The occasion which brings us together this afternoon is a truly memorable one: to present to you, Sir Harold, the newly founded Denis Sinor Medal for Inner Asian Studies. Here at Cambridge, indeed, and everywhere among Iranists in Britain, your epic contributionsto the knowledge of Inner Asia and its cultures are indeed better known than the new award with which we today seek to acknowledge them. I should, I think, preface my remarks with a few words about the new medal and its origins.