An important passage which has often been treated, but not so far satisfactorily, is found on page 186 of the Iranian text of the Bundahišn, lines 11–12,

that is, but dēv ān kē-š pat Hindūkān paristēnd api-š vaχš pat ān butīhā mēhmān <i > čēegōn bōδˇāsaf paristēt: “the demon But is that which they worship in India and in his images a spirit is resident which is worshipped as Bōδāsaf.”

The rapid pace of the change sweeping through the Arab world over the last few decades has profoundly affected both its various cultural products and its writers' perception of their national identity, social role and the nature of literature. The aim of this paper1 is to discuss the major changes in the sociopolitical reality of the Arab world, the cultural frame of reference and the responses of one of the major literary genres in modern Arabic literature: the novel. It is assumed here that there is a vital interaction between the novel and its socio-cultural context, in that novels encode within their very structure various elements of the social reality in which they appear and within whose constraints they aspire to play a role. Their generation of meaning is enmeshed in a variety of cultural, psychological and social processes, and their reception therefore brings into operation an array of experiences necessary for the interpretive act.

In recent years, the field of Buddhist studies has witnessed renewed interest in the study of the Parthian An Shigao (active since 148 A.D., during the Later Han Dynasty), the earliest translator of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.

The challenge of establishing the chronology of the early Zhou dynasty, especially the date of the Zhou Conquest of Shang, periodically arouses the intense interest of scholars. Down the centuries interest in the general problem has revived whenever advances in calendrical, astronomical, or textual knowledge seemed to offer the promise of a breakthrough. Extraordinary efforts have repeatedly been brought to bear, but until quite recently little progress was achieved in verifying benchmarks prior to 841 B.C., a date already regarded as secure in the time of Sima Qian toward the end of the second century B.C.

THAT there existed an Arabic translation of the commentary of Themistius on the De Anima of Aristotle has long been known through the references made to it in the works of Ibn Rushd.1 The commentary itself is mentioned by Ibn al-Nadīm in the Fihrist.2 In his note on the De Anima he says: ‘ Themistius wrote a commentary on the whole of this work. He dealt with the first section in two sections, the second in two, and the third in three ’—a division which corresponds to that of the Greek text as we have it. Unfortunately, on the subject of the translation, Ibn al-Nadim's article is not without ambiguity. According to it, Hunain ibn Ishāq translated the entire De Anima into Syriac, while his son, Ishāq, translated the greater part of it into Arabic, and then made a second and complete translation. Ibn al-Nadīm proceeds to quote Ishāq himself as saying: ‘ I translated this work into Arabic from a defective manuscript. Then, after thirty years, I found an extremely good manuscript with which I collated my first version’. The quotation ends with the words: ‘ and it is the commentary of Themistius ’.

The Palaungs, called by themselves Ta-ang, are an ethnic group speaking a language of Northern Mon-Khmer type, distributed widely in the Shan State of Burma and the adjacent border regions of Yunnan, and having its greatest concentration in the former state of Tawngpeng in the northwestern part of the Shan State, where Palaungs are a majority in the population. Occupied chiefly in growing and trading in tea, they are at the same time the most prosperous of the minor hill races of Burma and the only one to have adopted Buddhism. Their language, which is not written—Shan being used as a written language by educated Palaungs—shows the influence of both Shan and Burmese; Shan loans are particularly frequent in the formal language of songs. A grammar and dictionary were published by Mrs. Leslie Milne in 1921 and 1931 respectively.

With the accession of Tegüder, alias Ahmad, on the death of his brother Abaqa in 681/1282, the Īlkhānate was for the first time ruled by a Muslim. Consequently the possibility appeared of the establishment of peaceful relations with the rival Mamlūk sultanate under al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn (regn. 678–89/1279–90). Two successive embassies were in fact sent to the sultan during Ahmad's short reign, and accounts of these as seen in Mamlūk court circles are extant in the writings of two contemporaries. The first appears in the largely unpublished biography of Qalāwūn, al-Fadl al-ma'thūr min sīrat al-Malik al-Mansūr by Shāf‚’ b. ‘Alī (649–730/1252–1330), and the second in the published but incomplete biography, Tashrīf al-ayyām wa'l-‘usūr fi sīrat al-Malik al-Mansūr by the maternal uncle of Shāfi'b. ‘Alī, Muhyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Abd al-Zāhir (620–92/1223–92). Both writers served in the chancery of the sultan in Cairo.

From the studies of Zurvanism made in this century, a large measure of agreement has been reached. It is accepted that Zurvan ‘est en general le dieu du firmament lumineux et étoilé … avant tout le dieu du sort … en général regardé comme un dieu quadriforme’; and that his cult was ‘enraciné surtout dans l'lran occidental’. But a fundamental disagreement has developed over the origin of Zurvanism. H. S. Nyberg, although pointing out scrupulously that ‘le mythe zervanite n'st directement attesté que dans le mazdéisme’, and that ‘nous ne trouvons jamais un système zervanite où Ormuzd ne soit représenté’, has nevertheless maintained that Zurvan is an ancient Iranian god, whose cult, older than Zoroaster, has been partly adopted into, and partly obliterated by, orthodox Mazdeism. In this he has been followed by a number of scholars.

One of the most controversial aspects of Hittite phonology is the question of the significance, if any, of the so-called plene-writing of vowels. Explanations for this practice have been sought in a variety of directions. Some have seen in it the continuation of a tradition inherited from predecessors of the Hittite cuneiform syllabary with perhaps little relevance to the facts of the Hittite language. Others have been more confident in seeing in it a method of representing some real linguistic feature, such as vowel length, while inconsistencies or apparent inconsistencies in its use have led others to the conclusion that it has often no functional significance at all. No full-scale investigation of the phenomenon covering the entire Hittite corpus has yet been carried out, nor is such an attempt practicable here. The present paper has the restricted aim of investigating one particular phenomenon, the occurrence of plene-writing in different syllables in different inflexional forms of the same words, and the material drawn upon is chiefly Old and Middle Hittite, since it seems likely that certain patterns of variation in the use of plene-writing were quite early disturbed by analogical levelling within paradigms, or eliminated by the abandonment of plene-writing in the words in question; nevertheless, I believe that the oldest texts in particular still preserve enough evidence for these patterns to be discernible and that the reasons for them are intelligible in historical terms.

The student who approaches the study of the turbulent life of Ibn Taymiyya will soon realize that Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, his renowned shāfi‘ī disciple, is indeed one of the main sources for the Hanbalī scholar's biographers. Al-Dhahabī wrote many biographical notices of Ibn Taymiyya and one of these has been identified with the manuscript source presented in this article. The article briefly introduces the source, discusses its content and its importance in relation to the early biographies of Ibn Taymiyya as is evident from the text, and raises some questions about the state of consensus towards the Hanbalī jurist among his traditionalist Damascene fellows. An edition and annotated translation of the Arabic text are appended to the introduction.

Modern scholarship dealing with the history of Arabic grammar has almost entirely neglected serious consideration of the possibility that during the very early period of the Iraqi grammatical schools, a Medinese centre of that science was a living fact. I believe that the data collected by some scholars, including myself, will now allow the conclusion that such a school really existed and probably disappeared during the first century of the 'Abbāsid regime. First, the few accounts of eighth-century Medinese grammarians in modern works will be surveyed, then the available material will be carefully studied and evaluated.

My article written some twenty years ago had a twofold purpose: to insist on the importance of a systematic study of the toponymy of Persia and, by way of example, to examine the Mongolian stratum of placenames in the southernmost area of the Persian province of Azarbayjan.

Much of what I said in the first part of the original draft has happily become superfluous in view of the appearance of a very welcome series of volumes which, in the years 1328–32/1949–53, was published by the Persian Army Survey, under the title of Farhang-i joghrāfiyāyi-yī Irān. The production of this series is chiefly due to the enlightened endeavours of the former chief of the Survey, General Hosayn ‘Ali Razmārā (brother of the assassinated premier).

From early times China was surrounded by states of lower culture, and on the whole, of lesser military power, which the Chinese regarded as protectorates or tributaries. As early as the Chou dynasty, interpreters were appointed to deal with envoys bringing tribute or declarations of loyalty. The Chou interpreters were called chi , hsiang , ti t'i , or i , and took charge of peoples from the east, south, west, and north respectively. The Ch'in dynasty bureaux of tributary affairs were the tien k'o and tien shu kuo , which the Han later replaced by the Ta Hung Lu under which there were interpreters (i kuan ). In the Sui, T'ang, and Sung dynasties tributary affairs were handled by the Ssŭ Fang Kuan (). In the Ming dynasty the Ssŭ I Kuan was founded to translate foreign diplomatic documents, and was continued in the Ch'ing with a change of name ( to ) and accompanied by the Hui T'ung Kuan, which handled oral interpreting.

This paper is a contribution to the study of the relations between science and technology in seventeenth-century China. I hope that its unusual perspective may help to illuminate the problem of how these two areas of human activity relate to each other in a more general context. Outside the small group of interested scholars the relations between science and technology are not seen as problematical. In the popular stereotype, scientists are trie people who make discoveries, while technologists simply find out how to use what they have discovered. This crude view has some support from historical fact. Over the last hundred years there has undoubtedly been a steady flow of useful ideas from (for instance) the physicist to the engineer and from the biochemist to the agronomist.

Between 1985 and 1987 the present writer took part in a multi-disciplinary study of the Wahiba Sands organized by the Royal Geographical Society. During this time I was able to travel extensively through and around the Sands to visit many bedouin families of the Āl Wahība, who inhabit the greater part of the area, and other tribes including the Āl ،Amr, Āl Bū ،Īsa, Ḣikmān, Hishm and Janaba who are found in certain enclaves, particularly to the east and north of the main sand desert. The purpose of my research was to make a social and ethnographic survey rather than a purely linguistic one, but in the process I was able to record some dialect speech including the text presented below.

Very little was known about the bedouin of this part of Oman prior to the Wahiba Sands Project. Holes has recently published examples of some related dialects and has proposed a classification scheme as the basis for a dialect geography of Northern Oman (Holes, 1989). Bedouin dialects of central and eastern Arabia have been more extensively described and classified (Holes, 1983; Ingham, 1982(a), 1982(b), 1986; Johnstone, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1967). Comparative studies of the distribution of certain features of present-day dialects have been shown to shed light on the population movements of the past, often supporting the written histories and oral traditions of the area.

The Zāyande Rūd, from Lenjān to the Gāv Khūnī, was regulated by an elaborate system, which is said to go back to Safavid times. This system remained in force until A.H. 1315 (shamsī, A.D. 1936), when it underwent alteration, owing to the fact that, on government orders, the cultivation of cotton was substituted in the lands watered by the Zāyande Rūd for the cultivation of rice.

The details of this regulation are found in an interesting document, popularly known as Shaikh Bahā‘ī’s ūmār, to be found in the Finance Ministry of Isfahan. The precise date of the origin of the ūmār is uncertain. The following words are written at the beginning of the document: “Written in the sealing office of the late Shah Tahmasp 923.”

For 300 years after Vasco da Gama touched Calicut generations of traders, merchants, missionaries, soldiers, and other emissaries from at least five different nations of Europe took their turn in India, pursuing their interests at a respectful distance, making no obtrusive efforts to scrape acquaintance with Sanskrit culture. Such advances were socially difficult, and would not have been welcomed. Moreover, our early associations were with Dravidian India, and very few cultured Brahmins sought membership of Christian Churches.

Numerous Arab geographers and Persian literary texts refer with a variety of detail to an important desert caravanserai known as Dayr-i gachīn (Ar. Dayr al-jiss), situated to the south of Ray. The word dayr, meaning in Arabic ‘monastery’, or perhaps ‘hospice’, seems a natural term for a caravanserai. That the term could also mean a domed building and a fire temple is suggested by both the Burhān-i qāti' and the Farhang-i Ānandrāj. The Burhān-i qāti', under ‘Khwarnaq’, states:

Khwarnaq is the arabized word for Khuwarna, and this was a most excellent building which was built for Bahrām-i Gūr by Nu'mān b. Mundhir … and the other palace, which had three domes, one inside the other, and was built as a temple and a place of worship, they called Si-dayr since in Pahlavi they call a dome ‘dayr’.

On several occasions in his writings Ibn Sīnā discusses the problem of destiny (al-qadar), by which he means primarily the problem of reconciling the divine determination of human acts and characters with the rewards and punishments of the after-life, in such a way as to safeguard God's justice to man. This aspect of the problem of theodicy had arisen long before his time out of statements of the Qur'ān and Traditions, and had been settled in their own fashions by Mu'tazilite and predestinarian theologians. Ibn Slna as a philosopher could hardly avoid offering a solution, if only to satisfy the doubts of his Muslim public; but he goes beyond a perfunctory answer, and seems to show a genuine interest in finding an intellectually convincing solution consistent with his own philosophy.