The fatwā is the legal opinion of a jurist not institutionalized in the classical sense: it is intended to elucidate, at the request of an inquirer, the position as to a legal issue; it is not binding on the inquirer or anyone else; unlike the judgement of a qāḍī, it is not enforceable. The fatwā that is the object of this paper belongs to a collection of legal documents gathered from tribal arbitrators in the Judean Desert and from the archives of sharī‘a courts. Those documents deal with various legal matters: personal status, torts (homicide and assault), contracts and property, land, etc.; most date from the twentieth century and some from the last quarter of the nineteenth. The collection has been used in research on the Islamization of tribal society in the Judean Desert in process of sedentarization.

This article deals with Palestinian Christians and Jews who availed themselves of the Muslim pious endowment institution (waqf, pi. awqāf) during the late Ottoman period. In Judaism and Christianity we find pious endowment institutions: the Jewish ‘Hekdesh’ and the Christian ‘Piae Causae’. In both religions there exists an ancient tradition of endowments for purposes which are quite similar to those of the waqf. In spite of this, Christians and Jews in Muslim territories availed themselves of the waqf from the Middle Ages until the end of the Ottoman state. This is an example of the use by minorities of the majority's legal system.

Between 1985 and 1987 the present writer took part in a multi-disciplinary study of the Wahiba Sands organized by the Royal Geographical Society. During this time I was able to travel extensively through and around the Sands to visit many bedouin families of the Āl Wahība, who inhabit the greater part of the area, and other tribes including the Āl ،Amr, Āl Bū ،Īsa, Ḣikmān, Hishm and Janaba who are found in certain enclaves, particularly to the east and north of the main sand desert. The purpose of my research was to make a social and ethnographic survey rather than a purely linguistic one, but in the process I was able to record some dialect speech including the text presented below.

Very little was known about the bedouin of this part of Oman prior to the Wahiba Sands Project. Holes has recently published examples of some related dialects and has proposed a classification scheme as the basis for a dialect geography of Northern Oman (Holes, 1989). Bedouin dialects of central and eastern Arabia have been more extensively described and classified (Holes, 1983; Ingham, 1982(a), 1982(b), 1986; Johnstone, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1967). Comparative studies of the distribution of certain features of present-day dialects have been shown to shed light on the population movements of the past, often supporting the written histories and oral traditions of the area.

Bei der Durchsicht der Brāhmī-Handschriften der “ Mainzer Sammlung / [Mz]1 entdeckte einer der beiden Verfasser [Maue] mit Mz 639 ein Fragment, das neben Sanskrit eine Übersetzungssprache enthielt, die aufgrund einiger Indizien dem Iranischen, am ehesten dem Sogdischen, zuzuordnen war. Anhand einer ersten vorlä ufigen Umschrift konnte Professor R. E. Emmerick (Hamburg) das Sakische ausschlieβen. Der zweite Autor [Sims-Williams] erkannte darin zweifelsfrei das Sogdische. Somit ist nun auch dieser mir. Dialekt in Brā hmī belegt und erstmals ein sogd. Textstück, das definitiv auf eine Sanskritvorlage zurückgeführt werden kann. Der besondere linguistische Wert liegt in der durch die Schriftart erzwungenen vollen Vokalisierung. Das neu entdeckte Bruchstück nährt die Hoffnung auf weitere sogdische Materialien in Brāhmī.2 Die lesbaren und verständlichen Teile des Blattfragments lassen klar erkennen, daβ esp. sich um einen Heilkundetext handelt, vermutlich einen Abschnitt über Augenkrankheiten.3 Wir haben Reste von vier Rezepturen oder Paragraphen, wie die erhaltenen Zahlen beweisen, die es auch erlauben, Vorderund Rückseite zu bestimmen. Im übrigen aber ist das Blatt so sehr fragmentiert und die Schrift teilweise so stark abgerieben, daβ das gewohnte Schema (zu behandelnde Krankheit, Zusammensetzung des Medikaments und dessen Dosierung) an verschiedenen Stellen zwar noch durchscheint, aber im einzelnen nicht rekonstruiert werden kann. Dies beeintrachtigt die Sicherheit und das Verständnis der Lesungen. Hier kann der entscheidende Fortschritt nur vom Mūla-Text oder zumindest von Paralleltexten kommen Die Suche danach, an der sich freundlicherweise auch R. E. Emmerick beteiligte, hat bisher nur zu einem negativen Ergebnis geführt:

A complete and reliable edition of the Khwarezmian phrases and words in the lawbook Qunyat al-munya by Najm al-Dīn Abū RajāMukhtār b. Mahmūd al-Zāhidī al-Ghazmīnī (d. A.H. 658/1260 C.E.) has long been a desideratum but was delayed by the inaccessibility of the best extant manuscript, no. C2311 in the Leningrad Oriental Institute (cited as S in the edition under review). The Qunyat al-munya comprises a résumé of a work by Najm al-Dīn's teacher, Munyat al-fuqahā’, a compilation of legal cases that in turn were probablytaken from a still older work, the Yatīmat al-dahr by Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd ‘A;ā’ al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Raḥīm al-Tarjumānī al-Makkī al-Khuwārzmiī (d.A.H. 645/1247 C.E.). The Khwarezmian elements in the Qunya can therefore, roughly, be said to be descended from the Yatīma via the Munya. Most of the cases from the Qunya involving Khwarezmian words, as well as several from the Munya that were preserved as marginal notes in manuscripts of the Qunya, were collected by Jalāl al-Dīn al-‘Imādī around A.H. 750/1350 C.E. in a separate text (referred to as the Risāla (R) in this edition). Professor D. N. MacKenzie's recently published edition is based upon manuscript no. C2311, originally from Astrakhan, which contains both the Qunya and the Risāla.

In the study of Chinese science it is important to take into account the fact that there are many Chinese terms which do not convey exactly the same meanings to traditional and modern scholars. It is essential to try to put ourselves in theshoes of the former in order to have a better understanding of classical Chinese texts. Take for example the simple term shuxue, which we all take to mean ‘mathematics’. Indeed we are quite correct to call it ‘ mathematics’ when it appears in a modern text, or after the time of Li Shanlan (1811–1982) who first used itwhen he translated Western mathematical works into Chinese. However, when the term shuxue appears in any text written before the time of Li Shanlan it can often be dangerous to use the modern meaning of the term without circumspection. I quote a passage on the Biography of Zhang Zhong from the Ming waish. contained in the Imperial Compendium Gujin tushu jicheng which reads:

(Zhang) Zhong was studying at his youth and presented himself at the jinshi level of civil examinations. However, he failed, and whereupon he gave rein to roaming among the mountains and streams. On one occasion he came across an extraordinarily gifted person and learned shuxue from him. (Henceforth) he talked about future destiny, and was often uncanny in accuracy.

Tangut is the dead Tibeto-Burman language of the Buddhist empire of Xīxià, which was destroyed in 1227 by the Golden Horde of the Mongol warlord Temuüjin, more commonly known as Genghis Khan (c. 1162–1227). The Tangut empire was established in 1032 and comprised the modern Chinese provinces of Gānsù, Shānxī and Níngxià, extending from the Yellow River in the east to Kökö Nōr (Chinese: Qīnghăi Hù) in the west. The northern frontier of the Xīxià empire skirted the city of Qumul (Chinese: Hāmì), the river Edzin Gol (Chinese: Ruò Shuĭ), the Hèlán hills and the Yellow River. In the south, the empire extended down into the present-day province of Sichuān. The Xīxià capital was situated in what is now the city of Yinchuān (formerly Níngxiàfŭ) on the left bank of the Yellow River.

Examination of the verb paradigms of Omotic can easily engender a sense of bewilderment; there is such a variation from language to language, even when, in other respects, the languages concerned appear to be quite closely related. Coming to Omotic from a language group such as Eaśt Cushitic, the contrast is especially striking. For example, when investigating any little known East Cushitic language (and there are a few left!), one starts out with a strong expectation of finding in the verbal system certain morphological elements and patterns (e.g., t ‘2nd person, 3rd feminine singular’; n ‘1st person plural’ a palatal vowel signalling ‘perfect’; a guttural verb signalling ‘imperfect’; a rounded vowel signalling a ‘subordinate function’ or ‘non-indicative mood’; etc.), and one is never entirely disappointed; the well known formatives, along with the anticipated patterns of distribution, crop up with an almost monotonous regularity. Similar predictabilities are not obviously the case when we look at Omotic. With virtually every new language investigated, new and unfamiliar features emerge. I have remarked on this before (Hayward, 1984: 324), but I am not alone in having done so; Andrzej Zaborski has also emphasized the high degree of innovation seen in the Omotic verb (Zaborski, 1986: 528). But I think the essence of the problem is not that there are no identifiable cognate formatives so much as that we have been unable to understand their historical significance, andso supply them with meaningful labels.

Generation- and age-set systems are found in many parts of the world. They are of particular importance in Africa, and especially in East Africa where some ethnic groups operate socio-political and cultural systems in which generation-sets play a dominant role. Ethnographic descriptions of generation-set systems abound, but their theoretical understanding seems still to be inadequate. With examples from the Toposa and Turkana, this paper aims to contribute to the theory of generation-set systems. Moreover, the processes described and the ideas expressed may also contribute to the general theory of socio-political and cultural systems.

I should like to discuss briefly three Arabic treatises that are quite different from one another with regard to content, authorship, and provenance. They do, however, share one interesting feature. Each one survives in just two manuscript copies, both in a Yemeni hand, the one in Arabic script, the other also in the Arabic language but written in Hebrew characters. The circumstances of their survival are instructive concerning the intellectual histories of both Jews and Muslims in the Yemen, and especially with regard to the relationships that obtained between these two communities. We may also add that none of these treatises, each of which is of some interest to its respective field, has been the subject of even a cursory study.

Bārgīrī is a New Persian term seemingly of transparent meaning: ‘the taking up of loads’. As such, it is listed by Steingass, with various special meanings ‘Conviction, criminal charge; taking-in of a ship's cargo’, none of which covers its full, or perhaps most important, semantic range. Moreover, the word is of note both for its relation to the nomadic life-style, and its interest to Orientalist scholarship. It seems worth collecting the references to provide a wider setting.

Leyla Azami (sister of the Iranian folklorist, Cheragh Ali Azami), recently discussed the word in connexion with the transhumant life of the Sangsarī tribe in the south-eastern Elburz. Here it is defined as tahiya-i muqaddamāt-i safar ‘the preparation of the preliminaries for a journey’, events which take place ‘in the third decade of the month of Urdibihisht’—the second month of the Iranian calendar, April–May, when the pastoralists assemble, preparing for their move to high ground with the advent of spring.

On a recent (December 1990) visit to India, I had the opportunity of visiting the new excavations at Mahabalipuram (Māmallapuram) 50 km. south of Madras, carried out in 1990 by the Archaeological Department of Tamilnadu, and still in progress.

The work is in the area immediately to the north of the ‘Shore’ temple. So far uncovered is an apsidal-shaped tank, its curved end aligned south towards the middle portion of the shore temple. This middle portion consists of a mandapa enclosing a rock-cut image of reclining Visnu, Anantaśayana. From the eroded nature of this piece, and the fact that the Pallava structure over it was clearly an addition, I have long felt this Anantaśayana to antedate the shore temple. The erection of the latter would thus have ‘converted’ this area to Śaiva use, since, as extant, the shore temple consists of two cellae with liiigas, one to the East of the Visnu-figure, the other to the West.