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 ...

De positie en rol van ambtenaren krijgt in Nederland en in veel andere landen hernieuwde aandacht. Zal de regering de rechtspositie van ambtenaren gelijktrekken met die van werknemers in de private sector zoals gedaan is in Italië, Zweden en Denemarken? Of blijven we juist waarde hechten aan het eigene van het werken voor de overheid? Juist langs die lijn is recentelijk in Groot-Brittannië en andere EU-lidstaten nieuwe wetgeving ingevoerd.

In De ambtenaar in het openbaar bestuur bet...

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...

This volume focuses on reconstructing the daily lives of Bronze Age farmers as well as the landscape for their subsistence practices. Doing so, Wild West Frisia analyses the separate components comprising Bronze Age subsistence (i.e. crop and animal husbandry, hunting and gathering) rather innovatively: instead of summarizing the known data for each subsistence strategy and drawing conclusions solely based on these observations, this study first determines what may have been present yet perha...

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...

El trabajo que aquí se presenta es una propuesta que replantea el vínculo cultural entre presente y pasado en la práctica arqueológica de la Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, México. Como parte de una arqueología alternativa se plantea la Gran Línea de Vida, que es una línea que habla del tiempo a partir de la vida misma y que: expresa cambios y continuidades, es continua, es decir, no está fragmentada ni termina en 1521, está en movimiento y fluye en dos direcciones. Asimismo, está ocurriend...

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...

This 47th volume of the ASLU series focuses on the practical challenges of managing a World Heritage listed historic city in a South Asian context. The Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka’s Galle Fort, a walled town, identified as the best-preserved colonial fort in South Asia, is the subject of this study. The book analyses the costs and benefits of the fort’s World Heritage recognition to its local urban community and to the colonial fort itself, as a monument. It shows how thirty years of...