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With the inauguration of the Khalsa in 1699 by the tenth guru of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh, a new understanding of ‘being Sikh’ was put in place. In examining the earliest prescriptive texts of the Khalsa, manifestations of Sikh religio-cultural identity and visual distinctiveness were deeply connected to the male Sikh body. This study locates Sikh women within a number of these early ritual and textual ordinances while also exploring how Sikh female religio-cultural materiality is contradistinct to the normative Khalsa male body. The production of phulkaris, a form of embroidered head covering (but having other uses as well) was historically associated with Sikh women and are here examined as alternate forms of religious belonging, ritual production and devotion. This study concludes with an examination of how the turban, for a small number of diasporic Sikh women, can be understood both as a rejection of traditional Sikh female ideals, as well as a novel form of Sikh women’s identity construction that is closely aligned with Sikh masculine ideals.

Kejanlıoǧlu, Dilek Beybin (Dogus Author) Beginning with the so-called 'turban issue' in universities in the 1980s, public discussion about women in the public sphere in Turkey has arisen due to the veiled women's demand for a presence in public life. Since the banning of the veil in public life, Islamist columnists have been in a struggle against Kemalists to make the veil public, though there are different views on the limits of veiled women's visibility in public life. By analyzing the content of hundreds of columns in five pro-Islamist newspapers, each representing a different faction among Islamists since 1997, this article reveals both the Islamist discourse vis-à-vis the Kemalist discourse on the public sphere and the conflicting gendered discourses among Islamists. This article suggests that there is an ongoing hegemony struggle among Islamist columnists about the presence of veiled women in the public sphere, contrary to their common position in the hegemony struggle against Kemalists.

Court cases involving imposture or impersonation offer unique insights into the workings of legal systems and their underlying ideas about personal identity and the social order. This study, based on manuscript and published sources, examines a case of imposture in eighteenth-century Yemen. Through a close analysis of two accounts of this case, I elucidate the legal processes and evidentiary standards by which personal identity was established, assumptions about a person's social identity, and the enactment of justice in the Zaydī highlands of Yemen.

Focusing on the Indian Muslims, this chapter shows the translocal movement of headgears and thereby to identify shifts in the boundaries of the global systems as well as in their cultural centres. It first looks at the early Mughal turban and tries to situate it in its Persian and Central Asian context. Secondly, it follows the loss of political and cultural hegemony of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century through the emergence of local traditions in headgear, which served to identify ethnical factions and rising provincial powers. Thirdly, it looks at the advent of the British colonial power, bringing with it a different sartorial history and reference system. Finally, it follows the search for an Islamic identity on the part of the Indian Muslims under and after colonial rule, leading first to spreading an unostentatious and plain turban, then to the adoption of the Ottoman fez. Keywords: British colonial power; headgear; Indian Muslims; Islamic identity; Mughal turban; Ottoman fez; shifting globalities

Here we are concerned only with the Ottoman period so disliked by Orientalists. The entry into the scholarly field of specialists from other disciplines clearly contributed to challenging the theory of the implicit primacy of Islam in studies of the city and to breaking the kind of monopoly established in these studies by specialists in religion. The profound linguistic and cultural unity of the region under consideration, its community of historical destiny over this period, the existence of still widespread remains of the cities of this time all these things give rise for hope that these ttraditional Arabt cities will present sufficient original characteristics for a genuine turban systemt to be demonstrated. The arguments developed have already called attention to the importance of segregational factors which - with respect to the spatial organization of the traditional Arab city - are simply an expression of the profound inequality of the social structure. Keywords: Islam; Orientalists; spatial organization; traditional Arab; urban system

During the waning years of the Later Han Dynasty, Heaven seemed to be withdrawing the mandate to rule which it had bestowed upon Emperor Ling-ti (see Hou Han-shu, Po-na edition [hereafter abbreviated as HHS], 8 for biographical details). Hens developed male characteristics (see HHS chih, 13. iob-iib; also 8. Ioa-b.), a reminder that the monarch was allowing eunuchs to meddle in the affairs of state. On July I, 178, a wreath of black vapor in the form of a dragon entered the imperial audience chamber (HHS, 8. iob; also consult ibid. chih, 17. 4b, IIb-I2a). Away from the capital an earthquake occurred, creating a fissure in the earth (HHS chih, 16. Ioa-b). These supernatural omens, as well as others recorded in HHS chih, 17. 5a-b, 7b-8a, 18.I7b, were accompanied by a recurrence of agrarian distress. Great epidemics occurred in 171, 173, 179, 182, 185 (HHS chih, 17. IIa.), which gave rise to a vigorous religious movement. This movement eventually led to resistance against the throne. The waves of rebellion which finally engulfed the Han Empire, including rebellions initiated in the west by the Yiieh-chih, were directed primarily by NeoTaoist adepts skilled in alchemy, herbalism, and faith-healing. These adepts promised their followers that the azure heaven of Han would perish, and be replaced by a yellow one, and the eastern Yellow Turban leader Chang Chiieh even called himself Yellow Heaven in 184, as reported in HHS, 8. 14b, and ibid. chih. 17. 7a: 8a-b. The Taoists declared that 184, the first year of a new cycle, would also usher in a new era. The characters chia-tzu, designating the first year of the new cycle, were written with white clay in anticipation of the coming overthrow of the dynasty. They were to be seen on official residences in the prefectures and on temple walls in the capital of Lo-yang (HHS, 61. Ia-4b). The clamor for a new dynasty to accompany the change in cycle