This paper outlines the centrality of the Late Roman period in the settlement history of Palestine, and the marginal contribution of the Christian establishment to the development of the land. Settlement momentum during these periods resulted from the fact that Palestine was part of the Roman Empire. The historical trends in Palestine should be regarded as part of a broader political settlement drive that characterized the eastern parts of the Roman realm during the period under discussion. The argument that the process of expansion was unique and stemmed from Palestine's holiness in the eyes of the Christian world is unfounded.

The gibla, the south-west of Mauritania, is a monotonous region of gum acacia trees, baobabs, ‘dead’ dunes, and hillocks. This ‘backwood’ is the last refuge of Znāga Berber, once spoken far to the north in whole regions of the Western Sahara. A number of short poems, a cycle of folk-tales, and a handful of masterpieces of extended odes in praise of the Prophet—some 200 years old and written in Arabic script—this is the meagre literary legacy of a proud and cherished tradition.

The first comprehensive survey of Geniza documents about the trade on the route to India was published by me in Speculum, A Journal of the American Medieval Academy, 29, 181–97, in April 1954. At that time I was able to give a report about 130 Geniza papers related in one way or another to the India trade. Soon after the article was published, a distinguished institution offered me the opportunity to publish the material in full. I accepted with enthusiasm and set feverishly to work. But slowly it dawned upon me that one should not try to solve problems by sagacity at a time when new sources that could provide factual answers to those problems might lurk around the corner

The following is an account of the spoken Arabic of Mecca. The present work does not attempt a comprehensive description but is confined to the phonology of the syllable and the morphology of the verb and affixes; such a study is perhaps the most economical way of showing the character of the dialect and its relation to other dialects. My thanks are due to Mr. M. H. Bakalla, a post-graduate student of this school and a native of Mecca, for his constant help in the preparation of this article.

Zoroaster is said to have lived in the sixth century B.C. This has been a tradition, within Zoroastrianism itself, for around two thousand years. Up until recently in the West its accuracy was widely considered an established fact.

Western scholars came across the evidence for this tradition in the nineteenth century. Many immediately gave it a warm reception. After all, such a late dating was far better suited to the forward-looking, evolutionary spirit of the times than the much earlier one that had been favoured up until then, but which risked losing sight of Zoroaster in a suspiciously distant past. Also, as well as sounding eminently reasonable it seemed to have the pedigree of a genuine Zoroastrian tradition.

This paper is a meditation from a religious studies perspective on the twelfth-century Vīraśaiva saint, Basava (c. 1105–68); that is, its primary focus is religious experience rather than literary evaluation or the historicity of the past. By exploring a variety of sources—ancient and modern, fact and fiction—and by making connections with urgent twentieth-century concerns, it seeks to bring into focus the religious aspirations and social implications of Basava's world. Part 1 is derived from history and hagiography. It provides an outline of Vīraśaiva belief and practice, and then proceeds to discuss the religious context of twelfth-century Karnataka, the debate regarding the origins of this ‘new’ religion, and a key inscription in the debate. It ends with a summary of the tradition's account of Basava's life. Part 2 focuses on a play written in Kannada (Taledaṇḍa, ‘Death by beheading’, 1990) and then rewritten in English for a pan-Indian and international audience (Talé-Daṇḍa: a play, 1993), in both cases by Girish Karnad. Karnad is not the first playwright to focus on Basava, and he will not be the last. In the preface to the Kannada version, he explains that ‘it becomes inevitable for every Kannadiga to return, like a tongue that returns again and again to a painful tooth, to the victories and agonies of that period.’ Karnad's dramatization of Basava's catastrophic final year is discussed in the context of the historical and hagiographical material considered in Part 1.

The nearly complete 432 lines of the Šābuhragān presented in the first part of article come from a series, almost certainly unbroken, of 9 folios = 18 pages, each with 24 lines. It is possible that a whole folio, i.e. two pages, is missing between D v and E r, or between F v and G r, but the content of those pages makes it seem most unlikely. A question not yet considered is how the folios A-J were folded into a quire. A, B, C and E are double sheets, i.e. have at least partially preserved counter-folios (which we may call A2, B2, C2 and E2) still attached to them, on the left side of the fold and of the binder's stitch-holes. This, however, does not tell us from how many double sheets the quire was made. To establish this we must know which of our folios, if any, were the first and last of the quire. The main parts of H and J, M 505 a and b, are separate folios, though of very similar shape, and described as ‘fragments from a double sheet, whose pages were consecutive’ (Henning, apud Boyce, Catalogue, M 505). Confirmation and proof of this statement, presumably based on the content of the folios, comes from one of the fragments which complement them, viz. M 542 b, identified as ‘das verbindende Stück’ by Dr. Sundermann. This is still hinged (Boyce, Catalogue, ‘from the centre of a double sheet’), its side I clearly belonging to H and II to J (see pl. VI). There can be no doubt, therefore, that H-J was the centre double sheet of the quire.

He hunted the valley till it was midday. Moreover, there were with him two-and-thirty crowned kings, his vassals at that time. Not for the joy of hunting did the emperor hunt with them so long, but because he had been made a man of such high dignity that he was lord over all those kings.

‘The dream of Macsen Wledig’

That the three provinces which constituted Rāmaññadesa, the Mon kingdom in Lower Burma, were divided into 32 townships is one of those acknowledged crumbs of fact which, passed down from historian to historian, never seem to excite more specific inquiry. The institution has suggestive parallels and analogues elsewhere in South East Asia, to the study of which Sir Richard Winstedt, in the ‘History of Perak’ which he wrote with R. J. Wilkinson, himself contributed almost thirty years ago.

It is surprising that the Manichaean religion did not become altogether submerged in the slime of witchcraft and sorcery. There were countless demons to be warded off and nearly as many divine and semi-divine beings that could be invoked. Mani, it is true, had regarded his " gods " as hardly more than exponents of particular functions of the Godhead, and had been conscious of the inadequacy of the anthropomorphic terms he had ill-advisedly employed:the resplendent hosts, he said in his Treasure of Life, will be called young women and virgins, fathers and mothers, sons, brothers and sisters, because such is the custom in the books of the prophets. In the country of joy there is neither male nor female... they do not differ from each other in weakness and force, in length and shortness, in figure and looks; they are like similar lamps which are lighted by the same lamp and nourished by the same material (Beruni, India, transl., i, 39).

Of the many astronomical observations which are recorded in ancient and medieval history, perhaps the most interesting and useful relate to solar eclipses. Obscurations of the Sun are often noticed by the casual observer and may indeed leave a profound impression on him if the degree of obscuration of the Sun is very large. In particular, total solar eclipses are responsible for the onset of sudden and intense darkness, during which the brighter planets and stars may become visible. Hence ancient and medieval accounts of solar eclipses (and to a lesser extent lunar obscurations) are not confined to treatises on astronomy. They also tend to be reported fairly frequently in chronicles and other writings of a historical nature. The only other celestial phenomena regularly to attract widespread attention in ancient and medieval times were comets. However, in chronological studies, eclipses have a distinct advantage over comets. Both solar and lunar obscurations last for only a few hours and their exact date of occurrence can be computed, as well as the time of day (or night) when the event took place. Comets, on the other hand, often remain visible for several weeks and only for Halley's Comet can useful computations of visibility be made.

The Genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat preserved dozens of petitions addressed to the Fatimid and Ayyubid chanceries in Cairo and decrees that they issued in response. This article provides an edition, translation, and discussion of a petition housed among the Genizah documents of the Bodleian Library directed to Sitt al-Mulk, half-sister of the caliph al-Ḥākim (386–411/996–1021) and head of the Fatimid state between his death and her own in 414/1023. Geoffrey Khan had previously identified two petitions to a Fatimid princess housed in Cambridge and New York; it is likely that they, too, were addressed to Sitt al-Mulk. Such documents elucidate Sitt al-Mulk's role in government after her brother's death and provide evidence for the chronicler al-Musabbiḥī's claim that she received and responded to petitions from subjects. The article offers possible explanations as to why petitions such as this one, which concerns an Ismaili mosque, should have found their way to the Jewish community of Fustat whose members reused and preserved them. It also suggests some broader conclusions about the dispersal, survival, or disappearance of pre-Ottoman Middle Eastern archives and documents.

It was a common idea in the last century, and one which can be found even today,2 that Soma/Haoma was a drink which led to ecstasy, and drugs which produce such an extraordinary state of mind have always been objects of curiosity. Therefore, the search for the plant which was used by the Indo-Iranian peoples in their solemn rituals was never abandoned, although the variety of candidates brought forward made the question look unsolvable.Some of the strong drugs suggested for the original Soma had to meet with statements from the Rgveda or Avesta which ran contrary to their shapeor properties. The effects of others on the human mind are so unspectacular that it was difficult to accept them as the plant so highly praised in antiquity.

The Iranian economy underwent impressive growth in the value and volume of foreign trade during the nineteenth century. The combined figures for imports and exports show the widening of commercial links and economic interrelations between Iran and the rest of the world, particularly Europe. Between 1800 and 1914 total visible trade at current prices rose from £2.5million to £20 million. The implication of these figures is that in real terms visible trade increased about 12 times. The greater portion of this increase occurred during the last decades of the nineteenth century.

The Islamic tradition credits the promulgation of a uniform consonantal skeleton (rasm) of the Quran to the third caliph ʿUthmān (r. 644–656). However, in recent years various scholars have espoused a conjectural dating of the Quran's codification to the time of ʿAbd al-Malik, or have at least taken the view that the Islamic scripture was open to significant revision up until c. 700 ce. The second instalment of this two-part article surveys arguments against this hypothesis. It concludes that as long as no Quranic passages with a distinct stylistic and terminological profile have been compellingly placed in a late seventh-century context, the traditional dating of the standard rasm (excepting certain orthographical features) to 650 or earlier ought to be our default view.

Outstanding amongst the scholastic compendia of jurisprudence produced in the fifth/eleventh century are the Muhadhdhab of the Shāfi 'ī scholar Abū Ishāq al-Shīrāzī (d. 476) and the Mabsūt of the Ḥanafī scholar Shams al-Dīn al-Sarakhsī (d. 483). These works encoded three centuries of juristic speculation while confirming and promoting the distinctive patterns of their respective law schools. Both scholars, Sarakhsī in Qarakhanid Trasoxania, and shīrāzī in Saljūq Baghdad, were involved in the politics of their day, but produced no political theory seeparate from their large-scale works of furū' which followed the traditional pattern of furū' literature, established as early as Mālik. The holistic approach to divine law was the conformity to type of Sarakhsī's and shīrāzī's works helped to ensure them the classical status they acquired in the developing law-schools, and in the curricula of madrasas. The Kitāb al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya of Māwardī (d.450)was in contrast, to a great extent, innovatory in subject matter and in structure, if not in juristic methodology. The difference between writers like Sarakhsī, on the one hand, and Māwardī, on the other, is not however simply formal: it includes a nicely distinguished approach to political power. The nature of this distinction might be demonstrated under a number of discrete headings selected from furū' literature. This essay is concerned with Friday Prayer (FP), a ritual generally recognized as having in some degree a political aspect.

Mrs. A.K. Fatunsin's Yoruba pottery (Lagos, 1992) is the outcome of a project funded by the Ford Foundation (grant no. 875–1066) as part of its continuing programme ‘to preserve and interpret diverse aspects of West Africa's cultural heritage’. The intention of the project as suggested to them in 1985 by this author was that it should ‘go beyond the mere collection of artefacts’. Emphasis was to be ‘placed on techniques of pottery manufacture, sources and types of raw material, methods of forming the pots, decoration and firing, as well as forms and functions including the designated names for the pots in the different parts of the Yoruba speaking area.’ Also investigated would be the uses to which the pots were put; and the organization, beliefs and customs of the potters themselves. The monograph resulting from the work would be designed to show pots ‘not just as art objects but as basic components of the entire economic, social, and religious life of the people’.

The story of Balai Pustaka begins in 1908, a memorable year in the history of modern Indonesia, for that was the year in which Boedi Oetomo, the first nationalist organization in Indonesia, was founded. In the same year the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies set up a Commissie voor de Volkslectuur, a Committee for Popular Literature. And even though there was no visible connexion between the founding of Boedi Oetomo and the setting up of this Committee, there certainly was an indirect link. Both the foundation of Boedi Oetomo and the need for an institution for popular literature had something to do with the expansion of modern education in the colony.

The sources of information from which the present collection of Nabataean inscriptions has been compiled are as follows:—

Site 1. About two miles north of Bīr Abu Darag, beside which is the site of a Roman enclosure:—

Wilkinson MSS. (by courtesy of the Griffith Institute, Oxford, on behalf of the owner, Mrs. Godfrey Mosley, Calke Abbey, Derby); Envel. L, a few pages of roughly pencilled field notes relating to his second 1826 journey, the written-up Journal of which is missing: Nos. 22a, 22b, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34. Pp. 11–14; Pls. I–IV.

THE purpose of these notes is to suggest a new approach in the study of articulation with the aid of palatography.

The language material studied consists of words in English, Marathi, Burmese, Chinese, and Fijian uttered for the purpose by native speakers of the languages, trained to work with artificial palates.

It must constantly be borne in mind that utterances are events, not facts. The finding and the stating of the facts are the business of the phonetician. He attempts this by means of a set of correlated techniques each one of which makes its own specialized abstractions from the utterances. The findings are stated in the technical syntax and idiom of the discipline, employing categories and notations required by the conceptual framework.