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The aim of this thesis is to articulate and analyse, from the point of view of the defence of India, the British military and strategic implications of the Russian crisis, 1875 - 1880, the greatest crisis involving a major European power to confront British soldiers and statesmen between the Crimean and Great Wars. It is hoped thereby perhaps indirectly to illuminate the making of military policy in the immediate post-Cardwellian era, the influence of military, especially Indian military, considerations upon European diplomacy, and the genesis of a scientific approach to questions of Indian frontier defence. Chapter I analyses the character of the Russian threat to India in the Near East but mainly in Central Asia in terms of the emergence of Pan-Slavism, Milyutin's Prussian-inspired military reforms and the adventurism of Russia's Central Asian policy; and sets in contradistinction the fundamental factors governing the formulation of a British Indian defence policy - political influence and intelligence facilities in the buffer states, and military and naval capacity for offensive warfare. It exposes by implication the fundamental duality in Britain's Indian military policy that was to be aggravated and intensified by the simultaneous Russian threats to Merv and Constantinople. Chapter II, emphasising the shift in the strategical centre of gravity from Central Asia to Europe, discusses Colonel Home's mission to Constantinople as the first real attempt at defence planning, which showed that Constantinople could not be defended militarily except under such extraordinary conditions as would allow of the Reserves being called out, produced a wide divergence of views over war policy and suggested alternatives in the defence of Constantinople, by naval action alone, the assistance of a Continental ally, or by territorial compensation or all three. Chapter III discusses Cabinet military policy in terms of these three factors in view of an imminent Russian occupation of Constantinople; but the failure to achieve an alliance, to make adequate naval or military preparations or to create a reliable intelligence service resulted in some ludicrous defence measures that were fortunately averted by Plevna. Against this background, chapter IV discusses the Indian military policy conceived in the face of a simultaneous Russian threat to Merv, and shows how Lytton's attempts to gain time by raising the Central Asian tribes were frustrated by European complications, a surly Salisbury and finally Plevna. Chapter V analyses British military policies, plans and preparations provoked by San Stephano and tries to show how far they could have brought victory had war with Russia eventuated and how far they contributed to bringing Russia to the Berlin conference table. At the same time, the Cyprus Convention policy showed the ascendancy of Indian defence over European interests, and chapter VI discusses the final stage of this development in a discussion of the second Afghan War.

In 1913 a new Indian revolutionary movement, known as the Ghadr party, was founded in the United States. It was a coalition of middle class Indians, several of whom were established revolutionaries, and Sikh workers who had settled in the United States and Canada from around 1905. The latter had become discontented because of the discriminatory nature of Canadian immigration legislation and their revolutionary enthusiasm was aroused in 1914 when the Canadians prevented the entry of Indians from the Komagata NIaru. In August 1914 large numbers of Ghadrites left North America to start a revolution in the Punjab, but the Indian authorities had been forewarned and many were interned under the Ingress Ordinance. Plans for a revolution continued and a projected rising in February 1915 was thwarted by police action. The Ghadrites failed because of their weak organisation and their inability to win popular support. They were more successful in gaining adherents in the army, though the army mutiny in Singapore in February 1915 was due more to tensions within the regiment involved. The Germans formed an alliance with the Ghadrites and other revolutionaries in Bengal and Europe, whom they vainly attempted to arm with munitions from America and the Philippines. In the East Indies help was given to the Bengali revolutionaries and plans made to raid the Andaman Islands, while in Siam there was a plot to invade Burma and from Turkey and Afghanistan there were attempts to influence Indian Muslims. All these plans failed. They resulted in the strengthening of extraordinary legislation in India and the growth of a British intelligence system in the east. Later in the war the Germans and revolutionaries hoped to regain the initiative by influencing Japan. This also failed, though it helped to sour Anglo-Japanese relations.

The first part of this study examines the emergence of the mamluk institution as an answer to the problem of conducting imperial politics in a Muslim context. As long as tribal ties served to set off the conquerors against the conquered population the need for such an imperial tool did not arise, and the erosion of the tribal roots did not immediately create one, since the transfer of power to the generals in the Marwanid period engendered a factionalism which drew metropolitan and provincial armies together in common rivalries. When the rise of a new army brought the faction to an end the Abbasids attempted to build up an imperial aristocracy, using, inter alia, the tie of free clientage, as part of their overall effort to foster an Islamic imperial ideal. When this failed the discrepancy between the norms of Islam and the demands of government dictated the use of foreigners recruited as slaves. The second part takes up the formation of these norms themselves, and here the starting point is the fusion of a Jewish heresy with a tribal tradition. Islam began as a Judeo-messianic movement, and it was in the long search for a religious identity of their own that the Arabs were brought to elaborate Islam as an Arab religion, in the course of which they increasingly sanctified a normative tribal past over and above the cultures of the conquered peoples. The Shu'ubi protests proved ineffectual and the tension between Islam as a national or universal religion was never quite resolved. In cultural terms the result was the incompatibility of the two traditions which the Abbasids tried to fuse.

The core of this thesis is the edition of ff.160b-178b of the Tarlkh Mayyafarigin wa Amid by Ibn al-Azraq al-Fariql. This text, hitherto largely unexploited, deals with the history of the - Jazira from c.1100-c.1150, and contains a wealth of local detail - political, prosopographical and topographical. Despite its format of a city chronicle it also sheds much light on the major historical processes of this period, such as the revival of caliphal power, the growth of the atabegate and the rise of minor Turcoman dynasties at the expense of Saljuq power. The prime aim of this thesis has been to render the text more accessible. This has been done firstly by preparing a critical edition based on the two known manuscripts. Since the text is known to be complex, however, it seemed best to try to solve its many problems by providing translations of both manuscripts and an extensive commentary on the edition itself. In this commentary the fullest possible use is made of other contemporary primary sources to control the information given by Ibn al-Azraq. Individual chapters then explore some of the issues raised by the text. The chapters on fl-Ghazi and his sons seek by careful selection to establish the significant landmarks of their careers and to assess them as military and civil rulers. The beginning of their transition from semi-nomadic amIra to settled dynasts ia thereby clarified. Chapter II shows how later writers exploited the text of Ibn al-Azraq and thereby examines certain typical Islamic approaches to works of history, biography and topography. Chapter III analyses the text as an interesting source for the study of late medieval Arabic. The edition itself, then, with its associated critical apparatus, addresses itself to the specific problems of language, history and topography presented by the text. The chapters which follow arise naturally out of the content of the text and demonstrate the wider horizons of this material.

This study deals with Selim II's confiscation of monastic properties at the end of the 16th century. The research is based firmans and huccets from monasteries on Mount Athos and Patmos as well as fetvas of the seyhu 'L-islam Ebu' s Su 'ud, dating from between 1569 and 1570. The purpose of this study is to show that, unlike previous confiscations by Ottoman Sultans, this was not a straightforward seizure of property, but ultimately a re-definition, to the benefit of the Ottoman Treasury, of an agreement between the monasteries and the Sultan. The immediate motive seems to have been the need to raise money for the attack on Cyprus in 1570. The new arrangements, however, were also intended to bring long term benefits to the Treasury while allowing the monasteries to remain intact. It was Ebu's Su'ud who provided the legal instruments for the confiscation by ruling that agricultural land was held by the Sultan on behalf of the Treasury, and by ruling vakfs made for churches and monasteries to be invalid. Monastic vakfs offended two legal principles. Firstly, they consisted largely of rural land which in Ebu's Su'ud's definition was mfrf land, and secondly they had been created for the benefit of churches and monasteries, a concept totally opposed to the hanaH laws on vakfs. Thus, monastic land was confiscated on the grounds of the first offence and the rest of monastic properties, i.e flocks, vineyards, orchards, buildings, fountains, on the grounds of the second. However, Ebu's Su'ud recognised the necessity of retaining monastic communities intact. Thus, when the monks requested to be treated as a collectivity, he devised a legal fiction that enabled monastic communities to survive and to continue operating as before. He categorised monastic vakfs as family vakfs and then he recognised the monks of a monastery as the offspring of deceased monks. By this device, the monasteries received assurances that no one would interfere in the possession and exploitation of their properties, in future, provided that the monasteries did not re-offend. This leniency demonstrated by Ebu's Su'ud, is evident not only in the rulings of the ~eyhu 'I-islam but also in the procedure in the kadf's court on Kos. The kadf seemed to have 'bent the rules' on a number of occasions, testified in the huccets concerning the sale of the properties of Patmos Monastery and their conversion into vakfs. Despite, the standard procedure of converting mUlks into vakfs, the monks of the monastery converted properties to vakfs before they actually bought them back from the mfrf. In two cases, as well, fields were sold by the mfrf as mUlks in clear defiance of Ebu's Su'ud's prohibition of the practice.

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