Abstract The purpose of this paper is to study Jerome Xavier’s opus magnum, the Āyina-yi ḥaqq-namā (literally The Truth-Revealing Mirror), based on seven Persian manuscripts, as well as a Spanish version entitled Fuente de vida . It is not only the first Persian theological text written from a Catholic point of view, but also the first of a series of controversial works, provoking a chain of reactions between Shia Clerics and missionaries in Safavid Iran, and Arabists in Rome during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This paper endeavours to explore this work, not only as part of a theological discourse, but also as a form of observation of the practiced, lived Islam and Hinduism in Indian subcontinent. Special attention is given to Xavier’s terminology, his methodology, and his controversial approach. This essay brings into discussion the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī written by ʿAbd al-Sattār Lāhūrī. It provides valuable insights into dissenting, contradicting Mughal voices that reacted to the presence and discourses of the Jesuits, thus offering a crucial counterpoint to the Jesuit perspective as embodied in the Āyina-yi ḥaqq-namā .

Abstract Scholarship holds that the Persian opus magnum Āyina-yi ḥaqq-namā (Mirror of Truth, 1609) of Jerome Xavier, the Spanish Jesuit missionary at the Mughal court, is presumably based on a Portuguese draft, whose manuscript he unfortunately lost during his journeys in India. However, there exists also a Spanish draft, titled Fuente de Vida , completed in India in 1600, in the Jesuit Archive in Rome. This essay seeks to explore the purpose of Fuente de Vida ’s Roman manuscript, produced in parallel to the Persian Āyina-yi ḥaqq-namā . Why is it written in Spanish, whereas its author asserted that he wrote the initial text in Portuguese, whose copy got lost? Taking a linguistic survey of its vocabulary, its grammar and its syntax, it is suggested that the text is neither merely a translation nor a continuation of the lost Portuguese version, but many parts of it hint at an original Spanish draft. This leads one to suppose that the Spanish manuscript sent from India to Rome serves an entirely different purpose and was written for another audience than the lost Portuguese manuscript, which had been meant to be given to the Persian-speaking translators for producing the Āyina-yi ḥaqq-namā . This essay claims that, by writing in a widespread language, Spanish, he intended to provide a practical handbook for missionaries who were living in Muslim countries or those in contact with Muslim people.

Abstract How can a cycle of interreligious exchange and polemic offer us new understandings of early modern conceptions of revelation, language, and the miraculous inimitability of the Qurʾān ( iʿjāz al-qurʾān )? This article approaches the polemical cycle of Jesuits and Muslims in Mughal and Safavid courts as a means to trace the evolution of iʿjāz al-qurʾān in the early modern period by attending to the epistemological “pressures” felt by figures such as ʿAli-Quli Jadid al-Islam (d. 1734). In response to Jesuit claims, Jadid al-Islam articulated key concepts of the Islamic revelatory imagination in new ways, such as his remarkable foray into inscribing pre-Qurʾānic revelation with its “original” purity by providing a translation into Persian of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib’s “uncorrupted” recension of forty suras from the Torah. These forty suras of the Torah demonstrate an evolution in iʿjāz al-qurʾān wherein the “inimitable” character of the Qurʾan is refocused upon doctrinal perfection rather than aesthetic quality. In turn, the example of Jadid al-Islam’s suras reveal how the interreligious exchange becomes a generative form of self-knowledge rather than just polemic or apology.

Abstract In 2023 David Scott highlighted the importance of children and young people for the field of missiology. This article contributes further to that discussion by opening up a conversation that focuses on the rich body of historical scholarship on children and the Protestant missionary movement that has emerged over the last three to four decades. It argues that this body of knowledge potentially expands how we view the relationship of younger ages to Christian mission and offers both ideas and methodologies useful to ongoing missiological research. Three historical vignettes from New Zealand are positioned with respect to wider historiographical trajectories and contexts. Then it considers selected methodological emphases in history research, that may open up new ways of approaching both historical and contemporary missiological resources.

Abstract The article argues for missional masculinities from an incarnational framework as the foundation for imitatio Christi among Pentecostal men in Africa. It suggests that since masculinities are defined by societal ideals that men are expected to embody, Pentecostal men should reclaim the divine vision of the new ‘manity’ in Christ. Here, Christ serves not only as the epitome of new humanity but also as the exemplar, setting the standard and modeling what it means to be human. Jesus is the primordial model, the definition, the determination, the illustration, and most importantly, the beginning and the end of what it means to be human. Therefore, missional masculinities, modeled after Christ, are primed to exhibit kenotic, relational, agapeic, redemptive characteristics, and are everyday prophetic performances of abundant life for humanity and creation.