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Forging Late Roman Italy
Read more: Forging Late Roman Italyby Jeroen Wijnendaele (This text incorporates my introduction for the book launch of Late Roman Italy at Hamburg’s RomanIslam centre […]
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Ridley Scott’s Napoleon: From Uniformed Soldier to Costumed Emperor
Read more: Ridley Scott’s Napoleon: From Uniformed Soldier to Costumed Emperorby Brontë Hebdon Early in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (2023), Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais see each other for the first […]

Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700-1900
Read the blog post to find out more about writing the newly published book Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700-1900 by Kevin L. Schwartz. Remembering Iran, Forgetting the Persianate There was a time – roughly from 1000 to 1850 – when…

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…

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…

The Resilience of Nomadism and Village Life in the Heart of Helmand Valley
By Marc Abramiuk, archaeologist and applied anthropologist The central Helmand Valley of Afghanistan is the name I use to describe the section of the Helmand River basin lying between the confluence of the Arghandab and Middle Helmand in the north,…

Afghanistan – Themes and Variations
As it enters its second year of publication, Warwick Ball reflects on the emerging themes and (accidental) article pairings in both the October 2018 and April 2019 issue of Afghanistan, the new journal of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies.…

Warwick Ball on the cultural diversity of Afghanistan
It is a pleasure to see the launch of the first issue of Afghanistan, a journal to showcase the country’s exceptional cultural diversity. It is the first scholarly journal devoted to the country since the demise of Afghan Studies in…