The accepted definition of poetry among most of the classical Arab prosodists is al-kalām al-mawzūn al-muqaffā ‘speech in metre and rhyme’. Unrhymedverse was thus excluded. The simplest rhyme in Arabic verse is generally, a consonant (rawiyy)between two vowels. The only exception to this rule is the rhyme of al-qaṣīda al-maqṣūra, i.e. in a poem which rhymes with alif maqṣūra, where the consonantis not important. It is obvious from the different statements of some of the critics and philosopherswho were interested in the Greek sciences, that the Arabs were aware that the Greeks had blank verse. However, they were all firm in their conviction that rhyme in Arabic poetry is as essential as metre. Fārābī (873–950) in his Kitāb al-shi'r, observed that Homer used blank verse: wa-yabīn min fi'l Awmīrūsh shā'ir al-Yūnāniyyīn annahu lā yaḥlafiẓ bi-tasāvn al-nihāyāt, while the Arabs pay more attention to rhyme than do other nations: Inna li 'I-'Arabmin al-'ināya bi-nihāyāt al-abyāt allatī fi 'l-shi'r ahihar mimmā li-kathīr minal-umam allatī 'arafnā ash'ārahā.

A second group of poems share the same characteristics with the poems discussed in part I of this article, and are of equally late authorship. However, they lack the explicit evidence of a later date. These are nos. VII, X, XIX, LXXIX.2 Poem no. VII is yet one more of those ‘defensivexs’ poems which seem to indicate that not only the poet, but the whole tribe, in the wider sense, are on the defensive. Although it can be argued that the poem is not by Ḥassān, there is evidence of a deliberate attempt to give the impression that it is. At the same time there is evidence, too, of even later interpolations.

Of the poems of boasting ascribed to Hassan b. Thabit, 16 are found on investigation to be by later Ansarls and reflect the inferior status to which the Ansar in general were reduced after the battle of al-Harra and the sack of Madina in the year A.H. 63, as well as, occasionally, the tribal rivalries which prevailed during the Umayyad period.

In the Saka language of Gostana (Khotan) three manuscripts contain a metrical version of the Buddhist avadāna of Sudhana. These texts were printed in my Khotanese Buddhist texts (1951). Two, Ch. 00266 and P 2025 (with P 4089a), are two copies of one text. The third text, P 2957, differs markedly in phrases, in additional verses, and in orthography; it is in a less developed form of the language.

The monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai possesses a large collection of odocuments concerning its own affairs and dating from the Fāṭimid, Ayyūbid, Mamlūk, and Ottoman periods. They were used for historical purposes as early as the seventeenth century by certain writers belonging to the monastery, but, if exception be made for the pioneer (but limited) work done by B. Moritz in the early years of this century, they remained unexploited by modern scholars. The American expedition of 1950, which has microfilmed about one-half of the library's manuscripts in various languages, brought back microfilms of the entire collection of Arabic and Turkish documents, thus making a thorough study of them possible for the first time. There is no need to specify the earlier bibliography of the Sinai documents, since readers of this Bulletin can obtain the necessary information from an article of mine published in an earlier volume.

In the course of their expansion into Central Asia the Muslims came into contact with Turks, either settled and Iranized or else nomadic and marauding in their mode of life. As early as the time of the Caliph ‘Uthmān, when the conquest of Khurāsān was barely complete, there were, according to the historical sources, a number of incursions by Turkish nomads into that province in the neighbourhood of Marw and even as far as Nīshāpūr. Under the Umayyads, however, the Muslims came into direct contact with both the Western and the Northern Turkish states. In the period 86–96/705–15, under Qutaiba b. Muslim, the famous Umayyad governor, the Muslims won their first important victory over the Western Turks. Under Naṣr b. Sayyār, in the year 121/738–9, the Muslims broke the power of the Western Turks by defeating the dominant group amongst them, that of the TürgeshKhāqāns. The empire of the Northern Turks was destined to come to an end shortly afterwards in the year 744.

On several occasions in his writings Ibn Sīnā discusses the problem of destiny (al-qadar), by which he means primarily the problem of reconciling the divine determination of human acts and characters with the rewards and punishments of the after-life, in such a way as to safeguard God's justice to man. This aspect of the problem of theodicy had arisen long before his time out of statements of the Qur'ān and Traditions, and had been settled in their own fashions by Mu'tazilite and predestinarian theologians. Ibn Slna as a philosopher could hardly avoid offering a solution, if only to satisfy the doubts of his Muslim public; but he goes beyond a perfunctory answer, and seems to show a genuine interest in finding an intellectually convincing solution consistent with his own philosophy.

The story of Sudhana is one of the most popular of the avadānas of Northern Hīnayāna Buddhism. There are two main versions of this story, one adopted by the Mahāsanghika school and the other by the mūla-Sarvāstivāda school. The former is preserved in the Mahāvastu under the title Kinnarījātaka, and a similar version of this story is found in a Chinese collection called Liu-tu-chi-ching ‘Collection [of tales to illustrate] the six pāramitās’, said to have been translated in approximately A.D. 270 (Taishō Tripiṭaka, in, no. 152, 44 f.) and accessible to us in Chavannes's Tripitạka (Cinq cents contes et apologues, no. 80). The mūla-Sarvāstivāda redaction is found in a Vinaya text of that school called the Bhaiṣajya-vastu. It was translated by I-ching and is referred to as Ken pen chouo … by Chavannes (iv, 133).

One of the major political and social results of the Ottoman Tanzimat in Syria and Palestine during the nineteenth century was the transformation whichit wrought upon the form of rule in the towns. The era of Turkish reform notonly gave a new shape and a different content to the struggle for authorityin the Syrian city between the Ottoman government and the local forces; italso contributed largely to the crystallization and consolidation of the urbanleadership of ‘ulamā’ and a'yan, by the establishment of local councils (Majlis)in the towns, which formed the main basis of future municipal life and autonomyin the area. The internal strife in the Syrian town, although acquiring a differentcharacter during the Tanzimat period, had its roots in the pre-reform era, whena fierce contest for power took place in many cities between various forces, of which the Turkish Pasha was only one. In the eighteenth century feudsoccurred in the big cities, either between the rival Janissary units, or betweenthem and the Ashrāf militia, the descendants of the Prophet. The Pashas withtheir own forces also took part in this struggle, usually siding with one factionand seeking to establish their control.1 Involved also in this struggle were thelocal ‘iulamā’, in whose hands was the administration of justice, and the a'yān, who controlled the civil administration in the towns.2

The first text of al-Bīrūnī (A.D. 973-C. 1050) published in Europe which contains a reference to his translation of Patañjali's Yogasūtra is his Risāla fī fihrist kutub Muḥammad ibn Zakarīya' al-Rāzī, the relevant part of which was published by E. Sachau, Leipzig, 1876ndash;8.1 In his list of his own works, which is included in this Risāla, al-Bīrūnī states that this list comprises the works he has written up to the end of 427/1037.2 Several years later Sachau published al-Bīrūnī's India (London, 1887), in which al-Bīrūnī not only refers to his having translated this work of Patañjali, 3 but also quotes from it copiously.4

Brockelmann mentions once a certain Shams al-Dịn Abụ Thạbit Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Malik al-Dailamị as author of a treatise entitled Mir'ạt al-arwạh wa-sụrat al-aujạh, 'Erläuterung einer Figur, welche die Einteilung der Welt nach den Vorstellungen der Sîfîs von der hîchsten Region 'îlam al haira wal ‘ilm al maǵhûl bis zur tiefsten mahall aš šaitîn taht al ard darstellt’.1 The unique copy of this curious work is preserved in Gotha; and W. Pertsch when cataloguing it, having seen the entry in Hạjjị Khalịfa in which it is stated that this al-Dailamị composed al-Jam ‘bain al-tauhid wa’l-ta'zim during the year 899 (1493),2 very reasonably gave that date as his floruit. In this Brockelmann duly followed Pertsch.

What follows, as will be apparent to the reader, was written as a review of Mr. Howard Levy's translation of the T‘ang story Yu-hsien k‘u, which, although mentioned in some Western histories of Chinese literature, has not hitherto appeared in a complete translation.

The story of Yạhyā b. Zayd (in full, Yahyā b. Zayd b. 'Alī b. al-Husayn b. 'Alī b. Abī Ṭalīb) forms a well-known episode in the history of the closing years of the Umayyad Caliphate. The insurrection of Yaḥyā was in many respects a forerunner of the final rising under the 'Abbāsid emissary Abū Muslim, by which Umayyad government in Khurāsān was overthrown. The fullest early description of this episode is that given by the historian al-Ṭabarī in his account of the events of the year 125/742-3. After the rebellion and death of his father Zayd at Kūfa in 122/739–40, the young Yaḥyā had fled from Iraq with a few companions to Khurāsān. At Balkh he lived concealed under the protection of a man named al-ḥuraysh b. 'Amr. Eventually 'Uqayl b. Ma'qil, the prefect of the town for the Umayyad government, received instructions to track down the fugitive.

It was in the year 1856, with the publication of Stanislas Julien's partial translation of the then fairly recently published T'ao-lu of 1815, that Europe and America first became aware of the possible existence of an ‘imperial kiln’ or group of kilns at Ching-te Chen Nor was this all, for according to Julien's translation such an ‘imperial kiln’ was established in the year 1369, the second year of the Hung-wu period. In view of Julien's standing in his own time, it is not unnatural that the facts as recorded by him with regard to this important event should have remained virtually unchallenged for the better part of a century. Jacquemart, in his monumental Histoire de la cÉramiqite, from which so many terms for wares and techniques have survived to become common currency, is heavily dependent upon his predecessor in the field.

In current studies of the problem of landlorḍism in twentieth-century China there is a fundamental conflict and contradiction between the interpretations of the socio-economic historians, whose major thesis is often the inevitable process of progressive weakening and eventual decline of the control of ‘feudal’ landlords over land and peasants, and the actual conditions and facts of contemporary Chinese history, in which the decay of landlord power seems to have been far from inevitable, and where such persons as P'eng Pai and Mao Tse-tung have had to exert great revolutionary efforts to forcibly destroy the landlords' dominance.

No Ottoman institution has aroused more bitter criticism than the devshirme the ‘tribute of blood’, especially—and naturally—among those Christian peoples whose forebears were subjected to it; and at the same time none touches on so many fundamental problems. Dr. Basilike Papoulia, bringing together the Western and oriental sources and submitting them to a close and careful analysis, has now presented the first full discussion of its origin and its character. The scope of her study appears already in the definition with which she begins and ends it, that the devshirme devshirme was ‘the forcible removal, in the form of a tribute, of children of the Christian subjects from their ethnic, religious, and cultural environment and their transplantation into the Turkish-Islamic environment with the aim of employing them in the service of the Palace, the army, and the state, whereby they were on the one hand to serve the Sulṭān as slaves and freedmen and on the other to form the ruling class of the State’.

The cowry

‘Parmi tant de coquilles que le flot des mers rejette sur les plages, il n'en est pas que les homines aient recherchÉes, recueillies, portÉes plus que les cauris.’

The purpose of this study is to investigate the cowry in the Western Sudan. But it is impossible to study any aspect of cowry diffusion and use in isolation, and some understanding of the complex and fascinating global history of the shell is essential to our knowledge of its history in this area.

'Amda ṣeyon was one of the most outstanding Ethiopian kings of any age and a singular figure dominating the horn of Africa in the fourteenth century. Almost alone among Ethiopian rulers he was fortunate in having his principal campaign against Adal chronicled in a manner worthy of this exploit, for, in contrast to much of the literature preserved in G∂‘∂z, 'Amda ṣeyon's chronicler j could wield his pen with dexterity and some literary panache.

One of the difficulties in the study of the verbal system of a language that is comparatively little known can be finding the appropriate past participles to go with present stems or the reverse. This difficulty faces those working with Khotanese. H. W. Bailey has only recently assigned ārsta- to ārīh- ‘to share’ and pärsta- to prïh- ‘to conceal’. Some further suggestions I make here for the first time.

1.1.1. It has been said that ‘the interrelation of language and other aspects of culture is so close that no part of the culture of a particular group canproperly be studied without reference to the linguistic symbols in use’.1 One manifestation of cultural change in the language is seen in ‘linguisticborrowing’, which, both as a general linguistic and cultural phenomenon, andas a process related to particular languages, has attracted the attention of a great number of scholars, including many linguists.2