In Jumādā II 661/April 1263 the Mamlūk sultan al-Ẓāhir Baybars visited Jerusalem and undertook various pious works, including the erection of a public khān for lodging those visiting the Holy City. Unfortunately Baybars's khān has not survived and much speculation has been made regarding its location. The Arabic sources relating to Baybars's deeds provide a good deal of information relating to his khān, which, once combined with western sources and archaeological evidence, allows us to suggest its probable site, its architectural type, and even range of services.

The Mughal emperors of India were remarkably mobile kings, inspiring modern historians to describe their imperial court culture as ‘peripatetic’. While the Mughals were not immune to the impulse to construct massive urban architect, no Mughal city, no matter how splendid, innovative, accessible or enlightened, remained the imperial centre for long. Through generations of Mughal rule in India, the political relevance of Mughal imperial cities continued to be very limited; it was physical mobility which remained at the centre of Mughal imperial court life and, for much of the Mughal period, the imperial court was encapsulated in the physical presence of the king.

By correlating literary evidence, avian ethology and neurophysiology I will try to demonstrate why Vālmīki chose a pair of Sārus Cranes, and not any other avian species, to epitomise grief and sorrow in the Rāmāyaṇa. This choice illustrates the importance of personal experience of the living reality (behaviour of Sārus Cranes); but the grief, śoka, as experienced by Vālmīki, became in later critical literature, the rasa of karuṇa, the aesthetic appreciation of grief, as suggested by Ānandavardhana and explained by Abhinavagupta. By emphasising the central importance of affective states (sthāyibhāvas) in life as well as in the arts (rasas) Vālmīki, Abhinavagupta and Ānandavardhana appear to have had a perception of the human condition that is consistent with recent developments in affective neuroscience; and thus it is the pitch and the tonal quality of the cries of grief that convey the depth and universality (sādhāraṇatva) of the emotion.

One of the most influential European printed sources on South-East Asia at the turn of the eighteenth century was the Scottish sea-captain Alexander Hamilton's memoirs. The picture he paints of the Portuguese communities that had existed since the period of Portuguese ascendancy in the sixteenth century is overwhelmingly negative. But a close textual and empirical analysis of his text shows that not only was he frequently misinformed in terms of the historical developments relating to that community, but that he merely conforms to a set of standard rhetorical tropes we can associate with the Black Legend, which had grown up in Protestant countries of northern Europe since the 16th century to denigrate Portugal and her achievements. This article urges that this key text consequently be used with far greater circumspection than has hitherto been the case.