While the status of the offspring of illicit intercourse has long attracted the interest of Muslim scholars, it is a particularly significant—and problematic—issue within Imāmī Shī'ism. The problem arises from the way in which the Imāmīs view their place in the universe. A considerable body of traditions characterizes the Imāmīs as a breed apart, created of a heavenly substance and combining pure origins (nasab) with impeccable moral qualities. At the same time, there are other Imāmī traditions which portray the offspring of illicit intercourse—usually called walad zinā (=w.z.) —as combining impure origins with moral turpitude. The ineluctable conclusion to be drawn from these two sets of traditions is that ‘an Imāmī w.z.’ is a logical absurdity. Now it is a fact that Imāmī lawyers discuss at some lenght the status of the w.z. in this world, while Imāmī theologians ponder his fate in the next; an analysis of their views forms the bulk of this paper. As long as the w.z. is not an Imāmī, a discussion of his legal and salvation statuses presents no insurmountable problem; but what if he is, Imāmī tradition notwithstanding? The final section of this paper consists of an attempt to trace the answers provided to this question.

For some time Western sinologists have acknowledged the importance of the Buddhist monasteries as a social and economic force in medieval China. However, the historians have been understandably reluctant to embark on extensive reading in Buddhist sources, with their never-ending problems of technical language, while the Buddhologists have for the most part remained preoccupied with philosophical and doctrinal questions. Thus very little has been done to clarify the situation. In recent years a beginning has been made by a number of scholars, but anyone wishing to pursue the matter in a systematic way was forced to depend in the main upon the researches of the Japanese historians of Buddhism, who have built up an extensive secondary literature on the social and economic aspects of Buddhism in the last three decades. Even in Japanese, however, there exists no general survey of the whole problem of the monasteries in the broad context of their external relationships, and these studies have tended to be piecemeal, and over-concerned with points of detail.

In our very first grammar lesson at the primary school of al-Azhar we were introduced to al-mabādi’ al-‘ashara, ‘The Ten Introductory Aspects’ with which the textbook began. We learnt then that these ten aspects, as handed down by the ancient tradition, were points to be considered when embarking on each fann (branch of knowledge). ‘They said: it is incumbent upon him who sets out to expound a book to deal in the introduction with certain things before he begins with the intended subject matter’ Such was the importance of ‘The Ten ’ in traditional Islamic education that they were formulated in two lines of verse, in more than one version, to aid the memory of learners.

Since the publication in the West last century of a major Sunnī work on the Islamic sects, those interested in the early firaq have found themselves dependent on the heresiographical tradition. Islamicists have had little choice in the matter; most writing and thinking produced in circles later deemed heterodox has not been preserved, and to a large extent is available only through the mediation of the heresiographers. While material of other sorts has not gone unstudied, it has for the most part been the heresiographers who have shaped the way we look at early Islamic sectarianism.

This marriage of modern scholarship and medieval heresiography is, however, a distinctly uncomfortable one. As indispensable as the firaq material may be, questions about its reliability persist. The difficulties which characterize this literature are well known, and hardly need to be rehearsed here: it is late, highly schematic, and frequently hostile to the doctrines and groups which it describes. To these might be added one other problem noted less frequently: most of the books in general academic circulation have passed through Ash'arite and/or Mu‘tazilite hands. If, as we shall see, the tradition is not entirely synoptic, there are at least powerful forces at work which militate against a diversity of perspectives.

With few exceptions, scholarly presentations of the Ibāḍī “stages of religion” (masālik al-dīn) and their corresponding Imāms (i.e. imām al-ẓuhūr, imām al-difāʿ, imām al-shirā', and imām al-kitmān) propose a simplified overview of the institution that is based on post-Ibāḍī renaissance thought on the Imāmate. This paper investigates the pre-renaissance usages of the masālik al-dīn by comparing sixth/twelfth-century Arabian and North African Ibāḍī texts on the subject. It demonstrates that Eastern and Western Ibāḍīs manipulated the concepts central to the later masālik al-dīn ideal to reflect the particular needs of each respective community. While the articulations of the masālik al-dīn differed according to region, they simultaneously utilized a similar vocabulary. This convergence implies an earlier and inherited conceptual system (most likely from the earliest Basran Ibāḍī umma) that was adapted in the medieval period to fulfil the unique needs of each community.

Tigre, an Ethio-Semitic language spoken in Eritrea by a predominantly Muslim population, is known to have remained in intensive contact with Arabic since at least the nineteenth century. In the present article we attempt to survey the lexical and grammatical features of Tigre which are potentially attributable to Arabic influence. The genealogical proximity of Arabic and Ethio-Semitic complicates the task, as borrowed features and common retentions are not always easily distinguishable. In the lexical domain, the Arabic impact is undoubtedly conspicuous: thus, even in the core vocabulary Arabic loanwords are more prominent than in any other Ethio-Semitic language. Nevertheless, for many individual lexemes the borrowing hypothesis remains to be substantiated. Recent Arabic influence is probably responsible for a few relatively superficial features of Tigre phonetics and morphology. Several more deeply-rooted features may in principle be due to a more ancient and more intensive contact with Arabic: the specific influence of the ejectives on the vowels; the grammatical categories of singulative and diminutive; the diversity of verbal noun patterns in the basic stem; and several types of broken plural formation.

IN a previous article, we noted that by the time of the death of Shāh Isma'īl I (19 Rajab 930/23 May 1524) it is possible to observe certain trends in the development of the principal offices of the Ṣafawid state. During the last decade of the reign of Isma'īl I, there had been a movement away from the theocratic form of government which obtained at the time of the establishment of the Ṣafawid state, and this was reflected in changes both in the scope and function and in the relative importance of the principal offices of state: there was a tendency to lay less emphasis on the paramount position of the wakīl as the vicegerent of the Shāh (wakīl-i nafs-i nafīs-i humāyūn), and to regard him rather as the head of the bureaucracy; there was a decline in the power of the ṣadr; and Isma'īl himself took steps to curb the power of the amīr al-umarā.

La loi musulmane n'admet, en principe, que des baux à courte durée pour les awqāf. Toutefois, les juristes dans les différentes parties du monde musulman admettaient, dans certaines circonstances, des baux divers à long terme équivalant à une quasi-aliénation. Quelques-uns de ces contrats, par exemple le ḥikr égyptien, l'inzāl tunisien, les djalsa et djazā' marocains, ont été traité d'une manière approfondie. Le contrat d'‘anā’ — le bail à long terme le plus répandu à Alger à l'époque turque — n'a cependant pas suscité une attention analogue de la part des chercheurs, à cause, peut-être, du manque d'intérêt dans un contrat, qui ne signifiait plus grand chose sous l'égide de la législation française, laquelle supprima le caractère inaliénable des awqāf.

The people known to both Africans and Europeans as Mbugu (Wambugu, Vambugu) live in the western Usambara mountains in Tanzania among the Sambaa. Their language, long known as posing a linguistic problem, is usually-described as having a non-Bantu lexicon and a Bantu grammatical structure. However, the actual linguistic situation is somewhat more complicated than this, as our researches (A.N.T. 1965, M.A.B. 1959) now show.

There exists a considerable body of scholarly literature on the contributions of the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the knowledge of geography in China. Much of this literature is centred around the world maps of Matteo Ricci. Studies have been made on the different editions of these maps, on the sources of information (both European and Chinese) that Ricci must have used, on the reception by the Chinese literati of Ricci's time of the maps and the world-view represented by them, and on the possible influence of Renaissance cartography on Chinese map-making. Writers differ on the importance and utility of these maps and their influence.

It is well known that the Almohades instituted a politico-social system or hierarchy. In it the subjects of the Almohade state were divided into ranks or grades of aristocracy which do not appear to be closely connected with their administrative arrangements but may originally have been a battle-array. The broad lines of this system are fairly clear; it is the details that are often obscure. The Mahdī's, later the Caliph's, advisers, the ‘ cabinet’ of his government, were ten men known simply as ‘ the Ten’ or Ahl al-jamā'a. Below them came a council called ‘ the Fifty ’ {Ahl Khamsīn or Ayt Khamsīn). The mass of the people were divided thus in descending order (I follow here Ibn al-Qaṭṭān, later copied by the anonymous author of the Ḥulal al-mawshiyya): the Talaba, the Ḥuffāẓ, the Ahl al-dār, Hargha, Ahl Tīnmāl, Gadmīwa, Ganfīsa, Hintāta, the Jund, the Ghuzāt, and Rumāt. Other writers have additional categories and put them in a slightly different order. Gaudefroy-Demombynes has used the Kitāb al-ansāb for the light it throws on the description of Hafsid institutions given in his partial edition of ‘Umarl's Masālik al-abṣār, and more recently Terrasse has summarized its information in his Histoire du Maroc.

Bei der Durchsicht der Brāhmī-Handschriften der “ Mainzer Sammlung / [Mz]1 entdeckte einer der beiden Verfasser [Maue] mit Mz 639 ein Fragment, das neben Sanskrit eine Übersetzungssprache enthielt, die aufgrund einiger Indizien dem Iranischen, am ehesten dem Sogdischen, zuzuordnen war. Anhand einer ersten vorlä ufigen Umschrift konnte Professor R. E. Emmerick (Hamburg) das Sakische ausschlieβen. Der zweite Autor [Sims-Williams] erkannte darin zweifelsfrei das Sogdische. Somit ist nun auch dieser mir. Dialekt in Brā hmī belegt und erstmals ein sogd. Textstück, das definitiv auf eine Sanskritvorlage zurückgeführt werden kann. Der besondere linguistische Wert liegt in der durch die Schriftart erzwungenen vollen Vokalisierung. Das neu entdeckte Bruchstück nährt die Hoffnung auf weitere sogdische Materialien in Brāhmī.2 Die lesbaren und verständlichen Teile des Blattfragments lassen klar erkennen, daβ esp. sich um einen Heilkundetext handelt, vermutlich einen Abschnitt über Augenkrankheiten.3 Wir haben Reste von vier Rezepturen oder Paragraphen, wie die erhaltenen Zahlen beweisen, die es auch erlauben, Vorderund Rückseite zu bestimmen. Im übrigen aber ist das Blatt so sehr fragmentiert und die Schrift teilweise so stark abgerieben, daβ das gewohnte Schema (zu behandelnde Krankheit, Zusammensetzung des Medikaments und dessen Dosierung) an verschiedenen Stellen zwar noch durchscheint, aber im einzelnen nicht rekonstruiert werden kann. Dies beeintrachtigt die Sicherheit und das Verständnis der Lesungen. Hier kann der entscheidende Fortschritt nur vom Mūla-Text oder zumindest von Paralleltexten kommen Die Suche danach, an der sich freundlicherweise auch R. E. Emmerick beteiligte, hat bisher nur zu einem negativen Ergebnis geführt:

This paper attempts to deal with a short passage found at the end of the third chapter of the Huai Nan tzu book, a compendium of learning assembled in about 120 B.c. under the patronage of the prince Liu An I first became interested in it after reading the tantalizing reference in Needham (SCC, III, 224). (It occurs to me that the preceding sentence or some variant of it is likely to occur in learned journals with a high frequency for the next 50 years at least.) My first efforts to understand the original text led me to the conclusion that it was unique in a number of ways and had points of interest that did not fully appear in the version of Maspero, 1929, 348 ff. Professors A. C. Graham and D. C. Lau both gave very generously of their time in discussions of my first draft. Professor Graham raised the question of possible Mohist influences and brought to my notice a commentary by the Ch'ing scholar Ch'ien T'ang , Huai Nan tzu t'ien wen hsün pu chu c. 1788. I did not feel able to follow Ch'ien in all he wrote, but was relieved to find that we reached the same general conclusions about what the text was saying, although Ch'ien seems to miss much that is important. While there are still some obscurities of language in what appears to be a rather corrupt text, I offer the version given here with a fair degree of conviction that it does not substantially misrepresent the intentions of the unknown author. Any errors that I have obstinately retained despite the helpful advice given to me throughout the time I was engaged on this work are, of course, my responsibility alone.

The existence of a tradition of bow-playing is recorded in some of the earlies written accounts of the Zulu people. Captain Gardiner in 1836 (pp. 104—5 and p1. 1) notes the presence of a gourd-resonated musical bow. It is not, however, clear which of the two Zulu gourd-resonated bows Gardiner encountered. He provides an illustration of a simple bow with undivided string and gourd resonator attached near the centre of the stave but does not note its name. the instrument would seem to be a cross between the Zulu ugubhu, a simple bow with undivided string, but with the gourd resonator attached near the lower end of the stave, and the Zulu umakhweyana, a simple bow with the gourd resonator attached near the centre of the stave, but in which the string is divided by means of a loop which is secured within the centrally-located resonator. Angas (1849:p. 111 and p1. 25) also seems to have confused the two instruments. Plate 25 is an illustration of a young man playing what appears to be the ugubhu (although the gourd resonator is situated higher up the stave than is usual), but the drawing in the text (p. 111) in explanation of plate 25 shows a young man playing the umakhweyana. Thus, while the ugubhu is generally regarded as the older and more authentically Zulu of the two instuments (the umakhweyana being thought to have been borrowed from the Tsonga of Mozambique around the turn of the nineteenth century), it is apparent that, from at least the time of the first documentation of the Zulu, both instruments were in current usage.

Rājasthānī in its historical aspect has been admirably served by Western scholarship—most notably by the work of Tessitori on Old Western Rājasthānī (OWR), and of Sir Ralph Turner on Gujarātī phonology (since OWR ‘represents the stage of comparative linguistic unity of Gujarātī and Rājasthānī’). Last year saw the unveiling in Bikaner of a memorial to Luigi Pio Tessitori; this year sees the seventieth anniversary of his birth, and the publication of the present volume in honour of Sir Ralph.

Tughluqabad is the first of many sultanate and Mughul towns which were purposely planned and constructed on previously uninhabited sites. Built early in the fourteenth century, Tughluqabad was to serve as the capital of the newly established Tughluq dynasty. There were, of course, three earlier Muslim capitals in the vicinity, the first the Delhi of Rāi Pithūrā, converted to an Islamic town after the Ghurid conquest in 588/1192–3; the second Jalāl al-dīn Khahīs Shahr-i naw, which was founded by Muՙiẓẓ al-dīn Kai Qubād (685–8/1286–9) at Kīlukharī (or Kīlugharī) but left incomplete at the time of his death, and the third Sīrī, built by Alՙ al-dīn Khaljī between 698/1298–9 and 700/1300–1 in the fields outside the walls of the older Delhi, but nothing has remained from these towns except parts of the fortification walls and some isolated monuments. The ruins of Tughluqabad, on the other hand, are enshrined in a time capsule. Built between 1320 and 1325 by Ghiyāth al-dīn Tughluq, the town had a brief life, and within a generation was abandoned and its population reduced to the size of a small village. As a result, most of its remains are datable to the short period of its duration in the first half of the fourteenth century. The only exception, as we shall see, are the remains of a small settlement which continued to exist around the old town centre, and in the late Mughal period also occupied the citadel.

The scholars who are descendants of Muhammad Aqīt b. ‘Umar b. ‘Alī b. Yahyā al-Ṣanhājī, and who include Aḥmad Baba al-Tinbuktī, are rightly regarded as being among the greatest in the medieval Sudan. Yet, in part due to the fact that the mosque and quarter of Sankuray were the focal point of their scholastic endeavours and in part due to the vague use of the geographical expression Takrūr, which included, as an appendage, areas northwards to the Mauritanian Adrar as well as the Sudanese Sāhil, the essentially ḥanh¯jī and Saharan origin and background of these scholars is sometimes underrated.

Awngi is a central Cushitic language, the southernmost representative of the Agaw group. It is spoken in the Provinces of Agawmǝdǝr and Mätäkkäl, Governorate General of Gojjam, Ethiopia, by at least 50,000 persons. This dialect group has been called by Conti Rossini ‘Awiya’. This is a misnomer; the word awíya means ‘Agaw man’ (literally: ‘son of Agaw’, see §3.4). The language itself is called by its speakers awῃi, with the derivative -ῃi (Amharic -iñña) used for languages. In my earlier publications, I simply called it Southern Agaw, but following the preference of several of my colleagues, I adopted the self-denomination ‘Awngi’.

The present article may perhaps be regarded as supplementary to Professor Klingenheben's article, ‘Die Präfix- und die Suffixkonjugationen des Hamitosemitischen’, MIO, IV, 2, 1956, 210–77, in much the same way as that article followed on the article ‘Verbalbau und Verbalflexion in den semitohamitischen Sprachen’ by Dr. Otto Rössler, ZDMG, C, 2, 1950, (pub.) 1951, 461–514.

Partial and complete Bible translations into classical Chinese existed well before Protestant missionaries actually began to work actively among the Chinese. Translation work accelerated once missionaries gained a foothold in the newly opened treaty ports after 1842, and the entire Bible or portions of it were translated into Fuzhou, Amoy, Canton, Hakka, Suzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai dialects. S. I. J. Schereschewsky's (1831–1906) translation of the Old Testament (OT) into the northern vernacular in 1875 opened a new chapter. His translation was accessible to larger numbers of people and, in contrast to the OT in classical Chinese, was readily understood when read to the illiterate. Moreover, unlike previous translations, it was prepared entirely from the Hebrew original.

The purpose of this essay is to examine some of Schereschewsky's views on translating and several of the techniques which he employed in rendering into Chinese the Book of Genesis. My basic assumption is that translation is an interpretative activity. When a text is transposed from one language into another, changes are introduced that are consonant with the receiving languages and culture. Translation is affected by interpretations from within the receptor tradition which, in turn, makes possible the acceptance of the translation and the ideas which it contains. Thus the Old (as well as the New) Testament translations represented one of the initial steps in the signification of Protestant Christianity.