The Medieval History Journal

The book this article discusses is a late medieval Portuguese technical text on illumination written with Hebraic characters. It belongs to a miscellaneous manuscript at Parma's Biblioteca Palatina. Discovered in 1803, it was attributed to Abraham ben Judah Ibn Hayyim and dated to 1262. Soon some authors assigned it to the fifteenth century. The paper's water-marks, recently observed, confirmed the fifteenth century date. Yet, the possibility that this text could be a copy of an older original remains. However, the discussion of the historical context and the content also suggests that the original dates more probably from the fifteenth than the thirteenth century. In terms of structure and content this text should not be considered a treatise but a heterogeneous compilation which, besides the Hebraic marks, presents significantly alchemic, Castilian and Arabic influences.

In 1472, the Cūdāsamā ruler of Junagadh in Saurashtra (peninsular western Gujarat) was finally defeated, after a long struggle, by the armies of Mahmūd, the sultan of Ahmadabad, a turning point in the history of Gujarat. The Cūdāsamās, hitherto dominant rulers, were reduced to the status of minor landholders. For the sultanate, it marked the abandonment of an administration based largely on tribute and alliance with local chieftains in favour of more direct rule. The transition in their government from military garrison-based rule to a more settled, bureaucratic sovereignty marked a significant shift away from the former system of politics in Gujarat. In spite of this history of violent antagonism between the Cūdāsamās and the sultans, this article hopes to show how both groups belonged to a common, transforming arena of politics in which alliance-making, genealogy and patronage were markers of status, a form of politics which may still be recovered from texts, genealogies and the accounts of professional record-keeping groups.

This article seeks to locate and analyse the ecological and socio-political conditions specific to hill agriculture within Kashmir in a medieval context. It draws upon a range of sources—texts, travel accounts and personal observation, as also interaction with farmers—to put the story together.

This article focuses on the complex relationship existing between the interpretation of Confucian classics and political power in China, Japan and Korea. A wide range of materials is contained for discussion, namely East Asian scholars’ commentaries on the Analects and Mencius, questions extracted from the Book of Mencius in the civil service examinations in the Ming (1368–1644) China, reminders which a Tokugawa Japanese scholar marked on Mencius against imperial reading, and quotations from Confucian classics appearing in the dialogues between emperors and courtiers in the Han (206 BCE–220 CE) and Tang (618–907) dynasties. It is pointed out that the dual roles played by the interpreters—as Confucian scholars and as administrators—had closely connected the interpretation of classics to political power. Briefly speaking, three forms of relationship are observed: inseparability, competition, and the balance to be struck between the interpretation of the classics and political power. To sum up, the East Asian Confucians read and understood the classics through their own ‘existential structures’, at the same time endowing the classics with new strategic content; they were not just playing ‘intellectual games’