Bis repetita non placent: The deceptive nature of repetitive statements Johannes Kurz Currently collecting material on alleged Muslim envoys from Srivijaya and the identification of the surname Li 李 as a Muslim name in Chinese records on Southeast Asia, I came across the following statement “That this name represented ‘’Ali’ is widely acknowledged” in Geoff Wade’s chapter “Early Muslim Expansion in Southeast Asia Eighth to Fifteenth Centuries”, in The New Cambridge History of Islam Volume 3: The Eastern Islamic World Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, ed.by David O. Morgan and Anthony Reid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 373 [366-408]. 1 Wade repeated this statement in his contribution “Islam Across the Indian Ocean to 1500 CE”, in Early Interconnectivity across the Indian Ocean World, Vol. II: Exchange of Ideas, Religions, and Technologies, ed. Angela Schottenhammer (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 100 [85-138]. Like in the earlier text information on who acknowledged Li as ‘Ali and when is missing. In a subject such as early Southeast Asian history that rests until today to a certain extent on general assertions that a majority of scholars agree upon, are common, such as, for instance, Srivijaya, early Muslim maritime trade networks, Arab Muslim traders in eighth century Guangzhou, and so forth. In addition, writers tend to rely on translations of premodern Chinese texts and their interpretations in their research on these above mentioned and related topics. The title of the most well-known translation of Zhao Rukuo’s 趙汝适 work Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志 into English by Friedrich Hirth and William W. Rockhill rarely is questioned. The original title translates as “Record of the Various Barbarians” (and similar), while Hirth and Rockhill announced their agenda by titling their book Chau Ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-Fan-Chi (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Science, 1911). According to this rendition of the title, trade excluded people from the Indian subcontinent, the Bay of Bengal, and all of Southeast Asia, the focus being Chinese and Arab traders. 1 I did not have access to the published version of Wade’s paper “The Li (李) and Pu (蒲) “Surnames” in East Asia-Middle East Maritime Silkroad Interactions during the 10 th -12 th Centuries”, in Aspects of the Maritime Silk Road: From the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea, ed. Ralph Kauz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 181- 193. 1