After achieving independence in 1945, Indonesian leaders began tackling the basic questions that faced all postcolonial state-builders: What principles would guide the state and nation? Communism or capitalism? Secularism or Islam? How could they craft a common national identity from a diverse population? It is against this backdrop that in the April 1954 issue of the popular Indonesian Muslim periodical Al-Muslimun, the editors published an unusual translation of a well-known verse from Sūrat al-Nisāʾ of the Qur’an from Arabic into Indonesian...

Several claims are made in Arabic primary sources concerning the original function and meaning of the Dome of the Rock. Modern scholars have combined these primary sources with analyses of the structure and ornamentation of the building. Dominant lines of interpretation have suggested that it was designed to assert the victory of Islam; to evoke the Solomonic Temple; to mark the role of the Temple Mount at the end of time; and even to serve as an alternative locus for Muslim pilgrimage (ḥajj) during the second Islamic civil war...

Collaboration in collecting, cataloging, and digitizing information from ancient manuscripts and codices is critical for the preservation of texts on early mathematics and science in Arabic and other languages. New developments in technology help to shed light on the complex and often obscure pathways along which the history of science developed from Late Antiquity through the Islamic Middle Ages...