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Abu’l-Fazl, the author of the History of Akbar, is known to anyone with an interest in Mughal India. Along with his brother Faizi, Abu’l-Fazl made a lifelong career for himself in imperial Mughal service, while their father Shaykh Mubarak ran a madrasa in Agra. They represented a relatively small but growing number of Indian Muslims who had gained mastery in Persian to prepare them for various posts in this fast-growing empire of early modern India…

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...