For over a hundred years, scholars of medieval Jewish history have been interested in the history of the headship of the Jews in Egypt. The first among them, relying mostly on literary documents, believed that the ancient accounts about the establishment of the office of the head of the Jews (Nagid) could be traced back to the Fātimid occupation of Egypt (A.D. 969), while recent scholars—having at their disposal a growing stream of historical data from the Cairo Geniza—have ruled out the early establishment of the headship of the Jews (Negidut) because of the silence about this function in the Geniza documents of the first half of the eleventh century.

With the rejection of the early establishment of the headship of the Jews in Egypt, an approach developed which attempted to view the Gaon, head of the Palestinian academy, as the head of the Jews in the Fātimid empire. Now, the rise of the headship of the Jews in Egypt was seen in conjunction with the decline of the Yeshiva of Eretz Israel, at the close of the eleventh century. Lately, scholarship has been enriched by the deciphering of two new Geniza documents related to the office of the headship of the Jews which provide an opportunity for a renewed discussion of two central problems. The first touches upon the old question of putting a date to the establishment of the headship of the Jews in Egypt, and the second, following on from the first, concerns the issue of the status of the Gaon of Eretz Israel during the Fatimid administration.

Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kirmānī is known mainly from al-Ṭabarī as a rāwī for events in the caliphates of Mūsā al-Hādī and Hārūn al-Rashīd; from al-Jahshiyārī as a rāwī for an anecdote concerning al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā al-Barmakī (and probably for other, unattributed items of information); and from the mention of him as 'Umar [b.] al-Azraq al-Kirmānī, author of a book called the Akhbār al-Barāmika wa-faḍā'iluhum (‘Historical accounts of the Barmakid family and their merits’) by Ibn ‘Asākir in his great biographical dictionary of the leading figures and scholars associated with his native city of Damascus, citing him as an authority on Khālid b. Barmak's early close connexions with the ‘Abbāsid Imāms Muḥammad b. ‘Alī b. ‘Abd Allāh b. al-'Abbās and his son Ibrāhīm.

The occasion for the present article was the appearance for sale in a London auction of the portrait, apparently by the Scottish painter Sir William Allan 1782–1850), reproduced here on p1. I. It represented a young Persian gentleman in mid-nineteenth-century dress. On the back was a label in a later hand, which read:

‘Muzjd [read Mirza?] Mohammed AH Bey / Professor of Oriental Languages / University of Hazan / Painted by Sir William All…’.

On 26 March 1987 the present writer received an inquiry from the cataloguer, Karen Taylor, seeking help with the identification of the sitter and his place of residence. Some rapid inquiries were made at the time, from which it appeared that the university was probably that of Kazan in eastern Russia, and that the sitter may have had some connexion with a teacher of Persian known to the celebrated Russian Orientalist V. V. Bartol'd. However, records relating to Kazan then available in London were insufficient to support a definite identification. The portrait was sold as Lot no. 352 in the auction held on 4th November 1987, and was reproduced in the catalogue of the sale.Subsequent research, and inquiries in Russia, have brought forth fuller information about the sitter, a person whose career was unusual and distinguished, and who may be considered one of the founders of Oriental Studies at St. Petersburg. In spite of the time which has passed since the sale, it seems worth while to put the resulting information on record.

The expression pramāṇabhūta is attested in a number of Indian grammaticaland philosophical texts, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, its existence in texts no longer accessible inSanskrit being inferable from their translations in Tibetan where we find its standard equivalent tshad mar gyur pa. But the grammatical correctness and the interpretation of the term have given rise to a good deal of discussion and exegesis. Some commentators have taken up the grammatical question as to why we have the form pramāṇabhūta rather than the at first sight perhaps more normal form pramāṇībhūta. And in the Buddhist Pramāṇa-school a problem arises as to the precise meaning of the expression pramāṇabhūta employed as an epithet of a person. For by Dignāga and Dharmakirti pramāṇa has been exhaustively divided into pratyakṣa ‘(direct) perceptual knowledge’ and anumāna ‘inferential knowledge’, so that in the usage of their school at least a person (puruṣa, pudgala)—as opposed to knowledge or a cognition (jñāna = šes pa, or dhi/buddhi = blo)— would not strictly speaking be considered in the first instance as a pramāṇa.

Immediately after finishing his Kurzgefaβtes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen (KEWA), M. Mayrhofer had the very commendable courage to start work on an Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen (EWA), of which the first 11 fascicles now (Autumn 1992) lie before us. It is not, as the author rightly insists,‘a new (and improved) edition’ of KEWA, but a renewed attempt in its own rights. It is an attempt to produce ‘an etymological dictionary of’ a big corpus language (i.e. of Sanskrit)’ in ‘a practicable and finishable form’, that is: an etymological dictionary such as could be brought to completion ‘by a single scholar within his life time’,—provided this scholar would have the industry and tenacious dedication of a Mayrhofer, we should like to add. Even in the close atmosphere of such a somewhat constraining qualification, Mayrhofer aims high: he thinks of –an etymological dictionary approaching the fulfilment of demands of an ideal order–. The differences between the former work and the one recently begun, already clearly recognizable, are many and conspicuous. The changes introduced are mostly—not always, as is only to be expected—distinct improvements. One of the most important changes is highly welcome: the conscientious- reference to the first occurrence of each word in Sanskrit literature. The attribute ‘kurzgefaβt’ does not appear in the title. Even the KEWA was not actually ‘conciseမ: it was so in comparison only with the planned Vergleichendes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen by W. Wüst

Students of traditional Chinese political institutions cannot afford to disregard the importance of the Ch'ing confidential memorial system. Essentially, this dynastic institution had existed for centuries, but it reached maturity only in the Ch'ing dynasty. Under this system, government officials in various positions from many regions outside the capital submitted confidential memorials which reached the imperial desk through special channels. After reading and commenting on them in vermilion ink, the ruler returned the memorials to their authors confidentially via the same channels. This system resulted in direct communication between ruler and officials, and under the vigilant Ch'ing emperors, it enhanced imperial autocratic power in several ways

In the traditional Chinese state the ruler, however enlightened or benevolent, was an autocrat. His words were law; his decisions final. Without his sanction, no state affairs or government plans could proceed. His authority could only be circumvented or manipulated within the bureaucratic procedure and for this reason he worked hard to safeguard his authority by keeping a close eye on his officials throughout the empire.

The data and analyses of Tangut verbal morphology which I have presented (1979b, 1981, 1982, 1985) represent the cumulative result of more than twenty years of research of Tangut texts. It is with great regret that I saw my analyses misunderstood (LaPolla, 1992). In order to clarify my view on the Tangut verbal agreement, I feel compelled to give a succinct account of the phenomena causing so much controversy in the Tibeto-Burman linguistic literature.

The Tangut verb shows agreement for person and number of actant. The three overt agreement morphemes are <-ŋa2> (first person singular), <-na2> (second person singular) and <-ni2> (first and second person plural). The Tangut verb shows overt agreement only with first and second person actant. Third person involvement is marked by zero. A Tangut intransitive verb agrees with the subject, i.e. the ‘intransitive subject’. The two rules for the distribution of the overt agreement markers in the transitive verb as formulated in my Tangut grammar (Kepping, 1985: 233–4) are: (1) If one and no more than one of the actants is a first or second person, then the verb will overtly agree with that actant regardless of its syntactic role, and (2) if a transitive verb has two non-third person actants, the verb will agree with the grammatical patient or ‘transitive object’.

In 1989 Jadranka Gvozdanović published data of the ‘Yakkhaba’ transitive verbal paradigm. In the present paper these data are identified as Yakkha, re-arranged and interpreted. Comparisons are made with other Kiranti verbal agreement systems and with my model of the Proto-Kiranti verb.

1. Yakkhaba, Yakkha and Yakthungba

Kiranti languages are native to eastern Nepal and the western fringe of Sikkim. The Kiranti branch of the Tibeto-Burman is characterized by verbal morphologies which by Tibeto-Burman standards may be called complex. The Kiranti languages are traditionally divided into Limbu, Yakkha and the Rai languages. Limbu, at the far eastern extent of the Kiranti homeland, has several dialects, of which (Weidert and Subba, 1985) and Phedāppe (van Driem, 1987) are the best described. Yakkha occupies an intermediate position and is spoken in the vicinity of Cainpur in Saṅkhuvā Sabhā district on the slopes east of the Arūṇ river. Rai (Nep. Rāī) is a highly heterogeneous group of languages. This has to do with the fact that the name Rai, although convenient, is not a proper linguistic designation, but represents what in Nepal is perceived to be an ethnic grouping.

The Futūḥ al-Shām of al-Qudāmi, now lost, is not listed by Brockelmann or by Sezgin although it is one of the earliest works of futūḥ: its author lived in the second half of the second Islamic century. A few excerpts from this book, taken from Ibn ՙAsākir (d. 571/1176), Ta'rīkh madīnat Dimashq and Ibn Hajar (d. 852/1448), al-Iṣāba fī tamyīzi 'l-ṣaḥāba, provide some insight into the author and the book.

Ibn ՙAsākir's monumental work (see ‘Abbreviated references’ below, under TMD) is now available, in addition to the volumes which have so far been edited, in the form of a commercial facsimile edition. Its Mukhtasar, by Ibn Manzūr, is also available in a scholarly edition. Only a few years ago, apart from the edited volumes (which only cover a small part of this voluminous biographical dictionary), one had to rely on the incomplete and at times unreliable Tahdhīb of this book prepared by ‘Abd al-Qādir Badrān. This situation has now changed fundamentally and the easier access to this book will, one hopes, give new impetus to research in those areas where Ibn ‘Asākir excels, such as the conquest of Syria and Palestine.

Although the existence of 12 Armenian manuscripts in the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies has been known to scholars for some time and partial listings of their contents have appeared, they have not as yet been the subject of any more detailed publication. The collection features only one gospelbook which, in consequence of losing its original binding, also lacks its final colophon which would inform us precisely on such matters as date, provenance and, where appropriate, patron.

From other data the copyist can be identified as Movsēs. Moreover, since he describes himself simply as scribe (grič‘), we may deduce that he occupied only one of the minor clerical orders. He refers to assistance he received in lining the manuscript, which probably explains the awkwardness of the openings of two of the gospels where, despite the page being arranged as usual for two columns of writing, the scribe has elected to ignore the divisions and treat it as one. Similarly, his reference to his teacher confirms the impression left by his employment of the diminutive grč‘ak at one point that he was still under instruction in the art at a monastery. This is further compatible with the comparatively low level of technical excellence exhibited by the illuminations. Paleographically, the codex might be assigned to the seventeenth century, a date supported by some of the later grammatical forms which appear in the surviving colophons.