A total of 32 poems, including some of doubtful authenticity, are ascribed to Hassān b. Thābit in his Dīwān or elsewhere, which can be wholly or partly classified as elegies. It is remarkable, however, that in this total there is not a single poem on an Ansārī while no less than eight are on 'Uthmān b. 'Affān, as compared with only four on the death of the Prophet. Equally remarkable is the fact that there is a wide variety of style and method of treatment not only among the poems as a whole but among poems on the same subject.

The material upon which this paper is based is in the first instance taken from the Relationship systems and customs of a Sudan Arab tribe (the Kababish) and of the Beni Amer, a Hamitic tribe whom I have been able to study myself in the Sudan by means of the genealogical method. Miss Moss kindly collected a list of relationship terms in Malta for me, which I have used. The rest of the material has been taken from dictionaries, and although I am fully aware of the inadequacy of material culled from dictionaries, yet in this case the method is inevitable. Full investigation into the relationship system and social organizations of the Amharic-speaking Abyssinians would be of the greatest value, and a complete examination of the Maltese terms would also be of interest. I have had much help from friends, though they are in no case responsible for my conclusions. Chief among these is Professor S. Langdon, who has given me much information. I am also indebted to Dr. Hall, Professor Zammit, Dr. Czermak, and Mr. S. H. Ray for references.

In modern English the pun as a form of word-play tends to be associated with wit and humour. It has long been recognized that Japanese literature of various genres abounds in the punning type of word-play, although it is not necessarily humorous. A typical example would be matsu ‘pine tree’ and matsu ‘to wait’, often neatly translated into English as ‘pine’ in both senses. This pun is so frequent in classical Japanese literature that the mere mention of a pine tree can connote yearning for or missing a loved one without further overt reference. The pun thus even creates a metonym.

The nineteenth-century rise of Zanzibar under the ruling Albusaidi Dynasty of Oman owed its origins primarily to the solid foundations of commercial activity laid down in Muscat in the preceding century. In the subsequent development of the Omani economy, in Omani territories in both Arabia and Africa where the dictates of the Omani political/tribal system did not allow for any centralization of authority, local communities and tribal groups resisted the domination of the Albusaidi rulers as they strove to bring under their own control the benefits of burgeoning trade.

The opposition of the major Omani groups in East Africa, the Mazāri‘a of Mombasa and the Banū Nabhān of Pate, to the Albusaidis and the eventual success of the Omani rulers in dismantling and neutralizing this opposition are fairly well documented. However, the sustained challenge of Hilāl b. Sa‘īd to the reign of his father Sa‘īd b. Sulṭān, the Albusaidi ruler of Oman and Zanzibar and their dependencies from 1806 to 1856, has hitherto been neglected, despite the fact that Hilāl's resistance in East Africa was the greatest internal threat to Sa‘īd after that posed by the Mazāri'a and had dire consequences for the subsequent course of Oman's history. The conflict between father and son set in train a course of events that led inexorably to the 1861 British-sponsored dismemberment of Oman into two Sultanates, one in Arabia and the other in East Africa.

Through the courtesy of the authorities of the Preussische Staatsbibliothek I have had the opportunity of reading in the India Office Library the apparently unique copy of Abū Sa'd 'Abd al-Malik b. Muhammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Wā'iz al-Khargūshī's manual of Sūfism entitled Tahdhīb al-asrār. Khargūshī, who is otherwise known for his voluminous biography of the Prophet and a treatise on the interpretation of dreams, died at Nīshāpūr in 406/1015 or 4Q7/1016. He is therefore an earlier authority than Sulamī (d. 412/1021), Abu Nu'aim al-Isfahānī (d. 430/1039), and Qushairī (d. 465/1072), but is junior to Sarrāj (d. 378/988), Kalābādhī (d. 385/995), and Abū Tālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996). These comparisons are important, for they show Khargūshī as being a sufficiently early writer in the genre of systematic Sūfism. His name is not included in Nicholson's list of eight authorities for the history of early Sufism, and he does not appear to have received the attention which he deserves; though it is true that he has been utilized by Massignon in his study of Hallaj. The purpose of the present note is to supplement the somewhat exiguous account of the work given by Ahlwardt, and also to estimate the true value of Khargūshī's manual as a primary source.

The great South-East Asian linguist and epigrapher, Gordon H. Luce, devoted many decades of his long life to the decipherment and analysis of the inscriptions of Old Burma. He had long intended to draw on the unparalleled wealth of materials in his files to produce a comparative lexicon of ‘prestandard Old Burmese’ (OB). As Professor Henderson explains in her moving introduction, Luce's advancing years and failing eyesight caused A comparative word-list of Old Burmese, Chinese and Tibetan (CWL) to be less ambitious in scope or polished in format than Luce would have wished. Even so, the CWL is a mine of fascinating comparative material, not only for OB, where Luce's first-hand expertise was second to none, but also for Archaic Chinese (AC) and Written Tibetan (WT), where he had to rely for his data on Karlgren's reconstructions and Jäschke's dictionary.

The important series of pre-Mughal monuments in the Lodi Gardens (the former Lady Willingdon Park), set in the midst of the residential area of New Delhi, is familiar to most visitors to the city. Apart from a handsome Mughal bridge (the Āṭhpula) and some small and insignificant outbuildings, there are five main structures which lie along a south-south-west to north-north-east axis. The most southerly monument is the domed octagonal tomb thought to be of Muhammad Shāh Sayyid (r. 838–49/1435–46): and the most northerly is another domed octagonal tomb in a square fortified enclosure thought to be that of Sikandar Shāh Lōdī (r. 894–923/1489–1517).

The study of quantifiers is an important area of language description. This is in part because their description has proved relevant to an issue of great theoretical interest, the relation between syntax and semantics. One question of interest is how far the unity of their semantic function is reflected in their syntactic behaviour. This raises questions like, is there a syntactic category ‘quantifier’ or ‘quantifier phrase (QP)’?

It is now more than a hundred years since the birth, in 1826, of Edward Byles Cowell, the guru of perhaps the greater number of English Sanskrit scholars. His story is well known. The son of an Ipswich merchant, he was called at 16, by his father's death, to leave school and carry on his father's business. His heart was set on learning. He was already widely read in classics, Statius, Lucian, and Greek romances being added to his school reading, and he was destined, while yet in his 'teens, to publish articles on Rabelais, Longus, and the Persian poets. In 1841, at the age of 15, he had been introduced to Sir W. Jones' works, and in the early morning (called, it was said, by the milkman pulling a string attached to his foot) he had studied in them the Asiaticae Poeseos Commentarii (on Persian and Arabic poetry) and the Persian grammar, working by himself at the extracts from Hafiz and the Shahnamah. Soon, however, help came to him from an old Bombay officer, Major Hockley, whom Professor Cowell cited in 1898, when receiving the gold medal of the Royal Asiatic Society, as a proof of the power which “ enthusiasm and sympathy can always exercise on others, wherever we may be placed ”.