bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Navarātri festival in Madurai
Authors: Fuller C. J. , Logan Penny
Published: January 2010

Navarātri (Tam. Navarāttiri) is one of the most popular and important annual festivals in the south Indian city of Madurai. The same is true elsewhere in the state and, in somewhat different forms, the festival is also popular in many other regions of India, notably Bengal (where it is known as Durgā Pūjā) and Karnataka (where it is called Dasarā). Navarātri means ‘nine nights’ and throughout India the festival is celebrated on the first nine lunar days (tithi) of the bright fortnight (i.e. the fortnight ending on full moon) of the lunar month ofāśvina. In the Tamil calendar, however, the year is divided into twelve solar months and Navarātri is said to occupy the nine lunar days beginning with the day after new moon in the solar month ofpuraṭṭāci(September-October). Very occasionally, the Tamil formula may supply the wrong date. In many years, the festival only lasts eight weekdays, as two lunar days may fall within one weekday. (In some parts of India, a Navarātri festival is celebrated in the spring, but that is not discussed here.)
More thieves, fewer members
Authors: Mackenzie D. N.
Published: January 2010

As Dr. Y. Yoshida, Kyoto, kindly points out to me, the Buddhist Sogdian Ýδ('k)h in P 3, 14, 87 which, following Benveniste, I took as ‘limb, member’ (BSOAS, XLVI, 3, 1983, 535) can as well, even more likely, also be translated ‘wound’, as in P 7, 64. This leaves SCE 119, 121 wxwšw Ýδ'kh as the only support for a Ýδ- ‘*limb’. There it translates indriya in , otherwise 'nδ"y. But, given the fact that the six senses are also described as ‘six great thieves’ wxwšw mz'yx t'yt, it seems all too likely that Ýδ'kh in SCE also means ‘thief’ (in the numerative), however poorly this pejorative term fits the context. This spoils my suggested pun and, until other evidence emerges, removes Ýαδ-δ ‘*limb’ from the Sogdian vocabulary, leaving only B Ýαδ- m. ‘thief’and B, Chr. Ýαδ- f. ‘wound’ (cf. Khwarezmian 'Ýδ f. idem).
Many deep baptisms: reflections on religious, chiefly Muslim, conversion in Black Africa
Authors: Fisher Humphrey J.
Published: January 2010

The primary purpose of this paper—apart from a personal concern to offer a token of affection and respect to a friend and colleague of many years’ standing—is to consider two analytical models (one drawn from early Christian history, the other from the history of science), and to suggest ways in which these may help us to interpret the data of religious, and in particular Muslim, change in sub-Saharan Africa.
Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Authors: Geller M. J.
Published: January 2010

One of the fundamental innovations of the early Church was the abolition of an ancient, venerable institution—divorce, the practice of which was as widespread as marriage itself. The explicit ban on divorce found in the Gospels ran counter to legal systems of the known world, with one notable exception: among the sectarian group whose rules are enshrined in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a stance against divorce can be verified, implying that a legal innovation of early Christianity can be tracked back to its origins in Sectarian Judaism.

By the time Christianity was emerging, marriage and divorce had already co-existed for a long time; in Mesopotamia marriage contracts had for two millennia been anticipating the possibility of divorce, with litigation governing the dissolution of marriage and division of properties. The best evidence, however, for the precursors to late Hellenistic (i.e. pagan, Jewish, and Christian) legal practice derives from a group of Neo-Babylonian marriage contracts dating from the seventh to third centuries B.C.
A New Autograph Fragment of Maimonides'sEpitomesof Galen (De Locis Affectis)
Authors: Hopkins Simon
Published: January 2010

Unlike most of the medical works of Maimonides (1135–1204), which enjoyed wide circulation both in their original Arabic form and in Hebrew or Latin translations, hisEpitomesof Galen seem never to have become widespread or popular. Whereas his other medical compositions are usually extant in a good number of manuscripts, and in their original language are often available in both Hebrew and Arabic script, the manuscript attestation of Maimonides'sEpitomesof Galen is rather meagre. Steinschneider, whose splendid works remain the basic tools of reference for all research in this field, devotes to the ArabicEpitomesa mere three lines and lists only three manuscripts containing them (in fact, containing only a small part of them); Hebrew translations are not known to have been made, and not one of theEpitomesappears to have found its way into Latin. In 1966 two further manuscripts, both of them fragments from the Taylor-Schechter collection in the hand of Maimonides himself, became available when S. M. Stern published his ‘Ten autographs by Maimonides—fragments of medical works, responsa, letters and prescriptions’ inMaimonidis Commentarius in Mischnam… Vol. III, Corpus Codicum Hebraicorum Medii Aevi, ed. R. Edelmann, Pars I (Hafniae, 1966),11–29. The first two of these ten autographs are fragments of theEpitomesof Galen, to the publication of which Stern prefixed a fine discussion of the contents of these Maimonidean Epitomes and a summary of what is known about them.
Pīshkash: present or tribute?
Authors: Lambton Ann
Published: January 2010

The giving of gifts, though not peculiar to Persian society, is particularly common in that society. There are a large number of words designating gift or present. Among them are ḥadiya, ՙatiya, ṣilat, tuḥfa, ՙinayat, inՙām and pīshkash. Some implicitly define the status of the giver or the recipient. ՙInāyat implies a favour conferred by the giver; inՙām defines the superior status of the giver in relation to the recipient and often amounts to a gratuity. Pīshkash, which may originally have had a fairly neutral meaning, came to mean a present from someone of an inferior status. In the ninth/fifteenth century, if not before, it came to be used also in the sense of a due or tribute paid to the ruler or his officials. Tashrīf, pāy-andāz, taՙāruf, taṣadduq, khidmatī and taqdīmī usually signify an inferior status on the part of the one who offers the gift.
Readings of the Qur՚ān in London and Najaf: John Wansbrough and Muḥammad Bāqir al-Ṣadr
Authors: Mallat Chibli
Published: January 2010

Muḥammad Bāqir al-Ṣadr read the lectures which were published after his death under the title al-Madrasa al-Qur՚āniyya a few months before his arrest and execution, without trial, by the authorities in Baghdad. John Wansbrough, it is said, received threats following the publication of Quranic studies and The sectarian milieu. These two episodes of the late 1970s, in places as far apart as London and Najaf, show how fraught discussion of the Qur՚ān might be by the late twentieth century. That discussion of the literature of the sacred has always been a delicate exercise may be a truism, but at least there is solace in placing the writings of authors such as ?adr and Wansbrough in the long perspective of such threats to creativity. It provokes the soothing thought that even in this domain, the creative contribution will, sooner rather than later, establish itself against the hostility of ‘ la bêtise au front de taureau’. Such comfort may be drawn from the famous precedent of a cause célèbre in which creative novelty found itself on trial:
Modern Egyptian renaissance man
Authors: Ostle Robin
Published: January 2010

The rise of political consciousness in the Arab Provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century has long been referred to as an era of rebirth or resurrection (nahḍa), and from its earliest stages this period saw a dual process of aspirations to political emancipation and creative waves of cultural regeneration. Thus George Antonius was moved to attribute the beginnings of the Arab national movement to the foundation of a modest literary society in Beirut in 1847; the two figures who dominated the intellectual life of Syria in the mid nineteenth century—Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī and Buṭrus al-Bustānī—were ded icated to the resurrection of the lost world of classical Arabic literature, to the virtual re-creation of Arabic as one of the languages of the modern world, and to preaching the virtues of education based on inter-confessional tolerance and patriotic ideals. The most distinguished area of the early history of modern Arabic literature is neo-classical poetry, whose revival of the achievements of the golden age of the ‘Abbāsids provided the foundation on which the first tentative steps towards the renewal of the great tradition were to be based. Indeed the technical excellence of the neo-classical mode was such that it dominated poetry in Egypt at least until the late 1920s, and for even longer in Iraq and the rest of the Levant.
Two Parthian ostraca from Nippur
Authors: Shared Shaul
Published: January 2010

While looking at the Babylonian incantation bowls found at Nippur and kept at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia during the academic year 1992–93, i when I had the privilege of being a fellow of the Annenberg Institute, I came across three ostraca which seem to have escaped notice so far. Professor Wansbrough has been interested in so many aspects of the history of the Near East that I hope that this new find will also please him.

Two of the ostraca in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania are Parthian. The third is written in the Aramaic script but contains apparently a Middle Persian inscription. I hope to publish it shortly.

Parthian ostracon 1 (pis. I-II)

One of the two Parthian ostraca, B2983 in the Museum collection, is written on a piece of pottery now measuring a maximum of 12 x 7 cm. The potsherd is not preserved in its entirety. It is chipped on the left, at the end of line 1, and the fact that lines 4–6 are missing their endings shows that there was a piece broken diagonally in the lower left side of the pottery piece. It is written in the chancery style of Parthian, both as far as its script and as far as its language is concerned. It is quite close in its opening style and ductus to the Parthian letter on parchment found at Dura Europos.
The Great Goddess and Fulfilment in Love: Rādhā Seen Through a Sixteenth-Century Lens
Authors: Pauwels Heidi R.M.
Published: January 2010

In the Hindu pantheon the goddess Rādhā, Krsna's milkmaid lover and consort, is a relative newcomer. Notwithstanding her ‘youth’, she has already attracted scholarly attention (Hawley and Wulff, 1982; Olson, 1983; Kinsley, 1986 and 1989). The interest in this goddess has to do with her ambiguous relation with the male god with whom she is associated; though she has no independent existence from her ‘Viṣṇu’, she is not completely submissive to him either. In fact, Rādhā's devotees affirm her superiority over Kṛṣṇa. The relation between Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa certainly is not always portrayed as one eternal happy fulfilment (saṃbhoga-śṛṅgāra). One of the basic traits of this goddess is her suffering, mainly on account of his (real or imagined) unfaithfulness. It is in fact the very stubborn strength of her love that forms the basis for Rādhā's exaltation as a model of devotion. Ironically, with the rise her status, the need to provide an end to her suffering increases. Blissful union with her lover is clearly felt to be the prerogative for a great goddess, and with that the inevitable marital status is only one step away. In this paper I propose to discuss the historical moment when this ‘happy ending’ becomes important.
Vertical or horizontal? Reading directions in Japanese
Authors: Obana Yasuko
Published: January 2010

The Japanese language was traditionally written vertically. Recently, journals, textbooks and academic reference works have appeared with the script written horizontally. One reason for this may be that quotations of foreign names and articles (written in European languages) and mathematical equations often appear in technical texts, and it is therefore more convenient to have the main text of this kind of work written horizontally.
Waqf inscription from Ramla c. 300/912–13
Authors: Sharon Moshe
Published: January 2010

In the 1994 season of the excavations in Ramla, archaeologist Don Glick, digging on behalf of Israel Antiquities Authority, exposed in a field on the eastern part of the city, some 600 m. to the south east of Birkat al-ՙAnaziyya, a complex of water installations consisting of two small basins or troughs (one 1.00 × 1.50 m. and the other 0.50 × 0.62 m.), and water canals and pipes. One of the canals was covered with a slab of marble, with an Arabic inscription, in a secondary usage. In the course of fitting the stone to its new purpose, it was cut and a few lines from the top and bottom of the inscription were lost. From the contents of the inscription, as we shall soon see, it can be learnt that the field and the water installations continued to be in use, long after the inscription ceased to serve its purpose, for it was utilized in the repairs of the water installations in the field at some later date.
Compounding in Qafar
Authors: Hayward R. J.
Published: January 2010

The language described in this chapter is spoken by at least three million people who call themselves Qafar, though earlier European writers and travelers usually referred to them as Danakil. The Qafar inhabit that vast tract of land which stretches from the Red Sea coast south and west as far as the scarplands of the Ethiopian Plateau, an area generally referred to as the Danakil Depression. With the exception of narrow belts of luxuriant jungle along the banks of rivers, such as the Awash and the Mille, which descend into the Depression, the country is largely desert; though even quite short spells of rain can bring grass and other transient plant life back into some parts. Although Qafar living in large coastal towns such as Djibouti and Assab and those on the Red Sea coast who live by fishing have clearly abandoned past oralism as a way of life, the majority of Qafar remain pastoralists, and pastoralism is strongly reflected in the lexicon of their language.
Shuhayd Al-Balkhī, A Poet and Philosopher of the Time of Rāzī
Authors: de Blois François
Published: January 2010

Shuhayd (or Shahīd) al-Balkhī is remembered mainly as one of the earliest poets in Neo-Persian. But he was also a minor poet in Arabic and, moreover, a tantalizingly obscure figure in the history of Muslim philosophy in the ninth century. A first sifting of the relevant biographical material was made by M. Qazwīnī in 1910 and the only really significant contributions since have come from P. Kraus and most recently from G. Lazard, who published a critical edition and translation of the surviving fragments of Shuhayd's Persian poetry together with a comprehensive bibliography. The present attempt to add a bit more flesh to Shuhayd's still decidedly skeletal biography is based essentially on just two texts, one of which has been known all along, but has not, I think, previously been understood correctly; the other has only recently become available.
Brahui etymologies and phonetic developments: new items
Authors: Emeneau M. B.
Published: January 2010

1. Bray's excellent work (1909, 1934) on Brahui, the Dravidian language spoken, so improbably, in Baluchistan, could not help but be used to the full by Burrow and myself in our 35 years of work on Dravidian etymologies. My very short contact, no more than eight hours, with Brahui speakers at the Chanhu-daro excavation early in 1936 (Emeneau, 1937) had stimulated me and provided a background for intensive etymological study based on Bray's material. This resulted in my publications, especially in 1962, reprinted in part and with some slight change in 1980a (pp. 315–49). In this latter publication (p. 318) I ventured a statement: ‘More descriptive field-work would certainly provide [more material on the language]. Whether much more would emerge to add to Bray's account is uncertain. Certainly it seems that vocabulary additions would probably include no new items from the Dravidian heritage’.
The Ramtek inscriptions
Authors: Bakker Hans
Published: January 2010

The hill of Ramtek (21°.28´N, 79°.28´E),c. 45 km. NE of Nagpur (Maharashtra), merits special attention because it appears to be one of the very few places in India where an uninterrupted historical development from the fourth century A.D. to the present day can be investigated through a series of archaeological monuments which, although partly restored or built over in later periods, seem never to have been exposed to destructive and iconoclastic forces. From at least the fifth century onwards the hill, also known as Rāmagiri, Sindūragiri, or Tapamgiri (Tapogiri), served as a regional centre of religious activity and probably, also had a more secular function as an outstanding strategic base controlling the highway that connected, and still connects, the central and eastern part of the basin of the Ganges with the northern Deccan. This could possibly explain, at least in part, why the religious structures on top of the hill have attracted the attention and care of the rulers of the area from a very early date.
A Nestorian monastic settlement on the island of Ṣīr Banī Yās, Abu Dhabi: a preliminary report
Authors: King G. R. D.
Published: January 2010

Sīr Banī Yās is an island in the Western Region of Abu Dhabi, off the coast from Jabal Dhanna (Zanna) (fig. 1). Much of the landscape of the island has been entirely changed in recent years through earthmoving and landfill although the pre-modern terrain still exists in a few areas. There has also been widespread tree planting, and vast areas of Ṣīr Banī Yas are fenced to protect the plantations from gazelle, great herds of which roam free on the island. Nevertheless, limited areas with significant archaeological remains survived the plantation and the associated trenching.
‘The Traditions of Mahosadha’: legal reasoning from Northern Thailand
Authors: Huxley Andrew
Published: January 2010

Twenty years ago hardly any legal texts from the Middle Mekong region were known. Now more than a 150 legal manuscripts have been borrowed from monastery book-chests, cleaned and microfilmed. Only one of these discoveries has been translated into a non-Thai language, but that is a substantial and important text. Aroonrut Wichienkeeo's and Gehan Wijeyewardene's Laws of King Mangrai translates a manuscript from ‘The Elephant Supported Temple’ in Nan which Richard Davis arranged to be copied. Reviewing it in these pages I suggested that the MS has jumbled together four distinct works in two broad categories. The bulk of the text consists of rules about family, theft and compensation drawn from works called Worldly law and the law of Dhamma (§1–49) and Mangrai's Dhammathat (§50–76). The rest of the MS deals with legal precedents rather than rules and can be divided into a collection of judgement tales (title unknown) (§77–87) and The traditions of King Mahosot (§88–106). There are corruptions, lacunae and interpolations throughout, but the earlier sections can at least be checked against other recensions of Northern Thai law. That is not possible for the last 20 sections: there is nothing in the surviving literature remotely similar to The traditions of King Mahosot. In this paper I attempt to reconstruct the original intentions of its author on contextual grounds: knowing what we do about Middle Mekong legal culture, what is the most plausible reconstruction of this damaged, but fascinating, work? My main aim will have been met if I can make the text more accessible to legal and political historians.
The Turkish Yarkand documents
Authors: Erdal Marcel
Published: January 2010

The land sale contracts of the late eleventh century published here are important for several reasons. First, they are the oldest known legal documents written in Turkish. Very many Uighur-Turkish civil documents were found in the more eastern parts of the Tarim basin, but none of those appear to be older than the thirteenth century. On the other hand, there are Central Asian legal documents in several non-Turkish languages from as early as the first centuries of our era. After the Turks had penetrated the area in alternately warlike and peaceful manner and become owners of land, they may have gone on using the local vernaculars for such purposes, as they adopted many other facets of local life. The present texts have a fairly rigid structure, but this should not be taken as an indication that they were preceded by a Turkish legal tradition: the Persian text of A.D. 1107 published by Minorsky (1942) shows a rather similar form, which may simply have been borrowed by the Turks. Formally, our documents differ from the non-Muslim deeds of land sale in Turkish, which appear to follow Chinese models; this also speaks against a common Turkish tradition. There is nothing surprising about this: the Turks were probably relatively new both to the area and the occupation.
Le renouveau technique dans le roman africain: Mudimbé et Sassine;
Authors: Aire Victor O.
Published: January 2010

‘Notre siècle a donné naissance, sous le nom de “romans”, à des ceuvres qui sont des monstres sacrés, et qui dépassent le roman en tant que genre’. R. M. Albérès, Metamorphoses du roman, Paris, 1966, 244–5.
An unpublished autograph fragment of Mainmonides'sGuide of the Perplexed
Authors: Hopkins Simon
Published: January 2010

Of maimonides' (1135–1204) prinicpal philosophical workDalā al-Hāirīn (More Nevuxim)four autograph fragments are known, each from a different Geniza collection:

The first discovery was made at the beginning of the century by H. Hirschfeld, Who identified two unjoined leaves in the Geniza collection of the University Library, Cambridge, and Published them, with photographs, in JQR, xv, 1902–3, 677–81 under the title: ‘The Arabic portion of the Cairo Geniza at Cambridgem IV. Two autograph fragments of Maimonides’ Dalālat al Ḥārin, These leaves cover Book I, chs. 64–65 and Book II, Chs.32–33
The ‘Traditional date of Zoroaster’ explained
Authors: Shahbazi A. Shapur
Published: January 2010

Despite countless discussions, the date of Zoroaster remains a controversial problem. This is due to the fact that the testimony of the available sources is meagre, conflicting, and often ambiguous, for these are based on traditions which were put into writing long after the prophet is supposed to have lived, and contain both fictitious elements and the rationalizations of ancient savants. Of these traditions, the one now most widely accepted in the West is that which counts ‘258 years from Zoroaster till Alexander’. Formerly a number of distinguished scholars—among them Windischmann, Tiele, Geiger, Oldenberg, Bartholomae, Meyer, and Christensen—questioned the credibility of this tradition, arguing with cogent reasons that Zoroaster must be placed much earlier, probably at about 1000b.c.In the second quarter of the present century, however, the late date gained credence, mainly on the ground that a precise figure transmitted by a people well known for their veracity must be based on historical facts. For a time this view almost came to prevail, primarily because outstanding authorities—such as Herzfeld, Taqizadeh, and Henning—gave it their support. But more recently, arguments in favour of an earlier date have again been advanced by a number of scholars. Yet the main difficulty remains, which is to explain, in the words of T. Burrow, ‘how this precise figure (i.e. 258) came to be adopted’. The purpose of the present article is to offer a solution to that problem, and to trace an older Iranian tradition that Zoroaster lived before 1000b.c.
La tradition écrite arabico-malgache: un aperçu sur les manuscrits existants
Authors: Munthe Ludvig
Published: January 2010

L'écriture actuelle à Madagascar ne date que du siècle dernier. En mars 1823, le roi Radama I a adopté les caractères latins et l'orthographe détaillée proposée par les missionnaires de son entourage à Tananarive, la capitale.

Il existait pourtant même avant cette date une tradition écrite en caractères arabico-malgaches, héritage laissé par les premières families arabes venues à la Grande Île au 11–13 siècle. Cette orthographe, appellée sorabe (écriture majuscule), a été gardée et cachée par la tribu Antaimoro de la côte est de Madagascar. Une vingtaine de personnes par génération apprend à lire et à écrire et transmet ces anciens manuscrits d'un caractère religieux ou historique aux futures générations.
Proto-Austronesian *taqən: an anomaly removed
Authors: Shorto H. L.
Published: January 2010

In BSOAS, XXXVIII, 1, 1975, at p. 92 I noted the anomaly in the Achinese and Mainland reflexes of the PAN base reconstructed by Dyen as *[tT]ahan: Ach. thön, töhön ‘to endure’, Cham tha:n ‘to draw back, restrain’, Röglai that ‘to set [trap]’, which imply rather *-q-. Dyen's *-h- rested on the comparison of Malay tahan ‘to restrain, to endure strain, to set [traps]’ with Tagalog tahán ‘cessation’, Samar-Leyte Bisayan táhan ‘to detain’, Bikol táhan ‘to endure more than another’. It required the assumption that Javanese tahan ‘to restrain, endure’, which also prima facie implies *-q-, was a loan ‘perhaps from Malay’.
Negative and non-assertive in Contemporary Hebrew
Authors: Glinert Lewis
Published: January 2010

This is a syntactic-semantic study of negative and non-assertive environments in Contemporary (Israeli) Hebrew (henceforth CH), with particular reference to the determiners and pro-forms specific to them. These are illustrated by the non-italicized forms in 1–3 below:

By ‘non-assertive environments’, I mean incomplete negation (as with Enghlish ‘hardly, few’), implied negation (as with ‘reluctant, hard’), questions and conditionals. In English, these environments all allow a similar use of ‘any, anyone’ and suchlike, e.g. ‘I hardly saw anyone, it's hard to persude anyone, did any stock go? The concept ‘non-assertive’ has been described for English by Quirk et al (1972:53), Klima (1964)—he uses ‘affective’—and others.
On the chapter divisions in the Lao-tzu
Authors: Henricks Robert G.
Published: January 2010

The Ma-wang-tui texts of Lao-tzu have seemingly confirmed two points long held to be true by many scholars: (1) that the text from an early date, if not right from the outset, was divided into two parts; and (2) that—while it is not claimed that the Ma-wang-tui texts represent the original text—it was not originally divided into chapters. This latter conclusion is open to debate since, although there are neither chapter numbers nor names in the Ma-wang-tui texts, there are punctuation dots (·) in part II of text A, often placed at the beginning of one of our present chapters. However, absence of punctuation elsewhere, and the failure of what there is to completely coincide with present chapter divisions, would seem to indicate at least that the present eighty-one chapter divisions—thirty-seven in part I and forty-four in part II—were not yet (c. 180 B.C.) uniformly observed.
The terms and conditions under which English trade was transacted with Ṣafavid Persia
Authors: Ferrier R. W.
Published: January 2010

The economic state of Ṣafavid Persia has not been extensively studied and much of that which is known is deived from European sources, British, Dutch, and Russian in particular and to a lesser extent from the French, Venetian, Turkish, and Portuguese archives. There is no doubt that among the buildings of the Court at Iṣfahān there were one or more registries (daftarkhāna) in which archives were kept and documentation recorded on a systematic basis. There is internal evidence from royal correspondence to earlier exchanges of letters and in some cases later decrees are modelled on earlier ones. Unfortunately, economic information from Persian sources has scarcley survived and it has to be presumed from circumstantial evidence that following the occupation of Iṣfahān by the Afghans the archives were destroyed or burnt.
From Jabal 'Āmil to Persia
Authors: Hourani Albert
Published: January 2010

Shī'ī scholars from Jabal 'Āmil, the hill-country which lies inland from Ṣaydā and Ṣūr in southern Lebanon, claim that theirs is the oldest of all Shī'ī communities. They attribute its foundation to Abū Dharr, a Companion of the Prophet and one of the first supporters of the claims of 'Alī to be his successor. He is said to have gone from Madīna to Damascus, and to have been exiled from there to the country districts of Bilād al-Shām, or Syria in the broader geographical sense. There is a mosque associated with his name in the village of Mays al-Jabal.
On the quietist and activist traditions in Islamic political writing
Authors: Lewis Bernard
Published: January 2010

From the earliest times, the political tradition of Islam, on the one hand as formulated in Islamic theology and law, on the other hand as expressed in the accepted versions of early Islamic history, contains two distinct and in some measure even contradictory principles concerning the problems of government and obedience, of which one might be described as authoritarian and quietist, the other as radical and activist. The exponents of both these principles point to the authority of the Qur'ān and tradition, and to the example of the Prophet himself. Both principles are indeed exemplified in the career and teachings of the Prophet and in the history of the early caliphate, which constitute the shared memorv and common heritage of Muslims everywhere. These two traditions may be examined separately.
Food supply and agricultural self-sufficiency in contemporary Iran
Authors: McLachlan K. S.
Published: January 2010

Iran was preeminently and agricultural country until recent times. Growth of oil production, exports and revenues during the course of the twentieth century led increasingly to it playing an expanded but rather geographically and economically restricted role in the structures of both employment and national income. As late as the 1960s, more than half of all Iranians in gainful employment were to be found in agriculture or related activities and most Iranians were essentially rural dwellers. Only with the advent of land reform and other upheavals in the countryside from 1961 was there a marked change in the situation. Whatever its other merits, land reform overthrew a form of equilibrium in rural areas that had previously fostered conservatism, isolation and immobility. Among the changes brought in the train of reforms enforced by the central authorities beginning in the early 1960s were displacement of population at an accelerating rate. Rural People left agricultural employment and, as soon as opportunity presented itself, moved from the villages to the towns.
The tombs of the 'Abbāsid caliphs in Baghdād
Authors: Allen Terry
Published: January 2010

The mausolea that safeguarded the remains of the Commanders of the Faithful are not preserved among the meagre remnants of 'Abbāsid Baghdād. The history of these prominent buildings can be reconstructed from historical sources, however, and their significance sketched. The evidence presented here is not new, but it may profitably be reviewed with regard to funerary practices, terminology, and the development of Islamic architectural forms.
A copy of a decree from the archives of the Fāṭimid Chancery in Egypt
Authors: Khan Geoffrey
Published: January 2010

The medieval registers of the papal Chancery and of the royal Chanceries of Western Europe, which have preserved archival copies of outgoing documents, are an invaluable source for students of medieval European history and diplomatics. Analogous sources from medieval Islamic Chanceries are practically non-existent. We know from literary works, especially the handbooks for government secretaries, that the medieval Islamic Chanceries kept records of the documents they issued by meticulously copying them and filing them in an archive. Some of the surviving documents which emanated from the Egyptian chanceries also attest to this practice. These often contain annotations made by copyists certifying that the document had been copied in the Chancery and/or in other government offices. We also have a report by a clerk of the Ayyūbid Chancery concerning the search in the archives for the copy of a decree which had been issued several years previously. To this report is attached a reproduction of the archival copy. The original contents of the archives of the medieval Egyptian Chanceries, however, have perished almost without a trace.
Raiding, reaction and rivalry: The Shāhsevan tribes in the constitutional period
Authors: Tapper Richard
Published: January 2010

The Shāhsevan tribes of Azarbayjan were involved in various important events during the Constitutional period. In spring 1908, border incidents in Shāhsevan territory, between tribesmen and Russian frontier guards, provided the Russians with a pretext for military intervention in Azarbayjan on a scale which hastened the fall of the Constitutionalist government in Tehran. During the winter of 1908–9, there were some Shāhsevan among the reactionary forces which besieged Tabrīz. In late 1909 most of the Shāhsevan chiefs joined a Union of tribes of eastern Azarbayjan, which proclaimed opposition to the Constitution and the intention of marching on Tehran and restoring the deposed Muḥammad 'Alī Shāh. They plunde ed Ardabīl, receiving wide coverage in the European press, but were soon subdued by Nationalist forces during that winter and spring 1910. Subsequently the Shāhsevan were regarded as dangerous potential support for muḥammad 'Ali, while the main activity of their warriors was resistance to the occupying Russian forces.
Notes on the nasal consonants of Yoruba
Authors: Ufomata Titilayo
Published: January 2010

Taking them one by one, it is generally agreed that [] are the allophones of /w r j/ occurring only before nasal vowels. Ward (1952) noticed the nasalization of these approximants before nasal vowels but was rather confused by their orthographic forms. We have observed that all instances of [ɲ] occur when [j] is followed by a nasal vowel. This non-syllabic palatal nasal is therefore an allophone of /j/ and it is different from the syllabic one which is homorganic with the following consonant. Examples of this non-syllabic [ɲ] can be seen in the following words:
Al-Bīrūni's Arabic version of Patañjali'sYogasūtra: a translation of the second chapter and a comparison with related texts
Authors: Pines Shlomo , Gelblum Tuvia
Published: January 2010

The following study contains a translation of al-Bīrūnī's rendering into Arabic of the second chapter of Patañjali'sYogasūtracum commentary. (On this point see our translation of al-Bīrūnī's rendering of the first chapter of Patañjali'sYogasūtra.) This translation is based on Ritter's edition of the Arabic text. Comparison has been made with the unique MS of Ritter's text: Köprülü, 1589, folios 412a–419a (written on the margins). We have also compared the text with parallel passages and expressions in al-Bīrūnī'sIndia. In some cases the passages inIndiaare identical, while in others they show differences. Sometimes these differences are merely stylistic. In other cases there is a doctrinal divergence.
Writing without letters
Authors: Ullendorff Edward
Published: January 2010

The late Dr. Mont Follick was a Labour Member of Parliament in the first post-war House of Commons and a dedicated advocate of spelling reform. I vividly remember a vigorous parliamentary debate, initiated by Mont Follick and supported, outside the House, by Bernard Shaw, which ranged widely over the field of spelling reform. When Mont Follick died, he left a generous bequest to the University of Manchester for the endowment of a chair whose occupant would concern himself with matters of spelling improvement and rationalization. The committee appointed by the Manchester University Senate to study this offer and its academic implications had many interesting and enjoyable discussions, and we eventually emerged with a proposal, accepted by the Mont Follick trustees, for the establishment of a chair of Comparative Philology with special responsibility for studies of graphic and phonemic representation (or some such formula). After exhaustive inquiries we appointed William Haas to this chair in 1963, and his subsequent activities and publications have shown that this was a singularly felicitous choice and a wellnigh ideal appointment.
A Fortified Tower-House in Wādī Jirdān (Wāḥidī Sultanate) — I
Authors: Doe Brian , Serjeant R. B.
Published: January 2010

In September 1964 we were able, after considerable difficulty, to reach the village al-Jinainah (al-Junainah) of Wādī Jirdān (which we had already visited earlier in the year along the spectacular new road from Wādī ‘Amaqīn). In the afternoon of that day and early next morning before leaving to return to ‘Ataq we made a brief survey of the tower known as al-Muqaiyad—the subject of this article. The visit being so hurried and part of the work being carried out after dark, we were not able to record everything in quite the detail we should have wished. We are much indebted to Lt.-Col. Adrian Donaldson, D.S.O., M.B.E., the CO., and Major S. F. B. Francis, T.D., then of the 5th Battalion, Federal Regular Army, the latter escorting us to the mouth of Wādī Jirdān at ‘Ayādh, and for the generous hospitality they gave us at ‘Ataq. We acknowledge with pleasure the courtesy of Shaikh Ruwais b. Miḥsin b. Ḥasan Namārī Hilālī, Federal Councillor, who permitted us to survey the ḥuṣn and supplied us with much information on it, as also to his brother Ḥasan b. Miḥsin.
New Evidence On The Origins Of The Kunta—I
Authors: Whitcomb Thomas
Published: January 2010

The conversion of the Znāga of the western Sahara 1 to Islam may have begun as early as the second/eighth century, but the spread of Arabic as a spoken language in the area began only with the immigration of Arabic-speaking tribes 2 in the eighth/fourteenth century, and the development of many of the conventional Arab and Muslim perspectives which now exist among most tribes of Znāga origin seems to have taken place only during the last two or three centuries.
Notes on Sogdian Palaeography
Authors: Sims-williams Nicholas
Published: January 2010

It has long been recognized that the letters n and z, whose initial and medial forms had already fallen together by the date of the ‘Ancient letters’, remained distinct in final position, -n being provided with a long horizontal or vertical tail. At a slightly later period in the history of the Sogdian script two more pairs of letters—still distinguished in all positions in the ‘Ancient letters’— fell together: ‘ain with r,1 and x (ḥīth) with γ (gimel). The rare letter ‘ain does not occur in final position; but both x and γ are comparatively common in all positions. It is therefore remarkable that it should never have been noticed that final x and y are regularly distinguished in exactly the same way as -n and -z. The distinction is clearest in the Buddhist manuscripts,2 in which final x has a long horizontal or vertical tail: — (= ‘horizontal -x’) or L (= ‘vertical -x’), while final γ has only a rudimentary tail pointing down-wards. There is some variation in the distribution of the two forms of -x. In some manuscripts, e.g. Vim. and P 2, both are used interchangeably. In most ‘horizontal -x’ is preferred: it is the only form found in VJ, SCE, Dhu., P 5, and P 6, while in Dhy. and P 3 ‘vertical -x’ is also occasionally employed
A Genealogical Note Relevant To The Dating Of Sheikh Hussein Of Bale
Authors: Andrzejewski B. W.
Published: January 2010

Although a substantial amount of information is available about Sheikh Hussein of Bale,1 even an approximate dating of his life has so far presented considerable difficulties. An important clue is provided by the genealogy of Sayyid Mahdi [′mæhdi] 2 of Merca in Anonymous 1927, discussed in Ceriilli, 1938, 20–1.3 This genealogy gives 25 intermediate ancestors between Sheikh Hussein and Sayyid Mahdi, but does not indicate when the latter lived.
A new version of the Chinese–Vietnamese vocabulary of the Ming dynasty—II
Authors: Davidson Jeremy H. C. S.
Published: January 2010

AN-NAN-KUO I-YO: VIETNAMESE VOCABULARY
Abraha and Muhammad: some observations apropos of chronology and literary topoi in the early Arabic historical tradition
Authors: Conrad Lawrence I.
Published: January 2010

In has long been known that the chronological scheme commonly transmitted by the early Arabic sources for events of the latter half of the sixth century A.D. poses a number of major problems. These are sufficiently important to raise serious doubts about the reliability of the traditional chronological framework for the last years of the Jāhilīya in general. A key problem is that of the date for 'Ām al-fīl, the ‘Year of the Elephant’, so called after the expedition of Abraha into the Hijāz in that year. The early Arabic literary tradition does not specifically date this event: it simply maintains, first, that Muammad was born in the Year of the Elephant, and second, that he was summoned to act as God's Prophet at the age of forty. Considered together, the many reports to this effect imply―based on the prevailing view that the mab'ath is to be dated to approximately A.D. 610―that both the expedition of Abraha and the birth of Muhammad occurred in about A.D. 570.
Tahkāl: the nineteenth–century record of two lost Gandhāra Sites
Authors: Errington Elizabeth
Published: January 2010

The name Tahkā is today remembered by archaeologists only as the provenance of the famous Gandhāra statue of Kuvera in the Lahore Museum (fig. 1:Lahore 3/G101). Little is now known concerning the site itself, its precise location, or whether any architecural remains are still visible on the ground. Yet a hundred years age, the area around Tahkāl contained the most prominent Gandhāra ruins in the immediate neighbourhood of Peshawar, attracting the attention of all interested visitors who came to the city. It is moreover possible to construct a clear picture of the remains from their contemporary descriptions and from the forgotten archaeological record of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, the recent rediscovery of Punjab Public works Department reports of the 1870s, printed in the Punjab Government Gazette, provides many details concerning the precise nature of two of the three major Buddhist structures in this area.
Tibeto-Burman and Indo-European loans in Burushaski Kinship terminology
Authors: Parkin R. J.
Published: January 2010

Burushaski consists of two dialects spoken respectively in the Hunza and Nagir valleys (the dialect most usually called Burushaski; henceforward Bu.) and the Yasin valley (Wershikwar, henceforward Wk.) in the Northern Areas of Pakistani Kashmir. Although the language is genetically an isolate, it contains a considerable number of loans from the unrelated languages with which it is in contact, chiefly Indo-European (IE) Shina, Khowar and Dumaki, and Tibeto-Burman (TB) Balti. The chief sources for Burushaski have no difficulty in identifying loans from the former, but TB ones have by and large escaped notice or been disregarded. It is only Lorimer who deals with this question at any length, and even he relegates the data to an appendix in his dictionary because, he says (III, pp. vii-viii), of his limited knowledge of Tibetan. Therefore, the bulk of this article will discuss all the identifiable instances of TB loans in Burushaski in one particular area of vocabulary, namely, kin terms, as well as the possibility that the standard TB honorific prefix, a–, often attached to TB kin terms for elder kin, is present at least in Bu., in both loans and native material. Also discussed are a number of more problematic cases, as well as some that can only be understood as instances of common borrowing by both Burushaski and TB from IE. Finally, I list for convenience the undoubted IE loans among Burushaski kin terms, which will demand much less discussion in view of their identification already in Lorimer and Berger. The whole is intended as a preliminary to a further, somewhat longer, article I wish to publish discussing the whole Burushaski kinship terminology from a more semantic and anthropological point of view.
The two prefix-conjugations in East Cushitic, East Semitic, and Chadic
Authors: Voigt Rainer M.
Published: January 2010

It has long been observed by Cushiticists that the prefix conjugation in various Semitic languages represents one of the major arguments for treating this language group as belonging to the Semitohamitic (Erythraic, Afroasiatic) language phylum. From Semitic and Berber we are acquainted with (at least) two different prefix conjugations, a short one and a long one. THe long from is found in Berber and in several Semitic languages, although there is no general agreement about this. With this in mind, we should be surprised if we could not find so-called long imperfect forms in Cushitic as well. A strong candidate would be the Beja present which nasalizes the second radical, which is lengthened in other languages. In this context, however, I should like, not to discuss the problem bearing on the verbal forms of North Cushitic, but rather to draw the attention of the compartive Semitohamiticist to some East Cushitic languages for which new material is now available. ITt seems convenient to limit this discussion to the Rendille and Boni languages which have recently become knownthrough the work of Bernd Heine (1975–76, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982) and Hans-Jürgen Sasse (1979, 1980a, 1980b).
Li Chien-Wu and Modern Chinese Drama
Authors: Pollard D. E.
Published: January 2010

In the sketchy accounts which at present stand in for histories of the modern Chinese theatre, the name of Li Chien-wu appears either not at all, or in the lists of ‘these also served’. He was one of the several talented play-wrights who neither presented themselves early enough to earn honourable mention as pioneers, nor were emphatic enough to make a lasting political impression. He came of age in that lost, perhaps now futile, decade of the 1930's when so many Chinese writers discovered what to do with the art forms their predecessors had introduced and experimented with, when the native genius had absorbed and was beginning effectively to explore the wider possibilities of literature—the darker recesses of the mind, the lighter uplands of comedy—which Western works had opened to them.
George Steiner's after Babel
Authors: Ullendorff Edward
Published: January 2010

In coming to talk about George Steiner's extraordinary tour de force, a work that was clearly designed to be a masterpiece and so narrowly and peculiarly falls short of that aim, I feel rather like an inverted Balaam, for unlike Balaam I came to bless and not to curse, to appreciate and not to disparage. And now I stand here, not without awe before so monumental an achievement, yet full of doubts, questions, uncertainty, even some distrust.
Two Incantation Bowls Inscribed in Syriac and Aramaic
Authors: Geller Markham J.
Published: January 2010

The following incantation bowl from the Martin Bodmer Library, Geneva, contains an inscription in Syriac script consisting of 13 lines on the interior and one line on the exterior surface of the bowl. The inscription begins in the centre of the bowl, which contains an image of a snake with its tail in its mouth. The bowl measures 13·8 inches in diameter and 5·8 inches in height.