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Since 2018 the private collection of Ben Mboi (1935-2015), who is best known as Governor of East Nusa Tenggara - NIT - from 1978 to 1988, has been part of the Library of Atma Jaya Catholic University in Jakarta, where it is publicly accessible under the name of Ben Mboi Research Library. The collection totals 22,890 items; the majority of the books are written in English, Indonesian, and Dutch. After briefly introducing the life and work of Ben Mboi, this article first discusses the phenomenon of private libraries in Indonesia, making it clear that Mboi's collection is highly unusual. The main part of the paper explores the question as to what is specifically Mboian about the library and what it tells us about his mindset. Mboi's library functioned as a collection for a working mind and the essay focuses on his books dealing with good governance, which increasingly occupied Mboi's mind after he entered the world of politics. Special attention is paid to reader's marks and annotations: Mboi read his books from a decidedly Indonesian perspective. This is particularly evident in the case of Dutch books written by Dutch academics on contemporary Dutch society, which Mboi studied intensively in order to reflect upon the situation in post-Suharto Indonesia. Mboi's own political thinking, which advocated elitism and organicist statecraft, conformed to mainstream ideological discourse in the New Order, but is still de rigueur in post-Suharto Indonesia, showing a remarkable overlap with colonial ideas about leadership in the period of Dutch high imperialism.

The Sěrat candraning wanita (Book of descriptions of women) is a voluminous Javanese manuscript written in Yogyakarta in the 1930s. This handbook for would-be husbands is basically an instruction manual, informing its (male) readers how to choose a good wife/sexual partner (based on physiognomy) and how sex works (based on 'the etiquette of sexual intercourse'). It can be regarded as the swansong of pre-modern Javano-Muslim erotology.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on Contributors -- 1. Introduction: Comparative Perspectives on Islamisation -- Part I Conversion and Islamisation: Theoretical Approaches -- 2. Global Patterns of Ruler Conversion to Islam and the Logic of Empirical Religiosity -- 3. Conversion out of Personal Principle: ʿAli b. Rabban al-Tabari (d. c. 860) and ʿAbdallah al-Tarjuman (d. c. 1430), Two Converts from Christianity to Islam -- 4. The Conversion Curve Revisited -- Part II The Early Islamic and Medieval Middle East -- 5. What Did Conversion to Islam Mean in Seventh-Century Arabia? -- 6. Zoroastrian Fire Temples and the Islamisation of Sacred Space in Early Islamic Iran -- 7. 'There Is No God But God': Islamisation and Religious Code-Switching, Eighth to Tenth Centuries -- 8. Islamisation in Medieval Anatolia -- 9. Islamisation in the Southern Levant after the End of Frankish Rule: Some General Considerations and a Short Case Study -- Part III The Muslim West -- 10. Conversion of the Berbers to Islam/Islamisation of the Berbers -- 11. The Islamisation of al-Andalus: Recent Studies and Debates -- Part IV Sub-Saharan Africa -- 12. The Oromo and the Historical Process of Islamisation in Ethiopia -- 13. The Archaeology of Islamisation in Sub-Saharan Africa -- Part V The Balkans -- 14. The Islamisation of Ottoman Bosnia: Myths and Matters -- 15. From Shahāda to 'Aqīda: Conversion to Islam, Catechisation and Sunnitisation in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Rumeli -- Part VI Central Asia -- 16. Islamisation on the Iranian Periphery: Nasir-i Khusraw and Ismailism in Badakhshan -- 17. Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi as an Islamising Saint: Rethinking the Role of Sufi s in the Islamisation of the Turks of Central Asia -- 18. The Role of the Domestic Sphere in the Islamisation of the Mongols -- Part VII South Asia -- 19. Reconsidering 'Conversion to Islam' in Indian History -- 20. Civilising the Savage: Myth, History and Persianisation in the Early Delhi Courts of South Asia -- Part VIII Southeast Asia and the Far East -- 21. China and the Rise of Islam on Java -- 22. The Story of Yusuf and Indonesia's Islamisation: A Work of Literature Plus -- 23. Persian Kings, Arab Conquerors and Malay Islam: Comparative Perspectives on the Place of Muslim Epics in the Islamisation of the Chams -- 24. Islamisation and Sinicisation: Inversions, Reversions and Alternate Versions of Islam in China -- Index