From the point of view of Europeans there is no book that deals satisfactorily with Urdū, metres, and as the metres are numerous, it is difficult for a student to recognize any except the three or four commonest. They have all been taken over unaltered from Persian, and Persian took them almost unaltered from Arabic. To Europeans the rules of Urdū prosody seem arbitrary, because metres must conform to certain rules for which there seems to be no adequate reason.

For example the commonest Urdū, metre is scanned as follows: maf‘ūlu fā‘ilātu mafā‘īlu fā‘ilun. It might just as well be scanned mustaf‘ilun mafā‘ilu mustaf‘ilun fa‘al or in other ways, but we should be arbitrarily told that there are no such metres and that in fact they would be impossible.

This paper examines the social currency of copper-plate charters on the basis of Persian copper-plates from the Deccan. Indic religious systems have a long tradition of conferring land grants using this medium, partially rooted in beliefs of metaphysical qualities attributed to metals. The objects from this region are highly unusual because there are no other recorded instances of a sultan issuing or authorizing land grants on copper-plates. The Persian-language copper-plates appear from the sixteenth century onwards, and seem to be later copies of (or extracts from) paper-based charters issued by Bahmani sultans and other kingdoms in the Deccan. Issues of authenticity and forgeries, fakes and copies are also raised in this paper. This study examines objects that combine material culture and textual content. While the textual content of these objects has always been privileged as being a source of history, the medium – which itself has a history of reception – has not been given its own historical narrative. The paper provides new perspectives on what we might call the “social life” of different documentary formats in medieval and early modern India, in particular the copper-plate grant.

It is well known that the oldest existing complete literary work of a Mussulman Turk, the Qudatqu Bilik or Qutadghu Bilik, was composed in 462 H. (a.d. 1069–70) by Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib, a native from Bālāsāghūn, on the River Chu, for a Khān residing in Kāshghar who is called “Mashriq Maliki Tabghach Khani Malik Bughra Khan” (King of the East, Khan of China, the King Bughra Khan), “Tabghach Qara Bughra Khanlar Khani” (the Chinese Qara Bughra, the Khan of Khans), “Tabghach Ulugh Bughra Khan” (the Chinese, the great Bughra Khan), even more simply “Ordukent Khani Beg” (the Khan of the court-town, that is Kashghar, the prince). The statements concerning the chronology of the Kashghar kings of the eleventh century are very vague and scanty, and are not supplied by numismatic evidence; therefore it is not an easy task to ascertain who was the king mentioned by Yūsuf. There can be no doubt that he belonged to the dynasty of the Ilek Khāns. The chief authority on the history of that dynasty has been for all Muhammedan and European scholars the great work of Ibn al-Athīr, especially the statements given under the year 408 H. We are told by Ibn al-Athīr that Arslān Khān, son of Qādir Khān Yūsuf, King of Kāshghar, Khotan, and Bālāsāghūn, was deposed by his brother Bughra Khān and taken prisoner; Bughrā Khān was some time later poisoned by his wife, who put to death Arslān Khān also, in 439 H. Bughrā Khān ruled only fifteen months and was succeeded by Ṭoghrul Khān, son of Yūsuf Qadir Khāan (that is, by his brother), who ruled sixteen years (until 456 or 457). His son, Ṭoghrul-tagīn, was deposed after two months by “Hārūn Bughrā Khān, brother of Yūsuf Ṭoghrul Khān and son of Ṭafghāch Boghrā Khān” (?); Hārūn Bughrā Khān passed (‘abara) Kāshghar, made Hārūn (? mistake for Ṭoghrul-tagīn) prisoner; the army of the latter submitted to him, and he took possession of Kāshghar, Khotan, and the neighbouring districts to Bālāsāghūn, where he reigned twenty-nine years and died in 496. These statements can, of course, not be quite correct; if Bughrā Khān Hārūn was the brother of Ṭoghrul Khān, he must have been a son of Yūsuf Qadír Khān, and is, in fact, called so by Ibn al-Athīr himself on the previous page. The reigns mentioned by Ibn al-Athīr, and said to have extended from 439 to 496 (fifty-seven years), do not cover all that time, but nearly ten years less. We know, indeed, from an earlier author, Abu-I-Faḍl Baihaqī, that the first Bughrā Khān (called by Ibn al-Athīr Maḥmud) died not in 439 but in 449. Bughrā Khān Hārūn must have reigned in this case from 467 to 496, Ṭoghrul Khān from 451 to 467; the Qudatqu Bilik, composed in 462, was therefore written in the reign of Ṭoghrul Khān, but Bughrā Khān seems to have been a co-regent of his brother; Ibn al-Athīr speaks of the war made by the two brothers against Shams al-Mulk, Khān of Samarqand. Therefore it was quite natural to come to the conclusion that the Bughrā Khān mentioned by Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib was Bughrā Khān Hārūn ibn Yūsuf, and such an opinion has been expressed in my article “Bughrā Khān” in the Encyclopædia of Islām.

In the last centuries before the current era and in the early centuries after its beginning the major intellectual and literary activity in the realms (first) of the Jewish and (later) of the Christian communities was wholly centred in the field of interpretation. The OT, as the mainspring and foundation of all religious thought and teaching in those days and in those spheres, was the subject of this interpretation activity. In both the Jewish and the Christian world the Bible was considered to be not only holy and authoritative, but also, and this is in our context more important, the only and exclusive source of divine religious doctrine and of good ethical behaviour. Also historical events, political or religious, were seen, even foreseen, and evaluated from the aspect of this holy source of divine wisdom and planning.

This article traces the metamorphoses of Scheherazade, the heroine of The Thousand and One Nights' frame-tale, in modern fiction and film. It examines these metamorphoses in the context of a discussion of the function of narrative across cultures and disciplines. It looks more particularly at the role of genre ideologies—paradigms of knowledge implicit in generic expectations, ideologies external to genre, and subjectivities in narrative transformation—in transforming the story as it travels in time and across media of expression and cultures. Analysis of the Nights frame-tale, the story of Scheherazade, and its transformations, is further informed by an interrogation of the process of reading ‘texts’ critically. Do genre, ideology and subjectivity inform our readings of ‘texts’? In what ways do paradigms of knowledge perceived as inherent in these categories in turn affect our understanding of story and narrative?

For many years it was vaguely known that the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai possessed a large collection of documents concerning its own affairs and written in Arabic and Turkish, and more especially that this collection also included a number of decrees issued by various Fāṭimid caliphs; but it was only recently that detailed information became available. It will be convenient to preface the edition of one of these Fāṭimid documents by a review of what has been written about the Sinai documents up to now.

The contributions of Rong Xinjiang to the study of Tang civilization, and particularly of external influences upon it, have already rapidly mounted up to a considerable number, so the appearance of a volume collecting many of his essays together in one place is much to be welcomed.

The inscriptions described in this article were discovered in the course of a short journey which I made in the vilayet of Urfa, Turkey, in May–June, 1952. It is my pleasant duty to thank those who made this journey possible— the School of Oriental and African Studies, who granted me leave to travel to Turkey, and the officials of the Turkish Department of Antiquities, who accorded me facilities to operate in that remote area of the country. I am especially grateful to Mr. Seton Lloyd, Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, for his generous encouragement and help; Mr. Lloyd had visited Sumatar Harabesi during the previous year, and it was he who drew my attention to the monuments there.

The Shenxian zhuan is a biographical (or hagiographical) collection of great importance to our understanding of the formation of the Taoist religion in the early centuries of the Common Era.

This article analyses Shakespeare and Molière's enduring appeal in various African countries and the diversity of their plays’ adaptations. The starting point is the discrepancy between the two playwrights, Shakespeare in Africa being an artistic phenomenon (a controversial one in some quarters), while the adaptation of Molière remains mainly the domain of school curricula. This article will first provide a historical overview of activities related to the introduction of Shakespeare and Molière's works in Africa. Second, it will set out to analyse the varied adaptation and “Africanization” of both playwrights’ work. It will shed light on the political and scholarly disputes over the incorporation of these authors in school curricula after independence and examine the ways in which these classical European texts were domesticated in Africa.

Francesca Bray has recently pointed to the neglected role of women in the history of Chinese technology. This article takes up one example, and shows that the work of one woman inventor, whose personal name is unknown but whose family name was Liu, may be securely dated to between 712 and 724. From later descriptions it is also possible to discern that her invention (or just possibly the invention of another craftsperson, which she was able to introduce to court circles) consisted of the bringing together of two carefully carved woodblocks to create a resist for dyeing cloth. Ths in turn suggests that she may well have been familiear with woodblock printing, an invention for which there are also other forms of indirect evidence at about the same time. Since her family was relatively prominent, it may in future be possible to find about more about this inventor from genealogical materials.

The only definite statements as to the authorship of the play occur in the commentaries in two different MSS., and are conflicting; one mentions Bodhayana as the author, while the other mentions the name of Indracarumani. There were several Bdhyanas, two of whom were poets and it is not easy to decide to whom the first of the above statements refers. Several plausible guesses have been made, based on evidence other than the statements in the two commentaries. It has been pointed out that the Bhagavadajjukam, in common with the plays of Bhsa, lacks all reference to the author in the text, begins with a Sthpan instead of the usual Prastavana, and bear some resemblances to them in style and diction. On the other hand, it has been shown that the play shows similarities to the Mttavilasa of Mahendra-vikrama Varman. Both plays ridicule Buddhist doctrines and extol Hindu Dharma. This argument gains strength from the fact that in the stone mscription at Mmundr, which has been proved to be that of Mhendra-vikrama, Bhagavadajjukam and Mattavilasa are mentioned in company. Similarities in diction have also been traced between the two. It will therefore be seen that the authorship of the play is still uncertain, and will continue to engage the attention of scholars for some time to come.

Qur'ān 2: 198 states that it is no fault in the Muslims that they should seek the faḍl of their lord: laysa ‘alaykum junāḥun an tabtaghū faḍlan min rabbikum. This verse occurs within a series of godly ordinances pertaining to the Muslim ḥajj, and it is therefore quite obvious why Muslim exegetes thought that the faḍl of Allāh in our verse ought to be sought by the believers during the ḥajj. In order to convey this view, the exegetes used a simple device, they added the following clause at the end of the verse: fī mawāsim al-ḥajj—during the rites of, or, in the stations of the ḥajj. Several traditions in al-Ṭabarī contain this addition. Most of the isnāds of these traditions are Meccan, which implies that the scholars of this place were particularly interested in encouraging the believers to come to the holy places of the Meccan ḥajj. Thus, tradition no. 18 in al-Ṭabarī which contains the addition fī mawāsim al-ḥajj is transmitted from the Meccan ‘Ubaydallāh b. Abī Yazīd (d. 126 A.H.), who quotes Ibn al-Zubayr. In fact, the clause fī mawāsim al-ḥajj gained the rank of a qirā'a. In some traditions it is transmitted as such from the Meccan ‘Aṭā’ b. Abī Rabāh (d. 114 A.H.) on the authority of Ibn ‘Abbās. ‘Aṭā’ is quoted through the Meccan Talḥa b. ‘Amr (d. 152 A.H.), as well as through Ḥajjāj b. Arṭāt (d. 145 A.H.). The Medinese ‘Ikrima (d. 105 A.H.) also spread the same qirā'a. In al-Ṭabarī he is quoted by the Basrian Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī (d. 131 A.H.).

In 1907 M. Louis Desplaques described in Le Plateau Central Nigérien a series of large tumuli—pyramids of earth—the burial places of chiefs of a past era. He notes their existence at El Walaji and as far east as Aménaka, near Zinder, on the banks of the Niger near the Bassa rapids, west to Sikassa, and on the banks of the Senegal. On archaeological grounds, supported by a well-known passage from the Arab writer El Behri, he concludes that they were built by “red” or Berber races of the same stratum of population as the ancient inhabitants of the Ghana Empire. “They remain”, he writes, “as the sole witnesses of the activity, the industry, and civilization of these ‘red’ peoples, whose names and real origin we do not know”.

The Club was an exclusive society; admission to it was eagerly sought, but not very easily obtained; election was by ballot and one black ball excluded; many eminent men, among them Gibbon, Lord Camden, Beilby Porteus, Bishop of Chester, Conversation Sharp, George Canning, and Samuel Rogers were temporarily or permanently refused admission, even Edmond Malone, who became its treasurer and “great Corner Stone”, had to make two or three attempts to get into it. To this society William Jones, aged 26, in the spring of 1773, was elected.

Much has been written about the trading relations of the Italian states with the Levant in the period of the Crusades and the late Middle Ages. The bulk of the material that has made these studies possible has been provided by the voluminous archives of the various Italian cities, which also contain a few treaties and letters that originated from Muslim authorities (largely of the Mamluk period) and have been preserved in the original and/or in translation. The document to be presented here was addressed to various officials in Tripoli, that is, Tarābulus al-Shām, and dates from near the end of the Mamluk sultanate. It is an order for the attention of the Mamluk authorities only, intended to govern commercial dealings in Tripoli as they were unilaterally understood. The document is not to be thought of as comparable with the so-called ‘treaties’, which were draw up after a process of negotiation although they were ultimately expressed as independent decrees of the Sultan. One can only wonder at the chance survival of this undoubtedly genuine piece. It is now held in the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago, under the number OIM 13787. It was purchased in 1929 from Dr Bernhard Moritz, one-time librarian of the Khedivial Library in Cairo, and its provenance beyond that point is unknown. Three other Mamluk documents of the same period, which are relevant to affairs at Tripoli, survive in the archives of St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, namely nos. LXIX, LXX and LXXI of those published by Ernst. The first of these three refers to the monastery's waqf property at Tripoli, but the other two have absolutely no connection with any interests or affairs of the monastery, and it is difficult to imagine how they found their way there.

1. For “ one ” the NI use eka (106 Uo 7. 159 r 2. 187 o 8. 211 r 5. 231 r 2. 248 o 8. 253 r 1. 348 Uo 4. 425 Uo 5. Cr 6. 437 Cr 1. 577 Uo 6.630 o 4. 638 o 2, 3. 676 Uo 5. 688 oA 3).1 In the form eǵa it appears 709 Cr 4. It is used in the uninflected form, irrespective of gender;the genit. sing, ekisya “ single ”, is found 272 o 10. 514 o 1; a plural eke occurs 468 Cr 2. egaǵa in 417 o 2, as nomin. masc. egaǵo in 296 Uo 3, corresponds to Skt. ekaika-, Pāli ekaka- “single”, in accordance with the phonetic value of -ǵa.2 eka- is found in compounds with numerals(see 11), nouns (ekadeśammi 272 o 6), 3 adjectives (ekavarsaǵa ═ekavarṣika- 589 Uo 3).

The Swahili poet, Sayyid 'Umar bin Amin bin 'Umar bin Amin bin Nadhir al-Ahdal, Kadhi of Siu, c.a.d. 1856, left a number of poems upon religious themes. These include the best acrostic poems in traditional Swahili literature, e.g. Waji-waji, written in takhmis verse-form.

The title of the present work is given in the last verse: ya dura mandhuma, a Swahili form of the Arabic al-Durr al-Manẓum, or ‘Strung Pearls’. The manuscript copy, pasted on two pieces of cardboard, was written by Muhammad Abubakar bin 'Umar al-Bakariy, better known as Muhammad Kijuma, the well-known Swahili poet and scribe at Lamu, who produced most of his best work in the first two decades of the present century.