The most exciting experience I had during my visit to Morocco in the winter of 1951–52a visit made possible by the generosity of the Eockefeller Trust was the discovery, in the famous Qarawūyūn Library in Fez, of a manuscript containing one half, the second half, of an Arabic translation of the Nicomachean Ethics.The shortness of my stay in that ancient and fascinating Moorish city, and the disabling indisposition that befell me there, made it impossible for me to do more at the time than take note of the existence of this precious codex; but later the authorities of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Marocaines in Rabat, to whom I am infinitely obliged, procured for me a microfilm of the manuscript. It is now my high privilege to publish this preliminary note, in anticipation, I hope, of a full edition later on.

Poem No. CXL in the Diwan of Hassan b. Thabit is usually connected with the incident when the poet was attacked and wounded by Safwan b. al-Mu'attal. However, the poem itself, the incident, and the precise relation between poem and incident all seem to have been the subject of controversy. As for the poem, different versions exist in various sources. The opening line is:—

A TEXT which others have confessed their inability to translate is always a challenge, and on reading some of the commentaries on Is. 30, 32 it seemed to me that it was possible to render it quite differently in such a way as to bring it into line with its context. However, if my interpretation were sound it would have to be established that it referred to an object which had special significance for Assyrians and Judeans in the 8th century B.C.

THE historian of Isma'Ilism, to whichever part of its chequered history he turns, is confronted with unusually difficult problems of historical criticism. These are due, at least partly, to the character of the movement itself. There can be hardly any doubt that when Isma'Ilism, which had started as an underground organization in the middle of the 3rd/9th century, established itself in the 4th/10th century as a powerful empire under the Fatimids, the official leadership endeavoured to cover up the origins of the movement with a thick smoke-screen. On the other hand, its enemies and Isma'Ilism was the besthated sect in Islamadded to the confusion by giving currency to sensational and fanciful accounts, curious mixtures of truth and fiction.

OF all the delegations that are said to have come to pay homage to the Prophet in Madina in A.H. 9, none received so much attention from Arab historians as the delegation of the trībe of Tamlm. They tell1 of a boasting competition between members of the delegation and representatives of the Prophet, which resulted in their defeat and subsequent conversion to Islam. This explanation of the conversion of the Tamīmīs, which was accepted in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2 does not appear, however, to be warranted by the circumstances. Moreover, the confusion apparent in the whole story casts grave doubt at least on its details as well as on the degree of importance usually assigned to it, and, furthermore, the poems connected with the story appear to be of later date.

The middle of the 14th century offers a convenient dividing-line in the study of Islamic metal work. Few distinguished works were produced after that date and practically no new motifs were added to the artists' repertoire. In a passage of his Topography of Cairo, Maqrizi exposes the decadence of inlaid metal work in the latter half of the 14th century and explains some of the reasons which led to it. In view of the importance of this contemporary account, I am translating it in full in an appendix to this paper (pp. 228–31).

THAT there existed an Arabic translation of the commentary of Themistius on the De Anima of Aristotle has long been known through the references made to it in the works of Ibn Rushd.1 The commentary itself is mentioned by Ibn al-Nadīm in the Fihrist.2 In his note on the De Anima he says: ‘ Themistius wrote a commentary on the whole of this work. He dealt with the first section in two sections, the second in two, and the third in three ’—a division which corresponds to that of the Greek text as we have it. Unfortunately, on the subject of the translation, Ibn al-Nadim's article is not without ambiguity. According to it, Hunain ibn Ishāq translated the entire De Anima into Syriac, while his son, Ishāq, translated the greater part of it into Arabic, and then made a second and complete translation. Ibn al-Nadīm proceeds to quote Ishāq himself as saying: ‘ I translated this work into Arabic from a defective manuscript. Then, after thirty years, I found an extremely good manuscript with which I collated my first version’. The quotation ends with the words: ‘ and it is the commentary of Themistius ’.

In the preface to my recently published book, Zurvän, A Zoroastrian Dilemma,1 I said: ‘I have not found it necessary to alter much in the proof stage only what seemed to me to be positive mistakes’. During the two and a half years that the book was in the Press, however, I had come across evidence which I had not noticed before and which seems to be worth considering. There is further evidence of the theory put forward in the book that the original Zandiks persecuted by Kartir were identical with the Dahris. On the other hand, the references to Mithraism in the book are largely out of date, and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity to correct them.

This Law was promulgated under cover of Legislative Decree No. 59 of 17th September, 1953, during the Shishakly regime, and came into force on 1st November of the same year. It thus represents the latest development in the series of reforms in Shari'a law, as applied by the courts, which have appeared, one after the other, in the different countries of the Near East during the last few decades. The first major example—if we ignore legislation primarily concerned with matters of procedure—was provided by the Ottoman Law of Family Rights of 1917 which, short-lived though it proved in Turkey, was applied at the end of the First World War, with minor modifications, in Syria and Lebanon and, with further modifications, in Jordan. Next, there were the series of Egyptian reforms of 1920, 1929, 1923, 1943, and 1946—preceded, interspersed, and followed by similar, but much more piecemeal, innovations in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Then, as the immediate precursor of this Syrian Law, came the Jordanian Law of Personal Status of 1951—while a somewhat similar enactment has now been under consideration for a number of years in Iraq, but seems unlikely, for the present, to be promulgated.

WHEN my translation of the Hudud Al-' Ālam was published in 1937, it was found impossible to swell the book1 by further remarks on the language of the Persian original, and I promised (p. xii) to deal with this problem at a later date. On the other hand, the quarter of a century which has elapsed since I began my work on the Hudud has brought a considerable number of new facts bearing on the interpretation of the data which I was trying to explain. In various ways my work has been continued, both in the articles which can be considered as a by-product of the Hudud2 and in contributions on fresh but cognate texts.3 The object of my present article is to bring the book up to date by integrating my own research and by completing it with references to the studies of other scholars.

THE historians1 who take the death of Jihan-shah's son Hasan 'All in 873/1468 as the end of the Qara-qoyunlu dynasty disregard the fact that for some time the descendants of Qara-Yusuf survived in Hamadan and in the beginning of the 16th century rose to new honours as the Qutb-shahs of Golconda. Under Indian skies they kept up their family traditions, and their court historians summed up afresh the history of the Qara-qoyunlu and restored the missing links in the genealogy of the kings of Golconda. These links form the special subject of the present article.

THE traveller who approaches Harrān from Urfa passes near an isolated domed building known to the local inhabitants as the shrine of Shaikh Hayāt (ziyārat shaikh hayāt). It stands just outside the city, near the southwest corner of the perimeter-wall1 and is surrounded by some modern tombs (PI. I)2.

THERE still remain many interesting and important problems connected A with, the emergence in the 14th century of the Turkman federations of the Qara-qoyunlu (780–874/1378–1469) and Aq-qoyunlu (780–908/1378–1502). The roots of the Persian risorgimento under the Safavids (1502–1722) go deep into this preparatory period. On the internal policy of the Qara-qoyunlu our documentation is still insufficient. Having succeeded the Jalayirs the Qara-qoyunlu must have inherited the administrative pattern evolved under the Mongol il-khans.1

MY purpose is to draw attention to the rather puzzling problem laid before the student of early Ottoman history by the apparently complete incompatibility of the devshirme with the shari'a. The periodical forced levy of children from the Sultan—s Christian subjects for the recruiting of his standing army, and the forced conversion of those children to Islam must, indeed, appear—as it always did—as a flagrant disregard of the Holy Law which accords to the Christian subjects the status of dhimmi, implying personal liberty and the right to keep, and exercise freely, their religion. Only recently, making himself the voice of Muslim conscience, Professor Massignon has branded the devshirme as ‘un manquement à la Dhimmat ar-rasul’2

THE political career of King Giorgi V of Georgia, commonly known as Giorgi Brdsqinvale or George the Brilliant, spans an eventful period in the history of the Near East. When Giorgi first came to the throne in 1299, the Il-Khan dynasty of Persia under the able Ghazan Mahmud Khan was at the summit of its power. Ghazan's empire with its vassal states stretched from India to the Mediterranean and Black Seas. He controlled most of Anatolia, including the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and the Christian kingdom of Little Armenia. In 1300 he even seized and held Damascus for a short period. From these strategic positions, the Mongols of Persia were a constant menace to both the Mamluks of Egypt and the Khans of the Golden Horde.

THE Bakhtiari texts that follow are given almost exactly as they were recorded by me in 1914. I have not attempted to alter the rather heterogeneous collection of phonetic symbols of which I made use, except in one case. I have got rid of one frequently recurring awkward symbol by using a to represent sounds approximating to the -a- of ‘father’ and the -a- of ‘fall’ respectively. Normally it may be taken as representing the latter sound. The sound of -a- in ‘father’ occurs regularly only in a few words, e.g. baz ═ Mn.P. ba'daz

IT is now almost a century since Rapp cited, 1 among Greek texts relating to Persian customs and beliefs, the charming tale of Zariadres and Odatis, preserved for us by Athenaeus on the authority of Chares of Mytilene.2 The story is in brief as follows: Hystaspes and his younger brother Zariadres were said by the people of their land to be born of Aphrodite and Adonis. Hystaspes ruled Media and the lands below it, Zariadres the region above the Caspian Gates up to the Tanais. Beyond the Tanals lived the Marathi, ruled by Omartes, whose daughter Odatis was the most beautiful woman in Asia.3 Odatis dreamt of Zariadres, and loved him; and he too loved Odatis through dreams. He sought her vainly in marriage, for her father did not wish to give her to a stranger. Soon after, Omartes held a marriage-feast attended by his own kinsmen and nobles, and bade Odatis give a cup of wine to him whom she wished to marry. Zariadres, forewarned by Odatis, came in full haste across the Tanals, accompanied only by his charioteer, and entered the hall in Scythian dress as, weeping, Odatis slowly filled the cup. She recognized him with joy, and he carried her off. This tale, Chares states, was greatly esteemed by the barbarians of Asia, who painted scenes from it on the walls of temples, palaces, and even private houses, the nobles often giving the name of Odatis to their own daughters.

This outline of the basic principles of Turkish syntax was originally intended as an introduction to my study on the syntactical relations of the -e/-ü gerund in Old Ottoman. I found that I could not give a satisfactory account of the very interesting syntactical features presented by that gerund without laying before the reader the premises upon which my conclusions were based. Once embarked upon this task, it soon appeared that no brief introduction would serve the purpose. There was no accepted body of syntactical doctrine to which the reader could be referred for more detailed information. Indeed, it was necessary to discuss fundamental principles which, so far as I am aware, no one has attempted to elucidate. It seemed best therefore to postpone publication of the study on the gerund, and instead to devote a paper to the fundamental syntactical principles of the language.

Gurungkura is the Nepali name of a language spoken in West Central Nepal by the Gurung tribe.2 These studies are based on the speech of G./Lieut. Ganesh Gurung, M.C., l/2nd K.E.O. Goorkha Rifles, who during 1950 was seconded for duty as a research assistant at the School of Oriental and African Studies.