The Shī'ite revolts against the Umayyads may be said to have begun in 671. Immediately after his father's death in 661, al-Ḥasan had made an unsuccessful attempt to resist Mu'āwiyah, and had then retired to a life of luxury in Medina. Ten years later there was an abortive revolt in Kūfah led by Ḥujr b. ‘Adī al-Kindī. Next, in the troubled period after the death of Mu'āwiyah in 680, al-Ḥusayn, the younger son of 'Alī and Fāṭimah, with some encouragement from the Shī'ite party in Kūfah, came to 'Irāq and claimed the caliphate. He did not receive the support he had expected, however, and his small force of about a hundred was massacred at Karbalā'. In the confusion of the following years, with considerable support in ‘Irāq for Ibn az-Zubayr, the Shī'ites remained quiet; but on the death of Yazīd in 684 some of the older Shī'ites of Kūfah, led by Sulaymān b. Ṣuraḍ al-Khuzā'ī, preparedfor military action. The basis of this movement was twofold: they were to show that they repented of the betrayal of al-Ḥusayn (and so are known as the tawwābūn or Penitents), and they were to seek vengeance for his blood. Most of those who carried out the massacre at Karbalā' were living in Kūfah, but the governor who had despatched the army against al-Ḥusayn, 'Ubaydallāh b. Ziyād, had been forced to retire from 'Irāq and was now on the Syrian border with an army. After some debate they decided to march against him with their 4,000 men, but they were defeated and several of their leaders killed (Jan., 685).

In the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1915, p. 22, Mr. Minns published two Greek documents of the Parthian period acquired by Dr. Sa'id Khan from Avroman in Kurdistan, together with the facsimile of a third, not in Greek, which was found at the same place. As the writing of this third document (on parchment) seemed to be Aramaic in character, he very kindly sent me a photograph of it at the time, and has since given me additional information. The following note represents mainly what I then made out of the text, but it has lain in a drawer ever since because the results seemed hardly worth publishing.

This article is concerned with four inscriptions found at Bodhgayā in the nineteenth century that are documented by records kept in the Department of Asia at the British Museum. Two Tibetan inscriptions, probably dating between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, are of special note because they provide the first archaeological evidence for Tibetans at the site. Chinese and Burmese records of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth century are also noted, that of the Song emperor Renzong (1022–63) being illustrated for the first time.

Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician and one of the first pharma-botanists is known mainly for his book De Materia Medica, a medical codex listing hundreds of medicinal substances. The Arabs admired Dioscorides’ legacy however they were very aware that their own inventory of drugs was much larger than his.

The Andalusian physician Ibn Juljul (944 – after 994) became famous on account of several medical treaties which he wrote. He devoted most of his time to identifying the drugs listed in Dioscorides’ monumental work, and thereafter wrote: “An article on the drugs not mentioned in Dioscorides’ book. . .”

This article analyzes and discusses the names of those drugs and presents an English translation of this work. The absence of these substances from Dioscorides’ codex, and from other classical sources of the pre-Islamic period (Theophrastus, Pliny, Galen, Paul of Aegina), is a prime reason for ascribing their distribution to the Arabs.

Ibn Juljul's list reflects the major change that took place in the inventory of Galeno-Arabic drugs after the Islamic conquests; about one hundred new substances. Some of these substances, such as the myrobalan, soon became among the most common and popular drugs in the practical pharmacology of the Middle Ages. The fact that about half of the substances not mentioned by Dioscorides are of “Indian” origin should be seen against the background of the influence of the Ayurvedic medical culture, to which the Arabs were exposed alongside the Greek.

By the beginning of the fourteenth century the court histories of the Īl-Khānate had begun to lament that ‘qarachu’ (non-royal) commanders dominated the realm. The same histories report that these qarachu were drawn from the families of the khans’ royal guardsmen (kešik). The fact that these kešik families had come to eclipse, and in some cases threaten, the power of their Chinggisid patrons suggests a much broader transformation of the Īl-Khān polity from the patrimonial government of the khan's household, which characterised the early Mongol Empire, to a quasi-feudal state, dominated by a powerful military aristocracy. The present study will elucidate how this new aristocracy supported their authority through the hereditary transmission of armies, property and, offices, which entrenched their position at the summit of Īl-Khān polity.

The significance of Chêng Ho's voyages (1405–1433) has usually been considered purely from the political point of view. In that connection he is noted as the Muslim eunuch who lived from A.D. 1371–1433, and commanded a force in support of the Yung-lo Emperor's seizure of the Ming throne. Thereafter, from 1405, he commanded half a dozen enormous fleets, which sailed to Southeast Asia, India, the Gulf, and eventually East Africa. In the legend of the overseas Chinese, he was ultimately deified as the Prince of the Three Gems.

The emphasis of the present paper is however economic. It attempts to analyse the way in which the pepper brought from overseas was distributed; and to evaluate the influence of the seven voyages of Cheng Ho on the opening of trade relations between China and Afro-Asian countries, and the increased circulation of foreign goods in the Chinese market at that time.

Without attempting to go back to the obscure traditions concerning the great nomad confederacy or confederacies that ranged the country north of the desert of Gobi, or to the genealogies of the tribes of Turks, Tārtārs, and Muals, descendants of Yāfi (Japhat) son of Nūḥ, who, after coming out of the Ark with his father, is said to have fixed his yūrat or encampment in the Farther East, and who have furnished subjects for the most copious traditions for native chroniclers, and materials for the most intricate controversies ever since; it may perhaps safely be assumed that Mual was probably in the first instance the name of one tribe among many, a clan among clans, and extended to the whole as its chief acquired an ascendency over the rest. The name is most likely locally much older than the time of engiz, but it was hardly known to more distant nations before the tenth century, and became only widely famous in connection with him.

Few Islamic teachings can boast the fame, if not the notoriety, enjoyed by the doctrine of “unity of existence”, also known as “unity of being” (waḥdat al-wujūd). This controversialphilosophical doctrine became intimately associated with the towering figure of the Arabmystic of al-Andalus, Muḥyī'l-Dīn Ibn 'Arabī (d. 638/1240). Although Ibn 'Arabī himselfdoes not seem to have applied this ambiguous term to his loosely structured meta physical speculations, it gained wide currency among his followers starting from the celebrated Anatolian thinker Ṣadr al-Dīh al-Qūnawī (d. 673/1274).

Letters and coinage are the natural fruits of commerce. Scholars agree that the Indian or Brahma alphabet had a Western origin, and owed its existence to commercial exigencies. But while Hofrath Dr. Bühler traces it to a Phoenician source, and ascribes its creation to the early part of the eight century b.c., M. Halévy derives it from an Aramaean script in the time of Alexander the Great No such definite theory has been put forward with regard to the silver coins called purānas, the most ancient coins of India; but it is generally believed that they were current before the Macedonian invasion, and, as silver has always been one of the most important of the imports from the West into India, we should naturally suppose that silver coinage came also from the West—unless, indeed, it were an indigenous invention. In the case, then, both of Indian letters and of Indian coinage, a direct and constant intercourse with Western Asia is the presupposition of every solution. Now, for a trade between Western Asia and India three routes are possible. The first climbs up the precipitous and zigzag passes of the Zagros range—which the Greeks called “ladders”—into the treeless regions of Persia. This route was barred for centuries by the inveterate hostility of the mountaineers, and it did not become practicable until the “Great King” reduced the Kurdish highlanders and the lowland Semites to an equal vassalage.

Unfortunately very little is known about the life and personality of the author of the Kitâb al-muḥabbar. Abû Ja‘far Muḥammad b. Ḥabîb, al-Hâshimî al-Baghdâdî as he is usually called, was a mawlâ of the family of Muḥammad b. 'Abbâs b. Muḥammad al-Hâshimi. Ḥabîb is stated to be the name of his mother, a freed woman of the Hâshimite family, his father's name being unknown. However, in the Fihrist and by Yâqût who quotes the Fihrist he is called Muḥammad b. Ḥabîb b. Umaiya b. 'Amr. The date and the place of his birth are equally unknown and the only date we know for certain is that of his death, which occurred in Sâmarrâa in the year a.h. 245 (a.d. 859/860) in the reign of al-Mutawakkil. All the sources agree about this date, some adding the month, Dhu'l-Ḥijja, and the day, namely the 23rd of this month.

Hartwig Derenbourg in his Notes critiques sur les manuscrits arabes de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Madrid, (1904), described MS. no. DXCIII of the catalogue of these manuscripts compiled by F. Guillén Robles in the following terms:

Le seul ouvrage Chrétien en pur arabe (DXCIII), est un unicum de première importance, les Canons de l'Eglise chrétienne hispanique à la fin du VIIe siècle de notre ère, dans un exemplaire du milieu du XIe.

In his essay on the heretical schools of the Hindus, Mr. Colebrooke has given an account of the tenets of the Chāarvāakas, or Materialists (Misc. Essays, L, 402 ff). Professor Wilson also, in his “Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus” (As. Ees., Vol. XVI., pp. 5, 6), alludes to the attacks made by the founder of the atheistical, or materialistic school, Vrihaspati, on the Vedas and the Brahmans, and quotes some verses attributed to that author, in which he asserts that “the whole Hindu system is a contrivance of the priesthood to secure a means of livelihood for themselves.” I am not aware whether either the aphorisms of Vrihaspati (Vāarhaspatya Sŭutras), to which Mr. Colebrooke refers (Misc. Ess., L, 404) as having been quoted by one of the commentators on the Vedanta, or the work which contains the verses adduced by Professor Wilson, be still extant or not. As, however, the Sarva Darśsana Sangraha of Māadhava ÃAchāaryya (a work containing a concise account of the different philosophical schools of India, both orthodox and heretical), from which Professor Wilson derived the verses which he cites, contains a good many more of a similar tendency, which are both satirical and clever, I shall translate the whole, and compare them with passages of the same tenor which occur in the Vishnu Purāana and in the Rāamāayana.

Considerable attention has been attracted of late years to the astronomical instruments of the people of Asia. Many of these instruments, though far from modern, are remarkable for accuracy and beauty of workmanship, and not a few present admirable specimens of delicate engraving, inlaying, and ornament. The Sedillots, father and son, and others, have done much to elucidate the subject; but it is still far from exhausted, and every addition to our present materials for its illustration cannot fail to be of interest.

In 1443 Zangi advanced with, his army to the neighbourhood of Edessa and besieged a fort to the east of the town which the Franks had surprised from an Arab, Mani' son of ‘utair. Zangi took the fort of Shann, marched close to Edessa, sent an ambassador to the townsmen, and said that he did not wish to fight the Franks but to be at peace with them. They sent him gifts and presents from the town, food and drink, and he passed on to Aleppo.

Western sinologists dealing with texts of any antiquity are usually as aware as their East Asian colleagues of the importance of textual scholarship as the foundation of their studies. Yet despite the considerable sophistication of the techniques developed in the West for editing the texts of our own classical heritage we have until now largely left the collation of Chinese texts to East Asian scholars working on the basis of their indigenous academic traditions, and have generally been content to accept their results even in cases where these are clearly somewhat unsatisfactory. Paul Thompson's magnificent study shows that there is no need to let this situation continue. Taking an ancient work which has been the subject of conspicuous foul play on the part of pre- modern Chinese scholarship, he has produced a book which is in every sense of the word an exemplary demonstration of how the most rigorous techniques of textual and bibliographic analysis should now be applied to problems which have been ignored for too long.

In the Journal for October, 1917 (p. 815), I discussed some of the material available for the study of wages and prices in the latter part of Akbar's reign, and offered the tentative conclusions that, while a much wider basis is desirable for a final judgment, (1) we may take the rupee to have been worth at the Imperial capital about seven times as much grain as in the years 1910–12, (2) on the same basis we may regard urban wages as having been worth sotaewhere about the same amount of grain at the two periods. I have since been enabled to extend the inquiry to certain other commodities, which make, it possible to indicate provisionally and in general terms what money was actually worth to the population of the Imperial capital. The results apply directly only to this population, but they also have some bearing on the economic conditions prevailing over a wider area in Northern India.

Amongst the crowned heads and princes of royal blood in Asia who have taken an interest in the welfare of the Royal Asiatic Society, we have to name the Sháh of Persia, and his second son, the Prince Royal, Abbas Mirza. The latter is lost to his country and to us; and the untimely termination of his career is both a matter of public concern, and has especial claims on the notice and sympathy of the Society, from the peculiar relation in which his Royal Highness stood with respect to it.

The Gabrī dialect, as is well known, is spoken only by the Zoroastrians, or “Guebres,” of Persia (by whom it is called “Darī”), and is consequently almost confined to the towns of Yezd and Kirmān. It has been discussed, and specimens of it have been published, by Berésine, Rehatsek, Justi, Houtum-Schindler, and Huart (cf. J.R.A.S. for October, 1895, pp. 783–4), yet the total amount of material for its studyis so small that the short text which I now propose to publish will, I feel sure, be welcomed by Persian philologists. It was sent to me nearly a year ago, in response to a request more than once repeated, by my friend Ardashīr Mihrabān, whose hospitality I enjoyed during my three weeks' stay at Yezd in the early summer of 1888.