Work on the material available from sites in the Charsadda Subdivision and the Mardan District is constantly producing new facts and new evidence, and so, although I have up to a point stated my case quite clearly in a previous article, I feel that there is a considerable amount of unpublished material which will go a long way towards presenting a very different view of these finds from that put forward by Mile Corbiau in Iraq.

As a beginning I should like to put forward a suggestion about the meaning of certain expressions, or at any rate what they mean to me.

Coins of the Kākwayhid dynasty, whose princes ruled over a part of al-Jibāl (north central Persia) in the first half of the fifth/eleventh century, are of sufficient rarity to warrant their publication whenever they come to the attention of students of Persian history. The period between the collapse of the Buwayhid power and the rise of the Seljūqs is a complex one and as ‘Alā’ al-Dawlah, the Kākwayhid, played a not unimportant role in the political events of the time, his coinage is of considerable interest. While making a study of the Muḥammad an collections in the American Numismatic Society in New York I came across seven Kākwayhid specimens, all of them unedited, and these, together with two likewise unpublished coins in my own possession and one formerly in the collection of Professor Ernst Herzfeld, I propose to describe in the present paper. As previous notices of the Kākwayhid coinage are scattered in the wide numismatic literature, I have thought it worth while to assemble, as an appendix to the descriptions of these ten new specimens, all the known issues of the two Kākwayhid rulers who (to our present knowledge) struck coins: ‘Alā’ al-Dawlah Muḥammad b Dushmanzār and his an Farāmare.

In many villages and certainly in all the big towns in Iraq there are Government schools, in most cases for girls as well as boys. Newspapers are read and discussed, and in Baghdad the voice of the broadcaster may be heard in the land from loud speakers in most of the open-air coffee-houses, booming out weekly advice upon hygiene, care of children, and so forth. And yet the bulk of the women of the people, when it comes to matters which concern their physical life, are scarcely affected by the new ideas. At vital crises such as death, marriage, and childbirth ancient taboos are still observed and old customs still reign. A son or daughter who has been to school may protest or ridicule, but the still small voice is drowned in a torrent of talk from the elder women. Even a midwife who has learnt her craft in the Government training centres, of which there are now a growing number, though she may manage approximately to control essentials, humours her patients and their mothers, if she is wise, by observing the old taboos as far as possible.

Attentive readers of Layard's Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon will have observed that four of the lithographic plates and a number of small woodcuts in the text are taken from sketches by S. C. Malan, and that the Preface conveys ‘grateful thanks and acknowledgments’, among others, ‘to the Rev. S. C. Malan, who has kindly allowed me the use of his masterly sketches’. A fortunate chance has lately brought the writer of this article into communication with the artist's family, in whose possession his works are still happily preserved. Mr. Walter Malan, his grandson, has very generously allowed not only examination of the drawings contained in the bound volume entitled Armenia and Nineveh, but the reproduction of those which accompany this article; the first care of which must be that of renewing to him, for a like privilege, the thanks which Layard expressed to his grandfather.

The following paper is an account of a survey made on behalf of the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology, as part of the work of the Neilson Expedition to the Near East. The object of this survey was to investigate as many ancient sites as possible in the neighbourhood of the Jebel Sinjar, in order to link up the Khabur region, so thoroughly examined by Mr. Mallowan in 1934, with the river Tigris and the archaeologically better known area to the east of it. The writer's personal interest was largely concentrated upon the formidable array of mounds representing settlements of the pre-Christian era, with some emphasis on those dating from prehistoric times. He was, however, also fortunate in having the assistance of Mr. G. R. Reitlinger, whose comments on and photographs of some of the Islamic and other late remains form the subject of a separate section of this article in this number of Iraq. It was a chance circumstance that Sir Aurel Stein was at the same time at work upon a survey of the Roman Limes, also covering the Sinjar district. This seemed to justify a somewhat cursory examination of sites which were obviously Roman.

The territory west of Mosul, which includes the strange isolated mountain range of Jebel Sinjar, has always been somewhat off the beaten track. Under the Ottoman Empire it was the theatre of the dissidences of the Yazidi Kurds and the Shammar Arabs against the Turks. At the present day it is still remote, being left aside by the newly developed motor routes, though it is skirted by the Mosul-Tall Kochek highway connecting Baghdad with Stambul and Europe; this is shortly to be replaced by an extension of the railway. In the winter of 1907 Friedrich Sarre and Ernst Herzfeld, proceeding from Buseirah on the Euphrates to Mosul, passed through the town of Balad Sinjar, where they spent two days, made measured drawings of the shrine of Sittna Zenab and the minaret of Kutb ad-Dīn and collected some inscriptions. Then they went on to Mosul, covering eighty-five miles in three days' riding, which gave them little opportunity to leave the road. Nevertheless, their Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris Gebiet of 1911 is still the only archaeological survey of the district.

Nippur was one of the most important cities in the Sumerian world. Here was situated the shrine of the Lord of the gods, Enlil; here the king's name was spoken by Enlil, lord of the earth, calling him into existence as king, at the great shrine é-kur, the mountain-house where the god abode amongst men, and where kings did him honour.

The site was in part excavated by an American expedition from 1889 to 1990, but much still remains to be done. The excavations yielded large quantities of tablets of which, there is reason to believe, not all have as yet been published. The first group, dating to the Third Dynasty of Ur, with which this study is concerned, were published in 1910 under the editorship of Professor Hilprecht, and consisted of 171 tablets and fragments, but not until last year did others of the Hilprecht Collection appear. A few have appeared elsewhere, so that, in all, about 400 tablets and fragments from Nippur are at present available for study. The collection now published for the first time at the end of this article adds thirty-seven more. These are considerably less than the number of tablets which have been published from other sites of the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, such as Drehern, Umma, and Telloh, but they are sufficient for a review of Nippur at this period, such as is attempted here.