At a time when the United Kingdom accelerated decolonisation and slowly embraced Europe, London gradually lost the means and the will to fulfil its responsibilities to Hong Kong up until the expiry of the New Territories Lease in 1997. Although the immediate cause of this pessimistic mind-set was the leftist riots in 1967, the factors underlying despondency in London had to do with developments before 1967, namely Hong Kong's growing economic prosperity and administrative autonomy from London since the late 1950s, and beyond Hong Kong itself, the global implications of Britain's withdrawal from East of Suez and entry into the European Economic Community by the early 1970s. By 1972 the process of the “decolonisation” of Hong Kong was well underway. Although the British deemed the time unsuitable to initiate formal negotiation with the then Chinese government, they were prepared to take “informal soundings” concerning Hong Kong's future when a new pragmatic leadership emerged and before the crisis of confidence ensued nearer 1997.

In contrast to many regions of the Middle East, where Jewish communities existed at the time of the Prophet and throughout the centuries following his death, the Tamil region of south India and the Indonesian-Malay world lacked such populations. The absence of Jewish communities did not, however, imply a complete unfamiliarity with Jews and Judaism. Rather, their image emerged from a variety of textual sources in lieu of direct encounters. In addition to their depictions in the Qur'an and hadith literature, Jewish figures occasionally appeared in texts produced in these regions' local languages. The Book of One Thousand Questions, composed in Arabic and translated thereafter into many languages – including Javanese, Malay and Tamil – offers a glimpse to portrayals of Jews and Judaism in lands where their actual presence was virtually unknown.

This article seeks to trace the profile of the governors (mutasaddis) of the main port-cities (especially Surat and, to a lesser extent, Cambay) of the Mughal province of Gujarat in the first half of the seventeenth century. My research on the careers of individual mutasaddis – based mainly (but not exclusively) on existent Portuguese materials – allows us to better understand the social world of those occupying key positions in the ‘waterfront’ of the Mughal Empire and its dealings extensively with the European powers (Portuguese, Dutch and English). Hence, the analysis of the professional and personal trajectories of the Indian Muslim doctor Muqarrab Khan and the Persian Mir Musa Mu'izzul Mulk presented here demonstrate how far business, politics and cultural patronage were often entangled in the career of a Mughal mutasaddi of Gujarat.

This article engages with the 838–841/1435–1437 Anatolian adventures of the Mamluk amir Jānibak al-Ṣūfī. It demonstrates how Jānibak's narrative is a remarkable story full of meanings, which enable a more nuanced understanding of Mamluk engagements with southern and eastern Anatolia during the reign of sultan al-Ashraf Barsbāy (825–41/1422–38). First Jānibak's whereabouts in Anatolia are reconstructed on the one hand as they appear from contemporary source material and as they have been analysed in a handful of modern studies on the other. Against this historiographical background, a more comprehensive understanding of Jānibak's role and significance is then developed, combining local, Syro-Egyptian and Anatolian readings of Jānibak's story into one integrated social network approach. This reconstruction of Jānibak's social network in the Anatolian frontier zone finally leads to a number of conclusions on the complexity of political life in the 1430s in eastern Anatolia, on the nature of Barsbāy's state, and on the shared realities of 15th-century political cultures in the Nile-to-Black-Sea area.

I write this article in the spirit of the Persian poetic tradition, in which an answer to an earlier work takes off from the original and charts its own course. I will suggest that Tamerlane's recreation of the Mongol Empire was symbolic, and was part of his successful creation of a regional state which was at once Turco-Mongolian and Perso-Islamic. His experiment was continued and elaborated by his successors, and the resulting state provided a highly useful model for later dynasties in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Through my long engagement with Mongols and Turks, David Morgan's influence and aid have been a constant advantage and his friendship a recurring pleasure. Our acquaintance began in 1987 with a kind letter he sent me after reading the manuscript for The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane for the Cambridge University Press. Since then I have profited from his scholarship, have used his two books to teach generations of students, and have called on him for uncountable letters of recommendation, always generously given. I also want to thank David for asking me to write the Mongol chapter for the New Cambridge History of Islam, and thus attracting me into the Mongol period. It may seem odd to express my gratitude by writing an answer to David's article which is not entirely in agreement with his conclusions. I trust in the well-known openness of his mind and assume that he will take this in the spirit in which it is offered, as the continuation of many years of discussion.

Britain's tentatively built diplomatic ties with Tibet received a jolt on 28 June 1913 when four Tibetan boys and their chaperone Kusho Lungshar went to meet George V, King of England and Emperor of India at Buckingham Palace. Lungshar and the boys brought with them an extensive range of gifts and letters from the thirteenth Dalai Lama, inadvertently giving the British government a diplomatic headache: not only could this potentially have been interpreted as a breach of the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention, but what should be given in return? By bringing together recently identified objects and archives now located in the British Museum, the British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum, this paper will focus on the products of this encounter: the gifts. They will be considered here as statements of independence, signifiers of ‘Tibetanness’ and as examples of the developing protocols constructed by Britain in response to its encounter with Tibet.2

Halper 331 is the fragment of a codex that has been styled the ‘oldest dated document of the Cairo Genizah’. It preserves the opening of a Jewish legal document dated to the year 1182 (Seleucid era), which appears to have been copied into this codex, probably as a formulary, not long after this date, in the late 9th century. In this article, the text of this fragment, in Aramaic and Hebrew, is edited, and its identification as the beginning of a marriage contract (ketubbah) is evaluated. Its Egyptian provenance is questioned, partly because the earliest evidence for the introduction of the Seleucid era by Jews in Egypt dates from the mid-10th century. The article surveys the history of Jewish dating methods in early medieval Egypt and the Near East, in an attempt to clarify this question. The specific date of the document deviates from the rabbinic calendar, but agrees with that of the contemporary Jewish Near Eastern sectarian groups of Abū ʿImrān al-Tiflīsī and Ismāʿīl al-ʿUkbarī; this document could thus uniquely attest one of these sectarian Jewish calendars.

Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the introduction of Chess into Europe, its Asiatic origin is undoubted, although the question of its birth-place is still open to discussion, and will be adverted to in this essay. Its more immediate design, however, is to illustrate the principles and practice of the game itself from such Oriental sources as have hitherto escaped observation, and, especially, to introduce to particular notice a variety of Chess which may, on fair grounds, be considered more ancient than that which is now generally played, and lead to a theory which, if it should be established, would materially affect our present opinions on its history.

Among the relics brought home by Mr. Layard, and deposited in the British Museum, the visitors to our national repository may notice a series of bronze lions, of good workmanship and graduated magnitude, from one to several inches in length,—the largest weighing above 40 lbs., the smallest barely 2 oz. There are also several marble ducks, with cuneiform inscriptions upon them, of Babylonian rather than Assyrian characters. These appear to have been the commercial weights used by the people of Assyria and Babylonia. They were distinguished by cuneiform inscriptions on the back, which must have been originally well engraved, although they are now a good deal defaced, and in some cases so much obliterated as to leave scarcely the slightest trace.

Muqeyer, in Arabic, signifies “bitumined,” or “covered with bitumen,” its root being . The Arabs of the country about Baghdad, Suk süh Shuyükh, and Busrah, universally give the Arabic (Qaf) the sound of the English g, and muqeyer then with them becomes mugeyer. This corrupt pronunciation has led foreign travellers astray as to the real meaning of the word, which they have interpreted “overturned;” “changed,” spelling the name of the ruins Megheyer, Megkalir, and sometimes also Umgheir. The reason for its present name, which is modern, is obvious to the visitor, as everywhere are to be seen large pieces of bitumen, and remains of masonry, formed by kiln burnt bricks, imbedded in the same material. The ruins are situated sixteen miles N.W. by N. from Sük ush Shuyükh, and six miles due west from the northern end of Arjé village, on the right bank of the Euphrates. Muqeyer itself is buílt upon a slight elevation; the country all about it is, however, so low, that, during the annual flood of the Euphrates, the whole becomes a marsh, and the ruins themselves an island in the middle. Seven miles west of Muqeyer is, a long, low range of sand hills (abounding in sand stones and pebbles), which bounds the district known by the Arabs as the Hejerra, and which terminates about eight miles N.W. of Semaweli. Between the ruins and this ridge the ground gradually descends for five miles; it then as gradually ascends for two, up to the summit of the ridge. At the other side is the valley or hollow of Abu Shahrezer. This ridge is called the Hazem. The plan will, I hope, convey a good idea of the general shape of the ruins and of the mounds composing them, together with the spots at which excavations were made. Plate 1 is a sketch of the principal building from the northern face. This is not, I must observe, exact in detail, and was only made to give an idea of the building as it at present exists. To these (and Plate 2, which is a sketch of a part of the same building) I shall refer, to elucidate my report, and to point out the different spots where the most interesting relics were discovered.

Writing systems are used as, and considered to be, important tools and symbols of political discourses of their time. This article presents a historical overview of the alphabet changes in Azerbaijan and shows how the alphabets were associated with the discourses of modernisation, nationalism and national identity construction. In the early twentieth century, the discussion on the need to shift from the Arabic alphabet to the Roman was actually an extension of the wider debate on national identity and language coupled with the will to modernise and progress. In 1940, the Soviet regime imposed the shift from the Roman alphabet to the Cyrillic in a top-down manner. This change was neither negotiated nor discussed among the intellectuals and there was almost no room for the expression of critical views. With the introduction of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s, intellectuals started to question to what extent the Cyrillic alphabet and the Russian language could represent the Azerbaijani language, civilisation, and national identity. In 1991, Azerbaijan adopted the Roman alphabet. The case of Azerbaijan shows that alphabet changes are symbolic acts to deny and/or reject the previous political and cultural heritage and its legitimacy and tools for undermining its prominence in the new processes of transformation and change.

The overwhelming importance of Kurdish, both language and literature, in Turkish Kurdistan has tended to push all other languages into the background, though some of them are spoken by large and important populations. Zazaki and its literature is one of these that has received far less attention than it deserves, many educated people outside of Turkish Kurdistan being hardly aware of its existence. In this article I have presented the content of fragments from a new Zazaki source. These fragments were fortunately preserved in the binding cover of an old book, which seems to give us at least one of the neglected sources from which the Zazaki writers drew, and carries us back into the memories and the doctrines of the Zazaki community. It has great value as a document of the history of Alevism in Eastern Anatolia.

The three minarets in the Kirmān region, those of the Masjid-i Malik in Kirmān, the Masjid-i Jāmi‘ in Zarand, and the Masjid-i Jāmi‘ in Nigār, have already been noted in a number of publications, but have so far not formed the subject of a separate article. Diez, referring to the period of Turkish dominance, says that in Kirmān, Yazd, and Shīrāz there are no lofty round towers, but, despite the lack of dating inscriptions on any of the minarets, it is nevertheless possible to date them to this period, two with reasonable accuracy and the third by association.

Calicut was the most important port in southwest India during the late fourteenth and the fifteenth century. Its rulers, the Zamorins, maintained a vast network of trading relations extending from the coast of East Africa to the Indonesian archipelago and the Far East. This is amply documented in the accounts of foreign travellers, practically all of whom passed through the Malabar ports on the lengthy voyage from west to east and back. Marco Polo, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 'Abd al-Razzāq, to name but a few, figure most prominently in a long line of writers whose reports describe various aspects of old Colychachia, as Calicut was then called by Nicolo di Conti, an Italian traveller.

This is a fuller version of the paper which I read at the recent International Congress of Orientalists at Cambridge. It has been prepared in compliance with several requests from those who heard it for something on paper which they could study at leisure.

Turcologists will all be extremely grateful to Mr. Sinor for his paper on Qapqan in JRAS., Pts. 3 and 4, 1954. It is most important that “delousing” operations of this kind should be performed before delusions get too firm a grip on the public mind. With his general thesis that the word is purely Turkish and not Iranian I wholeheartedly agree, but, with respect, I do not agree with his suggested etymology, and I should be grateful for an opportunity to make some supplementary observations.

This district takes its name from Dārā [Darius] the Great, son of King Bahman ibn Isfandiyār.

Dārābjird.—This city was founded by Dārā, son of Bahman. It was built circular as though the line of circumference had been drawn with compasses. A strong fortress stood in the centre of the town, surrounded by a ditch kept full of water, and the fortress had four gates. But now the town lies all in ruins, and nought remains except the wall and the ditch. The climate here is that of the hot region, and there are date-palms. The streams of running water are of bad quality. A kind of bitumen [mūmīyā] is found [near Dārābjird] at a place up in the mountain, which bubbles up and falls drop by drop. Also there is a rock-salt found in these parts which is of seven colours where it comes to the surface of the ground.

1. Great was the reputation of Aristotle in the Middle Ages. His sway was undisputed, and whatever bore his name was sure to be treated as the expression of the highest wisdom. But that fame rested mostly on Arabic translations and interpretations of his philosophical writings. Along with the genuine writings, however, also other treatises were circulated which were ascribed to Aristotle, with what justification has not yet been settled, but probably because some of the ideas put into his mouth seem to have been culled from his genuine writings and others reflected, more or less accurately, views and opinions contained in his writings. Among such pseudo-Aristotelian writings, none enjoyed wider circulation than obtained by the treatise which claimed to represent the “Politeia” of Aristotle.