The medieval registers of the papal Chancery and of the royal Chanceries of Western Europe, which have preserved archival copies of outgoing documents, are an invaluable source for students of medieval European history and diplomatics. Analogous sources from medieval Islamic Chanceries are practically non-existent. We know from literary works, especially the handbooks for government secretaries, that the medieval Islamic Chanceries kept records of the documents they issued by meticulously copying them and filing them in an archive. Some of the surviving documents which emanated from the Egyptian chanceries also attest to this practice. These often contain annotations made by copyists certifying that the document had been copied in the Chancery and/or in other government offices. We also have a report by a clerk of the Ayyūbid Chancery concerning the search in the archives for the copy of a decree which had been issued several years previously. To this report is attached a reproduction of the archival copy. The original contents of the archives of the medieval Egyptian Chanceries, however, have perished almost without a trace.

The study of the Pahlavi poetry, so spiritedly initiated by M. Benveniste twenty years ago, seems to have come to a dead end. That certain Pahlavi texts, as the Ayādgār-ī Zarērān or the Draxt-ī Asūrīg (the Dispute of the date-palm with the goat), are poems, is conceded on all sides; but the formal problems, the problems of rhythm, metre, and rhyme, remain in the dark. It seems doubtful whether the material at hand is capable of leading us to definite conclusions. There are two main obstacles. Firstly, the notorious sloppiness of the copyists leaves too much room for conjecture; the mere addition or omission, at the editors’ discretion, of the word for “and” and the harf-i idāfet is sufficient to disturb the rhythmical balance. Secondly, as a rule we do not know the dates of composition, and therefore cannot tell how the words were pronounced by the authors; it makes a considerable difference to the metre (whatever it was) whether we put down paδak or paig, mazdayasn or mazdēsn, rōšn or rōšan, aδaκ or aig, šικanj or šκanj, giyān or gyān, yazat or yazd, awiš or ōš, druyist or drīst or drust or durust, hačaδar or azēr.

One thing is clear: a biased approach will not lead to convincing results. On the strength of the preconceived notion, carried forward from the study of the Avesta (where matters are equally dubious), that the metre is a purely syllabic one, the Pahlavi poems were made to suffer a great deal of emendation; where the usual procedure of omitting inconvenient words produced lines too short to fit into the scheme, either words were added or their pronunciation distorted.

The very hard, grey basalt stone on which this inscription is cut was discovered in 1961 by Mr. Shalom Kotzer (of the kibbutz Shā'ar ha-Golān) in shallow water off the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, near the modern amphitheatre ofTsēmaḥ (Samakh). In 1962 it was moved from the water to the kibbutz by Mr. Kotzer and his son Moshe. A preliminary note on the inscription in Hebrew by the present writer appeared in 'Al ha-Mishmār of 11 January 1963. The inscription consists of eight readable lines insimple Kūfī script, incised on afairly smooth surface. The back of the stone is not worked.

One of the most striking phonetic characteristics of languages of the Austroasiatic family such as Mon, Khmer, and Vietnamese is the great variety of vowel qualities that appear to be kept apart by native speakers despite the fact that some of them differ from each other so slightly that it is hard for the foreign observer to believe that they can be functionally distinct in practice. Accompanying these minute quality distinctions there are frequently puzzling and seemingly non-systematic variations in the length of vowels and in their distribution.

A total eclipse of the sun is rare enough in any one place and spectacular enough to leave a profound impression on those who observe it. From very early times it was regarded as a portent of disaster and carefully recorded. Advances in the field of geophysics, together with the advent of the high-speed computer, have made it possible to compute early solar eclipses with a new degree of precision, and we may now expect to find a significant correlation between literary and astronomical evidence for solar eclipses in areas where a sufficiently representative bloc of literature has survived. The region around Has Shamra (ancient Ugarit) is one such area, and it was decided to compute the principal solar eclipses visible there during the period covered by the Ugaritic texts (c. 1450–1200 b.c.), and scan the texts for possible references.

This article examines material that points to the existence in pre-classical Imamism of views on the subject of the imam's knowledge and the related question of sources (usūl) of Imami law, which are at variance with the views attested in the classical sources. The evidence shows that al-Fadl b. Shādhān refuted the possibility of divine inspiration for the imam and maintained that the imam's religious knowledge was based entirely on transmission from the Prophet and restricted to the Quran (a complete and perfect source) and its interpretation. It also provides a strong indication that the doctrine of tahrif and the idea of a ‘complete’ ‘Alid codex had originally served to support the claim that the imams’ teachings were based entirely on the Quran. Other evidence examined here suggests that al-Fadl's views are likely to have been representative of the ‘orthodox’ (viz. the legalist and non-ghuluww) position in early Imamism.

In the Sino-Tibetan family, reflexivity is either not expressed in the verb, as in Chinese or Tibetan, or expressed by means of a “middle” marker, as in Dulong or Kiranti languages. Among the morphologically rich languages of this family, only Rgyalrong languages have distinct and unambiguous reflexive and reciprocal markers on the verb. This paper shows that the reflexive prefix in Rgyalrong languages has two possible origins. It could come from a fusion of the third person singular marker and the root meaning “self” or, alternatively, come from the free third person pronoun. Both hypotheses are compatible with our understanding of Rgyalrong historical phonology.

This article is primarily intended as a “follow-up” of two previous ones on the historical records of Portuguese India, thus serving to remind historians of the importance of these documents. The articles to which I refer are “A preliminary report on the historical records at Goa”, by Surendra Nath Sen (88 pp., Calcutta, 1925, reprinted in his Studies in Indian History (1930)), and “Portuguese India and its historical records”, by the late J. LeRoy Christian (Hispanic-American Historical Review, vol. xxv, pp. 140–151, February, 1945). These two articles are all that I have been able to find in English about the Goa archives, and they are complemented by the recently published “Roteiro do Cartório Geral do Estado da India”, by Panduranga Pissurlencar, reprinted from No. 309 of the Boletim Geral das Colónias (Lisboa, 1951). This fourteen-page summary catalogue of the Goa archives by their scholarly director advantageously replaces the ostensibly fuller “Index alfabetico, chronologico e remissive”, published serially by Tovar de Albuquerque in the Oriente Portuguez (first series, 1910–1918), which is so riddled with mistakes, and compiled with such lack of system, as to be worse than useless as a guide to the material in the archives. In so far as possible, I have avoided repeating what is already recorded in the previous articles of Nath Sen and LeRoy Christian, confining myself to amplifying or correcting their statements where necessary. I have also limited myself to describing the codices which I studied during my stay at Goa in September–October, 1951. As will be seen from a comparison of the codices described hereunder with those listed in Dr. Pissurlencar's Roteiro, I was only able to study a relatively small proportion of the whole; nor was a thorough examination of all of those which I did see possible in the month at my disposal. Since virtually everything dated prior to 1600 which still exists in the archives has already been published by Cunha Rivara and others, I confined my own investigations to the period 1600–1740, the later date being taken as marking the end of effective Portuguese power in India with the loss of the “provincia do Norte” to the Marāthās after the disastrous if hard-fought Bassein campaign of 1737–1739. My own interests being chiefly concerned with the Far East, I naturally concentrated on Macao and Timor; but I trust that I have noted sufficient material dealing with East Africa, the Persian Gulf, India, Ceylon, and Malacca, to show the variety and richness of this little-used archive. It may be added that much of the material relating to India proper has been printed in the two series of the Archivo Portuguez Oriental, in the two series of O Oriente Portuguez, and in the Boletim do Institute Vasco da Gama, as explained in the final note to this article.

Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kirmānī is known mainly from al-Ṭabarī as a rāwī for events in the caliphates of Mūsā al-Hādī and Hārūn al-Rashīd; from al-Jahshiyārī as a rāwī for an anecdote concerning al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā al-Barmakī (and probably for other, unattributed items of information); and from the mention of him as 'Umar [b.] al-Azraq al-Kirmānī, author of a book called the Akhbār al-Barāmika wa-faḍā'iluhum (‘Historical accounts of the Barmakid family and their merits’) by Ibn ‘Asākir in his great biographical dictionary of the leading figures and scholars associated with his native city of Damascus, citing him as an authority on Khālid b. Barmak's early close connexions with the ‘Abbāsid Imāms Muḥammad b. ‘Alī b. ‘Abd Allāh b. al-'Abbās and his son Ibrāhīm.

L’origine des chiffres que nous appelons “ arabes ” parce qu’ils ont été introduits en Europe par les Arabes, et de la notation arithmétique basée sur leur valeur de position avec I’emploi du symbole zéro, a donné lieu à des recherches qui ont abouti à des résultats opposés: certains auteurs ont affirmé l’origine indienne du système, tandis que d’autres ont voulu y voir une invention occidentale.

Parmi ces derniers, M. G. R. Kaye s'est fait remarquer par son hostilité contre la thèse de l’origine indienne. Il s'exprime ainsi dans son article “ Notes on Indian Mathematics: Arithmetical Notation ” (JASB., 1907, p. 487):

It is of great importance to identify the autographs of al-Jabarī (1754–1825/6), 2 as by doing so we shall be able to know whether there were any deliberate changes or omissions by the redactors, editors, and copyists of his works. Moreover, it will be possible to solve many problems created by the calligraphic and copying mistakes of the transcribers, such as homoeoteleuton, homoeoarchy, homoeotopy, dittography, misplacement of diacritical dots (taṣḥīf), and other errors, and hence to know his authentic statements and style. This identification might shed a new and powerful light upon the way in which the author compiled his data, and even the sequence in time of their compilation.

Khums was, like zakāt, a ritual duty incumbent on individuals, a farīḍa 'alā l-'ayn. Distinguished from the other 'ibādāt by being as to immediate aim human rights and not divine ones (ḥaqq li'l-ādamiyyīn not ḥaqq li'llāh) the final aim of both khums and zakāt was none the less divine reward and more certain salvation. The qur'ānic basis for khums was found in the verse (8: 41):

Know that whatever you acquire as material gain a fifth belongs to God and to the Prophet and to those related and the orphans and the poor and the wayfarers.

It would seem that the genealogy given in the fragment of the text of Sīdī Aḥmad al-Bakkāy might be more authentic than the one given in the Ghallāwiyya. While the importance given to ancestresses in the text of Sīdī Aḥmad al-Bakkāy and its attempt to explain an individual's origins in terms of diversity rather than by a single patriline descending from one important ancestor certainly set it apart from later western Saharan genealogies and from Arab and Muslim genealogies in general, it is obviously a more realistic picture of origins, as a person's ancestors double with each earlier generation rather than becoming fewer. Also, the text of Sīdī Ahmad al-Bakkāy, which is older than the Ghallāwiyya, does not take the genealogies back as far as the later work which, however, is not convincing because of many apparent errors and illogicalities.

Zimbabwean Ndebele and Zulu might be likened, in a very broad sense, to American English and British English, in their relationship. Mzilikazi and his few followers left Zululand in 1822, and in the 1840s founded a new nation, over 1,000 km. to the north. There are certain differences in pronunciation and tone. Divergence is likely to have been bilateral: while Ndebele shows clear signs of non-Zulu influence in certain respects, Zulu on the other hand is probably not quite the same today as it was in 1822

The Sāsanavaṃsa ‘History of the religion’, a Pali work written in Burma in 1861, has long been recognized as an important source for the study of Theravāda Buddhism. It is essentially a chronicle of famous monks which seeks to trace the lineal succession of orthodox theras from the Buddha's immediate disciple Upāli to the heads of the saṅgha at Mandalay in the author's own lifetime. As early as 1882 Louis de Zoysa in his Catalogue of Pali, Sinhalese, and Sanskrit manuscripts in the temple libraries of Ceylon referred to the Sāsanavaṃsa as a work containing ‘very interesting information on the religious history of … Burma and Ceylon’. In 1892 the Russian Orientalist Ivan Pavlovitch Minaev drew upon the Sāsanavaṃsa for his Recherches sur le bouddhisme, in which he quoted fairly extensively from the Pali text. H. Kern in 1896 classed it along with the better-known Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa as ‘highly important for the ecclesiastical history of Ceylon’, and the treatise also gained mention in the researches of such leading Buddhist scholars as E. Hardy, Wilhelm Geiger, and G. P. Malalasekera.

Johnstone (1968, 1975, 1980, 1981) has pointed out that two of the Modern South Arabian group of Semitic languages, Jibbali (Śḥeri) and Socotri, systematically lose the person-marking prefix t- (whether it mark the second person or the feminine third person) in certain types of verbs. An example of this phenomenon from Jibbali may be seen in the passive paradigm of the basic stem, which is given below alongside the active-voice paradigm of a ‘stative’- type basic verb, the conjugation of which (aside from the person-markers under discussion) closely matches that of the passive form. In the active voice, the tappears in the positions in which we expect it on the basis of the cognate prefixes in the other Semitic languages, while in the passive voice the t- is absent.

The remarkable rise of the ‘Aẓms from an inconspicuous family of landed campaigners at Ma‘arrat al-Nu‘man to a dynasty of governors that ruled in Syria for most of the eighteenth century owes its origin to the process of disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and its institutions.

In choosing the subject for this short paper I am guided not solely by the fact that the archæological observations which first drew my attention to it were gathered in that field of my Central-Asian explorations with which I have fortunately been able to associate my old friend Professor Rapson as one of the earliest and most helpful of my collaborators. What invests certain curious finds among modest burial remains of the Lop desert with a special quasi-personal interest for me is the distant and puzzling relation they bear to a much discussed question of Vedic and Avestic research, that of the sacred Soma and Haoma.

It is a question which was often touched upon in his lectures by that great scholar and teacher, Professor Rudolf von Roth, during the years 1881–4, when I had the good fortune, figuratively, to sit at his feet as an eager devoted pupil. The question as to the identity of the original Soma plant and its home which he had discussed just at that time in two short papers of masterly clearness, was not to be solved then, and still remains undecided. But Roth's main contention still holds good that a solution for it could be hoped for only by the study of relevant physical facts, if possible, on the ground of early Aryan occupation.

This poem by a Macassar Malay describes the successful war of the Dutch against Macassar from 1666 to 1669. It was edited by Dr. C. Skinner for a London Ph.D. and published in 1963. The manuscript of the original poem is no longer available, but it is deduced that it must have been written between July 1669 and June 1670. The name of the author is recorded, an Enci' Amin; we learn from a comment in the poem itself that it was recorded on Chinese paper. It is unusual to know even this much about the original manuscripts of works in traditional Malay literature. Of the two extant manuscripts the earlier, preserved in Leiden, contains only part of the. poem. Although the name of the copyist is not given Dr. Skinner, continuing a fascinating piece of investigation by the Dutch scholar H. T. Damstè, is able to demonstrate with reasonable certainty that it was a Dutch lady, Cornelia Valentijn, wife of the famous Franςis; furthermore, that it would have been copied c. 1710 in Ambon.

The language on which this short study is based is Lingala, the very interesting lingua franca spoken along the vast stretch of the central part of the main Congo River. The language is spoken almost entirely by Bantu tribes, all of whom have also their own tribal languages. Naturally there is considerable affinity between these languages, and in some senses Lingala may be said to represent the Highest Common Factor of them. Phonetically they are almost identical, and so Lingala has preserved a clearly marked phonetic system, a brief account of which should not be out of place here.