A study of the poetry of the Sīra shows that a high proportion of it is the work of more or less professional forgers who supplied narrators with poems especially prepared to suit the narrative and appeal to the audience whose outlook towards the events of early Islam had undergone considerable change. Two or three generations after the final victory of Islam and the death of the Prophet, the persons as well as the events of that era were becoming part of pasthistory. Past events had begun to take a different form and when viewed acrossthe years they appeared like a panorama in which only certain high points werevisible, and different landmarks were differently placed in relation to each other. Time had produced a shift of interest and a change in outlook, andcertainpersons were becoming more legendary and less human.

Venetian preponderance in Mediterranean commerce during the late Middle Ages is attested in many ways. Muslim and European chronicles, travellers' reports from the Levant, and business records of the Republic illustrate the concern of Venice with the affairs, commercial and political, of the Muslim states in the Mediterranean. One striking aspect of this preponderance is found in the contemporary commercial treaties concluded between Muslim rulers and the Christian states of southern Europe.

It is of great importance to identify the autographs of al-Jabarī (1754–1825/6), 2 as by doing so we shall be able to know whether there were any deliberate changes or omissions by the redactors, editors, and copyists of his works. Moreover, it will be possible to solve many problems created by the calligraphic and copying mistakes of the transcribers, such as homoeoteleuton, homoeoarchy, homoeotopy, dittography, misplacement of diacritical dots (taṣḥīf), and other errors, and hence to know his authentic statements and style. This identification might shed a new and powerful light upon the way in which the author compiled his data, and even the sequence in time of their compilation.

Warren Hastings resigned the Governor-Generalship of Bengal in February 1785 and arrived in England in the following June. He faced his retirement with a fortune of approximately £75, 000, a total amounting to little more than a third of all the money which he had sent out of India during the 13 years of his administration. Those who knew Hastings well and who were aware that he had found it almost impossible to save anything out of his official salary of more than £30, 000 were pessimistic about his chances of living within the income of £3, 500, which he could anticipate from his capital of £75, 000. Such pessimism was fully justified.

‘Our policy and our powers have reduced all the powers in India to the state of mere cyphers: at the same time that their intriguing, discontented and rebellious followers still remain, with increased causes of discontent, diminished sources of profit and field for speculation and plunder. Nothing can keep these people in order excepting the Company's arms or a complete state of defence at all points which they can reach. The Company's arms cannot be everywhere ….’

The early centuries of the Christian era are of crucial importance for the history of the Buddhist religion. It is customary to ascribe to this periodthe emergence and development of the Mahāyāna; and by the latter half of the second century A.D. , towards the end of the Later Han dynasty, Buddhism hadspread as far as China, where the earliest of the long succession of translatorswere beginning to produce Chinese versions of Indian Buddhist texts, both Hīayāna and Mahāyāna. A detailed and connected narrative of this remarkable expansion of the religion would form one of the most fascinating chapters in theearly history of Asia. Such a narrative, nevertheless, cannot be written: the surviving information is fragmentary, interpretation is often uncertain, theproblems numerous and intractable. Encouraged by sheer exiguity of primary historical evidence, many modern scholars have consecrated to this period whole

The question under discussion here is both perplexing and easy, a paradox arising from the scarcity of precisely datable Sung bronzes. Because of the scarcity of such bronzes, art historians have not succeeded in forming a definite view about their quality, casting, and designs; however, it may be possible for specialists in other fields to say something about them. Unfortunately, records, too, are scanty. Under such circumstances, we may be justified in resorting to exogenous, namely economic, factors in the hope of finding an acceptable provisional conclusion.