Chapter 9 suggests how Hinduism and Confucianism may be understood in relation to the construct of transcendentalism in order to set up a discussion of India and China in the final chapter. (Unearthly Powers had largely taken Christianity, Islam and Buddhism as the main examples of transcendentalist traditions.) This involves a consideration of distinct forms that the Axial Age took in both regions and the religious and philosophical traditions that emerged from them. The diverse traditions coming under the umbrellas of Hinduism and Confucianism represent very substantial continuity with the immanentist pre-Axial past, especially in a fundamental emphasis on the role of ritual action. However, they also incorporated Axial elements, particularly an emphasis on liberation/salvation in the case of Hinduism and ethical rectitude in the case of Confucianism. Confucianism remains the most awkward fit within the mould of transcendentalism because of the absence of a soteriological imperative.

Chapter 8 explains why the most powerful chiefs in Hawaii decided to be baptised a few years after dispensing with their old cult. The most important of these factors revolved around immanent power: The ability of the new god to deliver victory in battle in the immediate aftermath of the abolition, and to Christian forces at the battle of Waimea in 1824, made a great impression, while healing was, as always, also a matter of concern. The impotence of the old gods was confirmed by deliberate challenges to the volcano goddess Pele and the female prophets who spoke for her and by the iconoclastic tours of Ka‘ahumanu, who was now taking centre stage. Meanwhile, the high chiefs also felt the need to repair the sacral basis to their authority, if now in a more righteous mode, while the strict form of Protestantism provided a way of ‘restoring the tabus’, disciplining both their subjects and the Euro-American inhabitants of Honolulu.

Chapter 6 narrates the 2nd Texas’ post Shiloh service record, including the bloody battle of Corinth in October 1862, which resulted in the martyred death of Colonel Rogers. Although there were questions surrounding his death, a celebratory tale of him took shape, portraying him as a martyr for the Confederate cause. After Corinth, the 2nd Texas had transformed into an elite fighting unit, but the stigma of Shiloh seemed to linger. The chapter closes with their final days in Galveston, depleted and demoralized.

Chapter 5 investigates the impact of prohibitions against fighting on clerical masculinity. It examines two clerical groups: those who acted violently but wished to remain clerics and those who abandoned their religious status. Both Western and Eastern canon law forbade clerical fighting, with an important difference: the Western Church put emphasis on bloodshed; the Eastern was more concerned with the clerics’ state of mind and the avoidance of anger. This meant that, in Romanía, outside of strict prohibitions against killing, there was more of an overlap in the exercise of moderate force. The situation was different for clerics who abandoned religious life. Eastern canon law insisted on strict religious/secular distinctions through a focus on vestments, but authors of histories accepted such shifts with little comment. In Romanía, religious status – and, as a result, one’s gender – could prove to be rather fluid throughout one’s life. The chapter ends with a case study focusing on Michael Chōniatēs’ Life of Niketas, the eunuch bishop of Chonai, who fought visible and invisible enemies. His example offers a limit case for how an ecclesiastic could show his masculinity while maintaining an attitude that was considered acceptable, and even ideal, for a clerical man within religious circles.

Folk stories in Mewat narrate how, in the sixteenth century, Sahab Khan, the Mughal governor of Tijara, near the present-day Alwar district in eastern Rajasthan in north India, summoned Laldas (1540–1648 CE) to account for not practising Islam, despite being born into a Muslim family. Sahab Khan offered him meat, saying it was Muslim food that a Muslim should willingly eat. This move was intended to symbolise the saint's Muslim identity and to reintroduce him to the Islamic fold from which he had strayed. The meeting with Sahab Khan is documented in a hagiography—compiled and written in rhyming verses by a Laldas devotee called Dungarisi Sadh:

Although the Mughal officer's invitation for Laldas to consume kebab might seem like a respectful act, it was, in fact, a deliberate tactic aimed to ascertain the saint's religious standing. By depicting Laldas's religious conduct as transgressing Islamic boundaries in these hagiographic narratives, the text seeks to establish his identity as a Hindu saint. According to the verses, Sahab Khan heard reports that Laldas did not pray as a Muslim: he neither performed ablution nor invoked the name of the Prophet, despite being a member of the Meo Muslim caste and the ‘Islam’ religion. In another set of stanzas, Dungarisi Sadh goes on to narrate the doctrine taught by the saint to both Hindus and Muslims, which got him in trouble:

The conclusion situates this volume in its wider historical context and assesses the gains derived from the methodology it employs. Unlike its situation after 1948, during the last decades of Ottoman rule Gaza was in no way an anomaly but rather an integral part of the Ottoman Empire. This contrast helps better understand depictions of Gaza in current day discourse: it was never integrated into any modern nation-state, and more closely resembles a relic of the pre-nation-state period. Countering the widespread fallacy that Gaza does not fit into any meaningful historical narrative, this work reimagines Gaza without the cumulative effects of the successive catastrophic events since WWI and the strictures of the Gaza Strip, but rather in terms of its multiple connections in time and space as they evolved over the centuries. Its reliance on an empirical, source-driven GIS-supported methodology constitutes a major advance that highlights the centrality of political factionalism for the city and its region and sheds light on the lifeworlds of Gaza’s commoner population. Overall, this work provides a rich terrain for formulating new hypotheses on social strategies in Gaza’s society and examining the strategic constructedness of claims found in contemporary texts.

This chapter delves into the politics of factionalism in Gaza, its causes, development, the impact of external factors, and its effects. It surveys the main bones of contention within the Gazan elite, presents portraits of elite families and political personalities, and discusses the relationships between the Gazan elite and outside forces. It focuses on the rise of the Shawwa family and its allies the Busaysus, erstwhile supporters of the Husaynis, who at some point in the mid-1890s turned against them for unknown reasons and eventually were able to oust them from control over the city’s politics in 1898, when the leadership of the Husayni family was exiled by the Ottoman government to Ankara. The rise of the Shawwa–Busaysu coalition, whose source of power was the newly created municipality, was accompanied by a spatial divide of the city between the neighborhood of Daraj where most of the elite families, including the Husaynis, resided, and the relatively poor neighborhood of Shajaʿiyya, the stronghold of the opposition. This led to what here is termed “spatialized factionalism,” a new concept that is discussed at length. Gaza’s factionalism is then analyzed in comparison to late Ottoman cities in Bilad al-Sham.