“It is so published that injury that comes upon the fruits lies upon the holder of the pledge, that which comes upon the stock, lies upon the farmer.”

For the interpretation of graβakāndār, bar and bun, one may refer to Bartholomae, MM., 1, 14.

A new text edition usually stimulates further publications and evaluations of similar texts. This situation particularly applies to J. Naveh and S. Shaked, Magic spells and formulae (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993), since much new material has come to light in recent years. The present article consists of additional texts which have special relevance to the above mentioned volume (see my review of Naveh-Shaked in this issue). Two magic bowls which appeared at Sotheby's (London) in 1985 were copied by me and sent to Naveh and Shaked for study and publication. One bowl in Jewish Aramaic script (Text A) was also copied by the present writer, but the bowl was not easily legible, and Naveh and Shaked chose not to include it within the corpus of bowls, because neither the photographs nor the hand copy were sufficiently reliable. Since the present owner and location of the bowl is unknown, I have included my hand copy of the bowl here, with an attempt to read as much as is reasonably legible, in the hope that eventually the bowl will reappear and corrections to these readings can be made, through collation of the original. A second bowl, in Syriac script, was edited by Naveh and Shaked (Bowl 17), but since they chose not to publish the hand copy of the bowl, it is given below (as Text B).

The oldest texts—Rgveda and Avesta—of the Indie (Indo-aryan) and Iranian languages, which together form the Aryan family, agree in much of their vocabulary, as well as in much of their grammar and syntax.

Tonal analysis has revealed many functions, grammatical as well as semantic, which tone performs in West African languages. Here we confine ourselves to one aspect, the incidence of tone in verbs, and in particular we examine the tonal patterns of verbal forms.

Hanoi Vietnamese, although not apparently genetically related to Chinese, is a language phonologically of the Chinese type; in the terminology of Hockett (1955, 60–1, 129), Hanoi Vietnamese phonology constitutes a system without interludes, with syllable juncture, and with tones as ICs of syllables. Hanoi phonology is in fact rather close to the phonology of Middle Chinese (Karlgren's ‘Ancient Chinese’, cf. Pulleyblank, 1962, 64), the source, via the dialect of Chinese called ‘Sino-Vietnamese’ (Haudricourt, 1954, 79), of the majority of Vietnamese lexical items.

The main doctrines of the Shī'a are well known; Ibn Babuye, in his book The Reasons for Laws, gives a more popular view of theology.

The imam

‘Alī said: But for us God would not have created Adam, Eve, paradise, hell, heaven and earth. How shall we not be better than the angels? We knew our Lord before they did, our spirits were the first He created, and He made us speak of His unity. Then he created the angels and, when they saw that our spirits were one light, they glorified us; but we praised God that they might know that we too were created creatures. It is said that God created the five, Muḥammad, ‘Alī, Fāṭima, Ḥasan and Ḥusain seven thousand years before the world; they were before the throne. Ḥusain said: We were forms of light, circling round the throne of the Merciful; we taught the angels to praise, laud and magnify. Another expression is: A brilliant light, which was the substance (clay) of ‘Alī, passed before the angels. God created the hearts and bodies of the prophets from the substance of the highest places (‘illiyūn). An imam said: God created us from the highest places and our spirits from something higher; He created the spirits of our followers from the highest places and their bodies from something lower, so they are kin to us and their hearts yearn towards us. Then God created Adam and placed us in his loins; He commanded the angels to bow down to him to honour us. Their prostration was worship of God and respect and obedience to Adam because we were in his loins.

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.

Muʿtazilite exegetical tradition has been defined primarily by reference to the theological dimensions of the tafsīr works authored by the Muʿtazila. This article is an attempt to go beyond this focus by exploring the significance of an exegete's affiliation to the tradition that is implicit in his selection of interpretations and his references to authorities. Focusing on the tafsīr of the tenth-century Muʿtazilite scholar ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā al-Rummānī, the article analyses al-Rummānī's references to his three Muʿtazilite predecessors: Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī, Abū l-Qāsim al-Balkhī and Ibn al-Ikhshīd. The content of these references indicates that, for al-Rummānī, the authority of these Muʿtazilite scholars extended beyond their views on the theological implications of the Quranic verses. The context suggests that the scholars were part of a distinct exegetical tradition that allowed for certain differences of opinion.

This paper* examines how Zoroastrians designate themselves (internal/self-designations), and how they are designated by others (external designations). Focusing on the term Gabr/Gavr as the external denotation for Zoroastrians and the term Gabrī/Gavrūnī as the designation for their language, it argues that these terms, once common in Western scholarship as well as among non-Zoroastrian Iranians, have become obsolete due to their pejorative undertones. However, they have recently been revived by some scholars, who justify such use with reference to the alleged etymology of Gabr as meaning “man” and by the fact that even some Zoroastrians use Gavr/Gavrūn and Gavrī/Gavrūnī as an internal designation for themselves and their language. This paper critically examines these views and argues that neither the etymology nor the internal self-designation justifies the use of these terms and proposes the term Zoroastrian Darī as the more appropriate designation of the language of the Zoroastrians of Iran.

The importance of documentary sources for the history of the official postal system (barīd) in the first century of Islam has long been acknowledged. In addition to a small number of documents from the eastern part of the Muslim Empire, Egyptian papyri from the 90s/710s and 130s/750s form the main documentary sources for modern studies on the postal system. These papyri belong to a distinct phase in Islamic history. Papyri from other, especially earlier, phases have largely been neglected. The present article addresses the history of Egypt's official postal system from the Muslim conquest up to c. 132/750. It argues that the postal system gradually developed out of Byzantine practices and was shaped by innovations by Muslim rulers through which their involvement in the postal system's administration gradually increased. The article ends with an edition of P.Khalili II 5, a papyrus document from 135/753 on the provisioning of postal stations.