character readings,\u00a0w\u00e9n<\/span>\u00a0\u6587 and\u00a0b\u00e1i<\/span>\u00a0\u767d, literally \u2018written\u2019 and \u2018spoken\u2019, do not correspond neatly to the four categories that are proposed here. This article illustrates the differences between all six terms, mainly by using standard Mandarin and B\u011bij\u012bng dialect, and secondarily by using words from M\u012dn and other dialects.<\/p>\n

[available via Open Access here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/p>\n

The god with a thousand vulvas: heroic feminisation in ancient India and Greece<\/strong>
\nBy Anahita Hoose<\/p>\n

The Brahman sage Gautama cursed Indra with emasculation, in some versions through the appearance of vulvas on his body, as a punishment for intercourse with Gautama’s wife, Ahaly\u0101; Ahaly\u0101’s punishment involved detraction from her visible or physical presence. I present an analysis of the version as told in\u00a0Padmapur\u0101\u1e47a<\/span>\u00a01.54. The story, in addition to reflecting male suspicion of women and dread of feminisation, simultaneously functions as a cautionary tale about the dangers of succumbing to lust and reflects inter-var\u1e47a<\/span>\u00a0tension: the weak-willed Indra, a divine\u00a0k\u1e63atriya<\/span>, is humiliated by the continent Gautama, whose asceticism is the source of the devastating power that he unleashes against both Indra and Ahaly\u0101. I also compare this myth to the Greek tales of Achilles, Herakles, and Teiresias’s feminisations, and suggest that the association of heroic feminisation with sexuality (as seen in the stories in which Indra, Achilles, and Herakles are feminised) may be a shared inheritance from Proto-Indo-European times. However, the myths of Achilles and Herakles’s feminisations, like that of Indra’s, are shaped by their specific cultural context: the feminised Greek heroes\u2019 penetration of women is confirmation of their continued masculinity, rather than the result of a reprehensible lack of self-control.<\/p>\n

[available via Open Access here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/p>\n

James Liu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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