bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
An Ascetic Vow and an Unseemly Oath?:īlā՚ andẓihārin Muslim law
Authors: Hawting Gerald
Published: January 2010

In societies where oaths and vows are taken seriously the problem inevitably arises of how to escape from them when necessary. The story of Jephthah and his daughter in Judges 11.3Off. illustrates what might happen if no escape mechanism is sought. In both the Bible (Num. 30:3) and the Qur՚ān (5:89) we are told that we must fulfil our oaths and vows, but both scriptures also set out acceptable ways of atonement for certain occasions when fulfilment proves impossible (cf. Lev. 5:1 ff. and Qur՚ān loc. cit.). The atonement might then serve as an escape route for someone who is bound by an oath or vow which he can no longer keep. Other ways out were also provided by the law and its interpreters (sometimes known in Islam as theahl al-ḥall wa՚l-՚aqd, ‘those who loose and bind’): the words used might be held to be invalid; recourse might be had to the principle that we cannot be held to vows which are beyond our capacity or are contrary to God's law; our state of mind at the time we made the vow (whether in anger, jest, or mental distraction) might be taken into consideration, etc. The tension thus generated between the desire to stress the seriousness of oaths and vows on the one hand, and the need to be realistic in recognizing human weakness on the other, could be considerable.
Ghazan, Islam and Mongol tradition: a view from the Mamlūk sultanate
Authors: Amitai-Preiss Reuven
Published: January 2010

The conversion of Ghazan Khan to Islam in A.H. 694/A.D. 1295 was an event of great importance for both the Mongol ruling class and the Muslim subjects of his kingdom. The story of this conversion, based primarily on semi-official Persian works emanating from the Īlkhānid state itself, has been retold and analysed in varying detail by several modern scholars. Recently, Dr. Charles Melville, using contemporary Arabic sources from the Mamluk Sultanate, has enriched our knowledge of this event; in addition, he has suggested that the Islamization of the Mongols may have been well advanced even before Ghazan's conversion. Melville deals mainly with Ghazan's conversionper se, as well as the events that led up to it. As for the nature of Ghazan's Islam, he writes: ‘It is beyond the scope of this paper to speculate on the sincerity of Ghazan's conversion, which we can never know, or on what he actually understood of Islam …’. He does show, however, that Ghazan's conversion to Islam was more than just a personal decision based on religious conviction: one motive behind this move was a desire to attract those Mongols who had already become Muslims, and thus to win their support in his struggle against Baidu.
On the Orthodoxy of Sasanian Zoroastrianism
Authors: Boyce Mary
Published: January 2010

It is some time since a book has been published which focuses entirely on Sasanian Zoroastrianism, and one from Professor Shaul Shaked, who has studied the religion at this period for many years, is sure of eager attention. The Sasanian epoch naturally attracts scholars approaching Zoroastrian studies from the Persian or Semitic fields; and the author points moreover to its interest for students of religions more generally, since this was a time when a number of other faiths were jostling for place within Iran, from Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity to the ill-fated but then vigorously expanding Manichaeism, and lesser ones of diverse hues. All this, and ‘an openness to Greek scientific and philosophical ideas’, made for as ‘lively and diversified a period of intellectual and religious activity as could ever be found in ancient Iran’ (p. 12).
Colour Terms in Shang Oracle Bone Inscriptions
Authors: Tao Wang
Published: January 2010

Most people are born with the natural ability to see and distinguish the colours of objects and things in everyday life, but to explain in words what colour is, is a more complicated matter. Scientists have generally accepted that, physically, colour is the visual aspect of electromagnetic radiant energy having a spectral composition ranging in wavelength from about 380 to about 720 nanometres. From the psychological point of view, it is a sensation produced on the eye and in the brain by rays of light when resolved by selective reflection. The problems raised by the study of colour use are thus interdisciplinary.
The Emigration of ՙUtba B. Abīwaqqāṣ From Mecca To Medina
Authors: Lecker Michael
Published: January 2010

This short article deals with the emigration of ՙUtba b. Abī Waqqāṣ (or ՙUtba b. Mālik), a member of the Quraysh subdivision named Banū Zuhra, from Mecca to Medina, which occurred several years before the Hijra of the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions. ՙUtba's famous brother, Saՙd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, belonged to the inner circle of Companions surrounding the Prophet Muḥammad from early on in his career. ՙUtba, by contrast, fought against the Prophet at Uՙud and probably died a pagan.
Records of lunar eclipses in medieval Arabic chronicles
Authors: Stephenson F. Richard , Said Said S.
Published: January 2010

In a previous paper, we discussed a series of solar eclipse observations recorded in medieval Arabic chronicles both for their astronomical and chronological value. In the present paper we investigate lunar eclipses reported in these same sources as well as in many further chronicles. It should be stressed that our interest here is limited to eclipse records from chronicles; we have not included any material from technical treatises composed by astronomers. The observations are largely from al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), Egypt, Iraq, and Syria; they mainly cover the date range from A.D. 867 to 1520, with additions from 1674 to 1791.
The Realm of the Imām the Faṭīmids in the tenth century
Authors: Brett Michael
Published: January 2010

Despite their period from the tenth to the twelfth century, at the height of the Middle Ages; despite their position in Egypt, at the centre of the civilization of the Near and Middle East; and despite their prominence as the third Caliphate of Islam, the Fāṭimids lack a satisfactory modern history of their dynasty. This is partly because of the length of their life, which covers the histories of so many hundreds of years; partly because of the span of their empire from North Africa to Egypt and Syria, stretching across the histories of so many regions; and finally because, at the level of Islam itself, their empire was divided between theirdawlaor state and theirdaՙwaor doctrine. The doctrine, which focused on the Fāṭimid Imām as thequṭbor pole of faith, gave the dynasty its peculiar strength and endurance. The failure of that doctrine to supersede the Islam of the schools, however, left the Fāṭimids increasingly isolated and ultimately vulnerable. Standing outside the mainstream of Islamic tradition, the dynasty's own version of its history was disregarded. Instead, its components passed out of their original context to be incorporated into the regional or universal histories of subsequent authors. Maqrīzī was alone in compiling hisIttiՙāẓ al-ḥunafā'as a history of the dynasty in Egypt, introduced by a miscellany of information on its origins and previous career.
The Goddess Mahā;cīnakrama-Tārā (Ugra-Tārā) In Buddhist And Hindu Tantrism
Authors: Bühnemann Gudrun
Published: January 2010

It is well known that some goddesses are worshipped in both the Buddhist and Hindu Tantric traditions. A form of the Buddhist Vajrayoginī, accompanied by Vajravarṇanī and Vajravairocanī, is the prototype of the Hindu Chinnamastā accompanied by Ḍākinī and Varṅinī. Forms of Ekajaṭā and Mañjughoṣa were adopted from the Buddhist pantheon into the Hindu and worshipped by the same name. Usually it is not easy to trace how and when these adaptations took place. In the case of Mahācīnakrama-Tārā, a special form of Tārā, it has long been suspected that the goddess was imported from the Buddhist Tantric pantheon into the Hindu pantheon. In this paper I demonstrate, on the basis of clear textual evidence, how the goddess's description in a Buddhist sādhana was incorporated into the Hindu Phetkāriṅītantra, which was then quoted as an authoritative source regarding the goddess by later Hindu Tantras. I further examine representations of the goddess in art, and provide a new edition and translation of two sādhanas of Mahācīnakrama-Tārā.
An Early Missionary Syllabary for the Hangzhou Dialect
Authors: VanNess Simmons Richard
Published: January 2010

A picture of the phonology of the Hangzhou dialect at the turn of the century is found in a short book entitled Sound-table of the Hangchow dialect that was published in 1902 by the Church Missionary Society in Shàoxīng. The author of the book is not identified, but its production was no doubt associated with Bishop George Evans Moule, who for over 40 years, beginning in 1864, operated a mission in Hángzhōu affiliated with the Church Missionary Society. The spellings used in this book, which presents a syllabary of the Hángzhōu dialect, presumably reflect the system used in two textbooks on the dialect and a prayer book in colloquial Hángzhōu all written by Bishop Moule. The same spelling system was also used in a Hángzhōu vernacular translation of Matthew from the New Testament which was published sometime in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
Balādhur(Marking-nut): A Popular Medieval Drug for Strengthening memory
Authors: Bos Gerrit
Published: January 2010

According to the medieval medical concept, ultimately going back to Galen, memory is a psychical faculty located in the posterior ventricle of the brain. When this faculty is affected by a disturbance of the balance of the four bodily humours, i.e., by too much moisture and/or coldness of the brain, forgetfulness will be the result. One way to treat this affliction is to restore the humoral balance by administering warm drugs. A popular but also notorious drug for forgetfulness wasbalādhur(Semecarpus anacardiumL; marking-nut), indigenous in India, and called by the Arab physicians ‘ḥabb al-fahm’ (nut of apprehension). The popularity of the marking-nut is sometimes explained from the fact that its juice when exposed to the air turns into a black corrosive fluid which was used as an indelible ink for marking linen and woollen clothes. Another explanation is that the nut has the shape of a heart, cf. the Latin ‘anacardia’ and the Arabic epithet ‘ḥabb al-qalb’. The black, resinous, viscid and acrid juice of the nut is called ‘honey’ by the medieval physicians; it is, according to them, hot and dry in the fourth degree and is recommended for a variety of diseases, but above all forgetfulness.
Afin de siècleJapanese romantic in Istanbul: the life of Yamada Torajirō and hisToruko gakan
Authors: Esenbel Selçuk
Published: January 2010

The modern Japanese tourist visiting the Topkapi Sarai may well be struck by a display of sixteenth-century samurai armour and helmet held there. It was presented, along with a sword, to the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1892 by Yamada Torajirō (1866–1957), an important pioneer in the history of Turkish-Japanese relations and the subject of this paper. Yamada, who was to remain in the imperial capital for almost twenty years, was witness to the history of the Hamidian era of conservative modernism under the despotic regime of the so-called ‘Red Sultan’, and the subsequent dramatic transition to constitutionalism that came with the Young Turk revolution of 1908. He was one of only two Japanese resident in the city (possibly in the whole empire) in this period. The other was Nakamura Ejirō, owner of the first Japanese shop in Istanbul, and Yamada's friend and partner.
The Three-Bodied Shun and the Completion of Creation
Authors: Henricks Robert G.
Published: January 2010

Students of ancient China learn early on the story of Yaoand Shun. The great emperor Yao (traditional reign dates, 2356–2255 B.C.) chose the virtuous Shun as his replacement over his own son Tan Chu. Shun was the model of filial piety: when his parents and brother tried to kill him a number of times, he saw the fault as his own and tried all the harder to win their love and approval.
Drift and Noun Plural Reduplication in Afroasiatic
Authors: Ratcliffe Robert R.
Published: January 2010

Noun plurals showing partial reduplication appear sporadically in a wide variety of Afroasiatic languages, particularly in the Chadic, Cushitic, and Semitic groups. In past treatments it has generally been assumed that these examples are remnants of a widespread proto-Afroasiatic process of plural formation by reduplication. The following paper argues on empirical and theoretical grounds that it is more likely that reduplication as such was not a means of plural formation in proto-Afroasiatic and that a reduplicated plural only occurred as a morpho-phonologically conditioned variant of the prosodically extended stem (or ‘nternal-a’) plural. This paper seeks to demonstrate that in those languages where reduplication does occur as a major means of plural formation it is more easily interpreted as an innovation rather than as a conservative retention.
Sino-Bodic
Authors: Van Driem George
Published: January 2010

In terms of number of speakers, Tibeto-Burman vies with Indo-European for the title of the world's largest language family. Yet by comparison little is known of its past. In linguistic terms, eastern Eurasia has always been much more of aterra incognitathan western Eurasia. Speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages occupy a vast area in the heartland of eastern Eurasia, but Tibeto- Burman peoples are by no means the only inhabitants of the Orient. Yet at one time it was believed that virtually all languages spoken by what was impressionistically called ‘the Mongoloid race’ or ‘Mongolian races’ belonged to a vast language family known as Turanian. In the middle of the last century, Friedrich Max Müller, a celebrated champion of this theory, divided the languages of the Old World into three language families.
Islam, iconoclasm, and the declaration of doctrine
Authors: King G. R. D.
Published: January 2010

The attitude of the early Islamic state towards figurative representations is often cited as a source contributing to the establishment of officially-supported iconoclasm within the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 726. Islam has generally adopted a position opposed to the representational in secular art, and the exclusion of all figurative motifs from Islamic religious art is clear from the first, yet this attitude is not necessarily to be regarded as intrinsically iconoclastic in the true sense of the word; indeed, outside Arabia itself, the only evidence of iconoclasm until the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate in 132/750 is confined to the well-known attack on images and statues carried out on the orders of Yazīd II. b. ‘Abd al-Malik (101–105/720–724). This much discussed outbreak of iconoclasm is well documented by Islamic and Christian sources, but the very fact that it is so specifically associated with Yazīd's Caliphate suggests that it was considered unusual at the time. Although Christian sources carefully record the difficulties of their communities under the Umayyads, the absence of references to image-breaking under Caliphs before Yazīd implies that his action was a rarity worthy of comment: under normal circumstances, it would seem the Muslims left the Christians to use icons and representations or not, as they wished.
Towards a dialect geography of oman
Authors: Holes Clive
Published: January 2010

This study presents some new observations on selected features of the phonology and morphology of the Omani Arabic dialects, and attempts to place them in a peninsula-wide typological framework. The paper is based on the results of an analysis of tape-recorded conversational data gathered in more than thirty, mainly rural locations in northern Oman between 1985 and 1987. Most of the speakers were men and women aged 35 and above with little or no formal education who, if not retired, were engaged in traditional occupations such as farming, fishing, pottery and animal husbandry. Much of the data was gathered in the context of a study of the epidemiology of rheumatic diseases conducted on a random sample of 2,000 Omanis adults by my wife for the Omani Ministry of Health, during which the subjects were interviewed by me at length in their homes or places of work.
More magic spells and formulae Plates I-IV
Authors: Geller M. J.
Published: January 2010

A new text edition usually stimulates further publications and evaluations of similar texts. This situation particularly applies to J. Naveh and S. Shaked, Magic spells and formulae (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993), since much new material has come to light in recent years. The present article consists of additional texts which have special relevance to the above mentioned volume (see my review of Naveh-Shaked in this issue). Two magic bowls which appeared at Sotheby's (London) in 1985 were copied by me and sent to Naveh and Shaked for study and publication. One bowl in Jewish Aramaic script (Text A) was also copied by the present writer, but the bowl was not easily legible, and Naveh and Shaked chose not to include it within the corpus of bowls, because neither the photographs nor the hand copy were sufficiently reliable. Since the present owner and location of the bowl is unknown, I have included my hand copy of the bowl here, with an attempt to read as much as is reasonably legible, in the hope that eventually the bowl will reappear and corrections to these readings can be made, through collation of the original. A second bowl, in Syriac script, was edited by Naveh and Shaked (Bowl 17), but since they chose not to publish the hand copy of the bowl, it is given below (as Text B).
The Proto-Omotic verb formative *d–
Authors: Hayward R. J.
Published: January 2010

One major problem which comes to the fore in comparing Omotic languages is the wide diversity seen in the inflectional morphology of the verb. To the linguist coming from Ethiopian Semitic or East Cushitic the variety encountered from language to language in Omotic is bewildering. The problem may be illustrated by comparing paradigms of three languages of the Ometo cluster—a group which on the basis of lexicostatistic calculations is considered to be fairly close-knit. Two of the languages, Zayse and Koyra, have been classified (together with Haruro, Ganjule, Harro and Zargula) as East Ometo, a label which is intended to convey a genetic as well as a geographical affiliation. The third language is Gofa, which, as a member of the dialect cluster which includes Wolaitta, Kullo, Konta, Gemu, Zala, Malo, Oyda, etc., is classified as Central Ometo. The paradigms compared are: (i) the perfect (or past) declarative, (ii) the perfect (or past) interrogative, (iii) the imperfect (or present) declarative, (iv) the imperfect (or present) interrogative. The verb employed in the illustration is wod'-‘kill’.
Priests, cattle and men
Authors: Boyce Mary
Published: January 2010

It is about three-quarters of a century since themaryannu(maryanni) of Mitanni and its dependencies, appearing in Hittite and Egyptian records of the second millennium B.C., were first discussed in connexion with the IndoIranians. In 1910 H. Winckler interpreted the word as a title belonging to Aryan infiltrators from the north, who had come to form an aristocracy among the Hurrians; and he recorded the suggestion by F. C. Andreas connecting it with Vedicmárya‘ young man, man, hero ’. Subsequently W. F. Albright presented a carefully documented case for considering themaryannuto be primarily ‘chariot-warriors’, arguing that from about 1700 to 1200 B.C. ‘chariots played the same role in warfare that cavalry did later, and the chariot-warriors occupied the same social position that was held by the⃛ feudal knights of the Middle Ages’. He further pointed out, with regard to Vedicmárya, that a semantic development from ‘young man’ to ‘warrior’ is widely attested. Thereafter R. T. O'Callaghan adduced yet more evidence from Egyptian and cuneiform sources to confirm that ‘from the mid-fifteenth century to the midtwelfth century B.C., and from the Mitanni kingdom down through Palestine beyond Ascalon, the termmaryannuis to be understood primarily as a noble who is a chariot-warrior’. The area was one where Indo-Aryan names occur at about the same period; and in the fourteenth-century Kikkuli treatise from Boghaz-köy, on the training of chariot-horses, Indo-Aryan technical terms appear. There were solid grounds therefore for thinking that Indo-Aryans, bringing with them horses from the Asian steppes, had played a leading part in developing chariotry in the Near East at that time, and that it was this which enabled a group of them to become locally dominant there.
‘South-Western’ elements in the language of the Ādi Granth
Authors: Shackle C.
Published: January 2010

The considerable size of the Ādi Granth, the varied authorship of its contents, and their arrangement within the volume to suit the requirements of liturgical performance rather than those of scholarly perusal, all these may be accounted factors to be held responsible for delaying, until quite recently, its critical analysis. Certainly the delay was not warranted by the intrinsic importance of the Ādi Granth (AG), which derives primarily from its status as the living scripture of the Sikhs, secondarily from the authenticity of the transmission of its text which this status has helped to secure since its compilation by Gurū Arjan in 1604.
The office of qāḍī in Dār Fūr: a preliminary inquiry
Authors: O'Fahey R. S.
Published: January 2010

A written law and a separate if not independent judiciary were among the most distinctive innovations brought by Islam to the Sudanic region. The history of the reception of thesharī'aand the institutions associated with it, of its modifications of the local customary law and of the changes wrought upon it by the same customary law may help to provide a framework for more general discussions of the process of islamization within Africa. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the history of the office ofqāḍī, or judicial official, in the Dār Fūr sultanate, which occupied what is now the westernmost province of the Democratic Republic of the Sudan between the mid-seventeenth century and 1916. Thus I am not so much concerned with the content of the law, whether customary or Islamic, administered within the sultanate as with who administered it.
The syntactic status of quantifiers in Somali
Authors: Saeed John I.
Published: January 2010

The study of quantifiers is an important area of language description. This is in part because their description has proved relevant to an issue of great theoretical interest, the relation between syntax and semantics. One question of interest is how far the unity of their semantic function is reflected in their syntactic behaviour. This raises questions like, is there a syntactic category ‘quantifier’ or ‘quantifier phrase (QP)’?
A unique Averroes MS in the British Museum
Authors: Harvey Steven
Published: January 2010

The fifth and last entry in British Museum MS Add. Or. 9061 (ff. 145b–154a) is described in the catalogue of Arabic MSS in the British Museum as Averroes's ‘synopsis contentorum’ of the eight books of Aristotle's Physics. This text appears as an unlikely addition to the rest of the MS, which contains the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in Arabic translation. The text, written in Maghrebi hand, is neat and pointed, and is marred only by a few small blotches. It was edited and translated into English by M. Saghir Hasan al-Masumi in 1956 in the Dacca University Studies under the title, ‘Ibn Rushd's Synopsis of Aristotle's Physics’.
Arms and Afghans in Makrān: an episode in Anglo-Persian relations 1905–1912
Authors: Burrell R. M.
Published: January 2010

When Kipling published that aptly-named poem ‘Arithmetic on the Frontier’ in 1886 his use of the term ‘jezail’ was no more literary device, for the tribesmen of the north-western borderlands were then armed with locally made, muzzle-loading, smooth-bore muskets. A decade later a few European breech-loading rifles began to appear, and by 1907 the military intelligence department estimated that over a quarter of those tribesmen had acquired a modern weapon. It was the Government of India's wish to halt that flow of arms which led to a British naval blockade of the south-eastern coast of Persia from 1909, and the landing of troops in Makrāan during 1910 and 1911.
Friday Prayer and the juristic theory of government: Sarakhsī, Shīrāzī, Māwardī
Authors: Calder Norman
Published: January 2010

Outstanding amongst the scholastic compendia of jurisprudence produced in the fifth/eleventh century are the Muhadhdhab of the Shāfi 'ī scholar Abū Ishāq al-Shīrāzī (d. 476) and the Mabsūt of the Ḥanafī scholar Shams al-Dīn al-Sarakhsī (d. 483). These works encoded three centuries of juristic speculation while confirming and promoting the distinctive patterns of their respective law schools. Both scholars, Sarakhsī in Qarakhanid Trasoxania, and shīrāzī in Saljūq Baghdad, were involved in the politics of their day, but produced no political theory seeparate from their large-scale works of furū' which followed the traditional pattern of furū' literature, established as early as Mālik. The holistic approach to divine law was the conformity to type of Sarakhsī's and shīrāzī's works helped to ensure them the classical status they acquired in the developing law-schools, and in the curricula of madrasas. The Kitāb al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya of Māwardī (d.450)was in contrast, to a great extent, innovatory in subject matter and in structure, if not in juristic methodology. The difference between writers like Sarakhsī, on the one hand, and Māwardī, on the other, is not however simply formal: it includes a nicely distinguished approach to political power. The nature of this distinction might be demonstrated under a number of discrete headings selected from furū' literature. This essay is concerned with Friday Prayer (FP), a ritual generally recognized as having in some degree a political aspect.
Turkish in pre-Mongol Persian poetry
Authors: Gandjeï Tourkhan
Published: January 2010

The rise and development of Persian poetry in Transoxiana and Khurāsān coincided with the growth in influence of the Turkish element in the Sãmãnid state. Although Turks had alredy been living in these regions at the time of the Arab conquest, it was under the Sāmānids especially that emerged into political and military prominence, having risen form the status of slaves to the highest ranks of power. In the fragmentary survivals of the Persian poetry of this period we not only find mention of Turks but even the occasional word of Turkish origin:

‘This cloud is like a crazed Turk, shooting arrows; the lightning his shafts, and the rainbow his bow.’
The ‘GreatYāsāof Chingiz Khān’ and Mongol law in the ĪLkhānate
Authors: Morgan D. O.
Published: January 2010

One of the odder features of the Persian sources on the history of the Mongol period is the vagueness and comparative rarity of references to the ‘Great Yāsā of Chingiz khān’. This struck me with renewed force after reading Professor David Ayalon‚s articles on theYāsā in Studia Islamica. My suspicions about the whole matter having thus been aroused, it seemed to me that it might be an interesting exercise to look again at the origin and nature of the Yāsā before trying to estimate how Mongol law worked in the Ilkhānate. And so, as I hope to show in this in this paper, it proved.
The great Persian famine of 1870–71
Authors: Okazaki Shoko
Published: January 2010

The great famine of 1870–71 was arguably the most tragic event in the modern economic and social history of Persia. Over wide areas of the country almost no rain fell during the winter of 1869/70, and in the following year only the western and southern provinces were blessed with any precipitation. Many areas did not have a single drop of rain during that two-year period. Khurāsān, Isfahān, Yazd and Fārs were particularly hard hit by the drought. In many areas dry-farming crops were wiped out, and harvests of irrigated crops were also very poor as a result of the severe depletion of surface and sub-surface water. Even the Zāyandeh-rūd, which normally contained a large volume of water, dried up.
The city in modern Arabic literature
Authors: Ostle R. C.
Published: January 2010

A superficial consideration of the history of Arabic literature impresses one by the remarkable longevity of literary forms: a qaṣīda written by the pre-Islamic poet Imru'l-Qays and many of those written by Aḥmad Shawqī who died in 1932 are eminently recognizable members of the same species. The system of prosody as codified by Khalīl b. Ahmad (d. A.D. 791) was still very much in force, and the thematic divisions into nasīb, wasf, and madīḥ or hijā' still had much in common. Similarly the maqāma form with its or ornate rhyming prose and limited range of stock characters was still being produced in Arabic at the turn of this century, and the links with the works of al-Hamadhānī (d. A.D. 1008) and al-Harīrī (d. A.D. 1122) are plain to behold and to hear. As with much world literature which is the product of ‘conservative’ or ‘traditional’ societies (for want of better terms), style is all. In thematic terms there is an implicit contract of understanding between the writer and the small, rarefied, élitist public. They know what to expect and the writer or performer delivers. The language, both in its form and its content, is a vehicle through which the relationships between writer or performer, and public or audience, are expressed.
Pharyngeal articulation
Authors: Ghali M. M.
Published: January 2010

This paper attempts to identify some unexplored types of articulation in the production of some speech sounds. The main interest here lies in the way some English and Arabic sounds are produced: the vowel /a/ in English, and Arabic consonants /ε/ and /ħ/.
Vestiges oftanwīn -unand the case ending -uas attested in Yemenite Judeo-Arabic texts from the seventeenth century
Authors: Blau Joshua
Published: January 2010

Although in classical Arabic all short vowels, as a rule, are preserved,ais more persistent thani/u: in prose, pausal -in/-unare elided, yet -anshifts to -ā. In many modern Arabic dialects too (dubbed by J. Cantineaudiffeérentiel)atends to be sustained in phonetic environments in whichi/uare elided. This is, it seems, the reason that in the Bedouin dialects of northern Arabia and the Syrian-Iraqi desert it is the historicaltanwīn -an, rather than -in/-un, that is preserved, especially when preceding an indefinite attribute; even phonetic -inhas, it seems, to be derived from original -an. The same applies to medieval Judeo-Arabic 'n(spelt as a separate word) in this position.
The history of Däbrä Tabor (Ethiopia)
Authors: Pankhurst Richard
Published: January 2010

Däbrä Tabor, the capital of Begemdir and headquarters of Emperors Tewodros II and Yohannes IV, was established, according to tradition, by the remarkable Oromo, or Galla, chieftain Ras Gugsa Mersa who held sway in the province from 1798 to 1825. He was the nephew of Ali Guangul, the founder of a Muslim dynasty, which as theislamisantSpencer Trimingham asserts, ‘became nominal members of the national Church for political reasons’.
Cassiodorus and Rashīd al-Dīn on barbarian rule in Italy and Persia
Authors: Morgan D. O.
Published: January 2010

Italy in the late fifth centurya.d.and Persia in the mid-thirteenth were lands of ancient and deeply-rooted culture. One had been at the centre of the western Roman Empire; the other had formed a significant part of the society of medieval Islam, and its traditions stretched back further still. Both lands found themselves invaded, conquered, and ruled by wandering ‘barbarians’, Ostrogoths and Mongols respectively, from beyond the then recognized frontiers of ‘civilization’.
Jina Ṛṣabha as an avatāra of Viṣṇu
Authors: Jaini Padmanabh S.
Published: January 2010

Avatāra, or the periodical incarnation of the deity, is a cardinal doctrine of the Vaiṣṇava sect of Brahmanical Hinduism. The increasing number of the avatāras is an indication of the popularity of this doctrine both among the theologians and among the devout laity. The modest list of three (Varāha, Kūrma, and Matsya) of the Brāhmaṇa literature grows into a list of 10 traditional avatāras (Matsya, Kūrma, Varāha, Nṛsiṃha, Vāmana, Paraśurāma, Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, Buddha, and Kalkin) in the Mahābhārata, and ends up in a still longer list of 22 in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. The latter has in its inflated list quite a few ‘minor’ (aṃśa) avatāras, mostly consisting of names of great sages renowned for their austerities and learning, e.g. Nārada, Nara, Nārāyaṇa, Kapila, Dattātreya, Ṛṣabha, and Veda-Vyāsa.
Maharashtra as a holy land: a sectarian tradition
Authors: Feldhaus Anne
Published: January 2010

The first manifestation of the regional cultures of India as we know them today was, in most cases, the literature produced by the medievalbhakti(devotional) movements. Composed in the regional languages, thebhaktiliterature provides evidence of early forms of these languages. Further, by its very existence, it marks the genesis of pride in the languages, of acceptance of them as appropriate vehicles for literary expression. Often addressed to local or regional deities (who are sometimes identified as local manifestations of gods worshipped throughout India), this literature clearly served to articulate and focus regional devotion to such deities. In addition, it is also possible that thebhaktiliterature provides evidence of the process by which people began to think of the regionsasregions (i.e., their genesis as cognitive regions), began to identify themselves asbelongingto the regions, and began to take pride, not just in the languages or deities of the regions, but in the regions themselves. This is the process which led ultimately, in very recent times, to the formation of the states of modern India.
The Semitic languages of Ethiopia and their classification
Authors: Goldenbekg Gideon
Published: January 2010

The accumulation of knowledge concerning the Semitic languages of Ethiopia has reached a stage when one may wish to venture upon a systematic comparative investigation of this linguistic group. Such an attempt is E. Hetzron'sEthiopian Semitic: studies in classification, which represents, in terms of genetic classification, the most detailed and penetrating comparative study hitherto undertaken in this field. The book is somewhat more ambitious than its subtitle would suggest; in fact it offers a fairly comprehensive exposition, well reasoned and carefully elaborated, of a new classification of the Ethiopian Semitic languages. And, as already argued a century ago, ‘in the field of cognate languages, classification is but a “modification” of the history of a language’, since ‘eo ipsothe history of language turns into a genetic classification’, or, as postulated in a more recent study, ‘the establishment of valid hypotheses concerning genetic relationships among languages is a necessary preliminary to the systematic reconstruction of their historical development’. The Ethiopian language area is sometimes mentioned as especially convenient for the comparativist. Indeed, ‘the field is inexhaustible and exceptionally fascinating’, as it comprises a rich variety of languages, dialects and ‘sub-dialects’’, Semitic and non-Semitic, spoken side by side in adjacent regions and at various substrata. However, such a linguistic situation is not necessarily favourable for applying the genealogical-comparative method, especially as regards interrelations between close, and rather fragmented, dialects.
Mourning regulations in Ordos, 1909
Authors: Serruys Henry
Published: January 2010

In 1961, the late Reverend Antoine Mostaert (1881–1971) published a fairly long document, namely the announcement to the Mongols of the Banner Otoγ of the death of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager in the winter of 1908, and a number of regulations for the required period of official mourning (‘Annonce de la mort de l'Empereur Te-tsoung et de l'Impératrice douairière Ts'eu-hi aux Mongols de la bannière d'Otoγ (Ordos)’, in Herbert Franke (ed.), Studia Sino-Altaica: Festschrift für Erich Haenisch zum 80. Geburtstag, Wiesbaden, 1961, 140–55).
Muḥammad Ḥayyā al-Sindī and Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb: an Analysis of an intellectual group in eighteenth-century Madīna
Authors: Voll John
Published: January 2010

A powerful revivalist impulse emerged in the Islamic world of the eighteenth century. Some of the leaders, like Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb or Shāh Walī Allāh in India, are well known. However, the foundations of this revivalism remain relatively obscure and personalities who inspired its leaders remain shadowy figures in history. One such person is Muḥammad Ḥayyā al-Sindī, who was a teacher of the founder of the Wahhābī movement. A closer examination of this Medinese scholar and the intellectual community of which he was a part can provide insight into the conditions which helped to inspire a prominent revivalist. Even more important, however, such analysis provides a basis for discerning some of the relationships among a number of the major eighteenth-century movements.
Déportation Et Pêche à Kilia Entre 1484 Et 1508
Authors: Beldiceanu Par N. , Beldiceanu-Steinherr IrÈne
Published: January 2010

Au cours de l'été 1972, nous avons trouvé aux archives de Topkapl Sarayl, sous la cote E 8938, un firman addressé au qāḍī de Kilia et délivré à Constantinople le 14 Safer 914/14 juin 1508.
The origins and development of the amīrate of the arabs during the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries
Authors: Hiyari M. A.
Published: January 2010

This study is mainly based on the writings of two authors: Ibn FaḍAllāh al-‘Umarī (d. 749/1349) and al-Qalqashandī (d. 821/1418). Al-‘Umarī has in the first part of his encyclopediaMaslik al-absār fī mamālik al-amṣāra section, the fifteenth,1dealing with the Arab tribes of his time.
Some phantom dynasties of early and medieval India: epigraphic evidence and the abhorrence of a vacuum
Authors: Henige David P.
Published: January 2010

Conventionally, the history of early and medieval India is viewed against a framework of a large number of dynasties, some local, others ‘imperial’, some ephemeral, others extending over several centuries.3In this paper I argue that such a conceptualization is to some extent illusory, at least if a dynasty is defined as a series of genetically related rulers succeeding to a given office over time. The purpose of the paper is not to deny that many of these dynasties could have existed, or even that they did exist, but only to argue that the nature and extent of our evidence is not sufficient to permit many of the hypothesized reconstructions of them. In other words, the impression of a dynastic Indian past often has resulted from a maximum of inference based on a minimum of satisfactory data.
Indian sÍndhu-, Iranian hindu
Authors: Bailey H. W.
Published: January 2010

The problem of the Iranian hindu- in the mountain name Us.hәndava and Old Indian síndhu- has already been subjected to frequent investigation. Up to 1972 these earlier interpretations are listed in M. Mayrhofer, Kurzgefasstes etymologisches Worterbuch des Altindischen, Lief. 23, 1972, s.v. síndhu-. Accepting a basic meaning ‘flowing water’, connexions have been offered with syandate ‘it flows’ from the time of Yāska till today, assumed as a variant to *syandh-: sindh-, which could be classed as a case of incremental variant -d-with-dh-to syan-, but it has also provoked a doubtful laryngal explanation of -d- with -H-; or assuming a connexion with Old Indian sedh-: sidh-‘to repel’ a doubtful meaning ‘boundary’ has been offered.
The Tomb of Ghāzī Evrenos bey at Yenitsa and its Inscription
Authors: Demetriades Vasilis
Published: January 2010

Yenitsa, in Ottoman Turkish Yenije-i Vardar or Vardar Yenijesi, is a small town some 50 km. west of Thessaloniki. Situated at the foot of Mount Païkon, near the lake of the same name (which was drained several years ago), it was in the Ottoman period an important Turkish military and cultural centre, particularly as being the base of theghāzīs, the ‘warriors for the Faith’, who had followed the great march-lord (uj-begi) Evrenos on his campaigns in Thrace and Macedonia. Very early, perhaps as early as 1372, Evrenos had come to Central Macedonia with his followers and settled in this place, where already there was probably a Byzantine castle. There soon grew up a township, from which Evrenos and his sons and grandsons set out on repeated raids in all directions, devastating the countryside and preparing the way for the definitive occupation of Macedonia, and later of Albania, by the ‘central’ apparatus under the command of the sultan. It is probable that the several occupations of various towns in this area, such as Veria (Turkish: Karaferye) and Thessaloniki, were the achievement of these raiders. Yenije soon had a con-siderable Turkish population, so that in 1430, after the final occupation of Thessaloniki, Murad II was able to order the deportation from there to the newly-conquered city of a thousand Turkish families without reducing Yenije's prosperity.
Focus and the Morphology of the Swahili Verb
Authors: Maw Joan
Published: January 2010

In this article, some previously unrecognized facts about the way the morphology of the verb manifests relationships within clauses in Swahili are presented, in the context of current general linguistic interest in functional semantics.
A Disputed Sabaic ‘Relative’ Pronoun
Authors: Beeston A. F. L.
Published: January 2010

The following note, though drafted by A. F. L. Beeston, is essentially the result of co-operative discussion between him, A. K. Irvine, W. W. Müller, M. Rodinson, and J. Ryckmans; all of whom are now in agreement on the issue. The discussion originated from the question whether four words beginning with t- in CIH 540 (tbs2nf line 15, ts3n/ts1n lines 16 and 19, tbn line 18) are to be explained as containing a feminine relative pronoun t as a variant of the normal Sabaic form ḏt, as Praetorius suggested; or are t-prefix verb forms. In favour of the relative interpretation are the facts, firstly that in classical Arabic poetry we find a masculine ḏā contrasting with feminine tī, and the same type of alternation is widely attested in vernacular dialects, including Yemeni ones; secondly, that in all four cases there is a defined feminine antecedent (‘glmtn, k'btn, k'bt/ġyln, k'bt/mfllm—assuming, as is most probable, that the last word is a proper name). Against it was the fact that such a pronoun appeared to be attested nowhere in all Sabaic except in this text. G. M. Bauer (Yazyk yuzhnoarabiyskoy pis'mennosti, Moscow, 1966, 92) accepted the relatival interpretation, but describes it as a ‘late’ use; while M. Rodinson (‘Sur un pseudo-relatif sudarabique’, Actes du premier Congrès international de Linguistique Sémitique et Chamito-semitique, Paris, 1969, ed. by Caquot and Cohen, Paris, 1974, 290–1) and W. W. Müller (in an article for AION, 1975, sent to press before our discussions took place) were inclined to deny the existence of this relative and adopt the verbal interpretation.
From Imāmiyya to Ithnā-'ashariyya
Authors: Kohlberg Etan
Published: January 2010

The Imāmī Shī'ī theory of the imāmate evolved gradually during the first Islamic century and was given a definitive shape in the middle of the second/eighth century by Hishām b. al-Ḥakam. For the next 100 years or so, until the death in 260/874 of the eleventh Imām, al-Ḥasan al-'Askarī, no significant changes seem to have been introduced. Only in the mid-fourth/tenth century does a major addition appear in the form of a doctrine: it is the belief that there are 12 Imāms, the last of whom remains in a state of concealment (ghayba) until his ultimate return as Mahdī, or Qā'im. This ghayba is divided into two periods: a shorter, ‘lesser’ ghayba (al-ghayba al-ṣughrā), lasting from 260/874 to 329/941, during which the Imām was represented on earth by four successive safīrs; and a longer, ‘greater’ ghayba (al-ghayba al-kubrā), whose duration is known only to God. It is this doctrine which distinguishes Twelver Shī'ism from the earlier Imāmiyya, and it io worth examining in some detail ite origina and the-main-stages of its development.
The Mahānubhāvas
Authors: Raeside I. M. P.
Published: January 2010

The Mahānubhāvas are a Hindu sect whose members are largely concentrated in northern and eastern Maharashtra, between the old districts of Khandesh and Nagpur, while they are strongest of all in Berar. In many respects they have a rather marginal place in the culture of Maharashtra today. Unlike the Vārkarīpantha, the much more celebrated and popular Vaiṣṇava sect, they are centred on a backwoods area. They tend to gather inmaṭhas(monasteries) in decayed villages that are a day's journey from the nearest railway or main road. Instead of Alandi, which is on Poona's doorstep, or Pandharpur, their holy places are Ritpur, a crumbling dusty village in the rolling country north of Amraoti, and Mahur, on a mountainside on the borders of Berar and the Adilabad district of Andhra. Like the Vārkarīs their followers are almost all non-Brahmans, but unlike the Vārkarīs they have, until recently at least, acquired few Brahman champions to lend them ethical and religious respectability, and indeed they are chiefly known in Marathi folk-lore as typifying a virulent brand of hypocrisy—the stereotype of a sweet tongue and professions of virtue that cover up all sorts of unseemly and unspecified ‘goings-on’. Their numbers are relatively small. Enthoven, whose section on them inThe tribes and castes of Bombayis one of the few references to the sect in English, gives it an estimated membership of about 22,000 in 1901, and it is hard to judge what relation this figure would bear to the number of professed Mahānubhāvas today. The modern census figures are of course no help, since Mahānubhāvas are included under the general heading of Hindus.
‘The admonition of the thunderbolt cannon-ball’ and its place in the Bhutanese New Year festival
Authors: Aris Michael
Published: January 2010

The purpose of this paper is to present to scholars of Tibetan and Himalayan culture a document which is recited annually to an assembled militia organization during the New Year festival observed in the old winter capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan at Punakha. Apart from attempting to disclose the origin of this custom, which can be traced with some accuracy to the middle years of the seventeenth century, it is intended to relate it briefly to the wider context of the New Year celebrations as they used to be held in Tibet and as they continue to be held with considerable variance in Bhutan and other places on the periphery of Tibetan culture. In certain areas an ancient and fundamental distinction between the ‘King's New Year’ (rgyal-po lo-gsar) and the ‘Agricultural New Year’ (so-nam lo-gsar) has survived and my remarks on the relevant Bhutanese traditions are made on the basis of these two categories.
A Contemporary Biography of Ras Alula: A Ge'ez Manuscript from Mänäwē, Tämbēn—I
Authors: Erlich Haggai
Published: January 2010

European contemporaries regarded Ras Alula, Emperor Yohannes's general, as one of the most prominent leaders of Ethiopia in the crucial period of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This was a period in which the country was struggling to remain independent during the ‘scramble for Africa’. The Ras was referred to as ‘the best native general and strategist that Africa has perhaps produced in modern times’, and ‘undoubtedly’ the ‘greatest leader that Abyssinia has produced since the death of the Emperor Theodore in 1868’. His Italian adversaries thought in 1885 that ‘Ras Alula is the most serious, the most influential, and the strongest personality in today's Abyssinia. The word of Alula is heard with enthusiasm and confidence by the King’. A Sudanese Mahdist historian wrote that ‘Ras Allulā was one of the famous and brave men in war, very experienced in the tactics of battles. He was a bone in the throat of the British, Italian, and Turkish [Egyptian] empires’. A British soldier and diplomat was of the opinion that ‘the Abyssinian generalissimo’ was ‘apparently the moving spirit of that country’.