This article explores the historical writings of Rashid al-Din Tabib (d. 1318) as part of a programme of political legitimisation for the Mongol Ilkhans of Iran. By considering both volumes of the Jami` al-tawārikh alongside one another and in their political context, it reveals aspects of the text that get lost when the dynastic and world history are treated in isolation. Rashid al-Din's presentation of legendary figures of communal identity from Perso-Islamic and Turko-Mongol traditions responds to immediate political conflicts between his patrons and their neighbours, the Jochid Mongols of the Volga region and the Mamluks of Egypt. In the relative absence of documentary evidence, court-sponsored narrative chronicles can in this way inform our understanding of ruling ideology during the period.

This article is a historical study of maritime trade between Tang China and early Islamic Iraq, in the seventh to tenth centuries. While the existence, in this period, of merchant communities from the Arab-Persian Gulf in Chinese ports has been known for a long time, the present study seeks to contextualise their emergence, to articulate the socio-economic conditions of their trade, and to consider the extent to which these were conducive to transmissions of ideas. Building upon scholarly findings accumulated in different disciplines, it outlines patterns of exchange that, while limited in scope, were more systemic than has hitherto been assumed.

Early Urdu poetry, at the time called Reḳhtah, forms a remarkable example of the circulation of ideas in early modern India. Scholars trace its modern form to the reception in early eighteenth-century Delhi of a Southern literary idiom, usually called Dakhanī that is itself the result of repeated waves of migration from North India to the Deccan. While the historical origins of Urdu occupy an arena of lively scholarly debate, its later historical and literary importance is quite clear. By the start of the nineteenth century a highly literary and Persian-inflected form of Urdu would swiftly replace Persian in elite circles. Thus we have a historically significant moment at which the confluence of the vernacular and the cosmopolitan created a new cosmopolitan vernacular, however this process remains understudied.

One of the enduring open questions in ancient Indian history is the identity of the king who identifies himself on the reverse of his gold coins as prakāśāditya. Most authors have assumed that he was a Gupta king. This paper reviews the various proposals on the identity of Prakāśāditya, arguing why we can be quite sure, as suggested by Robert Göbl, that he was in fact a Hun king and not a Gupta. Then, by presenting a near-complete reading of the obverse legend, it is shown that it is virtually certain that he was in fact the Hun king Toramāṇa, as Göbl had speculated. Implications of this finding are then considered.

Two drawings made on Carnicobar Island, possibly early in 1786, by the Calcutta merchant Gavin Hamilton (1754-1820), are discussed. One of them has previously been attributed to Robert Hyde Colebrooke so his later visit to the Nicobar Islands is discussed as is the earlier one of Nicola Fontana. Also discussed is the work of Sir William Jones on the Carnicobar breadfruit (Pandanus leram).

In the 1800s it was not only merchants from British India who participated in the expanding trade with China, but also those from the princely states who sought to profit from the increased demand for cash crops. Smuggling—just as most commercial activities unsanctioned by the Bombay Government were labelled—was a source of great anxiety for the colonial authorities in India, especially in the western territories. This article looks at smuggling activity in and around the Bombay Presidency during the first half of the nineteenth century. It will assert that local ‘smuggling’ was, in many cases, the continuation of pre-colonial trade relations, labelled as illegal as a result of ill-defined boundaries and ambiguous legal restrictions. In fact, the success of these activities was less a reflection of widespread criminality than structural weaknesses in the colonial administration. Evidence suggests that British anxieties over smuggling had a greater effect on the political economy of western India than the actual financial damage caused by the illicit trade. The coordinated subversive smuggling network, ultimately, did not exist, and held power largely as a figment of the imperial imagination.

Robert Morrison (1782–1834), the first Protestant missionary to China, was responsible for the completion of the earliest Chinese-English Dictionary in 1814. Though this work would not have reached publication without the help of Chinese assistants, and of the printer P. P. Thoms (1790–1855), even so Morrison's scholarly achievements in this and other aspects of Chinese studies were prodigious. This survey of recent research makes clear the continuing value of his writings to contemporary scholars, and also suggests that he was not simply more seriously engaged in attempting to understand China than his contemporaries but also more enlightened than a good number of his successors in missionary work.