This paper discusses Abdullah Cevdet, one of the founding members of the Young Turk ‘Committee of Union and Progress’, who in 1922 caused considerable public commotion by publishing an article favourable to the Baha'i religion in his journal İctihâd. He was prosecuted for attacking Islam and the prophet Mohammad by expressing his thoughts in favour of the Baha'i religion, recommending it as a world religion to replace Islam, which he deemed to be backward. It is argued here, in the context of Cevdet's Weltanschauung, that he did not use ‘Baha'ism’ merely as a tool to educate the Muslims in line with his Positivist ideas but that he identified himself with this new religious creed.

The present article explores uses of verse in direct speech attributed to Confucius (551–479 bce) within works compiled mainly during the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). Analysing short prose narratives and dialogues, the article investigates a poeticized debate, in which versified proverbs or apothegms are employed as tools of argumentation. In addition I examine the mnemonic function of reiterated rhymes on politics, and emotive song as an expression of thwarted ambition, purportedly revealing glimpses at Confucius's inner life; and libretto-like records of dramatic encounters whose participants exchange verse. The goal of the investigation is twofold. First, it demonstrates how, in early imperial China, the image of Confucius was remoulded to fulfil different functions and satisfy diverse needs beyond his by now familiar role as philosopher and as patron saint of an intellectual tradition and state ideology. Second, it draws attention to the riches of stylistic nuance and functional variety exhibited by early Chinese writings, which have so far hardly been tapped.

The Kitāb Sulaym ibn Qays, a collection of sayings attributed to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, was supposedly collected by the (otherwise unknown) Sulaym b. Qays al-Hilālī (d. 76/678); the work is generally recognized as an important source for early Shīʿī thought. There has been much debate, both within the Shīʿī tradition and outside of it, over when its contents reached their current form and how representative they were of Shīʿī views in the early centuries of Islam. Here, I take one passage from the Kitāb Sulaym and set it against the development of early Muslim hermeneutics in an attempt to establish a tentative dating for this passage. The result is a dating between late eighth century ce (second century ah) and the early ninth century ce (early third century ah), roughly contemporary with, and perhaps postdating the revolutionary hermeneutic work of Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820). This conclusion tallies, to some extent, with an analysis of the report's various isnāds.

The poem discussed has long been regarded as a “nonsense” poem that was extemporized as part of some kind of poetry game at Court. This article presents evidence to demonstrate that through the use of puns and double entendre the poet in fact ingeniously devised a witty scatological verse. Rather than “nonsense”, the poem is discovered to offer covertly a deeply satirical social commentary on the contemporaneous relationships between men and women, aristocrats and outcastes.

The only definite statements as to the authorship of the play occur in the commentaries in two different MSS., and are conflicting; one mentions Bodhayana as the author, while the other mentions the name of Indracarumani. There were several Bdhyanas, two of whom were poets and it is not easy to decide to whom the first of the above statements refers. Several plausible guesses have been made, based on evidence other than the statements in the two commentaries. It has been pointed out that the Bhagavadajjukam, in common with the plays of Bhsa, lacks all reference to the author in the text, begins with a Sthpan instead of the usual Prastavana, and bear some resemblances to them in style and diction. On the other hand, it has been shown that the play shows similarities to the Mttavilasa of Mahendra-vikrama Varman. Both plays ridicule Buddhist doctrines and extol Hindu Dharma. This argument gains strength from the fact that in the stone mscription at Mmundr, which has been proved to be that of Mhendra-vikrama, Bhagavadajjukam and Mattavilasa are mentioned in company. Similarities in diction have also been traced between the two. It will therefore be seen that the authorship of the play is still uncertain, and will continue to engage the attention of scholars for some time to come.

This article explores three important Zoroastrian legal texts from the ʿAbbasid period, consisting of questions and answers to high-ranking priests. The texts contain a wellspring of information about the social history of Zoroastrianism under Islamic rule, especially the formative encounter between Zoroastrians and Muslims. These include matters such as conversion, apostasy, sexual relations with outsiders, inheritance, commerce, and the economic status of priests. The article argues that the elite clergy responsible for writing these texts used law to refashion the Zoroastrian community from the rulers of Iran, as they had been in Late Antiquity, into one of a variety of dhimmī groups living under Islamic rule. It also argues that, far from being brittle or inflexible, the priests responded to the challenges of the day with creativity and pragmatism. On both counts, there are strong parallels between the experiences of Zoroastrians and those of Christians and Jews, who also turned to law as an instrument for rethinking their place in the new Islamic cosmos. Finally, the article makes a methodological point, namely to show the importance of integrating Pahlavi sources into wider histories of Iran and the Middle East during the early Islamic period.

L'écriture actuelle à Madagascar ne date que du siècle dernier. En mars 1823, le roi Radama I a adopté les caractères latins et l'orthographe détaillée proposée par les missionnaires de son entourage à Tananarive, la capitale.

Il existait pourtant même avant cette date une tradition écrite en caractères arabico-malgaches, héritage laissé par les premières families arabes venues à la Grande Île au 11–13 siècle. Cette orthographe, appellée sorabe (écriture majuscule), a été gardée et cachée par la tribu Antaimoro de la côte est de Madagascar. Une vingtaine de personnes par génération apprend à lire et à écrire et transmet ces anciens manuscrits d'un caractère religieux ou historique aux futures générations.

The system of iqṭā', the allotment of the resources of the state, income from land and elsewhere, to individuals to provide them with the means of serving the state, above all in military service, stands out from the pages of the chronicles as the dominant administrative institution of the Mamlūk period; the iqṭā' was the life-blood of the Mamlūk amīrs and the whole military apparatus of the state. All the vast amount of administrative work connected with the iqṭā' system, the assigning and control of, and accounting for, grants, was carried out by the Dīwān al-Jaysh, the Army Bureau. We see some of this work ‘through a glass darkly’ in the chronicles, and we have some very schematic accounts in the scribal handbooks that are available from the period. The operations of such ‘technical’ departments of state were not described by the writers of the handbooks with anything like the same detail as the operations of the Chancery (Dīwān al-Inshā'), because, despite a long tradition of discussion and comparison of their rival merits, which was one of the stock literary themes, the departments of financial and accounting functions were generally considered of lower standing and worth less attention than the Chancery, the bureau in which polite learning and literary talent were at a premium. Hence, examples of the prestigious productions of the Dīwān al-Inshā', treaties, foreign correspondence, diplomas, and decrees, were copied and preserved for their literary interest, in addition to, and sometimes before, their historical interest, and as models for aspiring ‘mandarins’ of the Chancery. There is a smaller, much smaller, amount of Chancery material that has survived in its original form in a few scattered collections of documents.

The Americans arrived (May 1911) to find Tehran in a turmoil of political excitement. In February the Minister of Finance, who had been a leading figure in the constitutional movement, had been assassinated by Russian subjects on his way home from attending the Majlis. This was followed by another political murder in Tehran later in February—again undertaken by Russian nationals. Since Russia retained the right of jurisdiction over her own subjects in Persia the murderers had to be hunded over to the Russian government. The situation the Americans found has been described by one of the members of the mission in a latter to President Taft. He wrote:

‘Pursuant to your kind request to keep you informed of our progress in Persia, the following statement of experiences and conditions may be of interest, especially in view of the recent return of the exiled Shah, Mohammed Ali, and the near approach of civil war which now seems inevitable, as the result of foreign intrigues. The entire country is in the most complete state of anarchy possible to imagine, and the government—if such it can be called—is of the opera bouffe variety, fit to adorn any stage without alteration of a single feature. Civic corruption exists to an extent beyond the limits of the wildest imagination, and is so widespread that an honest official, high or low, is almost unknown. No laws exist for the punishment of official crimes, and as the Oriental system of bribery for the consummation of any purpose whatsoever has existed since time immemorial, the natural result is beyond description.

Much of the economic and colonial history of England can be written in terms of the changing membership of the House of Commons;and much of the early history of the British in Asia in particular can be fully understood only in relation to the rise and fall of competing parties at the India House in Leadenhall Street. The following brief glimpse into Indian politics in London in the period of Olive′s sojourn in England between his first and second governorships of Bengal illustrates the force and truth of these generalizations.

The collection of books and manuscripts belonging to the library of William Marsden, and given by him to King's College in 1835, but now in the possession of the School of Oriental Studies, has in its valuable contents a few Marathi manuscripts. Sir E. Denison Ross, in his article on “The Manuscripts Collected by William Marsden”, published in the Bulletin (Vol. II, Pt. Ill), has reproduced on pp. 535 and 537 the entries made by Mr. Marsden on these Marathi MSS.

The word Yogakṣema claims high antiquity. It is found used in the Vedic Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, and Śrauta-Sūtras. (See Bloomfield's Concordance, p. 808a.) It occurs in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad, Bhṛgu-vallī, ii, 51, and in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, ii, 1, 2. Its best-known use is in the Bhagavad-gītā, ix, 22, while it is found further compounded as niryogakṛema in ii, 45 of the same work.

Hardly ever has Islam survived a more disastrous and more mournful event than the destruction of Baghdād by the Mongols of Hūlāghū Khān in the middle of the month of al-Muharram of the year 656/January, 1258. The Mongol conqueror, after having subdued the Assassins, turned against the capital of the ‘Abbāsids and captured it without any resistance. The fall of the ‘Abbāsid caliphate was followed by a veritable reign of terror which lasted for forty days. Baghdad was plundered during this dismal period, its entire population was massacred mercilessly with the exception of the Christians, the co-religionists of Hūlāghū Khān's wife and father. The Caliph al-Musta'ṣim and his sons fell victims to the fury of the enraged conqueror, who put them to death. And to complete the disaster, a great conflagration destroyed many parts of the city.

I Give below a portion of the Pahlavi Žāmāsp-Nāmak with notes. The text is easily accessible in J. J. Modi's Jâmâspi, Pahlavi Pâzend and Persian Texts, 1903, Bombay, and, for a part only, in West's edition in Avesta, Pahlavi, and Ancient Persian Studies, 1904. It has, therefore, seemed unnecessary to reprint the Pahlavi. West used a MS., entitled DP., of the late Shams ul Ulama Dastur Dr. Peshotanji Behramji Sanjana (West, loc. cit.), for the other MSS. see Modi's introduction, loc. cit. I have noted the chief discrepancies only (Modi's MSS. are quoted as “ MSS.”, or separately as MU.,DE.).

The Swahili poet, Sayyid 'Umar bin Amin bin 'Umar bin Amin bin Nadhir al-Ahdal, Kadhi of Siu, c.a.d. 1856, left a number of poems upon religious themes. These include the best acrostic poems in traditional Swahili literature, e.g. Waji-waji, written in takhmis verse-form.

The title of the present work is given in the last verse: ya dura mandhuma, a Swahili form of the Arabic al-Durr al-Manẓum, or ‘Strung Pearls’. The manuscript copy, pasted on two pieces of cardboard, was written by Muhammad Abubakar bin 'Umar al-Bakariy, better known as Muhammad Kijuma, the well-known Swahili poet and scribe at Lamu, who produced most of his best work in the first two decades of the present century.

Tibetan orthography looks phonetically challenging, to say the least; and one may well wonder whether such tongue-twisting combinations as the brj of brjes, the blt- of bltas, or the bst- of bstan ever did twist a Tibetan tongue, or whether the significance of these and other such orthographic forms might not have been morphophonemic in origin, with the letters r, l, and s in the syllable initial of forms such as these serving to associate these past-tense forms lexically with their corresponding present-tense forms; e.g. Viewed in relation to Tibetan orthography the past-tense forms of a class of verbs in the Golok dialect seem to support this hypothesis. Table 1, below, contains a number of examples of Golok verbs in their past-tense and present-tense forms to illustrate a type of phonological analysis suited to that view of the r syllable-initial unit in the Golok examples, and, indirectly, in the WT examples too (the symbols b and b will be accounted for in section (B) below).

The Mahānubhāvas are a Maharashtrian bhakti sect founded in the second half of the thirteenth century. Like other Indian bhakti sects, the Mahānubhāvas practise exclusive devotion to one god, but do not thereby deny the existence of other gods. Rather, Mahānubhāvas hold that ‘the gods’ form a category of real beings distinct from jīvas, the world, and God. Mahānubhāva thought pays a good deal of attention to the gods; yet this attention does not compromise Mahānubhāva monotheism.