The Cairo Geniza is surely the most important manuscript source for the study of Judaeo-Arabic texts, that is to say, texts whose language is Arabic written in Hebrew characters. This paper is an overall survey of the Judaeo-Arabic material in the 54 Arabic boxes of the Old Series in the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection. This collection which is housed in the Cambridge University Library is the largest collection of Geniza pieces to be found in any one place, with some 140,000 fragments. The Judaeo-Arabic material we are specifically dealing with here comprises some 7,000 manuscript fragments, research on which is now being prepared for publication. The discussion is limited to present research; it does not include references to other oriental collections such as the Firkovitch in St. Petersburg, which comprises not only fragments but codices (some almost complete) and a much wider range of Karaite Arabic material. As the Firkovitch collection is at last becoming more accessible, its contents will obviously need to be studied at a later stage in relation to the Cambridge Geniza material.

The amirate of Mecca was established by sharifs of Hasanid ancestry in the middle of the fourth century a. h./tenth century a.d. The territory traditionally under its direct control included the holy city of Mecca and its immediate hinterland, the nearby hill town of Ṭā'if, and the Red Sea port of Jedda. In addition, the sharifs often exercised a tenuous hold over certain tribal areas in the Sarāt Mountains south of Ṭa'if, as well as the coastal plain south of Jedda, known as the Tihāma.

In an article published in UF, 16, 1984, entitled ‘The ritual KTU 1.46 (= RS 1.9) and its duplicates’, M. Dijkstra proposed that to the large fragment of the ritual tablet RS 1.009 should be joined four fragments. None of these is supposed to be a physical join, neither with RS 1.009 nor with any other of the smaller fragments, but all five fragments are said to have originally been part of the same tablet. To Dijkstra's transliteration (pp. 71–2) is added a sixth fragment, RS 1.009A, about the ascription of which to RS 1.009 Dijkstra is not sure (see p. 70). The reconstruction, with assumed proper placement of each of the five primary fragments was illustrated in a collage made up of Dijkstra's own copies of the small fragments and Virolleaud's copy of the primary fragment (p. 76). My intention here is to discuss the validity of the hypothetical reconstruction. The texts given below, based on new collations, are presented here for the first time. Philological aspects of the interpretation of the texts will not be dealt with here; for such matters see my forthcoming edition of the Ugaritic ritual texts.

Part 1 of this paper was concerned principally with the various problems that confront any attempt to provide a satisfactory transcription of these two examples. Given the nature of the difficulties encountered, it is clear that any generalizations we might wish to derive from them can only be tentative and provisional. Nevertheless, the paucity of comparable material, which on the one hand renders the interpretative hurdles all the more difficult to surmount, on the other makes the urge to draw at least some conclusions from the material provided by ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Marāghī and Binā'ī well-nigh irresistible. Such conclusions would involve, essentially, an assessment of the extent to which their notations shed light on the musical practice of the period and provide reliable evidence for the history of composition and styles of textsetting. But in any evaluation of this nature it is essential to avoid the temptation to confuse the sources with the speculative editorial interventions that produce the versions presented in part 1 (exs. 26–8 and 30). The area about which least can be said with regard to the naqsh notated by Binā'ī is, therefore, the nature of the text-setting, while with regard to ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Marāghī's notations it is, rather, the first topic we may consider, the relationship between melody and the underlying articulation of the rhythmic cycle.

The treatise published here (with an annotated translation), from the codex Arabe 1450 of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (folios 176b–179a), gives a concise account of some fundamental doctrines of early Nuṣayrī theology. The literary framework of this text is a report of a few sessions held before the Nuṣayrī sage Abū Muḥammad ‘Alī ibn ‘Īsā al-Jisrī. In the treatise the date of these sessions is given as Ramaḍān 340 a.h./February 952 C.E., and the treatise itself is likely to have been written down not long thereafter.

Taking as a yardstick the number of copies made (and commentaries provoked), there can be little doubt that the most influential of all Arabic treatises on music has been the kitāb al-Adwār (referred to henceforth as KA) by Safi al-Dīn 'Abd al-Mu'min b. Yūsuf b. Fākhir al-Urmawī (d. 693/1294). Nevertheless, despite its obvious historical significance, this seminal work still awaits a satisfactory critical edition, one of the most important tasks of which should be to investigate the complex relationship between the form(s) in which it is now known and the markedly different version found in an Istanbul MS, Süleymaniye Fatih 3662 (referred to henceforth as F). Pending the more thorough analysis that should attend publication, an attempt is made in the present article to provide a general introduction to this hitherto neglected text.

Among the thousands of Jaina images found throughout India, those from Mathura produced during the Kuṣāṇa period are unique, for they alone contain representations of unclothed Jaina ascetics holding a single small piece of cloth in such a way as to cover their nudity. These curious figures cannot be identified with monks of the present-day Jaina sects of the Digambaras, who practise total nudity, or of the Śvetāmbaras, who wear two long pieces of unstitched white cloth wrapped around their bodies and occasionally a white blanket over their left shoulders. The veteran art-historian, the late Dr. U. P. Shah, in Aspects of Jaina art and architecture briefly mentions these figures, noting that ‘nowhere in the above references from Śvetāmbara as well as Digambara texts do we come across a reference to those figures on the siṃhāsanaof a Jina which we find in a number of sculptures of the Kuṣāṇa period from the Kaṅkāli Tīlā.’ Subsequently, in Jaina-Rūpa-Maṇḍano, he calls these figures ardhaphālakas (monks with partial covering) and speculates that these figures might be Yāpanīya monks, another Jaina sect that is now extinct, and states that these figures need further investigation. In addition to Shah, N. P. Joshi has also discussed these ardhaphālaka images. He states that ‘all the monks seen in the bas-reliefs, except one known to me, seem to belong to the Ardhaphālaka sect. … Besides the monks seen in the bas-reliefs, those hovering in the air (vidyā cāraṇas) or seen on some of the śilāpaṭṭāsare all Ardhaphālakas. This suggests that during the pre-Christian and early Christian centuries a large number of Jainas at Mathura followed this sect’.

Ibn Khaldūn runs the risk of being everything or nothing—or, at least, no more than this or that. It has long been customary to separate the Muqaddima or so-called Prolegomena from the body of the Kitāb al-'Ibar or so-called Universal History, and to treat them quite differently as an essay in the philosophy of history distinct from a much more commonplace amalgam of historical information of varying value. Regarded as no more than a vast compilation of historical knowledge in the manner of the time, this great bulk of the work has received much less attention than the much more famous introduction. By concentrating on Ibn Khaldūn's later career in Egypt, Fischel dwelt on the chapters dealing with the Mamlūks and the Mongols, and with Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Judaism. Treating him as an historian of the Marinids in Morocco, Shatzmiller has located the ‘Ibar as a whole in the dynastic tradition of Fes.4 The Marinids were a self-consciously Berber dynasty whose official histories fall into the well-established category of Mafākhir al-Barbar or ‘Boasts of the Berbers’, and it might be said that Ibn Khaldūn's classification of his material according to race merely reflected the origin of his magnum opus in a familiar literary tradition, from whose constraints he was only freed by the collapse of the political order in the Maghrib in the second half of the fourteenth century.

As a serious subject of scholarly investigation modern Middle Eastern history is very young. It was only 50 years ago that the subject began to be studied by historians who were adequately equipped for the work. Its subsequent rapid progress to the position of respectability which it now occupies within the discipline of history owes much to the work of a handful of scholars among whom Albert Hourani and Elie Kedourie were especially conspicuous. The deaths of these two notable historians should not pass without an acknowledgement of the debt which we owe them and an appreciation of their contribution to the happy revolution in the branch of history which they adorned.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how changes in the social structure of the countries of the Arabic-speaking Middle East are being reflected in new patterns of dialect use. The last 30 years have seen an enormously increased interest in Arabic as a living mode of everyday communication, reflected in many dialectological, typological and sociolinguistic studies. As a result, we now have a much clearer overall picture of the dialect geography of the eastern Arab world, and the beginnings of an understanding of the dynamics of language change. Inevitably, the focus of many studies has been geographically specific, so that the area-wide nexus between social change and linguistic change has not always been seen in a sufficiently broad context. By examining three case studies documented in the literature, I aim to point up similarities in the dynamics of change which are often obscured by distracting local particularities.

The Nachlass of Olaf Hansen, which I was able to examine in Kiel in 1985 through the kindness of his son Lars Hansen, includes transcriptions of several Christian Sogdian texts of which neither the original manuscript nor even a photograph seems to be extant. In such cases Hansen's transcriptions attain the status of primary sources. Amongst them are four fragments belonging to two different manuscripts of the Life of Serapion, the Syriac text of which was published by Bedjan, AMS v, 263–341.

Figures of repetition occur very early in Sanskrit literature. In the oldest stratum, the hymns of the Rgveda, this phenomenon seems to be restricted to the repetition of words with the same meaning, its function being either to express continuation or regularity, i.e. in the case when a single word, normally an adverb, is duplicated (āmreḍita, e.g. dive-dive), or to give a special emphasis to a phrase, preferably at the end of a number of stanzas of a hymn (refrain type). Both kinds of repetition continue to be used in later literature, such as the Pāli Jātakas and the two epics, Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa.

One of the places that plays a role in a number of myths and legends that survive from ancient China is the place called K'ung-sang , Hollow Mulberry. Confucius is said to have been born in a place called K'ung-sang, and Yi Yin, the man who served as chief minister to T'ang, founder of the Shang or Yin dynasty (traditional reign dates, 1766–1753 b.c.) was born in an actual hollow mulberry tree. By force of the Confucius connexion, commentaries often identify K'ung-sang as a place in the state of Lu, if not precisely Ch'ü-fu, the home town of Confucius. But K'ung-sang is located and identified in a number of ways in early texts: it is a mountain in the North or the East; it is a place that is being attacked by a demon; it is the capital of various Ti (emperors or gods); and in one source at least, it is the name of a musical instrument, a zither (se).

The purpose of the present article, as of its predecessor, is to make known a group of fragments surviving only in the form of transcriptions in the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen. Neither the original manuscript nor photographs seem to be extant. Olaf Hansen's handwritten transcripts, which I had the opportunity to study in Kiel in 1985, are published here by kind permission of his son Lars Hansen.

Among the well known stories of Indian mythology there is one relating how the god Mahādeva (Śiva) became four-faced and how Indra acquired a thousand eyes. When the divine maiden (divyakanyā) Tilottamā circumambulated the gods, the eyes of all save Pitāamaha (Brahmā) followed her, whence the multiplication of faces and eyes. Indeed, the great epic relates that upon orders from Brahmā, she, consisting of a mass of gems (ratnasaṃghātamayī), was originally fashioned by Viśvakarman. In Indian mythology the figure of Tilottamā is therefore that of the beauty of woman incarnate.

The eighth/fourteenth-century chronicle known as Ta'rīkh al-Malik al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qal¯wūn wa-awlādihi was edited from the unique exemplar (Berlin, MS Ar. 9833 We. 7) and published with a German translation by Dr. Barbara Schäfer, who had already produced a full preliminary study of the work. The name of the chronicler appears in a single place in the manuscript (f. 116a) as Shams b. al-Shujā'ī. Schäfer regards the correct form of the name as being Shams al-Dīn al-Shujā'ī, as it is given in Ḥājjī Khalīfa's Kashf al-zunūn. The chronicler's only other personal reference (f. 21 Ob) is to his participation in the Pilgrimage of 745/1345, while a textual reference (f. 124b) indicates that he was alive in 756/1355–6. Schāfer found no references to al-Shujā'ī in contemporary sources, although he was mentioned by the later chronicler, Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba (779–851/1377–1448), who actually possessed this manuscript.

The small, oil-rich state of Brunei (population c. 40,000 in 1940) is situated in north-west Borneo. The ‘Abode of Peace’ became a British protectorate in 1888 and a Residential System along Malayan lines came into operation at the beginning of 1906. For most of the Second World War the country was under Japanese Military Administration, a period of three and a half years beginning in December 1941. Allied, predominantly Australian, landings took place in early June 1945 (Fahey 1992: 325–8; Monks 1992: 7–53) and the sultanate was speedily cleared of enemy forces, though not before the latter had successfully executed a scorched-earth programme. Most crucially of all, the Seria oilfield (discovered in 1929 by the Shell company) was set alight, the flames shooting ‘like giant blow-lamps’ at least thirty feet into the air. The last well fire was not extinguished until 27 September 1945 (Harper 1975: 21–4). A report in the Straits Times of 20 July 1946 gives some impression of the problems faced by the returning Western engineers:

Most of the [Seria] wells were surrounded by blazing lakes, and the oil experts had to blast their way through. Because of the intense heat it was difficult to get near enough to ‘cap’ them and so seal the fires. In some cases aircraft were used, the fire-fighters advancing through the slipstream of the propellers which blew the flames and oil back. It then became possible to get near enough to thrust forward on long steel arms heavy charges of explosives.

In recent studies of the Tibetan epic, much effort has been spent on analysing the origins and types of material that make up the epic literature, but no study presents an overall view of Ling (Gling) society. In the paper I gave at the second Symposium on the Epic of King Gesar at Lhasa in 1991, I therefore discussed the theoretical basis upon which the whole of Tibetan epic literature is built. I demonstrated that the Tibetan epic reveals a basic principle as well as a ‘chronological order’ in its development. Without this theoretical basis, Tibetan epic literature appears as a tangled web of material which is moreover still growing in complexity.

In Tibetan Studies, Peking, 1990, there was an article on an early inscription on a stone pillar at Ra Grwa dgon-pa in the Tolung valley west of Lhasa. Unfortunately I have mislaid it apart from a copy of the inscription which, as the authors say, contains words that are difficult to read and others which are completely illegible. In addition, as in all eye-copies, I found dubious readings; also there appeared to be a lack of punctuation signs, and the text was shown continuously, not divided into lines. It was, therefore, desirable to obtain a photographic record and this has been generously supplied by Mr Anthony Aris who visited the place in 1992. His assistant also made an eye-copy of the text.

Among the Dunhuang Tibetan texts held by the India Office Collection of the British Library is a very large scroll, catalogued as Ch. 9.II.17, and long recognized as a compendium of Tibeto-Chinese transcriptional texts. Following the practice of Walter Simon (1958), this document is now conventionally called the ‘Long Scroll’. In earlier years several small portions of it were identified by Simon and others, but more recently Professor Tokio Takata has published a transcription of the entire text and reconstructed or identified almost all of it (Takata, 1993). Nevertheless, there remain portions of the manuscript which have not yet been restored, and these present a continuing challenge to those interested both in the Long Scroll and in Tibeto-Chinese transcriptions in general. The purpose of the present paper is to fill two such lacunae.