Arabic biographical writing is much used as a historical source, and scholars agree that its textuality must be taken into account in evaluating its content. There is less agreement, though, on the importance of thoroughly understanding the range of processes of literary composition used by biographers. This article approaches three sets of biographies from a purely literary viewpoint: two medieval sketches of women, a Sufi and a songstress respectively; three seventeenth-century hagiographies of the physician and theosopher Dāwud al-Anṭākī; and a thirteenth-century portrait of one man of letters, al-Qifṭī, by another, Yāqūt. It concludes that the art and care devoted to shaping such commemorations of individuals is evidence of the aesthetic and cultural importance of biography as an Arabic literary genre.

In this article the author presents an overview of the British Library's Manichaean Turkish text fragments (written in Runic, Manichaean and Sogdo-Uigur script). Besides information on all fragments published so far several pieces of a confession text on the Blessed Small Feast Day are edited in full and compared to parallels in other collections.

This article describes in detail the beginning of aviation in Egypt, with special reference to the Great Week of Aviation at Heliopolis in 1910, and the effect of this new technology on Egyptians. With the exception of a few flights in North Africa made by French pilots in late 1909, it also describes the first flights in the Arab world. Based primarily on contemporary Egyptian Arabic newspapers, it recounts how a group of colonial entrepreneurs sponsored a great aviation meeting at Heliopolis in order to promote their development of the ‘Oasis of Heliopolis’, or ‘Ayn Shams/Misr al-Jadida, as a new suburb of Cairo. The article focuses on the concept for the meeting, the first flights in Egypt before the meeting, the promotion of the meeting, and the international competitors and their performances. It then summarises the consequences of the meeting for aviation in general, aviation in Egypt – including the reaction of Egyptians to aviation – and the development of Heliopolis.

The overwhelming importance of Kurdish, both language and literature, in Turkish Kurdistan has tended to push all other languages into the background, though some of them are spoken by large and important populations. Zazaki and its literature is one of these that has received far less attention than it deserves, many educated people outside of Turkish Kurdistan being hardly aware of its existence. In this article I have presented the content of fragments from a new Zazaki source. These fragments were fortunately preserved in the binding cover of an old book, which seems to give us at least one of the neglected sources from which the Zazaki writers drew, and carries us back into the memories and the doctrines of the Zazaki community. It has great value as a document of the history of Alevism in Eastern Anatolia.

Both interdenominational co-operation and denominational competition featured in the Protestant missionary literary enterprise in nineteenth-century China. The interdenominational Religious Tract Society in London became the most vital link between the missionary translators, printing presses and target audiences in the production, publication and distribution of Christian tracts. Ideally, interdenominational missions would pool resources and promote cooperation among missionaries with different denominational affiliations. Doctrinal disputes, however, seem to have been inevitable among them in the everyday operation of missions. The first tract committee established in China, the Shanghai Tract Committee in the 1840s is a case in point. Unequal denominational representation resulted in heated doctrinal controversies and the resignation of a Committee member over the publication of a problematic tract in Chinese.

This article seeks to explain the traditional celebration of Cold Food and some other springtime customs in the mid-Yangzi basin in central China. In these rituals the ancestors and their influence in the production of new rice were highlighted while, at the same time, social reproduction through women was temporarily suspended. Female generative energy was not allowed to compete with the creative force of the ancestors in the fields. Cold Food is seen as a trope on seasonal agricultural tasks. The myth of moral constancy, which accompanied the festival, was on another deeper level an iconic exploration of the preparation of the agricultural fields. Death was seen to propel life, ancestral energy being transferred to the living through rice.

This article examines the significance of Buddhism in the insurgency that followed the annexation of the kingdom of Burma in 1886, demonstrating that Buddhism was a critically important part of the Burmese polity and identity. Moreover, it indicates that opposition to the British after the full colonisation of Burma was not only instantaneous, but also fuelled primarily by Buddhist sentiment. This challenges the prevailing notion that anti-colonialism in Burma – Buddhist-inspired or otherwise – was a twentieth century phenomenon. Beginning with the pre-colonial era, the article explores the intimate connection between Buddhism, the Burmese polity and the national psyche. The critical importance of the Buddhist king is emphasised in particular. When the kingdom of Burma was annexed in 1886, opposition to the British manifested itself instantaneously in the form of rebellions and insurgency. This period, sometimes referred to as the “pacification”, has been often ignored in studies. The article, using British colonial documents, shows clearly the importance of Buddhist sentiment in these uprisings as a response to the abolition of Burma's last Buddhist king. Buddhist themes present in translated rebel proclamations, as well as the widespread participation of Buddhist monks corroborate this.