The aim of Sharia Incorporated is to provide unbiased and contextual information about a topic that has of late been hijacked by politics in the West. Sharia Incorporated is an ambitious study of the development and incorporation of sharia and Islamic and customary law traditions into national legal, political, and social state structures. Sharia Incorporated also explores the sensitive topic of 'Western' human rights and rule of law standards in a Muslim world. This book provides an in-depth...

The Archaeology of the First Farmer-Herders in Egypt explores how and why farming and herding started in the Fayum, which is a large oasis with a permanent lake in the Egyptian Western Desert. Noriyuki Shirai's research on lithic artefacts used by the Epipalaeolithic hunter-fishers and Neolithic famer-herders in the Fayum gives a clue as to the mobility and residential strategy of the Fayum people and their time and labour investments in tool production. The Neolitic famer-herders ( 6th C.B.C...

Gog en Magog, als archetypen van het kwaad, spelen sinds hun verschijning in de Bijbel en de Koran een belangrijke rol. Van plattegronden tot literatuur en teksten, van middeleeuws Europa tot de Byzantijnse en Arabische wereld, van Berber tot Perzische en Indonesische tradities, en tot in het heden met teksten op internet: steeds weer komen deze monsterlijke wezens naar voren.

Deze 'Bijbelse' figuren worden in gezien als aankondigers van grote veranderingen, en worden afgebeeld met hondenhoof...

This book fills a gap by providing a new selection and description of almost 900 editions of the world-famous Persian quatrains: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. This is the first bibliography since the first Rubáiyát bibliography by A.G. Potter, published in 1929.

Omar Khayyám lived in the 11th Century. A Persian homo universalis, he was a mathematician, scientist, philosopher, astronomer and poet. He is believed to have written 200 to 600 Rubáiyát (quatrains) in Persian. His Rubáiyát ...

The Padmavat (1540 CE) by the Indian Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi is a classic of pre-modern Indian literature. It relates how the Rajput king Ratansen of Chitor finds and marries the beautiful princess Padmavati, and how the sultan Alauddin Khilji, on hearing of her beauty, besieges Chitor in a fruitless attempt to capture her.

'The Ruby in the Dust' presents a reading of Padmavat that challenges existing interpretations of Jayasi’s work and describes how its semantic polyphony reflects t...

In the course of the eighteenth century, Newton's ideas (in different guises and interpretations) became a veritable hype in Dutch society. In Newton & the Netherlands Newton's sudden success is analyzed in great depth and put into a new perspective. Deze titel is onderdeel van de OAPEN Library - http://www.oapen.org. Ad Maas is curator at the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, the Netherlands.|Eric Jorink is researcher at the Huygens Institute for Netherlands History (Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and ...

In 1884 an obscure British soldier, having finished his tour of duty in India, decided to make a detour on his trip home in order to spend three months crossing Persia unaccompanied except for the local muleteers. Among his accoutrements he packed a small leather-bound sketchbook in which he not only wrote a journal but in which he also added accomplished and charming water-colour illustrations. The authors' introduction contextualises this trip made in 1884 against the background of Persiana...

Islam exists in global history with its richly variegated cultural and social realities. When these specific cultural contexts are marginalized, Islam is reduced to an ahistorical religion without the ability to contribute to humanity. This limited understanding of Islam has been a contributing factor in many of the violent conflicts in the present day.

Reflecting on Islam in Indonesia, the world’s third largest democracy, supporting the largest Muslim population, Ahmad Syafii Maarif argues...

This publication examines the archaeological evidence from three city blocks in Ostia, focusing on elements of the water systems identified by past excavations and within unpublished archival material. Inspired by the diversity of research approaches currently used to assess the sustainability of water in contemporary cities, this study presents the Roman Water Footprint, which diachronically assesses changes to all parts of a hydraulic system (supply, usage, drainage). At the same time, the ...

The People’s Republic of China began the 21st century with a new-and-improved public relations approach that was meant to counter anxieties about China’s role in the world while simultaneously showcasing the leadership’s policies to a domestic audience. Crucial to this communication strategy have been networked spectacles: elaborate mass event, designed to reconfigure organisations, ideas, and the relations between people.

In "Staging China", Florian Schneider analyses large-scale projec...