2019.2

The article examines early and child marriage in contemporary India’s Muslim community. It discusses the historical background, laws raising the minimum marriage age, and the influence of traditional family life, education and Muslim personal law.

The article examines the adaptation of Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan in Delhi after the Partition of India in 1947. It considers housing and rehabilitation, the refugees’ role in the city’s growth, and their political preferences in the late 1940s and 1950s.

The article examines relations between Moroccan sultans and Sufi brotherhoods in the 17th and 18th centuries. After the Alawis established their rule, they had to limit the power of Sufi orders while avoiding open conflict with influential shaykhs. Historical chronicles show a more complex relationship than a simple confrontation.

The article discusses the dispute over sharing the waters of the Teesta River between India and Bangladesh. It reviews efforts to establish rules for water use since 1972, the role of West Bengal political elites, and obstacles to a settlement after the change of government in India in 2014.

The article studies the formation of pilgrimage routes used by Muslims of the Russian Empire to reach the Islamic holy sites in Arabia. It compares traditional and less-used Hajj routes and examines the authorities’ role in organising travel, preventing disease, issuing passports and choosing safer routes.

Based on a travel treatise by the Damascus Sufi ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, the article examines travel in search of knowledge in the cultural and intellectual life of late-17th-century Bilad al-Sham. It explores pilgrimage routes, cultural centres, scholarly contacts and cultural exchange.

The article examines contact between Western and Far Eastern civilizations in the early modern period. European printing houses in Siam and Vietnam introduced new printing techniques and books in the Latin alphabet. It also discusses the role of Catholic missionaries in establishing these presses and promoting Christianity in the region.

The article examines the role of the Coptic Orthodox Church journal “Al-Kiraza” in the life of the Coptic community, the circumstances of its emergence, and its influence on readers. Founded through the efforts of young church leaders in the 1930s–1950s, the journal promoted their philosophical views among Copts.

The article examines motifs of dreams and sleep in classical Persian qhazal. These motifs usually occur at the beginning or end of a poem and may shape the meaning of the whole text. It traces their transfer from love lyrics and qasida openings into qhazal, and interprets sleeplessness as a derivative counter-motif of sleep.

The article discusses language contact between Swahili and other Bantu languages in Tanzania. Swahili, itself influenced by Arabic, transfers borrowed lexical elements to local languages of lower social status. Its grammatical impact is less pronounced. The study uses material collected by the authors during fieldwork in Tanzania.