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This chapter introduces the most important genres and themes of rīti literature. Selections of poetry are analyzed to showcase the techniques of Brajbhasha writers from early modern India. Some of rīti literature is deeply embedded in classical traditions of Indian poetics, such as rasa theory, alaṅkāraśāstra, and nāyikabheda. Other components, notably the concern with bhakti, satire and new forms of historical poetry, are closely connected to contemporary cultural and political developments. Rīti writers experimented with the expressive potential of vernacular language, blending Persian, Sanskrit, and local words in highly innovative ways. Absent the grammatical standardization that would later be imposed on Hindi in the colonial period, Brajbhasha was a flexible idiom that could speak to a variety of communities.

The attempted “revolutionary execution” of Prime Minister Ala was one in a series of assassinations and assassination attempts by the Fadaiyan dating from its inception in the early 1940s. Though intellectually limited, the Fadaiyan preached in the burlesque the seemingly more sophisticated discourse of the learned ulama on apostasy, the corrupting of the earth, the war against God and Islam, and the reasons that killing might be justified. Indeed, most Fadaiyan insisted on obtaining a religious fatwa from an established Mujtahid before they set out on an assassination. They were the first in Iran after World War II to advocate and to strive to establish an Islamic government and the first to employ assassination as politics by other means. In the 1960s, the Fadaiyan murdered another prime minister and attempted to assassinate the shah, this time in association with movements devoted to Khomeini.

Two novels by author ʿAlaʾ al-Aswani are jointly analyzed to illustrate a multi-dimensional mapping of difference and asymmetries of power in domestic and public spheres as well as across local and global settings, Cairo in Yacoubian and Chicago in Chicago, all during times of resurgent essentialist perceptions of the self and the other. This juxtaposition delineates ineradicable interdependence between global margins and centers and how al-Aswani’s aesthetic construction of fictional worlds is with an unrelenting commitment to reality, observable to readers who are familiar with the spatial and cultural particularities of Cairo and Chicago. The nonconformist treatment of sensitive themes like sex, alcohol consumption, women’s subordination, and homosexuality has stirred controversy within certain literary and cultural circles, if not disqualification of al-Aswani’s works from possessing aesthetic value, despite the works’ unprecedented popularity as best-selling novels. This chapter discusses this novelistic phenomenon while inviting new critical considerations of what defines adab.

Rashid al-Din Tabib (d. 1318) was born into a Jewish medical family and raised between waves of Mongol conquest in Iran. By 1297, he rose to the highest level of administration in the new Mongol state. This chapter traces the first half century of Rashid al-Din’s life through the societies in which it unfolded. These include the Jewish community of Hamadan, the Ismaʿili fortresses of northern Iran, and ultimately the new concentration of professional and political elites at the Mongol court. Rashid al-Din’s family struck a close alliance with a particular branch of the Mongol ruling family. When one member of that family, Ghazan Khan (1295-1304) came to the throne, Rashid al-Din was situated to assume a position of authority.

The Blessed History of Ghazan (Tarikh-i Mubarak-i Ghazani) marked the culmination of several decades of historical writing that worked to integrate the Mongol ilkhans into historical and cultural patterns indigenous to the Middle East, but it was one of the first works produced under direct Ilkhanid patronage. This chapter surveys the historical writing of the early Ilkhanate before focusing on a series of works commissioned by Ghazan Khan (1295-1304) during the latter years of his reign. Of these, Rashid al-Din’s Blessed History provides the most concise, streamlined narrative, with the most compelling argument for the ilkhans’ legitimacy in the region. This chapter shows that to be a conscious production by Rashid al-Din for his Mongol patrons.

There are remains of coarse plaster on the lower parts of the walls of this space and the pavement is of cocciopesto. The excavators removed disturbed volcanic material mixed with plaster, particularly from the south-east corner of this room. A breach in this corner, in the east wall, would have provided access through to room 8. Near the doorway in the south wall, leading to the front hall of this house, were found: an iron handle, probably from the door; a bronze knob terminal, conceivably from a large steelyard; a small travertine base; a storage jar; a clay loom weight; and a bronze fibula. This area has been identified as a shop or workshop. The limited finds conceivably bear witness to some commercial or industrial activity having been carried out here but they are equally domestic in character, as well as fragmentary and loseable. It is quite possible that any commercial or industrial activity which might once have taken place here had ceased prior to the eruption. The walls of this entranceway were decorated in the Second Style and the pavement was of lavapesta. Ling noted repaired damage to the walls of this entranceway, which he initially attributed to the ad 62 earthquake but he has since identified the repairs as modern. The excavators removed volcanic material mixed with plaster and roof tiles from this entranceway. The only finds recorded here seem to have fallen from the upper floor (see below). The walls of this ‘atrium’ were decorated in the Fourth Style which Elia and Ling have dated to after the ad 62 earthquake. The pavement continued that of the entranceway, in lavapesta. The excavators again noted that the volcanic deposit here presented constant signs of disturbance and that nothing was preserved of the stratigraphy. At the centre of this area is a cocciopesto impluvium (inside dimensions: 2.10 m × 1.77 m). A few, scattered, loose finds were recorded in the disturbed volcanic deposit which could conceivably have been from this space (see below). Even considering the finds from disturbed deposits, the paucity of contents here is comparable to the situation in the front hall of the Casa del Menandro but contrasts with that in many other front hall in Pompeian houses.

This chapter provides a short outline of the evolution of the official ideology of the kingship of the Rum Seljuqs. The Rum Seljuq concept of legitimate kingship was formulated for the first time under the fifth Rum Seljuq ruler ،Izz al-Din Kiliç Arslan II and re-formualted and completed under his two grandsons ،Izz al-Din Kay Kāwūs and ،Alā، al-Din Kay Qubādh. The Rum Seljuq ideology of kingship was formulated when the new dynasty became an independent dynasty in Anatolia. It was also formulated to defend the dynasty from Muslim rivals. While the Rum Seljuqs did not commissioned treatises to elaborate their ideology, their kingship was articulated in monumental inscriptions, coinage, diplomacy and literary works. to understand the Rum Seljuq ideology of kingship, the chapter discusses first the formulation of that ideology under the rule of Kiliç Arslan II, when the Rum Sueljuq sultanate was established, and its re-formulation during the rule of his two grandsons, Kay Kāwūs and Kay Qubādh, and the zenith of the power of the sultanate. In this chapter, the ideology of kingship is understood as a set of ideas which a ruler employs to define himself as a sovereign and to legitimize his rule.

This chapter examines shifts in Kyrgyzstan's ideological landscape. It considers public events that are suggestive of the rhythms of Kyrgyz political life, and the issues that fueled collective action, along with the more slow-paced ideological currents that informed them. To gain an overview of these slower trends, three statues that successively occupied the Ala-Too Square's central 15-meter-high pedestal are discussed: the statue of Vladimir Lenin, the Erkindik (Liberty) statue, and the statute of the national hero Manas. The chapter also discusses the trajectories of socialism, (neo) liberalism, and nationalism in the post-Soviet period and explores how these ideologies translated into political practice, along with the tensions between rhetoric and reality that has characterized Kyrgyzstan's so-called transition. By connecting the succession of statues to the political events unfolding on the Ala-Too Square and beyond, the chapter shows how Kyrgyzstan's unraveling transition became interspersed with recurrent eruptions of political turmoil.

Chapter Eight discusses how late medieval discourses on jihād in particular have been appropriated and selectively adapted for new political and ideological ends by political ideologues and radical Islamists in the contemporary period. In the first group are included Hasan al-Bannā, Abū’l-’Alā’ Mawdūdi, Sayyid Qutb, Ayatullah Khomeini, and Muhammad ’Abd al-Salām Faraj from the twentieth century. From the post-September 11 period the views of Abū Yahyāal-Lībī; Yūsuf al-Qaradāwī, and Abū Baṣīr al-Tartūsī are discussed among others. The Islamicizing rhetoric of these ideologues and radicals are subjected to a close analysis and how they use and misuse the classical and later sources to grant religious legitimacy to their various enterprises is scrutinized in detail. Attention is also paid to the views of the last three on particularly suicide bombings.

This chapter follows the title al-Saq 'ala al-saq fi ma huwwa al-Fariyaq of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq in discussing the relation to the form of the body and the grounding of world. In al-Saq 'ala alsaq “man” is both promised and interrupted as the subject and the ground of language, as an older understanding and practice of language—one indexed in the Arabic word adab, a word that has come to be translated in Arabic and in the European languages as “literature”—is displaced and relocated, compelling the reading of the form offered in the entire text. In addition, the chapter provides an excursus which discusses Edmond Amran El Maleh's Mille ans, un jour. The character Nessim, who “according to tradition, bore the name of his grandfather.” This name bears a relation to mourning and loss. Its repetition mirrors that of the letters written in Hebrew characters to which Nessim repeatedly returns.

This chapter provides a historical overview and analysis of the Nizari Ismaili declaration of the Resurrection (qiyāma) on August 8, 1164. It argues that this declaration cannot be dismissed as an aberrant manifestation of antinomianism. Rather, it shows how the deployment of apocalyptic symbolism provided a theological framework for the transfer of authority from hidden to present imam. This transfer of authority provided a resolution to three logistical problems facing the Nizari community.

This chapter examines the Haft-Bāb, a document recounting the theology behind the Nizari Ismaili declaration of the Resurrection (qiyāma) written approximately 40 years after the event. It illustrates how the Haft-Bāb disclosed a new universe in which humanity was classified into three categories, categories based upon one’s spiritual relationship with the imam. This chapter also illustrates how temporality was envisioned in this new realm, as well as how one could obtain salvation. It then illustrates how some of the ideas of the resurrection were deployed by another exegete, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, in eschatological ways and non-eschatological ways to construct a paradigm of ethical behaviour. This examination, in turn, illustrates how apocalyptic and eschatological symbols can be reinvested with new meanings after they become decoupled from an immediate eschatology.

In this chapter, six Iraqis recount their experiences during the Iraq war. Hamida Rahdi Salah and her husband were newlyweds in 2003, but he died in the summer of 2007, a victim of terrorist bombing. Hassan Risn Badr al-Ruba'i was working at a military hospital in Baghdad that fell under control of the Ministry of Health after the invasion and became known as the Baghdad Center for Amputees. Ala'a Alzobeidi worked as an artist from 1998 until 2003, painting mostly portraits for income to support his wife and three children living in Kadhimiya. Hayder Mohammed Jodah was eighteen at the time of the invasion. Salah Hamid Jasim was a member of the Iraqi national soccer team in the years before the invasion, after which he worked as a youth coach and played for a Baghdad club. Hassan Ali, whose brother had been a political prisoner under Saddam Hussein's regime, worked as a cook after the invasion, but gradually became more and more involved in charity efforts in the impoverished section of Sadr City where he lived.

The chapter examines the relationships between Prokofiev’s early music and the poets that inspired him. Guided by Konstantin Balmont’s poetic characterization of him in the early 1920s as a “sun-sounding Scythian,” it looks at two specific facets of Russian Symbolism and post-Symbolism that informed Prokofiev’s works: the sun cult and Scythianism. Prokofiev’s luminous Scythianism encompasses the paradox of the lyricism of his early songs and the perceived barbarism of his rejected ballet Ala and Lolli, from which the composer derived his Scythian Suite. By analyzing Prokofiev’s collaboration with Gorodetskii on Ala and Lolli and the composer’s settings of Balmont’s and Akhmatova’s poems, we can understand how the incarnations of the sun god in the Russian Silver Age informed both the sunrise music and the aesthetics of horror in the ballet and the suite. The chapter also reflects on Ala and Lolli as an unrealized ballet in the shadow of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.