I N 1508 the Mediterranean port of Bādis, located on the coast of the Rīf on approximately the same meridian as Malaga, shared with Salé and Azemmour on the Atlantic the distinction of being the only Moroccan ports not occupied by either the Spanish or Portuguese. Subject to the Wattasids at Fās, at about the beginning of the sixteenth century Bādis had been granted by the reigning Wattāsidto a cousin, who for some years ruled almost independently there. Because of its geographical situation the port was of considerable interest to the Republic of Venice, two of whose merchant fleets had occasion to call there in the course of their voyages along the coasts of the Mediterranean.

Venetian interest in Bādis is illustrated by two Arabic documents: a treaty and its covering letter addressed by the Amīr of Bādis to the Doge of Venice, written in the year 1508 and concerning the establishment of commercial relations. The originals of these two documents are preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV) where also, in the Libri Commemoriali, transcripts of their contemporary Italian translations are to be found. These translations are reproduced here together with the Arabic texts.

A. A. Macdonell in his commentary on RV. IV. 50.5 (Vedic Reader for Students) remarks: “The exact meaning … does not clearly appear from its four occurrences; but it must have a sense closely allied to receptacle—in three passages it is spoken of as being rent or pierced, and twice is associated with Valá; and in the Naighaṇṭuka it is given as a synonym of megha cloud.” Grassmann (Wörterbuch) similarly translates as Behälter, Wolke. The four passages in which it occurs are I. 62.4, phaligam, Indra śakra, valaṃ raveṇa darayo, “Rend, O mighty Indra, the ph. cage with a crash”; I. 121.10, tam, adrivaḥ, phaligaṃ hetim asya, “At that ph., O thou of the thunderbolt, hurl thy missile”; IV. 50.5, sa … valaṃ ruroja phaligaṃ raveṇa, “He hath burst with a crash the ph. cage”; VIII. 32.35, ya udnaḥ phaligaṃ bhinan nyak sindhūṃr avāsṛjat, “Who split the ph. of the water and let the streams rush down.” Phaligam is here a valam, cave, prison or cage, but is not always used as such, otherwise there would be no need to complete its meaning by valam. It shares with the rock and the cloud the function of imprisoning the waters, but, unlike the twin aśman (cloud above and rock below), is not mentioned as a producer of fire. The cloud, like the rock, must be hard, so that the clash of the upper with the nether aśman may yield fire, and phaligam is probably hard also. It may be white, like the bright cloud or the snow-capped mountain, grey or even black, like the rain-charged cloud or the stark rock.

An initial y- is found in Tamil only before long ā in such Words as yā1E49;ai elephant, yāṭu goat, yāṟu river, yāmai tortoise, etc. Side by side with these forms We also have forms without the initial y-, āṉai, āṭu, etc., and an examination of literary usage shows that the forms with initial y- has been dropped. In the early anthologies the forms with initial yā- greatly preponderate; in Middle Tamil, literature yā- and ā- forms are indifferently used; while in Modern Tamil, Particularly in the spoken language, ā- forms alone are current. The following is a list of such words together with their cognates in the other Dravidian languages:—

Ta. yā, ā to bind, tie; to dam up, stop, confine, yākkai binding, bond; body, ākkai body; strips of fibre used for thatching, yāppu binding, bond; metre, prosody, āppu bandage, tie; body; wedge, Ma. āppu wedge, plug, what stops a crevice, Ka. āpu a restraint, a stoppage, what stops, Malt. eye to tie, bind, 3rd p.t. ēcha, ēpu the fibres of a wild plant of which cord is made, Kur. ēp string, cord, rope, (with prothetic h-) hē' enā to tie, bind, 3rd p.t. hēcas.

Muhammad b. Muhammad b. ‘Alī Abū Bakr al–Khawāfī al–Harāwī was born in Khurāsān in 757/1356 and he died at Herat in 838=1435. Praised by Jāmī as one who personified wisdom, both exoteric and esoteric, he was, without doubt, an important master of the Suhrawardiyya Sūfī order, though he established his own silsila, the Zainiyya. None the less, he was schooled in a number of other Sūfī orders. Dr. Leonard Lewisohn has revealed in his studies of the mystic poet, Mawlānā Muhammad Shīrīn, otherwise known as al–Maghribī, that al–Khawāfī is listed at the end of the Ṭaifūrī silsila by Ḥājj Zain al-‘Ābidīn al-Shirwānī. According to Ibn Karbalā'ī, he was a part-time student of Ishāq Khuttalānī and he was also affiliated to ‘Ala’ al-Dawla Simnānī, though it is ultimately to Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī that his silsila is usually traced.

The Persian term khargāh is first attested at the beginning of the fourth/tenth century. It has often been translated as “hut” or “pavilion”, but a comprehensive overview of the historical, geographical and poetic sources points to a more precise definition. Three main conclusions can be established. First, from the beginning the term exclusively referred to the trellis tent (commonly known as yurt) first identified in a Turkic milieu in Inner Asia. Second, khargāh entered the Arabic and Persian languages through the Sāmānid court and quickly replaced the Arabic expression al-qubba al-turkiyya which was previously used to refer to this kind of tent. Third, the presence of the trellis tent in Muslim courts predates the arrival of the nomadic Saljuqs in the fifth/eleventh century. The trellis tent, associated with the cloth enclosure (or sarāparda), was already a status symbol under the Sāmānids and Būyids in the fourth/tenth century. Thus this study, which lies at the crossroads of lexicography and the history of technology, provides new elements towards a better understanding of Central Asian cultural influence on the wider ‘Abbāsid world.

The following incantation bowl from the Martin Bodmer Library, Geneva, contains an inscription in Syriac script consisting of 13 lines on the interior and one line on the exterior surface of the bowl. The inscription begins in the centre of the bowl, which contains an image of a snake with its tail in its mouth. The bowl measures 13·8 inches in diameter and 5·8 inches in height.

This article deals with the identification and interpretation of two rare Middle Persian words. Firstly, some attestations of the as yet unrecognized word <hs’lyh> hassārīh are discussed, showing that it means “direction”. Then, a semantic analysis of its underived counterpart hassār is carried out, as a basis for an etymological proposal. Finally, it is argued that hassār descends from Old Persian *haçā-sāra- “(having the head) in the same direction”, and a possible reconstruction of the semantic development of the word is provided.

It is well known what an extraordinary power of absorbing foreign words Persian possesses. In addition to the innumerable Arabic words which since the creation of the New Persian literary language have formed an integral part of Persian speech, we have a fair number of Aramaic words 1 on the one hand, and of Eastern Iranian words on the other; in later times, there is also considerable borrowing from Turkish. It is, I think, proper to regard Eastern Iranian words in Persian as “loan-words” in the same way as, say, Arabic or Aramaic words; for no Eastern Iranian language is amongst the constituent dialects of Modern Persian, which can perhaps best be defined as the descendant of the current language of culture and commerce which developed in Persia during the Sasanian era. So far, little attention has been paid to the Eastern Iranian words in Persian. Horn, in his excellent paper on the New Persian literary language, quoted examples such as Balaχšān, Hilmand, fiš “mane”, fay, fuy “idol”, malaχ “locust”, bilist “span”, lōγḻdan “to milk”, etc., words whose phonetic habitus does not agree with the normal Persian development. To-day we are in a much more fortunate position since the Sogdian language has gradually become known to us: seen from Persia, Sogdian was by far the most important Eastern Iranian language, a language of culture, literature, and commerce, whose territory bordered on the area of Persian speech and extended towards the frontiers of China.