Neither of the terms commonly used to describe the seventh-century expansion of the movement that comes to be called Islam – “the Islamic conquests” or “the Arab conquests” – is satisfactory; both terms are anachronistic and in some ways misleading; yet there is, at present, no clear candidate for an alternative terminology. This article discusses the weaknesses of existing nomenclatures, with reference to relevant primary sources, and the conceptual problems the traditional nomenclatures pose in the context of an extensive review of scholarly literature from roughly 1900 to the present. It offers a few suggestions for possible new terminologies, but essentially opens the question for further discussion.

The importance of documentary sources for the history of the official postal system (barīd) in the first century of Islam has long been acknowledged. In addition to a small number of documents from the eastern part of the Muslim Empire, Egyptian papyri from the 90s/710s and 130s/750s form the main documentary sources for modern studies on the postal system. These papyri belong to a distinct phase in Islamic history. Papyri from other, especially earlier, phases have largely been neglected. The present article addresses the history of Egypt's official postal system from the Muslim conquest up to c. 132/750. It argues that the postal system gradually developed out of Byzantine practices and was shaped by innovations by Muslim rulers through which their involvement in the postal system's administration gradually increased. The article ends with an edition of P.Khalili II 5, a papyrus document from 135/753 on the provisioning of postal stations.

Several verbal forms reconstructed for proto-Semitic strongly resemble reconstructed forms in proto-Berber: compare Semitic yV-PaRRaS to Berber y-əFăRRăS, Semitic yV-PRaS to Berber y-əFRăS, and Semitic yV-PRuS and yV-PRiS to Berber y-ăFRəS. We suggest that these forms are historically related and sketch a line of development from the reconstructed meanings to their attested uses. yVPaRRaS, originally imperfective, retains that value in both Berber and Semitic. yVPRas, originally stative, gained a perfective meaning in Berber and Semitic; the stative meaning is retained in Berber, but was largely lost in Semitic. yVPRus/yVPRiS, originally perfective, retained that meaning in Semitic, merging with the newly perfective yVPRas forms; in Berber, yVPRaS completely replaced perfective yVPRuS/yVPRiS, relegating the latter to non-aspectual uses. We conclude by considering the quality of the first vowel; the alternation seen in Berber y-əFRăS and y-ăFRəS supports reconstructions as yiPRaS and yaPRuS/yaPRiS, conforming to the Barth–Ginsberg Law of Semitic.

In recent years a number of scholars have proposed more or less detailed schemas of the formation of the Zoroastrian ritual. These schemas offer accounts of the arrangement of the texts in the liturgy, the process of its formation, and even its function from an endogenous perspective. One way or another, they argue that the official Zoroastrian liturgy is an integrated ritual with a coherent text, and that the function of the ritual and the intention behind the arrangement of the texts can be determined by means of philological, literary and comparative analyses. The questions of formation and meaning of the Zoroastrian liturgy these scholars have placed on the agenda are important not only for the study of Zoroastrianism but also for the history of religions and ritual theory. I consider their accounts with respect to the texts they invoke and the methods they use, and show that their arguments suffer from fatal flaws.

Until the Mughal period historians of Muslim India hardly mention ladies, as it was considered discourteous, and even then only a handful of noble women were deemed worthy of mention. A secluded lady was of concern only to the man of the house. There was Sultan Raḍiya, Īltutmish's daughter, who succeeded to the throne and enjoyed a degree of freedom during Turkish rule in India, but was killed, accused of an illicit relationship with a black slave. Nevertheless, many women's influence reached beyond the harem and their voices appear between the lines. One such woman was the Sharqī Sultan Muḥammad's mother, Bībī Rājī, who played a significant role in the affairs of Jaunpur, but this article concerns another: Sultan Sikandar Lodī’s mother, known as Bībī Zarrīna (the Lady of Gold) who defied the Lodī nobility to put her son on the throne. Here we explore her story and study her tomb.

Headhunting has a long and well-documented history in China, but most people are today unaware of this practice, first recorded in Shang oracle bones and regularly mentioned in ancient Chinese texts until the Han dynasty. This ignorance is because headhunting subsequently came to be seen as a barbaric practice and knowledge concerning its long history was destroyed: this was achieved by inventing a new character, guo 聝, which means “to cut the ear of a dead enemy combatant” and using this to replace (and thus confuse meanings with) an older character guo 馘, which refers specifically to headhunting. Ancient texts in which headhunting practices are documented have been misunderstood and misrepresented by imperial era scholars to prevent anyone from seeing that ancient China was a headhunting culture. This study shows how dominant cultural norms can impact on the way in which texts are read.