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The lost story of the Shetland Female Emigration Fund
Read more: The lost story of the Shetland Female Emigration FundVéronique Molinari explores how four people united forces to help young Shetlanders emigrate to Australia
The continuing importance of Chile’s Cold War history
Earlier this year, the United States government declassified more than 40,000 documents showing the American intelligence community’s reporting on the Argentine dictatorship’s Dirty War. This refers to Argentines’ counterinsurgency campaign that decimated their country’s far left in the late 1970s.…
The Art of Kharita Dispatching in the Late 19th Century Afghanistan
Kharita dispatching On 2 Ramadan 1316 AH/ 15 January 1899, Amir Abdul Rahman Khan of Afghanistan (r. 1880–1901), sent an official letter, categorised as murāsala, to Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, Viceroy of India (in office, 1898–1911). Eventually, the ceremonially-illuminated letter…
Stick ‘em Up: How a South African Horror Film Prophesied Apartheid’s Road to Nowhere
By Calum Waddell Last year’s superior possession shocker Hereditary (from director Ari Aster) and the recent release of Jordan Peele’s Us has resulted in a new term, ‘elevated horror’, being introduced into the critical lexicon, much to the chagrin of…
Five Reasons why the Middle East Matters for World Christianity
Events such as the Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria have brought Middle Eastern Christians into the public eye in Europe and North America. Yet the academic field of World Christianity still gives little attention to the Middle…
The “Afghan Genizah”: A New Source for the History of Pre-Mongol Bāmiyān
How did Abū Naṣr Yehuda, a Jewish landowner from 11th-century Bāmiyān, conduct his business affairs with his Muslim neighbors? What was the role of Shujāʿ al-Dīn Muḥammad in the administration of Bāmiyān prior to its destruction by Genghis Khan in…
7 things you may not know about the history of Muslims in Central Asia
By Galina M. Yemelianova 1) There are both narrow and broad notions of Central Asia. The narrow one relates to the 5 Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, which until 1991 were part of the Soviet…
Does the British government learn from the history of military interventions?
From Iraq to Libya, Louise Kettles asks whether the UK has learned to learn from its past mistakes in Middle-Eastern military interventions.
Translating ‘The Sorrowful Muslim’s Guide’ – a labour of love
When we first thought about translating The Sorrowful Muslim’s Guide by Hussein Ahmad Amin, it was not just because the book had generated so much heated discussion locally as well as regionally in the Arab world. Nor that the book is…
Lord Seaforth: Highland proprietor in the age of the Clearances and plantation slave owner
Highland landowners in the decades before and after 1800, and Scots associated with plantation slavery in the same period, have had a bad press. The view of many people of the Highland Clearances comes from John Prebble’s book. First published…