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AbstractIndia and China were the most important producers of textiles in the world prior to the industrial revolution. However, whereas the Western historiography usually discusses Indian cotton and Chinese silk in connection with European imports, or with their sales in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, cotton and silk were also exchanged between India and China. Indeed, Indian cotton and Chinese silk were probably the principal manufactured goods exchanged between these civilizations. Although Indian records are fragmentary, especially when compared with the voluminous Chinese sources, Indian cotton goods are known to have reached the Indianized states in Xinjiang in the early Common Era (CE), and may have been produced there, in Khotan and the neighbouring states, by the time that indigenous silk production was known to exist in India in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Yet, while in later centuries large amounts of cotton cloth were produced in China while indigenous centres of silk production developed in India, exchanges of the finest types of cotton and silk cloth continued, usually driven by cultural and social factors in each civilization.

AbstractThe association between empires and commercial institutions is a well-known feature of pre-industrial Muslim empires, such as the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires. Rulers constructed religious monuments and civic institutions that simultaneously functioned as commercial centers. The key to this symbiotic relationship is the institution of waqf, the so-called "charitable endowments" that supplied funds to support mosques, schools, baths and other religious institutions. The endowments largely drew their funds from shops, bazars or caravanserais usually built nearby. Therefore a great mosque or madrasa often became a commercial center. This situation was the conscious result of imperial commitment to stimulating the commercial exchange, which would supply and enrich these states.Que les empires islamiques de l'ère pré-industrielles se sont associés aux institutions commerçiales est bien connu. Les empires ottoman, safavide et moghol en témoignent amplement. Les monuments religieux et les institutions civiles que leurs princes ont fait construire furet en même temps des centres de commerce. Cette relation symbiotique s'explique par l'institution de waqf, autrement dit 'un leg pieux'. Les fonds de ces legs servaient à doter les mosques, les écoles, les bains et bien d'autres institutions religieuses. Les donations pieuses, elles, furent en grande partie léguées par des boutiques, des bazars, et des caravansérails aux alentours. Ainsi la grande mosquée, ou la médresse, se trouvait être doublée d'un centre de commerce. Voilà l'effet intentionel de l'engagement impérial qui visait à encourager les échanges commerçiaux. À leur tour ces échanges fournissaient des produits à ces états et les rendaient plus prospères.

Readers normally assume that encyclopedias will be, well, encyclopedic, but they probably do not usually expect that a particular encyclopedia will function as a forum for advancing the state of knowledge in a field. Those who are familiar with Volumes I-V of the Encyclopaedia Iranica already know that its editor, Professor Ehsan Yarshater, has not only insisted that this encyclopedia would be exceptionally comprehensive, but that he has also encouraged many of his contributors to submit essays that represent innovative and original scholarship in Iranian studies. In fascicles 1-6 of Volume VI Professor Yarshater and his distinguished board of editors have maintained the exceptionally high standards of the first five volumes. Occasionally—but just occasionally—they have commissioned articles that seem to have marginal importance for the field, but ultimately scholars will appreciate and even delight in such entries which, in a sense, are a distinguishing trait of the editors' ambitions and success.

The only really unique feature of the Mappilla outbreaks which occurred in Malabar District during the period of British rule was that each attack was conducted as a kind of suicidal jihād, in which the Mappillas involved intentionally sought to become shahīds or martyrs for the faith. No other South Asian Muslims who took part in protest movements to achieve goals similar to those which underlay the Mappilla attacks resorted to suicidal jihāds as a means of coercion. Yet no satisfactory explanation has ever been given to account for the Mappillas' peculiar militancy. Modern scholars have generally ignored the question, while the few British officials who tried to answer it usually argued, or implicitly suggested, that the attacks represented the inherent fanaticism of Islam. This explanation is, of course, vitiated by the very uniqueness of the Mappillas' suicidal ritual.