Pub Date : 2020-11-11DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341525
A. Feenstra
This paper reconstructs the chain of demand for cash from Asia to the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It shows that the Javanese’s currency preferences were visible in the exports from Europe. The growing Dutch involvement in Javanese society from the 1680s increased and transformed the composition of the currencies requested from the Dutch Republic, towards more smaller denomination coins. The paper also demonstrates that with regard to the money supply, considerations of state prevailed over purely business interests. The limitations to the Dutch power forced them to adjust to the local power holders their currency preferences.
{"title":"Requests from the Indies. Asian Agency in the VOC’s Currency Supply to Eighteenth-Century Java","authors":"A. Feenstra","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341525","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341525","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper reconstructs the chain of demand for cash from Asia to the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It shows that the Javanese’s currency preferences were visible in the exports from Europe. The growing Dutch involvement in Javanese society from the 1680s increased and transformed the composition of the currencies requested from the Dutch Republic, towards more smaller denomination coins. The paper also demonstrates that with regard to the money supply, considerations of state prevailed over purely business interests. The limitations to the Dutch power forced them to adjust to the local power holders their currency preferences.","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43364166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-16DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341521
Upal Chakrabarti
{"title":"Letter to the Editor: Response to Rahul Govind","authors":"Upal Chakrabarti","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341521","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685209-12341521","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48356758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-16DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341519
Neelam Khoja
Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani’s court chronicle, Taʾrīkh-i Aḥmad Shāhī, written by Mahmud bin Ibrahim al-Husaini and completed soon after Ahmad Shah’s death in 1772, provides an eighteenth-century perspective on the criterion for kingship and sovereignty. Unsurprisingly, the only person who fulfills these requirements, according to the historian, is Ahmad Shah. While this is standard practice in most Persianate and Islamic histories about a king, the text deviates from a number of other literary conventions. The historian deemphasizes Ahmad Shah’s genealogy and connection to Sufi saints; instead, he focuses on Ahmad Shah’s inner piety and morality by attributing to him the concept of ilhām (direct revelation from God)—an attribute more generally characteristic of prophets and saints, not kings. The double move of deemphasizing lineage and Sufi connection while privileging personal, God-bestowed attributes is sharpened through comparison: Mughal governors and emperors are depicted by the author as descendants of noble, dynastic genealogies, but govern incompetently because they do not have the clarity of vision and fate of victory on their side, as God has not bestowed them with ilhām.
Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani的宫廷编年史,Ta al- r kh-i Aḥmad Shāhī,由Mahmud bin Ibrahim al-Husaini撰写,并于1772年Ahmad Shah去世后不久完成,提供了18世纪对王权和主权标准的看法。不出所料,根据这位历史学家的说法,唯一符合这些要求的人是艾哈迈德·沙阿。虽然这是大多数波斯和伊斯兰历史中关于国王的标准做法,但文本偏离了许多其他文学惯例。历史学家淡化了艾哈迈德·沙阿的家谱和他与苏菲派圣徒的联系;相反,他把重点放在艾哈迈德·沙阿内心的虔诚和道德上,把ilhām(来自上帝的直接启示)的概念归因于他——这是先知和圣徒的普遍特征,而不是国王的特征。通过比较,弱化血统和苏菲派联系,同时赋予个人、上帝赋予的属性特权的双重举动变得更加尖锐:作者将莫卧儿王朝的统治者和皇帝描绘成贵族、王朝谱系的后裔,但由于他们没有清晰的远见和胜利的命运站在他们一边,因为上帝没有赋予他们ilhām。
{"title":"Competing Sovereignties in Eighteenth-Century South Asia: Afghan Claims to Kingship","authors":"Neelam Khoja","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341519","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani’s court chronicle, Taʾrīkh-i Aḥmad Shāhī, written by Mahmud bin Ibrahim al-Husaini and completed soon after Ahmad Shah’s death in 1772, provides an eighteenth-century perspective on the criterion for kingship and sovereignty. Unsurprisingly, the only person who fulfills these requirements, according to the historian, is Ahmad Shah. While this is standard practice in most Persianate and Islamic histories about a king, the text deviates from a number of other literary conventions. The historian deemphasizes Ahmad Shah’s genealogy and connection to Sufi saints; instead, he focuses on Ahmad Shah’s inner piety and morality by attributing to him the concept of ilhām (direct revelation from God)—an attribute more generally characteristic of prophets and saints, not kings. The double move of deemphasizing lineage and Sufi connection while privileging personal, God-bestowed attributes is sharpened through comparison: Mughal governors and emperors are depicted by the author as descendants of noble, dynastic genealogies, but govern incompetently because they do not have the clarity of vision and fate of victory on their side, as God has not bestowed them with ilhām.","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685209-12341519","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41901772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-16DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341518
A. Gorzalczany, B. Rosen, Naama Sukenik
A mosaic discovered in luxurious Roman domus in Lod (Lydda, Diospolis) in Israel, depicted among other maritime creatures Royal Purple yielding mollusks and wicker traps used to catch them. Historical sources indicating that during Late Antiquity residents of Lod dealt in dyeing and exporting textiles (also Royal Purple) were reexamined. Clearly many city inhabitants were involved with textiles, and some of them had their hands permanently dyed. The mosaic hints that the mollusks contributed to their wealth. The problem of inland dyeing with Royal Purple was discussed, as well as the continuation of this industry in the area into the Islamic period.
{"title":"Royal Purple Industry in Lod during the Late Roman Period as Reflected in the Lod Mosaic","authors":"A. Gorzalczany, B. Rosen, Naama Sukenik","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341518","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341518","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000A mosaic discovered in luxurious Roman domus in Lod (Lydda, Diospolis) in Israel, depicted among other maritime creatures Royal Purple yielding mollusks and wicker traps used to catch them. Historical sources indicating that during Late Antiquity residents of Lod dealt in dyeing and exporting textiles (also Royal Purple) were reexamined. Clearly many city inhabitants were involved with textiles, and some of them had their hands permanently dyed. The mosaic hints that the mollusks contributed to their wealth. The problem of inland dyeing with Royal Purple was discussed, as well as the continuation of this industry in the area into the Islamic period.","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685209-12341518","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45380492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-16DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341517
Y. Ben-Bassat, Johann Buessow
This article takes the understudied Ottoman city of Gaza in southern Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century as a case study to illustrate the new possibilities available today to researchers of the Middle East by combining the study of historical sources with GIS and other digital technologies. It first surveys the main sources available for the study of this city, some of which have only become available to researchers in recent years. It then describes the construction of a comprehensive database based on these sources and ways to run statistical analyses based on it. Finally, it presents the research results on maps and aerial photos connected to a GIS system. The case of Gaza can thus serve as a model for studying other cities in Ottoman Greater Syria and the Ottoman Empire in general.
{"title":"Applying Digital Methods to the Study of a Late Ottoman City: A Social and Spatial Analysis of Political Partisanship in Gaza","authors":"Y. Ben-Bassat, Johann Buessow","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341517","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article takes the understudied Ottoman city of Gaza in southern Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century as a case study to illustrate the new possibilities available today to researchers of the Middle East by combining the study of historical sources with GIS and other digital technologies. It first surveys the main sources available for the study of this city, some of which have only become available to researchers in recent years. It then describes the construction of a comprehensive database based on these sources and ways to run statistical analyses based on it. Finally, it presents the research results on maps and aerial photos connected to a GIS system. The case of Gaza can thus serve as a model for studying other cities in Ottoman Greater Syria and the Ottoman Empire in general.","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685209-12341517","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46998155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-16DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341516
Ulfatbek Abdurasulov
The existing historiography on liaisons between Russia and Central Asia in early modern period often tends to portray the cross-cultural diplomacy between the settings as an assemblage of sporadic, inefficient, clumsy encounters, full of diplomatic failures. Further to it, the dominant paradigm emphasizes cultural differences in the region, whereby any form of cross-cultural encounters was inevitably hampered by various confessional, religious and social borders. As a result, we tend to read every case of cross-cultural encounter between early modern Central Asia and Russia as a metaphor of cultural incommensurability. In the essay, I shall offer a close reading of two 17th-century Muscovite diplomatic missions to Central Asia as test cases with which to make sense of cultural encounters through the lens of individual actors. In doing so, I shall highlight the specific practices and strategies that allowed the diplomatic actors to play key roles as cultural mediators using their language skills, local knowledge and contact networks. In the broader sense, the essay set out to examine how can we problematize cross-cultural encounters between Central Asian principalities such as Khiva and Bukhara on the one hand, and Pre-Petrine Russia on the other: and to consider what we actually mean when we speak of early modern diplomacy in Central Eurasia.
{"title":"Making Sense of Central Asia in Pre-Petrine Russia","authors":"Ulfatbek Abdurasulov","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341516","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The existing historiography on liaisons between Russia and Central Asia in early modern period often tends to portray the cross-cultural diplomacy between the settings as an assemblage of sporadic, inefficient, clumsy encounters, full of diplomatic failures. Further to it, the dominant paradigm emphasizes cultural differences in the region, whereby any form of cross-cultural encounters was inevitably hampered by various confessional, religious and social borders. As a result, we tend to read every case of cross-cultural encounter between early modern Central Asia and Russia as a metaphor of cultural incommensurability. In the essay, I shall offer a close reading of two 17th-century Muscovite diplomatic missions to Central Asia as test cases with which to make sense of cultural encounters through the lens of individual actors. In doing so, I shall highlight the specific practices and strategies that allowed the diplomatic actors to play key roles as cultural mediators using their language skills, local knowledge and contact networks. In the broader sense, the essay set out to examine how can we problematize cross-cultural encounters between Central Asian principalities such as Khiva and Bukhara on the one hand, and Pre-Petrine Russia on the other: and to consider what we actually mean when we speak of early modern diplomacy in Central Eurasia.","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":"63 1","pages":"607-633"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685209-12341516","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47595103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-16DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341520
Roel Sterckx
This paper questions the conventional scholarly view that early Chinese economic thought simply conceived of farming and commerce as mutually opposing forces. It argues that during Western Han times there existed a significant distance between court rhetoric and economic reality and suggests that, in reading official discourse, one should be cautious not to emphasize the economic over the political. The paper re-examines a series of well-known court memorials and concludes that few questioned the ethics of how wealth should be generated as long as political control could be maintained and the Han court was on the receiving end of it.
{"title":"Agrarian and Mercantile Ideologies in Western Han","authors":"Roel Sterckx","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341520","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper questions the conventional scholarly view that early Chinese economic thought simply conceived of farming and commerce as mutually opposing forces. It argues that during Western Han times there existed a significant distance between court rhetoric and economic reality and suggests that, in reading official discourse, one should be cautious not to emphasize the economic over the political. The paper re-examines a series of well-known court memorials and concludes that few questioned the ethics of how wealth should be generated as long as political control could be maintained and the Han court was on the receiving end of it.","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685209-12341520","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42378703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-13DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341510
Harel Chorev
The common narrative regarding the Palestinian Arabs during the British Mandate period highlights the disastrous effects of social and political disintegration on their integration as a national community, as well as on their ability to deal with the British and the Jewish Yishuv. The analysis offered here examines integration and disintegration processes in Palestinian society through diverse local, regional and national networks. The main argument is that disintegration and integration processes were not exclusively contradictory, as is commonly perceived, but rather dialectical developments that often ultimately served Palestinian integration, although this process did not mature until the fateful War of 1948.
{"title":"Disintegration as an Integrative Process: Revisiting Palestinian Cohesiveness from the Late Ottoman Era through the End of the British Mandate","authors":"Harel Chorev","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341510","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The common narrative regarding the Palestinian Arabs during the British Mandate period highlights the disastrous effects of social and political disintegration on their integration as a national community, as well as on their ability to deal with the British and the Jewish Yishuv. The analysis offered here examines integration and disintegration processes in Palestinian society through diverse local, regional and national networks. The main argument is that disintegration and integration processes were not exclusively contradictory, as is commonly perceived, but rather dialectical developments that often ultimately served Palestinian integration, although this process did not mature until the fateful War of 1948.","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":"63 1","pages":"434-464"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685209-12341510","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45863133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-13DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341515
E. Tasar
This paper traces the development of the historiography of Islam in Soviet Central Asia from the Cold War’s outset to the present by illustrating its uncritical reproduction of modernist and communist templates for describing Muslim religiosity, and its debt to two foundational frames of Soviet antireligious propaganda: “survivals” and “nationalized Islam.” It highlights the important implications of these frames for this scholarship’s development, i.e., its assumptions concerning “normativity” and the “poverty” of Central Asian Islam, as well as the urban-rural divide’s salience in religious life. The essay concludes with a survey of recent scholarship on the subject.
{"title":"Mantra: a Review Essay on Islam in Soviet Central Asia","authors":"E. Tasar","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341515","url":null,"abstract":"This paper traces the development of the historiography of Islam in Soviet Central Asia from the Cold War’s outset to the present by illustrating its uncritical reproduction of modernist and communist templates for describing Muslim religiosity, and its debt to two foundational frames of Soviet antireligious propaganda: “survivals” and “nationalized Islam.” It highlights the important implications of these frames for this scholarship’s development, i.e., its assumptions concerning “normativity” and the “poverty” of Central Asian Islam, as well as the urban-rural divide’s salience in religious life. The essay concludes with a survey of recent scholarship on the subject.","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":"63 1","pages":"389-433"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685209-12341515","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42474721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-13DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341511
A. J. Frank
Despite assertions of almost universal illiteracy among pre-Revolutionary Turkmens, an examination of the widely popular maktab primer, the Ravnaq al-Islām, shows that literacy among Turkmens before 1917 was substantially higher than previously thought. Additionally, the work and legends surrounding it show us Turkmen maktab texts contributed to a sense of supra-tribal Turkmen identity, which has generally been discounted or ignored in previous studies of Turkmen social history.
{"title":"Turkmen Literacy and Turkmen Identity before the Soviets: the Ravnaq al-Islām in Its Literary and Social Context","authors":"A. J. Frank","doi":"10.1163/15685209-12341511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341511","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Despite assertions of almost universal illiteracy among pre-Revolutionary Turkmens, an examination of the widely popular maktab primer, the Ravnaq al-Islām, shows that literacy among Turkmens before 1917 was substantially higher than previously thought. Additionally, the work and legends surrounding it show us Turkmen maktab texts contributed to a sense of supra-tribal Turkmen identity, which has generally been discounted or ignored in previous studies of Turkmen social history.","PeriodicalId":45906,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient","volume":"53 1","pages":"286-315"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685209-12341511","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41282872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}