This book deals with Punches and Punch-like magazines in 19th and 20th century Asia, covering an area from Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in the West via British India up to China and Japan in the East. It traces an alternative and largely unacknowledged side of the history of this popular British periodical, and simultaneously casts a wide-reaching comparative glance on the genesis of satirical journalism in various Asian countries. Demonstrating the spread of both textual and visual satire, it is an apt demonstration of the transcultural trajectory of a format intimately linked to media-bound...

Focusing on the Maijbhandari movement in Chittagong, south-eastern Bangladesh, which claims the status of the only Sufi order originated in Bengal and which has gained immense popularity in recent years, this book provides a comprehensive picture of an important aspect of contemporary Bengali Islam in the South Asian context.

Expertise in South Asian languages and literatures is combined with ethnographic field work and theoretical formulations from a range of disciplines, including cultural anthropology, Islamic studies and religious studies. Analysing the Maijbhandaris tradition...