The rekhta of architecture: the development of ‘Islamic’ art history in Urdu, c.1800-1950

This essay offers the first survey of architectural history after the Muslim conquests in the Indian Subcontinent in Urdu, the major Muslim literary language of colonial India. Contributing to the history of art history in non-European contexts, the essay traces the emergence of a deliberately ‘Islamic’ art history as the outcome of intellectual exchanges between Indian, European, and Middle Eastern authors. Reflecting this mixed provenance, the popular and scholarly texts examined here are termed ‘architectural rekhta’ by using the old name for Urdu (Rekhta: ‘mixed’). In apt architectural metonymy, ‘Rekhta’ was renamed ‘Urdu’ in homage to the Urdu-e Mu‘ala (or Red Fort of Delhi), revealing a conceptual link between the palace of the last Mughal emperors and Urdu as its language based on the centrality of buildings to Indo-Muslim cultural memory. Consequently, when colonial Muslim authors combined elements of European practice with their own concerns to produce their ‘mixed’ mode of art historical writing, architecture became their primary focus. In line with the themes of this special issue of the JAH, this approach examines the ‘post-Persianate’ cultural memory of Indian art of the Islamic period

The rekhta of architecture: the development of ‘Islamic’ art history in Urdu, c.1800-1950

This essay offers the first survey of architectural history after the Muslim conquests in the Indian Subcontinent in Urdu, the major Muslim literary language of colonial India. Contributing to the history of art history in non-European contexts, the essay traces the emergence of a deliberately ‘Islamic’ art history as the outcome of intellectual exchanges between Indian, European, and Middle Eastern authors. Reflecting this mixed provenance, the popular and scholarly texts examined here are termed ‘architectural rekhta’ by using the old name for Urdu (Rekhta: ‘mixed’). In apt architectural metonymy, ‘Rekhta’ was renamed ‘Urdu’ in homage to the Urdu-e Mu‘ala (or Red Fort of Delhi), revealing a conceptual link between the palace of the last Mughal emperors and Urdu as its language based on the centrality of buildings to Indo-Muslim cultural memory. Consequently, when colonial Muslim authors combined elements of European practice with their own concerns to produce their ‘mixed’ mode of art historical writing, architecture became their primary focus. In line with the themes of this special issue of the JAH, this approach examines the ‘post-Persianate’ cultural memory of Indian art of the Islamic period

Creole & Multiracial (Research Report #122)

This is the eighth in this series of reviews. This review focuses primarily on the Creoles. It also describes some multiracial groups with a historical presence, as well as the current trends in multiracial identity in the Gulf of Mexico region. Concentrated in coastal Louisiana, Creoles represent one of the larger and more well-known multiracial (or mixed-race) groups that have long histories in the region.https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/agcenter_researchreports/1005/thumbnail.jp

WNT signalling in prostate cancer

Genome sequencing and gene expression analyses of prostate tumours have highlighted the potential importance of genetic and epigenetic changes observed in WNT signalling pathway components in prostate tumours-particularly in the development of castration-resistant prostate cancer. WNT signalling is also important in the prostate tumour microenvironment, in which WNT proteins secreted by the tumour stroma promote resistance to therapy, and in prostate cancer stem or progenitor cells, in which WNT-β-catenin signals promote self-renewal or expansion. Preclinical studies have demonstrated the potential of inhibitors that target WNT receptor complexes at the cell membrane or that block the interaction of β-catenin with lymphoid enhancer-binding factor 1 and the androgen receptor, in preventing prostate cancer progression. Some WNT signalling inhibitors are in phase I trials, but they have yet to be tested in patients with prostate cancer

Chromosome conformation signatures define predictive markers of inadequate response to methotrexate in early rheumatoid arthritis

The authors would like to thank members of OBD Reference Facility Benjamin Foulkes, Chloe Bird, Emily Corfeld and Matthew Salter for expedient processing of clinical samples on the EpiSwitch™ platform and Magdalena Jeznach and Willem Westra for help with preparation of the manuscript. The study employed samples from the SERA Biobank used with permission and approval of the SERA Approval Group. We gratefully acknowledge the invaluable contribution of the clinicians and operating team in SERA. We would also like to thank Prof. Raju Kucherlapati (Harvard Medical School), and Prof. Jane Mellor (Oxford Univ.), Prof. John O’Shea (National Institute of Health) and Prof. John Isaacs (New Castle Univ.) for their independent and critical review of our study. A list of Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (SERA) inception cohort investigators is provided in Additional fle 1: Additional Note. Funding This work was funded by Oxford BioDynamics.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Afghanistan’s Islam

This book provides the first overview of the history and development of Islam in Afghanistan. Written by leading international experts, chapters cover every era from the conversion of Afghanistan through the medieval period to the present day. Based on primary sources in Arabic, Persian, Pashto, Uzbek, and Urdu, its depth of coverage is unrivalled in providing a developmental picture of Afghanistan’s Islam, including such issues as the rise of Sufism, women’s religiosity, state religious policies, and transnational Islamism. Looking beyond the unifying rhetoric of theology, the book reveals the disparate and contested forms of Afghanistan’s Islam. “Islam in Afghanistan has long been viewed as static and uniform, but this fine collection demonstrates that it has been far more contested and dynamic over the centuries than either Afghans or outside observers have realized. This book opens a door to that history to reveal a religious tradition that has constantly adapted itself to changing intellectual currents, local cultural beliefs, and political upheavals.” -THOMAS BARFIELD, Boston University “A pathbreaking book that challenges us to think in new and more sophisticated ways about Islam in Afghanistan, in the past as well as in the present. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to go beyond stereotyped images of a monolithic and timeless Islam in Afghanistan and in other Muslim societies.” -ROBERT D. CREWS, Stanford University NILE GREEN is Professor of South Asian and Islamic History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Sufism: A Global History and Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam

Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century

Sufism is often regarded as standing mystically aloof from its wider cultural settings. By turning this perspective on its head, Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century reveals the politics and poetry of Indian Sufism through the study of Islamic sainthood in the midst of a cosmopolitan Indian society comprising migrants, soldiers, litterateurs and princes. Placing the mystical traditions of Indian Islam within their cultural contexts, this interesting study focuses on the shrines of four Sufi saints in the neglected Deccan region and their changing roles under the rule of the Mughals, the Nizams of Haydarabad and, after 1948, the Indian nation. In particular Green studies the city of Awrangabad, examining the vibrant intellectual and cultural history of this city as part of the independent state of Haydarabad. He employs a combination of historical texts and anthropological fieldwork, which provide a fresh perspective on developments of devotional Islam in South Asia over the past three centuries, giving a fuller understanding of Sufism and Muslim saints in South Asia