This article seeks to gain a better understanding of a famous ode by the ‘Abbāsid court poet al-Buhturī (d. 897) by comparing it with two other works which exhibit a similar thematic development. One is an extract from The Aeneid by Virgil (d. 19 BC), the other a poem by Wilfred Owen (d. 1918). The three texts emanate from imperial identities (Roman, Arab and British) in a state of crisis, which in turn paves the way for cathartic encounters with an alien other that each involves an act of recognition. The comparison uncovers certain similarities in the psychological impact of this encounter and thereby throws a new light on the carefully crafted structure of al-Buhturī's ode. The experience described by the three texts emerges as an expression of man's universal quest for his lost self, and its recovery—however momentarily—in the very heart of his supposed foe.

‘Abdallāh b. Mu‘āwiya b. ‘Abdallam h b. Ja‘far b. Abī Tālib, great-grandson of ‘Alī's brother Ja‘far, rose up in Kufa in Muharram of 127/October 744. He was defeated by Umayyad forces in 130 (747–748), and killed by Abū Muslim in Khurāsaān. During the two years of his uprising, Ibn Mu‘āwiya established himself in the Jibāl and Fārs, where he appointed governors, collected taxes and struck his own coins. Ibn Mu‘āwiya's coinage is an important source for the revolt, which is among the most important uprisings of the late Umayyad period. It presents evidence for a strong and unified movement, and corroborates the interpretation of a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the ‘Abbāsid Revolution. This article suggests some alternatives regarding the chronology and geography of Ibn Mu‘āwiya's revolt through a re-examination of textual sources and new coinage, and shows the usefulness of numismatics for the historical study of early Islam.

This article is intended as a contribution to the debate on the nature of the early Islamic state (especially 1–70 AH/622–690 AD), as regards both its government and its ideology. It presents and discusses new documentary evidence that sheds light on these subjects and tries to advance a little further the discussion of two questions that have been particularly hotly debated in recent years. These are: whether the Muslims merely continued the administrative practices of the Byzantines and Persians or introduced innovations, and why recognizably Islamic messages do not appear in the material record before the reign of the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (65–85 AH/685–705 AD). Finally, this article attempts to draw attention to the relative under-use of documents, whether papyri, coins, rock inscriptions or the like, and to illustrate the different ways in which they might be deployed to enhance our knowledge of this very important topic.

While Abdülhamid is usually represented as an extreme example of a ‘censorship sultan’, this article seeks to redress the balance and to present a more nuanced picture of Abdülhamid's relationship with the press. Based largely on archival material from Istanbul, the article investigates how press magnates sought to use their relationship with the palace in order to ensure their survival and to gain the concessions they wanted, and how, in turn, the sultan manipulated the press and used it to cultivate his own image and to present the empire and his sultanate in the way he wished, both to his own subjects and to other states outside the Ottoman frontier.

In this paper, a synchronic study of the syntax and the semantics of the causative verb shi in Han period Chinese, particularly in combination with negatives, is at issue. Two different structures involving negation of this verb exist in Han period Chinese: first, (NP1) NEGshi NP2 V2P and second (NP1) shi NP2NEG V2P. A thorough analysis of the first structure ‘(NP1) NEGshi NP2 V2P' shows that two different semantic interpretations are required to account for the syntactic differences between the two structures. The article proposes that the first structure has to be analysed as an analytic causative construction with a visible causative verb which, in its negated form, contrasts with an affirmative causative construction. The negative has scope over the entire causative construction including V1 and V2P, whereas in the second structure the negative has only scope over V2P