This essay challenges the received idea that Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, the eighth-century Arabic translator of the Kalīla-Dimna fables, added the Trial of Dimna, the sequel to the first story of the Lion and the Bull, in order to let morality win in the end. The analysis of this sequel's synopsis shows the absence of morality and how the ruler uses the judicial to manipulate public opinion and to redress his politically-damaged image. The essay also shows that the sequel's main purpose and use is to give a practical demonstration of the art of forensic rhetoric, casting Dimna as a pre-eminent and redoubtable sophist. The Anvār-i Suhaylī version, the fifteenth-century Persian rewriting by Vā’iz Kāshifī, on which the essay is based, also engages with the philosophical conundrum of tasdīq, which seems absent in the Arabic versions of the text.

Published in 1879 in the Tahzīb ul-Akhlāq as well as in book form, Maulana Altaf Husain Hali's Musaddas on the Ebb and Flow of Islam (better known as Musaddas-e Hālī) is a unique text. The poem, which recalls a glorious Islamic past and mourns its decline in India, both drew on the Urdu shahr āshob tradition that had developed since the eighteenth century as well as innovatively developed a very Arabic “flavour” and style that was uncommon at the time. While C. Shackle and J. Majeed have analysed Hali's use of typical Arabic literary devices in their excellent study and edition of the Musaddas, they conceded that “the overt influence of Arabic poetry is less easy to establish”. However, new evidence from the Aligarh Institute Gazette of 1878 brings another piece to the puzzle and enables us to situate Hali's Musaddas in its broader historical and literary context: indeed, two articles written by Sayyid Ahmad Khan in January of that year show that Hali's masterpiece was in fact conceived as an Urdu re-adaptation of an Arabic classic, al-Rundi's famous Lament for the fall of Seville.

This article engages with the 838–841/1435–1437 Anatolian adventures of the Mamluk amir Jānibak al-Ṣūfī. It demonstrates how Jānibak's narrative is a remarkable story full of meanings, which enable a more nuanced understanding of Mamluk engagements with southern and eastern Anatolia during the reign of sultan al-Ashraf Barsbāy (825–41/1422–38). First Jānibak's whereabouts in Anatolia are reconstructed on the one hand as they appear from contemporary source material and as they have been analysed in a handful of modern studies on the other. Against this historiographical background, a more comprehensive understanding of Jānibak's role and significance is then developed, combining local, Syro-Egyptian and Anatolian readings of Jānibak's story into one integrated social network approach. This reconstruction of Jānibak's social network in the Anatolian frontier zone finally leads to a number of conclusions on the complexity of political life in the 1430s in eastern Anatolia, on the nature of Barsbāy's state, and on the shared realities of 15th-century political cultures in the Nile-to-Black-Sea area.

The authors and the Journal apologise for the following errors in this article:

The coloured cartouches mentioned under the map on the 24th page have been deleted.

The reference to Figure 1 on the 23rd page pertains to the Map on the 24th page.

Comparing the Liao, the Chinggisid and the Qing successive incorporations of Inner Asia, this article is prepared to argue that the hereditary divisional system that these Inner Asian empires employed to incorporate and administer their nomadic population was the engine that generated what scholars see either as ‘tribes’ or ‘aristocratic order’. This divisional system, because of its hereditary membership and rulership, invariably tended to produce autonomous lordships with distinct names and identities unless the central government took measures to curb the tendency. Whenever the central power waned, these divisions emerged as independent powers in themselves and their lords as contenders for the central power. The Chinggisid power structure did not destroy any tribal order; instead, it destroyed and incorporated a variety of former Liao politico-administrative divisions into its own decimally organized minqans and transformed the former Liao divisions into quasi-political named categories of populace, the irgens, stripping them of their own politico-administrative structures. In turn, the Qing, in incorporating Mongolia, divided the remains of the Chinggisid divisions, the tümens and otogs, into khoshuu and transformed them into quasi-political ayimaqs. Thus, it was the logic of the imperial incorporation and the hereditary divisional system that produced multiple politico-administrative divisions and quasi-political identity categories.

A new copperplate inscription of Vainyagupta, to be presented in this article, is important as one of the rare sources that provide a glimpse of the later history of the Ājīvikas. It also tells us about their worship of Maṇibhadra, one of the eminent yakṣas, with interesting information on his iconography. Finally, it gives us some insights into the early history of Samataṭa, a subregion of Bengal on its eastern fringe, as it includes a copy of the grant of an earlier king named Nāthacandra. In this article, I will present an edition of the inscription and discuss some historical aspects revealed by it in connection with other sources.

Mountbatten once said, “I sincerely hope that His Majesty's Government will support me should this eventuality arise. But I feel that if we can blot out 10,000 fanatics in the first round we may stop four hundred million people from being involved in war”.1 Despite his strong commitment and prompt responses to the communal riots, Mountbatten's inability to prevent the massacres, especially brutal and widespread in the Punjab, and in the rest of the country in general, invited criticism of his role as the last leader of British India. It is important, therefore, to analyze the dynamics of the communal violence in the Punjab and Mountbatten's response to it. This paper attempts to understand Mountbatten's reading of Punjab's communal problem and his efforts to deal with it. It also analyzes the measures he took to curb and eradicate violence which resulted from that. Hence, this study fills an important gap in our existing historical literature and helps in revising prevailing views about Mountbatten's real role in dealing with the communal riots in the Punjab.