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Since 1992, when the World Heritage Committee established its category of "cultural landscapes", scholarly debates have ensued on how they could best be managed. One approach, which appears to have gained significance over the past two decades or so, considers using traditional conservation practices as well as engaging local indigenous communities in the stewardship of these exemplary sites. To examine the efficacy of this recent approach, this book explores the concept of indigenous communities, the nature of traditional conservancy in the Matobo Hills Cultural World Heritage Landscape where this study was conducted, as well as the management history of the area. Based on the perspectives of the indigenous people of the Matobo Hills, this investigation studies the extent to which both traditional conservation practices and local involvement can be germane to the administration of World Heritage Cultural Landscapes.Simon Makuvaza is currently a Research Fellow in the Faculty of the Built Environment at the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Previously, he lectured archaeology at the Catholic University of Malawi. He also worked as an archaeologist for the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe.

This innovative work attempts to piece together the cultural biography of Mesoamerica's precolonial codices. Today less than twenty extant manuscripts are all that remains of the Mesoamerican book-making tradition. These pictographic and hieroglyphic texts have often been studied for their content, but in doing so their nature as physical objects faded into the background. By tracing the paths these books have followed over the past five hundred years, this study acquaints the reader with their production, use and re-use, destruction, rediscovery and reinvention. Even today, in fact, these books continue to add new chapters to their biography. That is, thanks to the most cutting-edge technology currently available, it has now been possible to uncover a completely new text from inside one of these precious and fragile manuscripts. Ludo Snijders is an archaeologist specialising in Mesoamerican cultures. This work is the result of collaboration with the TU Delft and the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, within the NWO Science4Arts funded project "Shedding light on endangered mutual heritage".

"For us non-Iranian readers of Hafiz's 14th-century ghazal poems, Iranianattitudes toward the premier lyric poet in the 1,000-year history of Persianliterature, are almost as intriguing as Hafiz's poetry itself. First is theinclination of Iranian readers to find deep, spiritual meaning in that poetry.Second is their personal identification with what they perceive as Hafiz'sphilosophy. Third is their linking of Iranian cultural identity with Hafiz's life and works to the point where some educated Iranians define part of theirIranianness by referencing Hafiz and even consider him a relevant politicalvoice. These features of Iranian appreciation of Hafiz come alive on pageafter page in The Reception of Hafiz in Nineteenth and Twentieth-CenturyPersia, while author Bahman Solati himself epitomizes Iranian love of andidentification with the poet's stances and themes in his poems."Michael Craig Hillmann, The University of Texas at Austin-Bahman Solati is Assistant Professor in Persian Language. He is the authorof several publications, including Rubaiyyat-i-Hakim Umar Khayyam, andPersian Proverbs in three volumes.

Persian passion play or ta`ziya depicts the role of the Prophets granddaughter Zeynab during the tragic death of the third Shiite Imam Hoseyn in Karbala in 680. This book depicts how Zeynab has become a role model in modern Iranian society, especially during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.Mahnia A. Nematollahi Mahani worked as an editor at the Center for International Cultural Studies in Tehran, before she started her academic career in Persian Studies at Leiden University.

The aim of Sharia Incorporated is to provide unbiased and contextual information about a topic that has of late been hijacked by politics in the West. Sharia Incorporated is an ambitious study of the development and incorporation of sharia and Islamic and customary law traditions into national legal, political, and social state structures. Sharia Incorporated also explores the sensitive topic of 'Western' human rights and rule of law standards in a Muslim world. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the role of sharia in the historical and legal formation of twelve representative Muslim states. In particular, the introduction Jan Michiel Otto goes to the heart of the prevailing environment in which Western discourses tend to oversimplify and misrepresent the substance and effect of Islam and more specifically Sharia. Otto's analysis and the twelve chapters, each written by laudable international scholars of law and anthropology, speak to the origin of Islamic legal trends, providing not only a comprehensive overview but a unique comparison of relevant legal domains and key issues raised by the advent of sharia. It is intended that this wealth of factual information contribute to current international debates on sharia, law, and politics. Jan Michiel Otto is hoogleraar Law and governance in developing countries aan de Universiteit Leiden, en directeur van het Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Development.