This paper describes the results of a brief archaeological survey of Jazī;rat al-Hulayla, an island in the Emirate of Ra's al-Khayma, United Arab Emirates. The island was found to contain extensive evidence of occupation dating from the first three centuries A.D. until recent times.

It is well-known that Maimonides (1135–1204), one of the greatest philosophers and experts in Jewish law (Halakhah), was an eminent physician as well. He probably studied medicine during his sojourn in Fez (Morocco) between 1158 and 1165, after he and his family had fled from his native city Cordoba, because of the persecutions by the fanatical Muslim regime of the Almohades.

In 1893, the Government of India revised the handbook for the officials who conducted its relations with the Indian States. The new edition included a chapter on titles and ceremonial because of “the great importance of these matters in Indian Political business”. Modern scholars agree that what we now call “honours” and “civic ritual” are worthy of study; and Stern's monograph on Jaipur State, and Dirks's on Pudukkottai, are only two of the many recent works that have noted the central role that titles and ceremonial played in the relationship between the British Paramount Power and the princes and chiefs of India.

These words of the thirteenth-century Hungarian chronicler, Bishop Thomas of Spalato, are not untypical of many descriptions of the consequences of the creation of the Mongol nation (ulus) by Chinggis Khan in 1206 and the subsequent expansion of the Chinggisid Empire. They accord with the popular concept of the Mongol hordes, known by Europeans of the thirteenth century as the Tartars, and believed to be the descendants of Gog and Magog who had broken forth from behind the Alexandrian Iron Gates at Derbend to destroy European culture and Christianity.