The most exciting experience I had during my visit to Morocco in the winter of 1951–52a visit made possible by the generosity of the Eockefeller Trust was the discovery, in the famous Qarawūyūn Library in Fez, of a manuscript containing one half, the second half, of an Arabic translation of the Nicomachean Ethics.The shortness of my stay in that ancient and fascinating Moorish city, and the disabling indisposition that befell me there, made it impossible for me to do more at the time than take note of the existence of this precious codex; but later the authorities of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Marocaines in Rabat, to whom I am infinitely obliged, procured for me a microfilm of the manuscript. It is now my high privilege to publish this preliminary note, in anticipation, I hope, of a full edition later on.

THE historian of Isma'Ilism, to whichever part of its chequered history he turns, is confronted with unusually difficult problems of historical criticism. These are due, at least partly, to the character of the movement itself. There can be hardly any doubt that when Isma'Ilism, which had started as an underground organization in the middle of the 3rd/9th century, established itself in the 4th/10th century as a powerful empire under the Fatimids, the official leadership endeavoured to cover up the origins of the movement with a thick smoke-screen. On the other hand, its enemies and Isma'Ilism was the besthated sect in Islamadded to the confusion by giving currency to sensational and fanciful accounts, curious mixtures of truth and fiction.

This Law was promulgated under cover of Legislative Decree No. 59 of 17th September, 1953, during the Shishakly regime, and came into force on 1st November of the same year. It thus represents the latest development in the series of reforms in Shari'a law, as applied by the courts, which have appeared, one after the other, in the different countries of the Near East during the last few decades. The first major example—if we ignore legislation primarily concerned with matters of procedure—was provided by the Ottoman Law of Family Rights of 1917 which, short-lived though it proved in Turkey, was applied at the end of the First World War, with minor modifications, in Syria and Lebanon and, with further modifications, in Jordan. Next, there were the series of Egyptian reforms of 1920, 1929, 1923, 1943, and 1946—preceded, interspersed, and followed by similar, but much more piecemeal, innovations in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Then, as the immediate precursor of this Syrian Law, came the Jordanian Law of Personal Status of 1951—while a somewhat similar enactment has now been under consideration for a number of years in Iraq, but seems unlikely, for the present, to be promulgated.

THE historians1 who take the death of Jihan-shah's son Hasan 'All in 873/1468 as the end of the Qara-qoyunlu dynasty disregard the fact that for some time the descendants of Qara-Yusuf survived in Hamadan and in the beginning of the 16th century rose to new honours as the Qutb-shahs of Golconda. Under Indian skies they kept up their family traditions, and their court historians summed up afresh the history of the Qara-qoyunlu and restored the missing links in the genealogy of the kings of Golconda. These links form the special subject of the present article.

THE political career of King Giorgi V of Georgia, commonly known as Giorgi Brdsqinvale or George the Brilliant, spans an eventful period in the history of the Near East. When Giorgi first came to the throne in 1299, the Il-Khan dynasty of Persia under the able Ghazan Mahmud Khan was at the summit of its power. Ghazan's empire with its vassal states stretched from India to the Mediterranean and Black Seas. He controlled most of Anatolia, including the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and the Christian kingdom of Little Armenia. In 1300 he even seized and held Damascus for a short period. From these strategic positions, the Mongols of Persia were a constant menace to both the Mamluks of Egypt and the Khans of the Golden Horde.

THE Bakhtiari texts that follow are given almost exactly as they were recorded by me in 1914. I have not attempted to alter the rather heterogeneous collection of phonetic symbols of which I made use, except in one case. I have got rid of one frequently recurring awkward symbol by using a to represent sounds approximating to the -a- of ‘father’ and the -a- of ‘fall’ respectively. Normally it may be taken as representing the latter sound. The sound of -a- in ‘father’ occurs regularly only in a few words, e.g. baz ═ Mn.P. ba'daz

Gurungkura is the Nepali name of a language spoken in West Central Nepal by the Gurung tribe.2 These studies are based on the speech of G./Lieut. Ganesh Gurung, M.C., l/2nd K.E.O. Goorkha Rifles, who during 1950 was seconded for duty as a research assistant at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

The Chinese demonstrative fwu has recently been examined in an article by Dr. B. Schindler.1 The use of as a final particle is, however, discussed only in connexion with the combination and Schindler does not commit himself to a definite decision as to its function. That the final f￡ deserves a detailed investigation is sufficiently shown by a glance at the definitions given by standard Western authorities:

The purpose of this article is to re-examine some of the ways in which tone has been stated in certain of the spoken Tibetan dialects, and to apply to the Nominal Phrase in one of them, Lhasa Tibetan (LT), the suggestion that such statements can be more profitably associated not with the syllable, as hitherto, but with the word.

‘Thus decreed and ordained T’lb lord of pastures, and S‘Dm and YHM’L of Suhaim, for their tribe the people of the town BRN and T‘Rm and ’SRm and DR and all territory belonging to the town BRN: that they (namely the people of BRN, etc.) shall cause this grazing-ground to be delimited and prohibited to every herdsman belonging to the pasture areas of the hill-town dDB‘NN, so that the latter may not drive any flocks on to it as (it is) defined by the boundary-cairns of this grazing-ground along all its boundaries; by virtue of the grant of grazing-rights made to them (namely the people of BRN, etc.) by their lords the Banu Suhaim.’

The domain of h- and q- which are prosodic features is stated in this paper to be the radical and its immediate extensions and affixes: for example, *h(edide), eating, is phonetically elile, and *q(edade), sleeping, is phonetically date. But as in other Akan languages, especially Twi, h- and q- may prove in Nzema also to be a feature of larger pieces.