Although the Wellcome Collection of Hebraica does not constitute one of the larger and more distinguished collections of oriental material in the Wellcome Institute, it nevertheless comprises a number of important manuscripts along with early printed books representative of several sixteenth and seventeenth-century Hebrew presses. One of these is a fragment of a larger work printed in Constantinople in 1505 at the press of David and Samuel Nahmias. It is the second earliest example of printing in Turkey, the first also coming from the press of the Nahmias brothers.

Hülegü (d. A.D. 1265) and his successors were known by the title īlkhān, which has provided modern scholars with a convenient label for the dynasty. In general, īlkhān has been glossed as “subject” or “submissive” khān. There is less agreement, however, over the circumstances in which īlkhān was adopted by Hülegü. This, in turn, is connected to the more general discussion on the manner in which Hülegü's dynasty was established. Without purporting to resolve these questions, in the following article some evidence is offered which sheds light on these matters.

Jean Deloche in a series of valuable publications has given an overall view of the Indian road network in the period up to about 1820 when the general pacification that followed the collapse of the Maratha kingdom gave British engineers the chance to transform the communications of India, first with military roads and later with railways. This transformation was nowhere more complete than in Central India and particularly in Malwa, the Mughal subha through which led the great road from Delhi and Agra to Burhanpur and the Deccan – a road which was followed by many of the European merchants and diplomats travelling between Surat and Agra and in part by the Maratha armies in the eighteenth century as they first raided and then conquered territory all the way up to Delhi. The other route from Surat to the north lay through Gujarat and the semi-deserts of Rajasthan (Deloche, 1980, pp. 55–7) and will not concern us here. Our route follows the Tapti valley east to Burhanpur, through the gap guarded by Asirgarh and then, after the unavoidable difficulties of the Narmada crossing and the climb up the Vindhya escarpment, takes an easy line through the flat well-cultivated Malwa plateau from Sironj to Narwar, following the grain of the country between the north-flowing tributaries of the Chambal.

Several of the manuscripts from Tunhuang in the invaluable Choix de Documents Tibétains conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1978 and 1979) record cases of civil litigation and administrative or judicial decisions on them in some instances. Fewer deal with criminal matters. Although students of Tibetan have referred to such documents in books and articles, published translations of any of them appear to be rare. In Journal Asiatique, 1955, Mlle Marcelle Lalou, a pioneer in studies of the Tunhuang material, translated Fonds Pelliot Tibétain (Pell. T.) 1089 concerning the appointment of a wide range of officials in the border region. The translation of orders on two short petitions from citizens of Shacu is included in Tsipon Shakabpa's Tibet, a Political History (1967). F. W. Thomas translated the “Law of theft in Chinese Kansu, a IXth–Xth century fragment from Tunhuang”, in Zeitschrift für Verglekhende Rechtswissenschaft, L (1936).

Indian commercial relations with the Red Sea area, and in particular with Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, date back to the dawn of history. Craftsmen from the sub-continent were also active in the Ethiopian region for many centuries, most notably in the early 1620s when “a noble Indian” there is said, by the Jesuit Affonso Mendes, to have thrown white pebbles into the fire, as he had seen done in Cambay, and to have thereby produced “a very glutinous lime”. The then ruler of the country, Emperor Susenyos, was reported by another of the Jesuits, Manoel de Almeida, to have shortly afterwards given orders for the construction of a stone bridge which was erected by a craftsman from India. The latter, according to a contemporary Ethiopian chronicle, was a Banyan called Abdāl Kerim who was also responsible for building Susenyos a palace at his capital Dānqāz.