The Emperor Tewodros II (1855–68), although remembered to-day mainly as an energetic modernizer, was also involved to a significant degree in the history of traditional Ethiopian libraries.

Tewodros had intended to build a great church dedicated to Mädhane Aläm ‘Saviour of the World’, on Christian ground near the natural fortress of Mäqdäla which had served him as state prison, granary, and family sanctuary no less than as a storehouse for his accumulated treasures.

The attributes of the Indian king have long been familiar, but taken together they have an inexplicable feature-their apparent incompatibility.An explanation for one, bhū-bhojana, is hinted at by J. J. Meyer&s Trilogie altindischer Māchte und Feste der Vegetation (Zürich and Leipzig, 1937), and the setting in which the subject is to be reviewed has been entirely recast by the lengthy and exhaustive article by J. Gonda, entitled ‘Ancient Indian kingship from the religious point of view’(Numen, III-IV, 1956–7). It is much to be hoped that these works will not escape the notice of historians of India, and it is assumed in this paper that Professor Gonda&s article is accessible to the reader.

In this article I examini two problems regarding women's participation in shared saint veneration and festivals in the eastern Mediterranean and Iberia. First, I ascertain what women's practices were, whether women participated in or assigned meanings to rituals that were separate from those of men, and finally, whether these shared practices were enough to break down religious barriers between women so that we may speak of ‘women's piety’ or ‘women's religious culture’ as a category that extends beyond the confines of individual religious affiliations. Secondly, I explore the meanings that certain male writers assigned in these practices and their emphasis on the fact that it was women, according to them, who engaged in the rituals. I show that, in contrast to Christian or Jewish authors, many Muslim legalists focused on women as the primary participants in certain types of piety as a polemical strategy to denigrate religious practices of which they disapproved.

Māwardī said of zakāt that it was paid ṭahratan li-ahlihā ma'ūnatan li-ahl al-sahman, as a purification for the donor and a support for the recipient. It has thus a dual aspect. As a social tax it provides for the transfer of wealth from certain productive classes of society to certain poor or non-productīve classes. As a religious duty it is of essentially the same type as ṣalāt, ḥajj, etc., afarīḓa 'ala l-'ayn. Like these it is a ritual whose correct performance involves an attention to precise details of quantity (naṣāb), timing (al-ḥawl), and intention (niyya) which may be irrelevant or even inimical to the optimum fulfilment of the social aim.

It is widely held belief among bedouins that common linguistic characteristics point to a common genealogical origin. Bearing in mind the importance attached to racial origin amongst bedouins, it is not surprising that they should be keen observers of the dialect of their own and neighbouring tribes. My investigations of the bedouin dialects of the North and East of Arabia do indicate that a common geographical origin is often reflected in a uniform dialect. In this area many bedouin tribes seem to have left an original homeland in the west some 200 years ago, so that in the somewhat isolated conditions of bedouin life their dialect retains the characteristics of the speech of their homeland. A particularly striking case of this is the Rashāyida, a tribe which ‘Arab tradition allies to the Hutaim of north-western Arabia. At some time this tribe broke up and many of them moved east to become clients of the Muṭair. Many others however crossed by sea to the Sudan when they acquired new camels and resumed the nomadic way of life. At present, with the increasing prosperity of Saudi Arabia, many of these have returned as immigrant workers or have been repatriated. Their dialect, however, after a period of perhaps 150 years' separation, is still recognizably of the Najdī type. It would not be possible for dialectology to verify bedouin genealogies; nevertheless, it can be seen that it might support traditions about the earlier location of tribes, since historical sources are not very informative for the medieval period in the Arabian peninsula.

Arabic documents containing eyewitness reports on historical events are very rare. They are the more welcome when they complement and illustrate the often very deficient literary sources. This is the case with the excerpts from two business letters of the 12th century published here, one sent from Aden to India and one from the same town to Cairo. Both passages describe one and the same event: the attack on Aden by a fleet sent by the King of Kīsh with the aim of taking the town or at least a part of it.

The following studies are all based on the registers of land, population, and revenue contained in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul. They will be limited to the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and to the first century of Ottoman rule. It is not my purpose to attempt a general study of the history of these areas in this period, nor to correlate the information derived from the archives with that obtained from other sources in a comprehensive historical monograph. My aim is rather to offer a series of studies in detail in a certain class of documents and on a few special topics; that is, to make a number of soundings in depth at selected points, rather than a surface survey of this material. The topics have, as far as possible, been chosen so as to give a wide range of variety, dealing with town and country, inland and coastal areas, mountain and plain. The first two studies deal with Palestine, which of all the countries under consideration has by far the richest documentation in outside.sources, and therefore offered the most promising field for a first experimental study. This study presents in outline the picture of Palestine in the early Ottoman period that emerges from the registers, and is intended as an introduction to the material as a whole. It will be followed by a documentary study of the quarters, population, and taxation of the towns of Palestine, and then by further studies on selected rural and urban areas in Syria and Iraq.1

The most detailed account of Mani's last days is contained in the Coptic “Narrative on the Crucifixion” (Polotsky, Man. Hom., pp. 42 sqq.). As I had occasion to point out before, this “Narrative” had been quoted by the Christian Jibrā'īl b. Nūḥ in his anti-Alanichaean book which was still available to al-Bērūnī (Chronology, 20819–22).

During the brief reign of King Hormizd Mani went to Babylonia, where he stayed until the accession of Bahram I. After some time he left Babylonia and slowly travelled down the River Tigris, visiting his communities on the way. He reached Hormizd-Ardašīr (Ahwāz, Sūq al-Ahwāz), one of the four chief towns of Susiana, from where he started on a journey to the north-eastern provinces of the Sasanian empire. But he was forbidden to go there and compelled to turn back to Susiana. From Hormizd-Ardašīr he journeyed to Mesene, thence up the River Tigris in a boat to Ctesiphon. From the capital he went to “the Pargalia”, where he was joined by Bαατ. He travelled to Kholassar, and from this town he reached Belapat, where he was destined to die. The route taken by him on the journey from Kholassar to Belapat is not known, as there is a gap in the manuscript. While the situation of “the Pargalia” remains unsettled, that of Kholassar (Khalasar) is well defined by a comparison of the itinerary given by Isidorus Kharacenus with the Arab geographers (journey from Ctesiphon to Holwan):—

‘Apocalyptic’, it has been pointed out, ‘is only another word for “revelation”, and apocalyptist for “revealer”. Essentially, therefore, prophecy and apocalyptic [are] identical.’ Prophecy in its turn has been defined as ‘the declaration of knowledge which cannot be apprehended through the ordinary faculties, but is acquired either by revelation from a deity or by some other mantic power inherent in te seer himself’. Through the accidents of history a distinction came to be drawn by students of Jewish sacred literature between ancient prophecy and later apocalyptic, the latter flourishing in the intertestamental period; and in the Jewish tradition it is apocalyptic which, it has been said, ‘was the first to grasp the great idea that all history, alike human, cosmological and spiritual, is unity. … Apocalyptic sketched in outline the history of the world and of mankind, the origin of evil, its course, and inevitable overthrow, and the final consummation of all things’.

The common view of adoption in pre-Islamic times is that it was widespread, that adoptees were the legal equals of biological sons, and that the institution was abolished with the advent of Islam. In the first part of this study I question the first two of these views. In the second part I argue that adoption, acknowledgement of paternity and false genealogical claims are three distinct practices, although scholars often confuse one with another. I explain the differences between them, and identify the sources of the confusion. Finally, I briefly mention Islamic alternatives to adoption.

The Anglo-Saddozai government in Afghanistan was overthrown by a series of risings in 1841–2. The first of these risings was that of the eastern Ghilzai tribes, who broke the line of communīcatīons between Kabul and Jalālābād at the end of September and the beginning of October 1841. On 1 November disturbances began in Kabul and these were followed by risings in the Kohistān, in the area of Ghaznī, and, sometime later, at Qandahar. In January 1842 the Kabul garrison withdrew, under treaty, but was entirely destroyed. In March 1842 the garrison at Ghazni surrendered and was destroyed. The garrisons at Jalālābād and Qandahar held out and were reinforced from Peshawar and Quetta respectively. In August and September they advanced and reoccupied Kabul, but soon afterwards the British withdrew altogether from Afghanistan. Between January and August 1842 there was a struggle for power among the various groups in eastern Afghanistan, which ended in the victory of Muḥammad Akbar, son of Dost Muḥammad. Although Akbar and his supporters were forced to fly at the time of the reconquest they were soon able to return, resume power, and prepare for the restoration of Dost Muhammad in May 1843.

Alchemy, on the rare occasions when it has been made the subject of reasonable inquiry, has usually been studied as part of what one may call the pre-history of science. But if, to use a favourite phrase, we are to see in alchemy merely “the cradle of chemistry”, are we not likely, whatever its initial charm, to lose patience with an infancy protracted through some fifteen centuries?

It is certain in any case that another aspect of alchemy—its interest as a branch of cultural history—has hitherto been strangely neglected. Mr. Walter Scott, for example, omits alchemistic writings from his great edition of the Hermetica on the odd ground that they are merely “masses of rubbish”. But if texts are to be dismissed as rubbish because they contain beliefs that we cannot share, I see no reason why the religious and philosophical parts of the Hermetica (and with them many books which to-day enjoy a far wider popularity) should continue to claim attention.

The Ayyubid Sultan Salāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin) used the pious endowment (waqf, pl. awqāf; alternatively ḥubs, hubūs, pi. aḥbās) as a major instrument in his efforts to gain political and military control over Egypt and Syria. In pursuit of this aim, he systematically converted properties belonging to his enemies into awqāf. The present study investigates some of the legal and social aspects of Saladin's waqf policy in the territories conquered by his armies. Here, I examine Saladin's endowment policy and his political aims from the viewpoint of the Sultan and his court. I will not reflect on the motives of the beneficiaries, those people of religion (al-mu῾ammamūn; literally ‘ the turbaned’) who co-operated with him, even though ‘ mingling with the monarch’ (malik or sultān) apparently clashed with some of the principles stipulated in guides for Suḟi novices.

This study presents some new observations on selected features of the phonology and morphology of the Omani Arabic dialects, and attempts to place them in a peninsula-wide typological framework. The paper is based on the results of an analysis of tape-recorded conversational data gathered in more than thirty, mainly rural locations in northern Oman between 1985 and 1987. Most of the speakers were men and women aged 35 and above with little or no formal education who, if not retired, were engaged in traditional occupations such as farming, fishing, pottery and animal husbandry. Much of the data was gathered in the context of a study of the epidemiology of rheumatic diseases conducted on a random sample of 2,000 Omanis adults by my wife for the Omani Ministry of Health, during which the subjects were interviewed by me at length in their homes or places of work.

WHILST the tonal languages spoken in West Africa have latterly received W a good deal of attention, it has not been generally realized that such languages are found also in parts of New Guinea. In New Guinea there are in fact two types of tonal languages. In one, the tones may be described as ” ornamental”, i.e. though they exist they do not seem to have semantic value, but rather to be connected with a certain type of sentence rhythm; in the other the tone systems are more definitely akin to those of Western Africa, and in such languages tones do possess semantic value. It is interesting that one at least of the latter group of languages tends also to be monosyllabic. It is hoped to provide a study of the former class of languages—at least one representative of which is also found in Northern Australia—at a later date. The present paper is occupied with the languages in which tones do have semantic value.

These languages, so far as has been observed yet, are two in number, and they are spoken along the shores of Huon Gulf, in north-eastern New Guinea. The map on p. 186 will show their locations. Both belong to the group of languages known as Melanesian, and this makes the occurrence of tones even less expected. A considerable number of other languages are spoken round about this area, and though some of these also are Melanesian, they do not seem to have developed tones. Moreover, it would seem that the use of tones in these two languages antedates the coming of the Melanesian languages, for reasons that will be given towards the end of this paper.

If there has been one dominant, quasi-official theory for Turkish classicalmusic in the second half of the twentieth century, it is that particularlyassociated with Ezgi and Arel. Their notational conventions have becomestandard, supplanting earlier norms, and the framework they developed is theone still employed in recent general accounts of the modal system, whether thesimplified introductory survey of Yilmaz (1983), for example, or the moredetailed and comprehensive coverage of Ozkan (1984). Both of these follow theanalytical models provided by their predecessors, and begin with an expositionofintervals and the various species of tetrachord and pentachord formed from them before moving on to describe the structure of the makams themselves. Thesequence interval, scale, mode, nevertheless forms a conceptual continuum: theintervals denned are restricted to those deemed to occur in Turkish classicalmusic, and the nomenclature of the various species, for all that they appear asabstract assemblages of intervals, identifies them with characteristic segments ofwell-known and important makams.

In the following, I will analyse a lost text from the Shang shu the ‘Ancient documents ’. The story recorded in this text that of an ominous portent—seven years of drought which occurred at the beginning of the Shang Dynasty, of a divination in which human sacrifice was demanded of the Shang founder Tang, and of the ritual in which he offered himself as a sacrifice to the Lord on High. I will argue that this text provides a conceptual link between the role of the king in Shang times as a medium between the spirits above and the earth below and the Zhou theory of the king as the recipient of a changing mandate of Heaven.

The Japanese language was traditionally written vertically. Recently, journals, textbooks and academic reference works have appeared with the script written horizontally. One reason for this may be that quotations of foreign names and articles (written in European languages) and mathematical equations often appear in technical texts, and it is therefore more convenient to have the main text of this kind of work written horizontally.

The Site numbers used in the present study are marked in the general map accompanying the first article (BSOAS xv, 1953, p. 28). More detailed maps of the central Eastern Desert and the Eastern Delta appear below, p. 212. The E. Delta map shows two new site numbers: (a) Site 17 (at El-Maḥemdīlya = Gerra ?) is the spot where Clédat actually found inscription No. 82 and it may be that Site 16 (at ancient Mons Casios) does not figure in the present study (see classical notes, p. 242). (b) Site 18 (QaṣEsr Gheiṭ), east of El-Qanṭara on long. 33° E., has a Nabatsæn fragment, No. 83. Nos. 50–1 and 52 (at Sites 11 and 9, see BSOAS xv, p. 17) are briefly repeated here for convenience, as. Winkler's inscriptions from the Leucos Limen road came to light after the first article had gone to press.

The biographer al-Mālikī reports that, in the year A.H. 171, Rūh b. Hatam, the governor of the Maghrib, offered the post of qādī to ‘Abd Allāh b. Farūk, a scholar-jurist of Qairawān. ‘Ibn Farūk firmly refused the offer. The governor, however, forced him to take his seat in the mosque and ordered the litigants to address their pleas to him, Ibn Farūk weeping the while and crying to them: “Have mercy upon me, that Allah may have mercy upon you”. When he thus refused to judge, the governor ordered that he be bound and taken up to the roof of the mosque: if he should then still refuse he was to be thrown over the edge.