In the history of Hebrew letters, few dates have so cavalierly been invested with literary and linguistic significance as 1886/7, the publication date of Mendele's short story BeSeter Ra'am.

Such scholars of literature as Ravnitzki, Klausner and Werses have hailed its style as the pointer or veritable trigger to a redeployment of the traditional ‘synthetic’ (composite Biblical/post-Biblical) Hebrew style—instead of being confined to the registers of non-fiction, it now rose to supplant Biblical Hebrew as the standard for narrative prose. Some historians of language have gone so far as to present it as a total innovation (for its time) in that the aforegoing Haskalah writers had adhered almost exclusively to a Biblical manner.

Khul’, according to its shar ī definition, is a wife's ‘redemption of herself’ from the marriage tie, with the husband's consent, by the use of the word khul’, or a verb derived from it, in return for consideration. The husband, not the wife, dissolves the marriage tie; he must be legally competent to divorce the wife, and the wife must be legally competent to enter into a contractual divorce agreement for consideration (Anderson, 1970: 367). She is a party to the proceedings for divorce by shar’ī khul’, just as she is a party to the marriage contract. She generally compensates the husband by returning the dower (which is her property under the sharī'a), wholly or in part, in exchange for her freedom. This is the picture emerging from the sijill and confirmed by research elsewhere.

‘ Les lois de compétence ne sont done plus les mêmes pour tous ceux qui se trouvent en Algerie. Aujourd'hui une distinction doit être faite, et, ce qui doit paraître invraisemblable en France, au xxe siècle, le critérium de cette distinction est religion.’

The last ten years have seen a remarkable increase in the number of published studies about the Sīrat Banī Hilāl, or, to borrow the term used by francophone specialists from the Maghrib as well as from France itself, La Geste hilalienne. The subject matter and the approach of these specialists has been varied. Their interests have focused on the myriad plots of the narrative of the sīra, the imagery employed, the performance of the shā ‘ir and the documenting of the texts, be they oral or written. In aggregate, these studies have done much to clarify the nature of the work itself and its relationship, if any, to the exploits of the real Banū Hilāl during and after the eleventh century within the Maghrib. They have also contributed to a better understanding of the literary value of all the best known Arabic folk epics.

The dynasty which ruled the khānate of Bukhara during the greater part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries claimed descent from Chingiz Khān's son Jochi, as did the Shaybānids of the preceding dynasty. It is known as Ashtarkhānid, to recall the place of origin of the family, viz. Astrakhan. More often it is referred to as Jānid, after Jānāī Muḥammad Khān, who is considered by some as the first ruler of the dynasty. But it will be seen that there is no clear basis for such an assumption, and that in fact his father and his eldest son were between them the founders of the dynasty

Kalpeni is one of the islands of the enchantingly beautiful small archipelago known as Lakshadweep, a group of diminutive coral islands lying off the southwest coast of India, scattered on the Arabian sea 200 to 400 kilometres off the Kerala Coast. The islands, though small, are densely populated-inhabited by an interesting tribal people, who are engaged mainly in cultivation of the coconut tree, and as a side-line, in fishing. The archipelago is part of the Republic of India, and is ruled directly by the Central Government since 1958. The events narrated in this article, however, took place when the islands were attached for administrative purposes to the districts of Malabar and South Kanara of the Madras Presidency (as most of British South India was called in the colonial days). Kalpeni Island was situated in that part of this territory of which the District Collector of Malabar was the supreme authority.

The subject of oracles and divination usually calls to mind two topics, the shells and bones of the Shang–Yin period, and the cast of the yarrow stalks with a view to constructing the hexagrams. Attention may then fasten on the inscriptions of the shells and the bones, or on the Changes, and their respective places in linguistic, religious, historical or philosophical studies. However, it is by no means always recognized that divination and oracles continued to be matters of considerable importance in their many forms in later ages, playing a significant role alike in political decisions, religious practice and scientific enquiry.

Few experiences are as exasperating as being obliged to resort to tedious hand calculation because the reference works available for the purpose of verifying historical eclipse observations are plainly inadequate. To those of us concerned with the history of East Asia who are intimidated enough by the chore of balancing the monthly bank statement, F. R. Stephenson's and M. A. Houlden's Atlas of historical eclipse maps will be a most welcome addition to the reference library.

In Tigrinya, the cardinal numbers from 5 to 9 show a hushing sibilant instead of the hissing sibilant which is found in the corresponding ordinal numbers, i.e., 5th to 9th, and the multiples of ten, i.e., 50 to 90. We cite the forms as given by W. Leslau (1941: 127 ff.)

The late Walter Simon discussed the Tibetan particle re in two important articles published in this journal: ‘The Tibetan particle re’ (BSOAS, xxx, 1, 1967, 117–26) and ‘Tibetan re in its wider context’ (BSOAS, xxxi, 3, 1968, 555–62).

The participle ghaţita (from the root ghaţ) has a wide range of meanings, but is quite restricted when applied to windows in a house or palace. Our purpose here is to clarify this specific usage by reference to texts and archaeological remains. As such, this note elucidates the cultural milieu of the term.

I read with interest the brief report on the Persian–Tamil inscription on a stone tablet recording the reconstruction of the Āmbūr Fort in Tamilnadu, and now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum (BSOAS, XLIX, 3, 1986, 553–7). As a Tamil epigraphist, I was particularly interested in the Tamil text edited by J. R. Marr (ibid., 553, n. 3). Unfortunately, he has misread two words (each occurring twice), made wrong segmentations of two other words and omitted the last word in the text. These happen to be crucial words and consequently his translation has suffered. The Tamil characters of the epigraph are almost modern and they can be made out quite clearly from the excellent reproduction (ibid., pi. I). Without more ado, I proceed to furnish a revised transliteration and translation of the Tamil record with brief notes on some of the interesting expressions occurring in it.