bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Word Tone of the Standard Japanese Language
Authors: Jimbo K.
Published: January 2010

The problem of “accent” in the Japanese language has attracted the attention of a few Japanese scholars for some hundred years. In recent years more writers, both native and foreign, on the Japanese language have touched upon this problem. For instance, B. H. Chamberlain, A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese, 3rd ed., 1898, pp. 19–20; R. Lange, Lehrbuch der japanischen Umgangssprache, 1906, ss. xxvii–viii; E. R. Edwards, Étude phonétique de la langue japonaise, 1903, § 142 f., § 159. Native writers: S. Izawa, Kokutei Tokuhon Seidokuho (The Orthoepy of the State Text Books); B. Yamada, Nihon Daijiten (Japanese Grand Dictionary); T. Takahashi, Hatsuon Jiten (Pronouncing Dictionary). Yet the results attained by these writers have not been quite satisfactory, as, for instance, Lange considers the Japanese “accent” to be that of stress, while Izawa thinks it is the delicate difference of length of speech-sounds. Yamada, Takahashi, etc., while they were right in thinking it to be difference of pitch, could not make out the pitch relations of the syllabic units of each word, and their method of indicating the “accent” was quite misleading.
Kahena, Queen of the Berbers
Authors: Rodd Francis
Published: January 2010

Within twenty years of the flight of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, and only ten years after his death, the recently persecuted adherents of the new Faith embarked on a series of conquests which distinguish the spread of Islam as one of the most important, if not the most important, historical period of the last two thousand years. The conquest of Egypt by the Khalifa Omar was hardly complete in a.d. 641, when the Arabs turned westward along the southern shore of the Mediterranean and became involved in a series of adventures which were destined to menace Europe at a most critical time in its history. The people of Arabia had begun to make another bid for world power which the European branches of Western Man eventually achieved, at their expense.
The Sounds of Sina
Authors: Bailey T. Grahame
Published: January 2010

In my Shina Grammar just published there is a popular description of the sounds written eight years ago in India, when it was impossible for me to consult anyone. Now I should like to alter some of it. In phonetics advance is so rapid that one's descriptions are out of date almost as soon as they are written. Happily it is all advance. There is no retrogression.
Thefatwāas an instrument of the Islamization of a tribal society in process of sedentarization
Authors: Layish Aharon
Published: January 2010

Thefatwāis the legal opinion of a jurist not institutionalized in the classical sense: it is intended to elucidate, at the request of an inquirer, the position as to a legal issue; it is not binding on the inquirer or anyone else; unlike the judgement of aqāḍī, it is not enforceable. Thefatwāthat is the object of this paper belongs to a collection of legal documents gathered from tribal arbitrators in the Judean Desert and from the archives ofsharī‘acourts. Those documents deal with various legal matters: personal status, torts (homicide and assault), contracts and property, land, etc.; most date from the twentieth century and some from the last quarter of the nineteenth. The collection has been used in research on the Islamization of tribal society in the Judean Desert in process of sedentarization.
A new edition of the Khwarezmian phrases in the Qunyat al-Munya
Authors: Skjæervø Prods Oktor
Published: January 2010

A complete and reliable edition of the Khwarezmian phrases and words in the lawbook Qunyat al-munya by Najm al-Dīn Abū RajāMukhtār b. Mahmūd al-Zāhidī al-Ghazmīnī (d. A.H. 658/1260 C.E.) has long been a desideratum but was delayed by the inaccessibility of the best extant manuscript, no. C2311 in the Leningrad Oriental Institute (cited as S in the edition under review). The Qunyat al-munya comprises a résumé of a work by Najm al-Dīn's teacher, Munyat al-fuqahā’, a compilation of legal cases that in turn were probablytaken from a still older work, the Yatīmat al-dahr by Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd ‘A;ā’ al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Raḥīm al-Tarjumānī al-Makkī al-Khuwārzmiī (d.A.H. 645/1247 C.E.). The Khwarezmian elements in the Qunya can therefore, roughly, be said to be descended from the Yatīma via the Munya. Most of the cases from the Qunya involving Khwarezmian words, as well as several from the Munya that were preserved as marginal notes in manuscripts of the Qunya, were collected by Jalāl al-Dīn al-‘Imādī around A.H. 750/1350 C.E. in a separate text (referred to as the Risāla (R) in this edition). Professor D. N. MacKenzie's recently published edition is based upon manuscript no. C2311, originally from Astrakhan, which contains both the Qunya and the Risāla.
Chinese science: the traditional Chinese view
Authors: Yoke Ho Peng
Published: January 2010

In the study of Chinese science it is important to take into account the fact that there are many Chinese terms which do not convey exactly the same meanings to traditional and modern scholars. It is essential to try to put ourselves in theshoes of the former in order to have a better understanding of classical Chinese texts. Take for example the simple term shuxue, which we all take to mean ‘mathematics’. Indeed we are quite correct to call it ‘ mathematics’ when it appears in a modern text, or after the time of Li Shanlan (1811–1982) who first used itwhen he translated Western mathematical works into Chinese. However, when the term shuxue appears in any text written before the time of Li Shanlan it can often be dangerous to use the modern meaning of the term without circumspection. I quote a passage on the Biography of Zhang Zhong from the Ming waish. contained in the Imperial Compendium Gujin tushu jicheng which reads:

(Zhang) Zhong was studying at his youth and presented himself at the jinshi level of civil examinations. However, he failed, and whereupon he gave rein to roaming among the mountains and streams. On one occasion he came across an extraordinarily gifted person and learned shuxue from him. (Henceforth) he talked about future destiny, and was often uncanny in accuracy.
Note on the new excavations at the Shore Temple, Mahabalipuram
Authors: Marr John R.
Published: January 2010

On a recent (December 1990) visit to India, I had the opportunity of visiting the new excavations at Mahabalipuram (Māmallapuram) 50 km. south of Madras, carried out in 1990 by the Archaeological Department of Tamilnadu, and still in progress.

The work is in the area immediately to the north of the ‘Shore’ temple. So far uncovered is an apsidal-shaped tank, its curved end aligned south towards the middle portion of the shore temple. This middle portion consists of a mandapa enclosing a rock-cut image of reclining Visnu, Anantaśayana. From the eroded nature of this piece, and the fact that the Pallava structure over it was clearly an addition, I have long felt this Anantaśayana to antedate the shore temple. The erection of the latter would thus have ‘converted’ this area to Śaiva use, since, as extant, the shore temple consists of two cellae with liiigas, one to the East of the Visnu-figure, the other to the West.
The Condominium revisited: the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1934–1956: a review article
Authors: Warburg Gabriel R.
Published: January 2010

The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan has, in recent years, attracted an ever-growing volume of research. In part, this may be attributed to the easier access to archival sources, both in England and—to a lesser extent—in the Nile Valley. In addition, there has evolved an increasing interest in bilateral relations between Egypt and the Sudan, prompted in part by the political outlook of Presidents Sadat and Numayri, and even more important, by the apparent decline in the Nile waters, especially in the 1980s. The Integration Charter {takamut), first announced by Presidents. Sadat and Numayri in 1974 and signed by Egypt and the Sudan in 1981, sought to establish co-operation, in a wide variety of spheres, which would—so it was hoped—ultimately lead to unity. These anticipations failed to materialize following the chatige of regime in the Sudan in 1985, and seem even less realistic under the present Sudanese fundamentalist dictatorship.
The Ramtek Inscriptions II: The Vākāṭaka inscription in the Kevala-Narasiṃha Temple
Authors: Bakker Hans , Isaacson Harunaga
Published: January 2010

InThe Ramtek Inscriptions[I] (hereafter RI) mention was made of a Vākāṭaka inscription in the Kevala-Narasiṁha temple on Ramtek Hill, the discovery of which was reported inIAR, 1982–83, 137. The credit for first discussing, as well as editing the text goes to the Director of the Archaeological Survey and Museums of Maharashtra, Dr. A. P. Jamkhedkar. In an article which appeared in 1986 in R. Parimoo (ed.),Vaiṣṇavism in Indian arts and culture(pp. 335–41), Jamkhedkar attributed the inscription to Prabhāvatī Guptā (op. cit., 340), an attribution for which he adduced arguments in a subsequent article that was published in M. S. Nagaraja Rao (ed.),Kusumāñjali, vol. i in 1987 (pp. 217–23).
Court ceremonial and marriage in the Sumerian epic ‘Gilgamesh and Huwawa’
Authors: Alster Bendt
Published: January 2010

Four versions of an episode in the Sumerian composition ‘Gilgamesh and Huwawa’ are discussed here. The encounter of Gilgamesh and Huwawa is interpreted in terms of Gilgamesh playing the role of a visitor received in audience at a foreign court. His gifts aim at inviting Huwawa to reciprocate, and thereby give up his protection. Gilgamesh especially exploits Huwawa's social isolation and lack of noble ancestry by offering him his two sisters, one in marriage and one as a concubine. he version in which the two sisters are the only offer makes most coherent sense. In another version the inner logic was distorted when the list was expanded to at least six offers.

TIM IX 47 (IM 62827) was first published by J. van Dijk, inŠumer, 15,1959, PI. 2, and edited in the same volume, pp. 8–10.1 had a chance to collate the text in the spring of 1990 when I visited the Iraq Museum, Baghdad.1 Since this led to some improved readings, which may clarify a difficult episode in the Sumerian composition ‘Gilgamesh and Huwawa’, a complete edition of the tablet is presented here.2 With a few exceptions my readings are in agreement with van Dijk's copy.
The rise of metafiction in China
Authors: Zhao Y. H.
Published: January 2010

Though it would be almost impossible to trace who first applied the term ‘Avant-Garde fiction’ (Xianfeng Xiaoshuo ) to a recent trend in Chinese fiction since 1985, it is an appropriate name in many respects. All the previous schools of fiction in modern China—Wound fiction (Shangheng Xiaoshuo ), Reform fiction (Gaige Xiaoshuo ), Re-thinking fiction (Fansi Xiaowen ), or Roots-Seeking fiction (Xungen Xiaoshuo )—received their names after their respective subject matters. The naming of Avant-Garde fiction itself seems to indicate that Chinese fiction has grown out of its thematic age to enter a new phase of life beyond themes.

The earliest authors of Chinese Avant-Garde fiction—Can Xue , Ma Yuan , Hong Feng , Zhaxi Dawa , Mo Yan and others—are all based in remote areas far from the centres of modern Chinese civilization. This led some critics to the conclusion that literary modernity was at odds with modern urbanized culture. Hardly had such an argument been put forward when, towards the end of 1987, there appeared a new group of Avant-Garde writers—Su Tong with The escape of 1934 (Yijiu sansi nian de taowang— :), Sun Ganlu with The letter from the postman (Xinshi zhi han Ge Fei with The lost boat (Mizhou) and Yu Hua with One kind of reality (Xianshi yizhong)— all of them based in the Yangtze Delta, the most prosperous area of modern China. This would suggest, at least, that Chinese avant-gardism is not entirely dependent on economic-geographical conditions.
A petition for aniqtā‘ addressed to Saladin or al-‘ādil
Authors: Richards D. S.
Published: January 2010

Many years ago the late Dr. Samuel Stern brought to my attention an item preserved among the Geniza documents in the Cambridge University Library. I remember that we used it as part of the illustrative material for a joint course of lectures on medieval Islamic administration, during which I, very much the junior partner, benefited greatly from his experience and store of knowledge. Stern himself intended to publish this piece, but had also brought it to the notice of Dr. Hassanein Rabie who used it, not entirely accurately, in hisThe financial system of Egypt, A.H. 564–741/A.D. 1169–1341Rabie did not publish the text and, as far as I know, no one else ever has, although Geoffrey Khan has briefly referred to the titulature of the addressee. It seems worthwhile to do so now, after such a long interval, because of the intrinsic interest of this document.
Prabodhānanda, Hita Harivaṃśa and the Rādhārasasudhānidhi
Authors: Brzezinski J. K.
Published: January 2010

In an earlier article (‘Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī: from Benares to Braj’, BSOAS, LV, 1, 1992) an attempt was made to establish an authoritative biography of Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī, the author of a number of devotional poems and commentaries in Sanskrit. It was shown there that the sannyāsin Prabodhānanda's life can be divided into three parts: the first, about which we know little, in which he was a Śankaraite monk living in Benares; a second, in which he came under the influence of Caitanya and his devotees, and a third, in which he associated closely with Hita Harivaṃśa, the founder of the Rādhāval-labhī sect in Braj.
The polemic about thekarāmāt al-awliyā’ and the development of Ṣūfism in al-Andalus (fourth/tenth–fifth/eleventh centuries)
Authors: Fierro Maribel
Published: January 2010

The flourishing of Ṣūfism in al-Andalus during the first half of the sixth/twelfth century with mystics like Ibn al-‘Arīf, Ibn Barrajān (who both died in 536/1141) and Ibn Qasī(d. 546/1151) has been interpreted in different ways. For M. Asín Palacios it reflects the influence of the mystical tradition initiated by Ibn Masarra in the second half of the third/ninth century, although he himself does not fail to mention the impossibility of providing evidence for such influence. For other scholars, it was mainly due to the influence of al-Ghazālī's works and thought. D. Urvoy, for his part, has shown how in the ‘image’ of Andalusian Islam during the fifth/eleventh-seventh/thirteenth centuries presented by scholars like Ibn Bashkuwāl and Ibn al-Abbār, Ṣūfism appears to be almost non existent. The question of what religious, intellectual and sociopolitical background allowed figures like Ibn al-‘Arīf, Ibn Barrajān and Ibn QasīT to appear, is still to be answered.
The theoretical basis of the Tibetan epic, with reference to a ‘chronological order’ of the various episodes in the Gesar epic
Authors: Karmay Samten G.
Published: January 2010

In the 1950s when Professor Stein was engaged in his research on the Gesar epic, he wrote: ‘If there ever existed a complete recension of all Chapters, they remain unknown to us. Neither written texts nor oral versions contain the totality of the epic story. And the ones that we know of at present, present themselves in the form of a literature that is still alive and mobile.’

Since then, the situation has totally changed with the publication of many previously unknown chapters, not only those that have come down to us from the past but also the new products of a literature that is still expanding, as Professor Stein so accurately observed. What I am concerned with here, however, is the theoretical basis which underlies the ordering of the episodes relating to the hero and his life, and the notion of a correct ‘chronological order’ which the tradition presents, however fictitious the events may be. It is the materials which existed before our time which are most pertinent here and which permit us to identify the theoretical basis of which I speak. That basis provides a perspective on the question as a whole, and a guide through the tangled structure of the Tibetan epic. We are now, as I said, in a better position than in the 1950s to make an assessment of the whole body of Tibetan epic literature.
‘Ālam al-dīn in Ismā‘īlism: world of obedience or world of immobility?
Authors: Calderini Simonetta
Published: January 2010

The definitions of the term ‘ālam (world) given by Muslim scholars from the tenth century onwards are as varied as the discussions on the world's shape, the aim of its existence and its reality (or irreality). Most theologians would agree that ‘ālam is ‘all that is not God’, or ‘all that exists, other than God’, thereby implying that the world is simply ‘all that is created’.
Sukhothai inscription II: Late Old Mon affinities and their implications for the history of Thai syntax
Authors: Bauer Christian
Published: January 2010

The word sadāṁ is attested in Sukhothai inscriptions only once, namely, in inscription n [#2 or Sd.2] (fourteenth century A.D.) from Wat Sri Chum (face B, line 61). It is glossed by Prasert na Nagara as a verb ‘to do’ The context in inscription #2, face B, reads as follows.
Ophthalmic surgery: a chapter in the history of Sino-Indian medical contacts
Authors: Deshpande Vijaya
Published: January 2010

Although in Chinese culture surgery has not usually been seen as a major part of medical practice, during the Sui (A.D. 581–618) and the Tang dynasties (A.D. 618–907) it showed a marked flowering in the field of ophthalmology. There are indications that it was closely related to Indian medical and surgical ideas which were transmitted to China. The evidence is found in historical records, popular literature and also in medical works and compilations. Interestingly, the origins of this transmission are seen in Chinese Buddhist canonical literature which emerged during the introduction of Buddhism into China in the late Han period (A.D. 25–220) and the mutual contacts which followed immediately thereafter.
The Chinese for ‘Confucius’ confirmed
Authors: Barrett T. H.
Published: January 2010

In February 1999 I published a review article in the Bulletin (62/1) pointing to the difficulties encountered in trying to confirm the derivation of the Latin term ‘ Confucius’ from its supposed Chinese original, ‘ Kong Fuzi’. Briefly, the only general lexicographer to cite the Chinese term from premodern materials, Morohashi Tetsuji, does no more than quote a memorial inscription from the early nineteenth century, long after the Jesuit coinage of the Latin term, for a Mongol period figure from amongst the descendants of Confucius. Other earlier sources on this figure do not confirm the usage ‘ Kong Fuzi’ in his memorial materials, but only the more usual‘ Kong Zi’. Consequently, my own speculation was that ‘ Kong Fuzi’ could have represented a deliberate barbarism on the part of the nineteenth-century author, Cai Jinquan. The expression ‘Kong Fuzi’, therefore, remained unattested before the Jesuits, raising the suspicion that it might even be a back-formation from Latin rather than genuinely Chinese.
A Mamlūk emir's ‘square’ decree
Authors: Richards D. S.
Published: January 2010

In his catalogue of the Haram documents, D. P. Little has brought attention to a group of nine items, which he identifies with what the handbooks and other contemporary sources describe as murabba'āt One may accept the translation ‘square’ for convenience sake, but the surviving examples show that murabba'a should strictly be understood as ‘quadrangular’. Under question are documents written on a sheet of paper in ‘landscape’ mode, folded centrally to form four pages, and distinguished from documents written on a piece of paper in ‘portrait’ mode or a series of these stuck together to produce a scroll. While looking through the Cambridge University Library's varied collection of material, both paper and papyrus, that is known by the name of its immediate source, Michaelides, I came across one more example, at least, if one judges bythe shape and general lay-out. It seems to be of sufficient interest to merit a brief study, with some cross-reference to the Haram material.
Temple of Imra, Temple of Mahandeu: a Kafir sanctuary in Kalasha cosmology
Authors: Parkes Peter
Published: January 2010

This article examines the mythical significance of the famous Afghan Kafir ‘Temple of Imra’ described in Robertson'sKáfirs of the Hindu-Kush(1896: 389–92) within the cosmology of the Kalasha (‘Kalash Kafirs’) of Chitral in northern Pakistan. It is known as the ‘Temple of Mahandeu’ in Kalasha tradition, and stories about this sanctuary play an important role in the exegesis of all Kalasha rites. It is, indeed, a focal symbol of Kalasha cosmology: the site of anaxis mundilinking heaven and earth with the underworld of the deceased, and the primordial domain of major deities. After examining narratives about this temple, I shall discuss several problems in the comparative religions of the Hindu Kush that such traditions help to elucidate. In recognition of the pioneering scholarship on this subject by Wolfgang Lentz (1974) and Lennart Edelberg (et al., 1959), I present here some Kalasha perspectives on an extraordinary Kafir sanctuary (cf. Jettmar, 1986: 50–51). But in discussing its significance in Kalasha cosmology, I also address broader questions about our present conception of religious knowledge in the Hindu Kush, particularly on the comparative ‘mythology’ of the Afghan Kafirs and of their Dardicspeaking neighbours in northern Pakistan
The way of the nomad
Authors: Brett Michael
Published: January 2010

Ibn Khaldūn runs the risk of being everything or nothing—or, at least, no more than this or that. It has long been customary to separate theMuqaddimaor so-called Prolegomena from the body of theKitāb al-'Ibaror so-called Universal History, and to treat them quite differently as an essay in the philosophy of history distinct from a much more commonplace amalgam of historical information of varying value. Regarded as no more than a vast compilation of historical knowledge in the manner of the time, this great bulk of the work has received much less attention than the much more famous introduction. By concentrating on Ibn Khaldūn's later career in Egypt, Fischel dwelt on the chapters dealing with the Mamlūks and the Mongols, and with Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Judaism. Treating him as an historian of the Marinids in Morocco, Shatzmiller has located the ‘Ibaras a whole in the dynastic tradition of Fes.4 The Marinids were a self-consciously Berber dynasty whose official histories fall into the well-established category ofMafākhir al-Barbaror ‘Boasts of the Berbers’, and it might be said that Ibn Khaldūn's classification of his material according to race merely reflected the origin of hismagnum opusin a familiar literary tradition, from whose constraints he was only freed by the collapse of the political order in the Maghrib in the second half of the fourteenth century.
The Azāriqa in Islamic heresiography
Authors: Lewinstein Keith
Published: January 2010

Since the publication in the West last century of a major Sunnī work on the Islamic sects, those interested in the earlyfiraqhave found themselves dependent on the heresiographical tradition. Islamicists have had little choice in the matter; most writing and thinking produced in circles later deemed heterodox has not been preserved, and to a large extent is available only through the mediation of the heresiographers. While material of other sorts has not gone unstudied, it has for the most part been the heresiographers who have shaped the way we look at early Islamic sectarianism.

This marriage of modern scholarship and medieval heresiography is, however, a distinctly uncomfortable one. As indispensable as thefiraqmaterial may be, questions about its reliability persist. The difficulties which characterize this literature are well known, and hardly need to be rehearsed here: it is late, highly schematic, and frequently hostile to the doctrines and groups which it describes. To these might be added one other problem noted less frequently: most of the books in general academic circulation have passed through Ash'arite and/or Mu‘tazilite hands. If, as we shall see, the tradition is not entirely synoptic, there are at least powerful forces at work which militate against a diversity of perspectives.
Family strife and foreign intervention: causes in the separation of Zanzibar from Oman: a reappraisal
Authors: Bhacker M. Reda
Published: January 2010

The nineteenth-century rise of Zanzibar under the ruling Albusaidi Dynasty of Oman owed its origins primarily to the solid foundations of commercial activity laid down in Muscat in the preceding century. In the subsequent development of the Omani economy, in Omani territories in both Arabia and Africa where the dictates of the Omani political/tribal system did not allow for any centralization of authority, local communities and tribal groups resisted the domination of the Albusaidi rulers as they strove to bring under their own control the benefits of burgeoning trade.

The opposition of the major Omani groups in East Africa, the Mazāri‘a of Mombasa and the Banū Nabhān of Pate, to the Albusaidis and the eventual success of the Omani rulers in dismantling and neutralizing this opposition are fairly well documented. However, the sustained challenge of Hilāl b. Sa‘īd to the reign of his father Sa‘īd b. Sulṭān, the Albusaidi ruler of Oman and Zanzibar and their dependencies from 1806 to 1856, has hitherto been neglected, despite the fact that Hilāl's resistance in East Africa was the greatest internal threat to Sa‘īd after that posed by the Mazāri'a and had dire consequences for the subsequent course of Oman's history. The conflict between father and son set in train a course of events that led inexorably to the 1861 British-sponsored dismemberment of Oman into two Sultanates, one in Arabia and the other in East Africa.
Pādyāb and nērang: two Pahlavi terms further considered
Authors: Boyce Mary
Published: January 2010

This short article is dedicated to a friend and scholar who has greatly promoted the study of Pahlavi by his masterly work on texts and manuscripts, and, earning thereby the gratitude of all, by his truly admirable Pahlavi dictionary. Pahlavi is a language notorious for the challenges it makes to the lexicographer, not the least of which are to be found in the field of technical religious terms. Since priests, setting down instructions for their fellow-priests, could assume a common basic knowledge of the rituals concerned, they felt evidently no need for a precise or consistent use of terms, but relied on context to make their meaning plain. There was moreover a marked tendency, in written as in spoken usage, to abbreviate common phrases and to deal casually with grammatical forms, while among the Gujarati-speaking Parsis Persian technical terms were sometimes given additional or quite new meanings. A student of religion can hope, therefore, by considering perplexing linguistic usages in the light of observances to contribute a little to the lexicographer's pursuit, a small return for the large debt which all such students owe to the work of philologists
Ribāṭs in Mecca during the medieval period: a descriptive study based on literary sources
Authors: Mortel Richard T.
Published: January 2010

The Islamic institution of the ribāṭ appears to have made its initial appearance along the North African coast, in what is today Tunisia, during the second/eighth century. In the first phase of its development, the ribāṭ was essentially a fortress located at a sensitive point along the Islamic frontier, garrisoned by pious individuals who envisaged their vocation as participation in the jihād, the defence of the lands of Islam against external foes.
Case and proto-Arabic, Part I
Authors: Owens Jonathan
Published: January 2010

It is a fundamental point of comparative and historical linguistics that genealogical affiliation can only be established on the basis of concrete linguistic features, the more central the feature the more important for classificatory purposes. While there is no absolute consensus about how a central linguistic feature be identified, it can be taken as axiomatic that long-term reconstruction and classification rests most fundamentally on phonological and morphological criteria. Of these two, Hetzron (1976b) has argued that it is the morphological which is the most important because morphology represents the level of grammar that is both more complex and more arbitrary in the sense that the sound-meaning dyad has no natural basis. Precisely this arbitrariness ensures that morphological correspondences are relatively unlikely to be due to chance.
Homoeroticism and homosexuality in Islam: a review article
Authors: Schmidtke Sabine
Published: January 2010

From the medieval confrontation between the Muslim world and Christendom to the present day, the moral and social institutions of the respective “ other” have been the subject of close cross-cultural attention. In particular, questions related to sexual morality, including the issue of homosexuality, were, and still are, used as a polemical focus for mutual denigration.
Winged words revisited: diction and meaning in Indian epic
Authors: Smith John D.
Published: January 2010

Scholars working in the field of oral epic all have a particular form of words committed to memory—Milman Parry's celebrated definition of the formula. The definition in fact appears in two slightly differing forms in Parry's writing. In 1928 he wrote, ‘In the diction of bardic poetry, the formula can be defined as an expression regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express an essential idea’ (Parry, 1971: 13). Two years later came the more familiar version: ‘The formula in the Homeric poems may be defined as a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea’ (Parry, 1971: 272). The differences between the two forms of the definition are negligible, and Parry made no further attempt to refine or modify it during the five years of life that remained to him. For Albert Lord, too, the definition was clearly adequate as it stood: in ch. iii of The singer of tales he simply quotes it verbatim (Lord, 1960: 30), and proceeds directly to a consideration of the function of formulaic diction.
Puzzling Words and Spellings in Babylonian Aramaic Magic Bowls
Authors: Müller-Kessler Christa
Published: January 2010

Through work on the large collection of Mandaic lead rolls in the British Museum and collations of incantation bowls in various museums and libraries, it appears that Mandaic gnostic incantation formulas were often translated into Babylonian Aramaic and Syriac, but not the reverse. In Late Antiquity, MandaicVorlagenseem to have dominated the field of magic in Mesopotamia. Although, only a scanty amount of pre-Islamic Mandaic incantation material has been published so far, classical Mandaic literature already gives many hints of this fact. It turns out that many solutions to puzzling words or spellings in Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls can be explained in the light of a MandaicVorlage.
State, feminists and Islamists—the debate over stipulations in marriage contracts in Egypt
Authors: Shaham Ron
Published: January 2010

A new dispute between Shaykh al-Azhar and the [Chief] Muftī concerning the marriage contract: Shaykh al-Azhar argues that the new contract permits the forbidden and forbids the permitted, that the contract is the creation of the secularists, and that it contains forbidden innovation (bid‘a) and is misleading; the Mufti holds that the contract does not permit the forbidden or forbid the permitted, that it is a result of a permissible independent reasoning (ijtihād mashrū‘), and that some of the articles included in the contract were approved by a few classical jurists.
The Thangmi verbal agreement system and the Kiranti connection
Authors: Turin Mark
Published: January 2010

Thangmi is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in central-eastern Nepal and north-eastern India. The majority of Thangmi speakers live in Nepal and still inhabit their traditional homeland of Dolakhá district. There are ethnic Thangmi in many of the other districts of the kingdom, especially in the neighbouring districts of Sindhupálcok, Sindhulī and Rámecháp. The Thangmi population in India is largely concentrated in Darjeeling and is the product of an emigration earlier this century.
Ṛgvedic satyá
Authors: Wright J. C.
Published: January 2010

That Sanskrit satyá (Avestan haiθiia) derives from sánt is by no means so certain as Georges-Jean Pinault has recently claimed, and as the standard etymological dictionary (both KEWA, III, and EWA, I) maintains. The picture has altered since (as noted already in KEWA) Elmar Seebold finally disposed of the existence of a Germanic *sun∂jaz, which had seemed to correspond in form as well as meaning with Sanskrit satyá ‘true’. Gothic sunja ‘truth’ (>*sun∂ī: Seebold, art. cit., 25, 36) offers no support for the notion of a -ya derivative from the participle. At the same time, Karl Hoffmann had sought to withdraw the support of Agni's epithet santya, by explaining it as ‘being together: (etwa) Mitbewohner‘ from a *sóm-tiyo which otherwise, as in Germanic (English soft), develops a sense ‘appropriate, agreeable: angenehm’. To this may now be added the consideration that Paul Thieme has thought (oral communication) to explain satyá, with IE *sem- ‘one, together‘ in mind, as ‘einig, übereinstimmend‘ from a *sm-tyó. The latter would show more primitive Ablaut and more literal meaning than *sóm-tiyo, but both words would thus be close relatives of samydk ‘together, properly’.
The function of asbāb al-nuzūl in Qur'ānic exegesis
Authors: Rippin A.
Published: January 2010

In John Wansbrough's work, Quranic studies: sources and methods of scriptural interpretation, several theses are put forth regarding the material known as asbāb al-nuzūl, occasions of revelation; the overall view of Wansbrough is one which is derived (critically) from al-Suyūṭī, which is that the asbāb material has its primary reference point in works devoted to deriving law from the text of the Qur'ān, that is, halakhic works. He suggests that the presence of asbāb material as found in a haggadic or narrative tafsīr such as that of Muqātil is ‘accidental’ because, while the narrative asbāb reports serve as anecdotes, they do not fulfil what Wansbrough sees as the ‘essential function’, that of establishing ‘a chronology of revelation
The Mir'āt al-Ṭālibīn, by Zain al-Dīn al-Khawāfī of Khurāsān and Herat
Authors: Norris H. T.
Published: January 2010

Muhammad b. Muhammad b. ‘Alī Abū Bakr al–Khawāfī al–Harāwī was born in Khurāsān in 757/1356 and he died at Herat in 838=1435. Praised by Jāmī as one who personified wisdom, both exoteric and esoteric, he was, without doubt, an important master of the Suhrawardiyya Sūfī order, though he established his own silsila, the Zainiyya. None the less, he was schooled in a number of other Sūfī orders. Dr. Leonard Lewisohn has revealed in his studies of the mystic poet, Mawlānā Muhammad Shīrīn, otherwise known as al–Maghribī, that al–Khawāfī is listed at the end of the Ṭaifūrī silsila by Ḥājj Zain al-‘Ābidīn al-Shirwānī. According to Ibn Karbalā'ī, he was a part-time student of Ishāq Khuttalānī and he was also affiliated to ‘Ala’ al-Dawla Simnānī, though it is ultimately to Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī that his silsila is usually traced.
Studies in Marduk
Authors: Lambert W. G.
Published: January 2010

For the hisory of religions the rise of Marduk, city god of Babylon, is one of the most striking phenomena known from ancient Mesopotamia. From being an utterly insignificant god in third-millennium Sumer, he had risen to be head of the Babylonian pantheon by the first millennium. The Münster thesis of Walter Sommerfeld, written under W. von Soden, is the first book-length treatment of this topic. As the subtitle indicates, it is largely restricted to the second millennium, the significant period because the rise took place within it. In fact third millennium evidence is dealt with briefly, but the first millennium is omitted. This is unfortunate because most of the religious literature dealing with Marduk is known from first-millennium copies only, though much of it was presumably composed during the second. In view of this uncertainty most of the religious texts about Marduk cannot be used within precise chronological frameworks.
Al-Zuhrī, Naskh al-Qur'ān and the problem of early Tafsīr texts
Authors: Rippin A.
Published: January 2010

While interest in early exegetical works concerned with the Qur'ān has certainly increased in the last few decades, no clear consensus seems to have emerged concerning how to establish the genesis of a supposedly early text. The basic problem to be faced is whether the texts we have today are compilations extracted from later works and then put in the name of a single, early authority or whether they are genuinely transmitted works from early teachers and writers, albeit with the definite possibility of some reformulation and intrusion from a later date by editors and copyists. The question to be discussed is one of both the date and method of composition.
The non-Sanskritic vocabulary of the later Sikh gurūs
Authors: Shackle C.
Published: January 2010

Althouth the Ādi Granth (AG) is rightly renowned for the number and the variety of its contributors, the great bulk of its contents is in fact formed by the compositions of Gurū Nānak (d. 1539), and those of his successors Gurū Amar Dās (d. 1574), Gurū Rām Dās (d. 1581), and Gurū Arjan (d. 1606).
Syriac inscriptions From a Melkite monastery on the Middle Euphrates
Authors: Hunter Erica C. D.
Published: January 2010

During a survey of the Djebel Khaled area, in conjunction with the excavation of the nearby Bronze Age site of El Qitar, Professor Graeme Clarke discovered two Syriac inscriptions on the wall of a small, vaulted tomb- chamber. Tracings were made and these, together with photographs of both the inscriptions and the sepulchre, were sent to me so that I might translate their contents and offer accompanying comments. In the meantime, Professor Clarke has published his valuable description of the Djebel Khaled area and its necropolis, including the tomb-chamber.1 Furthermore, Professor Takamitsu Muraoka has offered a tentative reading of the two Syriac inscriptions.2
The development of a modern prose style in Arabic literature
Authors: Cachia Pierre
Published: January 2010

The Arab literary establishment of the period immediately preceding the nineteenth century had reached such stability in social status, such homogeneity in education, and such unanimity in cultural values that it was no longer searching for innovative ideas, and of its men of letters—poets and prose writers alike—it expected not originality but consummate skill in the use of words. The prose that it favoured was not only rhymed, but laden with tropes, especially those developed in the branch of Rhetoric known asbadī, which concerns itself not so much with imagery as with verbal artifices2(such as the paronomasia, the double entendre, the palindrome) of which by then over 150 varieties had been devised.
The root finals of Bantawa Rai verbs, and the congruence of phonology with grammar and lexis
Authors: Sprigg R. K.
Published: January 2010

‘The meaning of texts is dealt with by a dispersal of analysis at mutually congruent series of levels, beginning with contexts of situation and proceeding throughcollocation, syntax (includingcolligation) to phonology and phonetics⃜ Stylistics with some notice of phonaesthetic features, lexicography and the place and use of translation are to be included to complete the spectrum’ (Firth, 1957: 30).
Syntactic valency and contextual specialization: the case of -shika in Swahili
Authors: Andersen Torben , Omar Yahya Ali
Published: January 2010

In Johnson's Standard Swahili-English dictionary (1939) the meaning of the verb-Shika is described as follows:

hold fast, take hold of, keep hold on, seize, grasp, keep. A common word with a wide range of application, e.g. (1) get hold on, press hard on, be on the mind, put in difficulties; (2) keep a hold on, persevere in; (3) hold to, keep to, observe, remember, attend to, obey; (4) determine, resolve, make up the mind to; (5) also as Intrans. have a hold, prevail, be urgent.
Abū Ḥafṣ ՙUmar al-Kirmānī and the rise of the Barmakids
Authors: Bosworth C. Edmund
Published: January 2010

Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kirmānī is known mainly from al-Ṭabarī as arāwīfor events in the caliphates of Mūsā al-Hādī and Hārūn al-Rashīd; from al-Jahshiyārī as arāwīfor an anecdote concerning al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā al-Barmakī (and probably for other, unattributed items of information); and from the mention of him as 'Umar [b.] al-Azraq al-Kirmānī, author of a book called theAkhbār al-Barāmika wa-faḍā'iluhum(‘Historical accounts of the Barmakid family and their merits’) by Ibn ‘Asākir in his great biographical dictionary of the leading figures and scholars associated with his native city of Damascus, citing him as an authority on Khālid b. Barmak's early close connexions with the ‘Abbāsid Imāms Muḥammad b. ‘Alī b. ‘Abd Allāh b. al-'Abbās and his son Ibrāhīm.
The Portraits and career of Mohammed Ali, son of Kazem-Beg: Scottish missionaries and Russian orientalism
Authors: Bivar A. D. H.
Published: January 2010

The occasion for the present article was the appearance for sale in a London auction of the portrait, apparently by the Scottish painter Sir William Allan 1782–1850), reproduced here on p1. I. It represented a young Persian gentleman in mid-nineteenth-century dress. On the back was a label in a later hand, which read:

‘Muzjd [read Mirza?] Mohammed AH Bey / Professor of Oriental Languages / University of Hazan / Painted by Sir William All…’.

On 26 March 1987 the present writer received an inquiry from the cataloguer, Karen Taylor, seeking help with the identification of the sitter and his place of residence. Some rapid inquiries were made at the time, from which it appeared that the university was probably that of Kazan in eastern Russia, and that the sitter may have had some connexion with a teacher of Persian known to the celebrated Russian Orientalist V. V. Bartol'd. However, records relating to Kazan then available in London were insufficient to support a definite identification. The portrait was sold as Lot no. 352 in the auction held on 4th November 1987, and was reproduced in the catalogue of the sale.Subsequent research, and inquiries in Russia, have brought forth fuller information about the sitter, a person whose career was unusual and distinguished, and who may be considered one of the founders of Oriental Studies at St. Petersburg. In spite of the time which has passed since the sale, it seems worth while to put the resulting information on record.
The Futūḥ al-Shām of ՙAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. Rabīՙa al-Qudāmī
Authors: Lecker Michael
Published: January 2010

The Futūḥ al-Shām of al-Qudāmi, now lost, is not listed by Brockelmann or by Sezgin although it is one of the earliest works of futūḥ: its author lived in the second half of the second Islamic century. A few excerpts from this book, taken from Ibn ՙAsākir (d. 571/1176), Ta'rīkh madīnat Dimashq and Ibn Hajar (d. 852/1448), al-Iṣāba fī tamyīzi 'l-ṣaḥāba, provide some insight into the author and the book.

Ibn ՙAsākir's monumental work (see ‘Abbreviated references’ below, under TMD) is now available, in addition to the volumes which have so far been edited, in the form of a commercial facsimile edition. Its Mukhtasar, by Ibn Manzūr, is also available in a scholarly edition. Only a few years ago, apart from the edited volumes (which only cover a small part of this voluminous biographical dictionary), one had to rely on the incomplete and at times unreliable Tahdhīb of this book prepared by ‘Abd al-Qādir Badrān. This situation has now changed fundamentally and the easier access to this book will, one hopes, give new impetus to research in those areas where Ibn ‘Asākir excels, such as the conquest of Syria and Palestine.
The Greek origin of the sixth-century dating of Zoroaster
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: January 2010

Zoroaster is said to have lived in the sixth century B.C. This has been a tradition, within Zoroastrianism itself, for around two thousand years. Up until recently in the West its accuracy was widely considered an established fact.

Western scholars came across the evidence for this tradition in the nineteenth century. Many immediately gave it a warm reception. After all, such a late dating was far better suited to the forward-looking, evolutionary spirit of the times than the much earlier one that had been favoured up until then, but which risked losing sight of Zoroaster in a suspiciously distant past. Also, as well as sounding eminently reasonable it seemed to have the pedigree of a genuine Zoroastrian tradition.
A possible fusion-word in theYi-chingdivinations in theTso-chuanand theKuo-yü
Authors: Cohen Alvin P.
Published: January 2010

The most ancient examples of divination using theYi-chingare found in theTso-chuanand theKuo-yü(both texts probady date from the end of the fourth cenury B.C.E). In each divination, a hexagram is determined which, in most cases,changesinto another hexagram. In a few cases the first hexagram doesnot change. In this brief essay, I will remark on the terminology for thechangeandnot changeof the hexagrams, and will propose an explanation for the term that designatesnot change.
Keret's dream:ḏhrtandhdrt
Authors: Greenfield Jonas C.
Published: January 2010

The dream near the beginning of the tale plays an important role in the Keret epic from Ugarit. Keret, suffering from deep depression after the death of his wife and his children in a series of tragic incidents, cries himself to sleep. This is stated in the text as:

šnt tlun wyškb‘Sleep overtook him while he lay,

nhmmt wyqmṣslumber while he crouched’; (CTA 14 i 33–35).

Lying in the crouched, curled-up position usual in incubation, he dreamt. The narrative concerning the dream begins with:

wbḥlmh il yrd‘In his dream El descended,

bḏhrth ab admin hisḏhrtthe Father of Man’ (11. 35–37).
The historical background of the vowel ṣere in some Hebrew verbal and nominal forms
Authors: Khan Geoffrey
Published: January 2010

One of the most important sources for our knowledge of the length of vowels in the Tiberian tradition of Biblical Hebrew is a corpus of manuscripts containing transcriptions of the Hebrew Bible into Arabic letters. In most of the manuscripts the Arabic transcription employs the orthography of Classical Arabic to represent the sounds of Hebrew. Since Classical Arabic orthography used matres lectionis systematically to mark long vowels we are able to reconstruct the distribution of long and short vowels in Tiberian Hebrew. The transcriptions show us that the main factors determining vowel length were stress and syllable structure.
The Poetics of Qur՚ānic Punning
Authors: Rippin A.
Published: January 2010

Puns stand as a bridge between rhyme and metaphor. Sound—that characteristic of rhyme—combines with the explosion of semantic implications associated with metaphor into the form of word play or punning. The quality of blending of sound together with meaning remains the best definition of what constitutes a pun. Certainly it is possible to create a classification system for puns which will lead to a workable description of the phenomenon. Interesting attempts along this line have been made working with Arabic, Biblical Hebrew, and English material, for example. Such efforts tend to rely on the formal aspects of the words used in the puns in order to produce their classificatory systems. That is, they speak of puns using the ‘literal’ meaning of two words, puns relying on ‘metaphoric’ meanings, and so forth; or they speak of the formal relationship between the words in question in terms of the combinations and permutations of letters and sounds. The aim of this paper, however, is not to circumscribe the use of puns in the Qur՚ān, although certainly a number of formal ranges of punning employment will emerge in the course of the treatment. Rather, the goal is to see what puns convey to the reader of the Qur՚ān, to see how the sound of music combines with sound argument within the text of scripture. Leaving the definition of word play or pun open (indeed, even using those two words interchangeably) allows the broadest view of the phenomenon to be embraced.