There's never two without a third, they say. So I might have guessed, after being twice unsuspectingly drawn into this Omar business, that presently I should be bothered again. But I didn't guess; and so it was a surprise, and I suppose as a pretender to scholarship I ought to say a pleasant surprise, when last fall (my transatlanticism is not without justification) I received a letter from Professor Arthur Upham Pope asking me if I would like to have a look at yet another ancient codex of Omar that had turned up, this time in New York. I fell; and these notes are the first fruits of that transdigression. I don't know yet who owns the thing; it flew the Atlantic twice to my knowledge; where its present resting place may be I cannot imagine.

1. From the period of the rule of the Kuṣāṇa family of the Saka kings cor three inscriptions from Mathurā. Of the first two neither is completely preserved, but in both a word bakanapati is unmistakably present. The first inscription is of the time of the mahārāja rājātirāja devaputra Huviṣka. The second inscription written on a pedestal seems to contain the name Vima, and this by both K. P. Jayaswal and Mme van Lohuizen de Leeuw is considered to mean Vima Kadphises, though Sten Konow expressed his doubts.

A convention existed among Manichæan copyists whereby most Parthian poetry was written as prose, the verses being separated only by some device of punctuation. The method saved a considerable amount of paper. Yet there are texts set out as poetry, in separate lines with a space between verses. The two great hymn-cycles, Huwīdagmān and Angad Rōšnan, are invariably presented in this way. These exist in the fragments of thirty-odd MSS. of very varied character; it is evident, therefore, that in their case the manner of presentation did not depend on individual taste or means, but was regarded as proper to the texts themselves.

§ 1. There is in all languages a considerable difference between literary and colloquial usage. Sometimes this difference is so great that one can almost speak of two distinct languages. But even when the contrast is less striking it remains true that a large part of the vocabulary and a number of grammatical forms are to be encountered only in books and do not come spontaneously to the lips in natural speech; just as, on the other hand, there are words and expressions to be heard on every side in ordinary conversation that would be unthinkable in formal writing. All this is as true of Persian as of any other language; but whereas in the West the colloquial idiom has long since achieved literary recognition in the drama and in fiction, this is by no means the case in Persia, where recent experiments in the recording of the spoken language have met with strong opposition from the upholders of the classical tradition. The first shot hi this new ‘Battle of the Books’ was fired more than 30 years ago by Sayyed Mohammad ‘Ali amālzāde with the publication of his celebrated collection of short stories known as Yekī būd yekī na-būd, in which he introduced into Persian literature a host of words and phrases in common use by all classes throughout Persia but unrecorded in dictionaries and carefully avoided by men of letters. ǰamālzāde was content to enrich the vocabulary of the literary language: it was left to men like the late Sādeq Hedāyat and his disciple Sādeq Čūbak to take a second and much more controversial step and to make the creatures of their imagination employ, as nearly as possibly, the actual pronunciation and grammar of the spoken language.

Considerable expectation has been raised by the announcement from Turkey that the Dīwān or collected poems of the famous 12th-century author Ibn Bājjah (Avempace) has been discovered. Nowadays when Ibn Bājjah's name is mentioned we think of him as a prominent figure of what may be called the Spanish school of Arabic philosophy. But in his own time and later Ibn Bājjah's reputation as musician and poet, cultivator inter alia of the new poetical style of muwashshaḥāt, was, it appears, scarcely less high than his philosophic fame. The biographers have preserved for us a score or two of his verses, some of which have been englished by A. R. Nykl. In general however, we are short of material to form a judgment on what was evidently a very characteristic part of Ibn Bājjah's activity. His complete Dīwān has till now apparently never been heard of, but the news that it had been brought to light was not on that account less welcome.

The Avromān parchments, two (I and II) in Greek and one (III) in Parthian, were brought to England in 1913 by Dr. Sa'īd Khan Kurdistāni and were acquired soon afterwards by the British Museum. Professor E. H. Minns, of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in his article ‘Parchments of the Parthian Period from Avroman in Kurdistan’, published in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1915, has translated and discussed at length the two Greek texts. The latest and most authoritative of several articles on the Parthian manuscript is that of Dr. H. S. Nyberg entitled ‘The Pahlavi Documents from Avroman’, in Le Monde Oriental of 1923. The summary of information relevant to the present paper given in the following three paragraphs is based on these articles.

When Soslan went to the land of the giant Uomar, son of Tara, he pretended to be his own hireling: Tari furt Uomari zænxæmæ ranæxstæræy ye'xuærsti ræuoni, Pam. ii 60. The Dictionary translates Dig. ræuonæ as ‘cause, pretext, appearance’, and quotes our passage to illustrate the third meaning: ‘in the appearance of his hireling.’ There is, however, another passage, in which ræuonæ clearly means ‘disguise’. Uaskergi had placed watchmen at the gorge of Zadælesk, to prevent Cænxigol, the spirit of salt, from leaving the heights. The villain Sirdon advises Cænxigol: mæn gadcay ræuændtæy leu næ rayervæzay uædta, dæ ramardzænæncæ ‘if you do not escape by means of my bitch's ræuændtæ (plur. of ræuonæ) they will kill you’; thereupon Cænxigol Sirdoni gadcay cari bacudæy ma uotemæy qalaurtæbæl rayevhudæy, “Sirdoni gadca æy!” zæhgæy ‘Cænxigol entered the hide of Sirdon's bitch and thus passed by the watchmen, who said: “it is Sirdon's bitch”’ (Miller, Ocemuhckue Эmю∂ы i 102). Miller translated mæn gadcay ræuændtæy as ‘by the ruse of my bitch’; evidently the meaning is ‘by disguising yourself as my bitch’. The plural ræuændtæ is also used, according to B., my Digor friend, when the word means ‘pretext’.

During the current year 1952, corresponding to the Hijra years 1371–2, two gatherings have been planned to celebrate, a little belatedly, the millenary of the birth of Ibn Sīnā in Ṣafar 370 (August, 980). The first, under the general patronage of the Arab League and the direction of a special Committee in Iraq, was held in Baghdad from 20th to 28th March. The second, under the direction of a Persian Committee, is provisionally scheduled to be held in Teheran and Hamadan later in the year. The two celebrations, far from being mutually exclusive, are intended to be complementary. Strong Persian and Turkish delegations attended the Baghdad meeting, in addition to delegations from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Libya, and representatives of Unesco and Western orientalism; and similar delegations are expected to attend the meeting in Persia.

Perhaps the most exotic among the many strange kings and rulers mentioned in the inscription of Paikuli is the Khagan of the Aq-Aqatärān or ‘White Khazars’. This is the meaning which the late E. Herzfeld, in his edition of that inscription, attributed to a group of words in the Middle Persian version which he read as ḥ'k'n ZY 'kka'n. As the inscription dates from the last decade of the 3rd century (probably from A.d. 293), his interpretation seems to involve a double anachronism: in the title, and in the national name.

Contemporary accounts of the events which led up to the Afghan conquest of Persia in 1722 ascribe some importance to the role played by the Georgians in this catastrophe. The well-known narrative of Jonas Hanway and reports of Catholic missionaries, European travellers, and Consular agents, together with the published documents from Russian archives, indicate that the deterioration of relations between the Shah and the King of K'art'li was among the factors which assisted Mīr Maḥmūd's enterprise. In the present brief study, the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Quai d'Orsay, as well as Georgian sources, have been drawn on to sketch the history of Georgian relations with the government of Shah Sulṭān Ḥusayn, and follow up some suggestive indications contained in Professor Minorsky's own writings.

Parodies of oriental speech and writing often consist merely of truisms, half-truths, and platitudes strung together in a fashion which appears to western ideas to reflect, with only a little conscious distortion, the working of the eastern mind. The grain of truth among the chaff is the fact that there undoubtedly exists a large body of proverbial wisdom that has for centuries been current amongst the peoples inhabiting the lands stretching between the Indus and the Atlantic, if not also amongst those living further to the east. Specimens of this gnomic currency occur as early as in ancient Egyptian, as well, of course, as in Biblical literature, while a distinct family group is to be found in the writings of Muslim peoples.

In a recent article on Ya'qūb Pasha, the Jewish physician of Sultan Meḥmed II, Professor F. Babinger cites two passages from the brief account of the career of Ya'qūb given by A. Galanté in his Médecins Juifs au service de la Turquie. The first tells of the arrival of Ya'ūb in Edirne during the reign of Murād II, of his service with Murād and Meḥmed II, and gives the text of an alleged ferman exempting Ya'qūb and his descendants from all taxation in perpetuity, granted by Meḥmed II at Boghaz-kesen in Rabī' II 856/Apr.-May 1452. The second alleges that in 1571 the descendants of Ya'qūb applied to the Rabbinate in Constantinople for exemption from Jewish communal taxes on the basis of this ferman. As Babinger points out, Galanté refers the first statement simply to ‘un auteur hébraïque’, without further specification, while for the second statement he cites no authority at all.

Being rather inconspicuous among the many beautiful and important exhibits of the Benaki Museum in Athens, the small bowl described in the present paper has so far received but scant attention and has not been published before.

Abū Dāwūd Sulaimān b. al-Ash'ath al-Sijistānī (202–275/817–889) was the author of the Sunan which has come to be recognized as one of the six authoritative books of tradition accepted by Sunnīs. Ibn Dāsa is frequently quoted as authority for the statement that Abū Dāwūd selected the 4,800 traditions in this work from a mass of 500,000 traditions which he had collected, those given a place in his book being ‘sound traditions, those which seem to be so, and those which are nearly so’. But he adds that only four traditions are necessary for one's religious guidance: (1) Deeds are judged by intentions; (2) To abstain from what does not concern him is a part of a man's good observance of Islam; (3) A believer is not a believer till he likes for his brother what he likes for himself; (4) What is lawful is clear and what is unlawful is clear, but in between are dubious matters.

Le 28 juin 1245, à l'ouverture du Concile de Lyon, le pape Innocent IV groupa sous cinq chefs ses principaux soucis. Parmi ceux-ci figurent les ravages des Tatares qui, terram Christianorum intraverant et Ungariam occupaverant non parcentes sexui vel etati quin omnes interficerent.

Most Iranists are probably acquainted with some of my writings on Iranian chronology and systems of time-reckoning. One of the essential points in my outline of the history of the Iranian calendars is the theory I put forward about the date of the creation of a fixed religious year, co-existing and running parallel with the civil year, which was a vague one. This fixed year, called in Pahlavi literature Vihēǰakīk, was, however, theoretical and without any application in daily life. It was used only by the Zoroastrian clergy for the purpose of ascertaining the original position of the religious festivals and keeping them in or about their astronomical positions. By the ‘original position’ is meant the places these most important religious days occupied in the tropical year at the time of instituting the Vihēǰakīk year, which time may or may not have been the epoch of the initial adoption of the Mazdayasnian or ‘Young Avestan’ civil year in Iran. The date I proposed was 441 B.c., or at any rate some time in the first decade of the second half of the 5th century B.c.

The British Museum manuscript Or. 8613 (146 folios, probably 5th–11th century) has lost both its beginning and end. Its subject is the doctrine of the Mu'tazila and it is divided into sections each of which begins with the quotation from a book by Abū 'Alī Muḥammad b. Khallād (Fihrist 174); in one place he is called ṣāḥib al-kitāb. The authorities mostly quoted are the two shaikhs, Abū 'Ahī al-Jubbāī and his son Abū Hāshim, the chief judge 'Abd al-jabbār (†415/1024) and Abū Rashīd Sa'īd b. Muḥammad who died somewhat later. He is the latest authority quoted. It is hard to decide to which of the two men Abū 'Alī refers. The MS. has been collated within the last 200 years but no other copy seems to be recorded unless no. 589 in Landberg (MSS. belonging to Maison Brill), Ziyādāt, by Abū Ṭālib Yaḥyā b. Ḥusain to al-uṣūl of Ibn Khallād, is the same work; but if the description ‘giving much information about the Zaidis’ is right, it is another book. The character of the book will be shown by a summary of its contents followed by an abridged translation of one section.

In 1937 the present writer published some new South Arabian copper coins, brought back from the Wādī Maifa'at in the Ḥaḍramaut by Miss Freya Stark, on which the Ḥaḍramī moon-god, Sīn, figured for the first time. These pieces, of various sizes and weights, had all the same types and legends. Parts were obliterated or missing, but a composite drawing (fig. 1), based on a comparison of all specimens, shows on the obverse the beardless male head, wearing long ringlets of the moon-god, Sīn, whose name in the South Arabian script is on the right, with the letter (m) of uncertain significance, perhaps the initial of the mint, on the left behind the head. The reverse shows an eagle standing, to right, with open wings, the first occurrence of this representation of the moon-god on coins from this part of the world. To the left downwards is the name [reversed, as are all the legends on this first group, since these particular coins have all been cast from a series of moulds; the join in the mould, for example, is clearly visible on the right-hand side and at the bottom of the coin illustrated], i.e. ŠḲR, about which more will be stated later; to the right, downwards, , i.e. YŠH, a legend which has occasioned some speculation. Professor G. Ryckmans, in a private communication, drew my attention to the numerous examples of triple proper names amongst Sabæan rulers, e.g. Šahar Hilāl Yuhar'im, and suggested that the enigmatic letters on the coins might be the initials of one such. Unfortunately, as A. F. L. Beeston has recently pointed out, triple royal names are not attested at all in Ḥaḍramī. He suggested that the letters should be read upwards, HŠY, i.e. ‘minting (a verb with the causative prefix h) of Šmr Yhr'š’, the latter being the Sabæan king into whose realm the kingdom of the Ḥaḍramaut was assimilated towards the end of the 3rd century A.d. This would agree quite well with the date suggested in the above-mentioned Num. Chron. article (p. 279) from a study of prototypes as being ‘at the earliest the second century A.d.’.

In the course of a recently published article, I had occasion to demonstrate, rather briefly and using a comparatively simple poem, what seemed to me a distinct pattern of symbolic allusion in the verse of Ḥāfiẓ. I suggested that this type of pattern (especially in association with certain others, which have recently engaged the attention of scholars) largely invalidated the traditional view of Persian poetry as a random shower of brilliant, but ill-assorted and uncontrolled, ‘fireworks’.

The steppe which stretches between the Lower Danube and the Black Sea, from the Delta southward as far as the foothills of the Emine Dagh, and which since the middle of the 14th century has been called, after the Bulgarian prince Dobrotitsa, the Dobruja, is the homeland of a small Turkish-speaking people, the Gagauz. It is because of their religion that they appear as a distinct group among the Turks: they are Christians belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church. In the past the Gagauz may have constituted, among the various ethnic elements of the region, a group of considerable importance, especially in the southern and middle Dobruja, from Varna and Kaliakra towards Silistria on the Danube. Besides, small isolated groups of them are to be found also in the Balkans (where they are more commonly known by the name of Sorguch): in Eastern Thrace, round Hafsa, to the south-east of Adrianople, and in Macedonia, to the east and west of Salonica, round Zikhna (near Serres) and round Karaferia (Verria). In modern times the Gagauz of the Dobruja have shrunk to a feeble minority chiefly as a result of a prolonged and massive emigration into Bessarabia. To-day even this remnant is rapidly dwindling.