This article discusses a story that has enjoyed a long life in scholarly literature, drama, and the visual arts: the alleged caging of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I Yildirim (r. 1389–1402) by the Central Asian conqueror, Temür (r. 1370–1405). Attention is focused on the evolution of scholarly discourse on the existence (or otherwise) of the cage. The period from the late seventeenth to the first half of the twentieth century is looked at in particular detail. The debate around the captivity of Bayezid is only fully understood when it is located within a larger historical framework, namely the changing political relationships between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the nineteenth century.

It is by no means unknown, in Middle-Eastern art-music traditions, to find claims that a given rhythmic cycle was invented on a particular occasion by a particular musician, the most obvious and reliable instance being provided by ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Marāġī (d. 1435), who tells us that he was commissioned to create a new cycle to commemorate a victory. With frenkçin, then, a cycle where the very name clearly suggests some form of western derivation or inflection, it was perhaps only to be expected that we should encounter a similar narrative that pinpointed its origin, associating its creation with the impulse provided by a particular cultural encounter with the West. It has to be said, though, that no such account appears as a standard feature of the contemporary theoretical discourse surrounding Turkish art music: works that deal with the rhythmic cycles tend to be expository catalogues unconcerned with origins and derivations, and it is only in one major modern reference work that we come across the notion of western inspiration, together with a tentative suggestion as to the period during which frenkçin emerged. The detailed narrative of origin certainly first appears in a text by an eminent Turkish scholar, but it is one written in French—the comprehensive survey article by Rauf Yekta Bey published in 1922—and possibly in consequence it has so far been relayed primarily in western languages. The discussion by Kösemihal, the one significant Turkish scholar to have accepted this account, appears to have had little impact, and it remains to be seen whether the relatively recent translation of Rauf Yekta Bey's article into Turkish will stimulate renewed interest in this version in Turkey itself.

The Sunni tradition of the ninth and tenth centuries often reports Muslims from the seventh and eighth centuries so fearful of God and the Last Judgement that they wished they had never been born, wept uncontrollably, and otherwise carried on as we seldom hear of from later centuries. My first object is therefore to make out what these fearers were up to. To look forward, I would characterise the piety on display as being intensely ascetical. It is about insecurity and divine transcendence, not trust and nearness to God. The fearers seem to have cultivated anxiousness to maintain their devotion and prevent complacency. My second object is to make out why such exaggerated fear evidently faded away in the later eighth century. I tend to think that fear had to be moderated with the development of Sunni theology in the ninth century, which made it necessary to stress the prospect of salvation for all Muslims, and of a Sunni piety that eschewed extreme practices unsuitable for everyone to undertake.

The transformation of cities in the Byzantine and early Islamic Near East was discussed by a number of scholars in the last century. Many of them adopted a traditional approach, claiming that the Islamic conquest caused the total collapse of large classical cities, turning them into small medieval towns. The urban landscape was changed dramatically, with the large colonnaded streets of the classical Polis transformed into the narrow allies of the Islamic Madina.

This study examines in detail the biographical entry of an Ilkhanid (the Mongol state centred in Iran) princess, El Qutlugh Khatun daughter of Abagha Ilkhan (r. 1265–82), in the biographical dictionaries of the Mamluk author Khalīl ibn Aybeg al-Ṣafadī (d. 1363). Al-Ṣafadī‘s biography of the lady provides a rare glance into the life of women of the Mongol royal household during the transitional period which followed the Ilkhanid conversion to Islam. It sheds light on issues such as the relations between the Mamluks and the Ilkhans in light of the latter's conversion to Islam and the influence of the process of Islamization on traditional Mongolian gender related practices. This paper also discusses the motivation of the Mamluk author in including El Qutlugh's unusual story in his biographical dictionaries showing how his choices might have been influenced not only by his own interests but also by what appealed to his readers.

The papers of Sir Edward Denison Ross (1871–1940) at the Archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) include a series of letters from Hungary, which thank him for his contribution in bringing the world's attention to Alexander Csoma de Kőrös (1784–1842). Some of these letters were produced collectively by learned societies and signed by dozens of male and female members, but many were also written by ordinary people expressing their admiration for Csoma, the scholar who had walked most of the way from Transylvania to India in search of the roots of the Hungarian language and people. This lively response was a result of a lecture that Ross delivered on 5 January 1910 at the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta which became a sensation in Hungary in a matter of weeks. This article therefore looks at the phenomenon of how Ross's purely academic research, to use Albert von Le Coq's words, “touched a nation's heart” and earned him a celebrity status in Csoma's homeland. It is particularly interesting to uncover the motives behind this great publicity and show how it was orchestrated by two young Hungarians in Calcutta for not entirely unselfish purposes.