This book deals for the first time with the cultural history of media in nineteenth-century Iran, a history that deals with how modern techniques of representation and communication were received in the Iranian Shiʿa society. This reception history is examined in religious photography, military reforms, Persian passion plays, Shiʿa medicine, and the burgeoning telegraphic culture. The problematic relationship between Shīʿa Islam and 19th-century media is conceptualised and contextualised,...

This ethnographic book deals with the emergence of the Wali Pitu (seven saints) tradition and Muslim pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia. It touches upon the issues of translocal connectivity between Java and Bali, Islam-Hindu relationship, relations between Muslim groups, and questions of authority and authenticity of saint worship tradition. It offers a new perspective on Bali, seeing the island as a site of cultural motion straddling in between Islam and Hinduism with complexities of local figur...

This book deals with non-conformist aspects of Sufism, and other antinomian movements in the Persianate cultural areas. The chapters cover a variety of subjects, ranging from gender and the role of women in Islamic mysticism, to genuine versus sham piety, belief versus unbelief, the notion of metempsychosis (tanāsukh) in the mystical philosophy of Shihāb al-Dīn Suhravardī, and the influential role of the Persian sage ʿUmar Khayyām in religious discussions on piety in Persia, and his rec...