Since the creation of its first disciplinary histories in the late nineteenth century, Near Eastern archaeology has perceived its origins largely in terms of individual breakthroughs, following the common precepts of a pre-Annales historiography. The founding figures mentioned in the works of Rogers, Hilprecht, Budge or Parrot were either great explorers, great scholars or, most importantly, great excavators. From Della Valle's first tentative explorations at Babylon in 1616 to the major excavations at Nineveh and Babylon three centuries later, Near Eastern archaeology saw itself as the fruit of individual discovery. ‘Real’ archaeology was furthermore perceived as a natural rather than a human science and subsequently taken to have originated in nineteenth-century positivism; earlier accounts were hinted at in only the briefest fashion.

If with all these openings there had been no exchange whatever between East and West in their literary productions, it would have been strange, to say no more; and though, as I repeat, we have no tangible evidence of anything like translations, whether oriental or occidental, at that time …

Those words come from one of Max Müller's last essays ‘Coincidences’, in which he listed the many points of contact between East and West in the period after Alexander the Great's invasion of Bactria and the Indus valley. Müller thought a translation of a literary work from Greek or Latin to Sanskrit or Pāli or vice versa might be the key to resolving the numerous similarities he had found in the myths of East and West, particularly in the sacred texts of Buddhism and Christianity. In fact, according to his son, the collection of these parallels was the project on which Müller was working at his death. Had the father of the Sacred Books of the East lived another half century, he would have had his translation, but, I believe, he would have been disappointed with the profit accrued so far from the discovery.

Among all the inequalities of traditional Chinese society, education was one of the most obvious. In most cases, girls and women were not expected to receive education at the highest level and in late Qing China, most Chinese women did not have access to a university education. Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), an educator of the late Qing era and of Republican China, was renowned for his progressivism towards women. His broad-mindedness can be perceived in the way he advocated and implemented for girls and women educational opportunities on a par with those available to boys and men. Although many of his well-known contemporaries shared similarly progressive ideas on women, none of them are regarded as the initiator of the admittance of women to China's national universities. Actually during the May Fourth Period Cai was Chancellor of an important academic institution in China and thus strategically placed at a decisive moment in modern Chinese history.

Al-Manār was an Arabic and reformist journal founded by Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā in Cairo in 1898, and its primary objectives were to examine the decadence of Muslim political institutions, underline the danger of European colonialism in the Muslim world, and promote the idea that Islam was compatible with modernity and reason. The present article attempts to examine the intellectual influence of al-Manār among the Ḥadhramī elite in the Malay-Indonesian world, and critically assess its role as the mouthpiece for the propagation of ‘Abduh's doctrines and accomplishment of his reforms. It first addresses the mission of al-Manār as a reformist journal that worked towards the promotion of social, religious and economic reforms in the Muslim world. It secondly examines the religio-cultural background of the Ḥadhramī elite who were influenced by the reformist mission of al-Manār and subscribed to its ultimate goal. The study finally highlights the impact of al-Manār on the religio-political and social structure of the Ḥadhramī diaspora in the Malay-Indonesian world, and discusses how this impact resulted in the establishment of a revivalist movement that rejected the conservative attitude of blind imitation (taqlīd ) of the four schools of Islamic law, and denounced the Sufi practices that were not in harmony with the fundamentals of Islam. Special attention will also be paid to the role of the Ḥadhramī organisations, schools and press that contributed to the propagation of al-Manār's reformist mission and its dissemination at the grass roots level of the Ḥadhramī community.