Poem No. CXL in the Diwan of Hassan b. Thabit is usually connected with the incident when the poet was attacked and wounded by Safwan b. al-Mu'attal. However, the poem itself, the incident, and the precise relation between poem and incident all seem to have been the subject of controversy. As for the poem, different versions exist in various sources. The opening line is:—

The middle of the 14th century offers a convenient dividing-line in the study of Islamic metal work. Few distinguished works were produced after that date and practically no new motifs were added to the artists' repertoire. In a passage of his Topography of Cairo, Maqrizi exposes the decadence of inlaid metal work in the latter half of the 14th century and explains some of the reasons which led to it. In view of the importance of this contemporary account, I am translating it in full in an appendix to this paper (pp. 228–31).

In the preface to my recently published book, Zurvän, A Zoroastrian Dilemma,1 I said: ‘I have not found it necessary to alter much in the proof stage only what seemed to me to be positive mistakes’. During the two and a half years that the book was in the Press, however, I had come across evidence which I had not noticed before and which seems to be worth considering. There is further evidence of the theory put forward in the book that the original Zandiks persecuted by Kartir were identical with the Dahris. On the other hand, the references to Mithraism in the book are largely out of date, and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity to correct them.

WHEN my translation of the Hudud Al-' Ālam was published in 1937, it was found impossible to swell the book1 by further remarks on the language of the Persian original, and I promised (p. xii) to deal with this problem at a later date. On the other hand, the quarter of a century which has elapsed since I began my work on the Hudud has brought a considerable number of new facts bearing on the interpretation of the data which I was trying to explain. In various ways my work has been continued, both in the articles which can be considered as a by-product of the Hudud2 and in contributions on fresh but cognate texts.3 The object of my present article is to bring the book up to date by integrating my own research and by completing it with references to the studies of other scholars.

MY purpose is to draw attention to the rather puzzling problem laid before the student of early Ottoman history by the apparently complete incompatibility of the devshirme with the shari'a. The periodical forced levy of children from the Sultan—s Christian subjects for the recruiting of his standing army, and the forced conversion of those children to Islam must, indeed, appear—as it always did—as a flagrant disregard of the Holy Law which accords to the Christian subjects the status of dhimmi, implying personal liberty and the right to keep, and exercise freely, their religion. Only recently, making himself the voice of Muslim conscience, Professor Massignon has branded the devshirme as ‘un manquement à la Dhimmat ar-rasul’2

This outline of the basic principles of Turkish syntax was originally intended as an introduction to my study on the syntactical relations of the -e/-ü gerund in Old Ottoman. I found that I could not give a satisfactory account of the very interesting syntactical features presented by that gerund without laying before the reader the premises upon which my conclusions were based. Once embarked upon this task, it soon appeared that no brief introduction would serve the purpose. There was no accepted body of syntactical doctrine to which the reader could be referred for more detailed information. Indeed, it was necessary to discuss fundamental principles which, so far as I am aware, no one has attempted to elucidate. It seemed best therefore to postpone publication of the study on the gerund, and instead to devote a paper to the fundamental syntactical principles of the language.

There is found in the Rgveda and in later mantra literature, but becoming obsolete later, a root noun is- of frequent occurrence. This is normally interpreted by Sayana as meaning ‘ food ’ (annam), and in conformity with this the modern interpreters usually render the term by ‘ nourishment’ or the like. Though this interpretation seems adequately to suit some passages, a survey of the whole material shows that this is too narrow a sphere of meaning to apply to the word in all its contexts. The central meaning is ‘ thriving, flourishing, prospering, prosperity’. This may apply to that thriving which results from adequate nourishment, to that nourishment itself, or to the force inherent in it. But it may also refer, and more frequently does, to men's thriving in economic, material, or social position, to the possession of riches necessary to maintain this status, and to the riches themselves. It also applies to the fructifying influence of rain or river-water necessary for the maintenance of life.

The classification hua-pen. covers a small but important part of the A vast corpus of Chinese fiction. The term is sometimes translated ‘promptbooks ‘,and was applied first to the written texts used by the market-place story-tellers of the Sung period, and later to new versions, fashioned by writers, of the tales these men had told. The stories of the Ching pen t'ung su hsiao shuo may fairly be described as hua-pen in this second sense.1

Since Professor Francesco Gabrieli's announcement to the twenty-third International Congress of Orientalists at Cambridge (August, 1954) has raised the hope that preparations for a new and complete edition of Idrisi's Geography will soon begin, I shall not withhold any longer the small additions which I have to make to my note in BSOAS, XIII/4, 1951, p. 1045. Wadi snt. Idrisi describes it, in his chapter on the British Isles, as the nearest place to England on the Continent and belonging to. Ifrands. It occurs several times also in his chapter on Francia, Normandy, Flanders, etc., where the main passage1 shows it as ‘a very small town on the sea shore from which one sails over to England 25 miles away’. It is now commonly accepted that Wadi snt denotes Wissant, a former port not far from Cape Gris Nez in the direction of Calais, most frequented for the crossing of the channel until the 14th century.2 Dr. Beeston's explanation of the Arabic form of Wissant, ‘with the first part of the name rationalized into the Arabic wadi’ (BSOAS, XIII/2, 1950, p. 273), is all too brief.

The Girnar Inscription of Skanda Gupta,1 read in conjunction with the Bhitari Inscription of the same king,2 shows that Skanda Gupta came to the throne while the Gupta Empire was in great difficulties as a result of the invasion of the Hunas and the mysterious Pusyamitras. On pacifying the country Skanda gave much thought to the choice of governors for the outlying provinces, and decided to appoint one Parnadatta as governor of Surastra.

In his exhaustive treatment of the language of the Vasudevahindi by Sanghadasaganin (ed. Caturvijaya and Punyavijaya, Bhavanagar, 1930) in the eighth volume of this Bulletin (BSOS, VIII, 1935–7, pp. 319 ff.) Alsdorf mentions as one of the most interesting and remarkable archaic forms in this text an ablative sg. m. n. ending in am, which he tries to explain as a normal development of the common abl. in -at. The passages in which he noted this strange ablative ending are: tao nissaranto dukkhamaranam (Skt. tato nirasarisyad dichkha-maranat) ‘then he would have escaped a miserable death’ (6, 13); pawayakandaram viniggaya (Skt. parvatahmdarad vinirgatau) ‘both of them came out of the cave of the mountain’ (146, 29); cukka si ayaram (Skt. cyutasy acarat) ‘you have fallen from the acara’ (227, 24).

In his article in BSOAS, xv, 1953, pp. 588–597, Professor E. G. Pulleyblank has made a number of statements which, in my opinion, need explanation and correction. This is not the place to discuss wider problems of Chinese gentry society in detail; this will be done on another occasion. I limit my notes, therefore, to a few interesting points.