Ibn Jazlah was born and raised as a Christian in Karkh (Baghdad) and died in the year 1100. He acquired his medical education in Baghdad, worked at the ʿAḍuḍi hospital, and was appointed as a registrar and physician for the court at the ʿAbbāsid capital and later became a court physician of Caliph al-Muqtadī. Ibn Jazlah wrote several books on various subjects, mainly on medicine. During the process of reconstructing the medical library of the medieval Jewish practitioners in Cairo, a Genizah fragment of a unique tabular medical book in Arabic was identified as Ibn Jazlah's tabulated manual “Taqwīm al-abdān”, which is most probably part of the earliest known copy of the text. A study of the T-S Ar.41.137 clearly shows that it was an uncompleted draft, and can therefore teach us how the medieval copier worked. The image of the fragment is presented here, as well as its transliteration, translation and analysis.

This article examines seemingly monotheistic, polytheistic and dualistic features of Zoroastrianism from the point of view of the Zoroastrian creation myth. Exploring the personality of the principal deity, Ahura Mazdā, the origin of the spiritual and material worlds and the worship of the Yazatas, it is argued that Zoroastrianism has its own particular form of monotheism.

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyī's al-Durr al-manthūr fī’l-tafsīr bi’l-maʾthūr is almost unique in presenting an exegesis based entirely on adīth material, taking tafsīr bi’l-maʾthūr to the extreme. Since al-Suyī cites a source, or multiple sources, for every single adīth that he includes in his collection, it is possible to gain some insight into his compositional method and the way in which he engages with source material. This article presents a statistical analysis of the sources in this exegesis, taking a sample of twenty-three sūras, including over 5,000 aādīth. The source data is analysed and shows that there is a discernible pattern in al-Suyī's use of sources and that there is much to learn from studying this source data in detail. Al-Suyī's hermeneutical method is closely aligned with those of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Kathīr, and this article will also examine the extent to which al-Durr al-manthūr can be viewed as the culmination of Ibn Taymmiyya's approach to tafsīr.

Chŏng Yagyong 丁若鏞 (1762–1836), commonly known by the penname Tasan 茶山, was infamous for his involvement in the early Catholic Church, which was formed by his close friends and his brothers. This Church was responsible for its self-evangelisation based on the ideas found in Matteo Ricci's Tianzhu shiyi 天主實義 (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven). The effects of this very controversial aspect of his life, and the influence of this precarious context—fraught with danger, narrowly escaping execution and exiled for 18 years—has been under-valued. This paper highlights the effects of such a context on Tasan's ideas by engaging with “deconstruction”, drawing on the ideas of Jacques Derrida. I outline how Tasan embroidered Ricci's deconstructive strategies into the deepest fabric of his own deconstruction of “original” Confucianism, or his dis-assembling of traditions. The paper uncovers Christian traces silhouetted in Tasan's theistic commentaries, leading him towards a Post-Confucian conceptualisation of humanity (仁) vis-à-vis a personal, monotheistic, creator God.

At a time when the United Kingdom accelerated decolonisation and slowly embraced Europe, London gradually lost the means and the will to fulfil its responsibilities to Hong Kong up until the expiry of the New Territories Lease in 1997. Although the immediate cause of this pessimistic mind-set was the leftist riots in 1967, the factors underlying despondency in London had to do with developments before 1967, namely Hong Kong's growing economic prosperity and administrative autonomy from London since the late 1950s, and beyond Hong Kong itself, the global implications of Britain's withdrawal from East of Suez and entry into the European Economic Community by the early 1970s. By 1972 the process of the “decolonisation” of Hong Kong was well underway. Although the British deemed the time unsuitable to initiate formal negotiation with the then Chinese government, they were prepared to take “informal soundings” concerning Hong Kong's future when a new pragmatic leadership emerged and before the crisis of confidence ensued nearer 1997.