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"Ottoman-Southeast Asian Relations: Sources from the Ottoman Archives, is a product of meticulous study of İsmail Hakkı Kadı, A.C.S. Peacock and other contributors on historical documents from the Ottoman archives. The work contains documents in Ottoman-Turkish, Malay, Arabic, French, English, Tausung, Burmese and Thai languages, each introduced by an expert in the language and history of the related country. The work contains documents hitherto unknown to historians as well as others that have been unearthed before but remained confined to the use of limited scholars who had access to the Ottoman archives. The resources published in this study show that the Ottoman Empire was an active actor within the context of Southeast Asian experience with Western colonialism. The fact that the extensive literature on this experience made limited use of Ottoman source materials indicates the crucial importance of this publication for future innovative research in the field. Contributors are: Giancarlo Casale, Annabel Teh Gallop, Rıfat Günalan, Patricia Herbert, Jana Igunma, Midori Kawashima, Abraham Sakili and Michael Talbot"--

"The History of the 'Slave of Christ' : From Jewish Child to Christian Martyr offers the first critical editions and English translations of the two Syriac recensions of this fascinating text, which narrates the story of a young Jewish child, Asher, who after converting to Christianity and taking the name ʻAbda da-Miḥa ('slave of Christ') is martyred by his father Levi in a scene reminiscent of Abraham's offering of Isaac in Genesis 22. In a detailed introduction, the authors argue that the text is a fictional story composed during the early Islamic period (ca. 650-850) probably in Shigar (modern Sinjār). Building upon methodology from the study of Western Christian and Jewish texts, they further contend that the story's author constructs an imagined Jew based on the Hebrew Bible, thereby challenging the way that previous scholars have used this text as straightforward evidence for historical interactions between Jews and Christians in Babylonia at this time. This ultimately allows the authors to reevaluate the purpose of the text and to situate it in its Late Antique Babylonian context"--