Al-Malik al-Mansūr Husām al-Dīn Lāchin al-Manṣsūrī was one of the succession of sultans whose brief reigns occupy the two decades from the death of al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn in 689/1290 to the third accession of his son, al-Nāsir Muhammad, 709/1310. Lāchīn himself reigned little more than two years; his sultanate ended as it had begun in conspiracy and it was distinguished by no outstanding successes. Nevertheless it has some features of significance for the history of the Mamlūk sultanate.

It has been frequently noted by linguists and other observers that in many parts of the Arabic-speaking world, the speech patterns of any one region divide quite sharply into two groups—that of the towns on the one hand, and that of the surrounding countryside on the other. The following is an attempt to show the relationship of two dialects of Arabic spoken in the province of Khūzistān in Iran which can be considered to be representative of urban and rural groups within their area.

Perhaps no question of historical-geographical interest relating to the ancient Middle East has been so frequently a subject of inquiry or brought a greater difference of opinion than has that of the location of the countries of Magan and Meluḫḫa. The problems of identification are particularly confused because widely separate areas appear to be indicated at different periods. Old Babylonian and Sumerian references seem to place these regions at the lower end of the Persian Gulf and along the coast of the Indian Ocean beyond, while texts of the late Assyrian period indicate Egypt and Nubia/Ethiopia

The quantity of Oriental, and particularly Indian curiosities brought to the British Isles in two centuries of imperial rule has till very recently exceeded the interest of the educated British public in them. Many have lain unregarded for long periods in the attics and basements of the descendants of those who originally brought them back. Hence amid a mass of worthless or commonplace objects there are still pieces of historical or stylistic interest, in private ownership as well as in our great public collections, which have not yet attracted scholarly interest.

Bintulu, an Austronesian language spoken in the district capital of that name and in several smaller communities in the basin of the Kemena river, Fourth Division, Sarawak, has two previously unrecognized implosive stop phonemes, 6 and d. Where these segments occur in lexical items known to reflect a Proto-Austronesian (PAN) reconstruction, they appear to result from an unconditioned phonemic split of PAN *b, *d, *D, or *j. A hypothesis constructed to account for a wider range of linguistic facts offers an explanation of some of these apparent irregularities. Most if not all residual discrepancies can be accommodated under an ancillary hypothesis of borrowing, independently motivated by various considerations. The case of the Bintulu implosives is of general theoretical interest, as it necessitates modifications in some recent claims regarding the diachronic sources of implosive stops.

The admirable article by Drijvers is a significant contribution to the study of early Syriac texts and certainly calls for further analysis. In the decipherment of lapidary texts the overriding factor is, of course, the script; and, fortunately, monumental Syriac script conforms to a fairly uniform pattern of development. The comments that follow are based principally on epigraphic considerations.

In BSOAS, xxxii, 2, 1969, my friend and colleague, Dr. Abraham Demoz of the Haile Sellassie I University, Addis Ababa, published the Amharic text of a phonograph message which the Emperor Menelik II (1889–1913) and the Empress Taitu sent to Queen Victoria.

At Vd., iii, 8, occurs the phrase (in Geldner's edition) yaṭ Bā paiti fraēštəm sairi nikante spānača irista naraēča irista. To explain the word sairi Bartholomae (Air. Wb., 1564–5) assumed a noun sar- f. of which sairi would be tjhe expected dual form.

A group of scholars at the Institute for Oriental Languages, State University of Utrecht, Netherlands, are planning to prepare a critical edition of the Kubjikāmatatantra, which is likely to be one of the oldest Hindu Tantras, but is still accessible only through manuscripts.