In a study which has been described as pioneering, Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, Theodor Nöldeke ‘discussed in detail the “Stylistische und syntaktische Eigentümlichkeiten der Sprache des Korans” (pp. 5–23) thereby collecting together everything that had occurred to him in this respect during his protracted and intensive study of the Holy Book of the Muslims.’ Among the examples Nöldeke discusses (pp. 13–14) are Q. 7 (not 77 which is clearly a misprint in his text): 55, 27:61; 35:27, 6:99, 20:55, 10:23, etc. where there is a sudden shift in the pronoun of the speaker or the person spoken about, known as iltifāt in balāgha (Arabic rhetoric), though Nöldeke does not refer to the term here. Introducing his discussion of this feature, Nöldeke remarks that ‘the grammatical persons change from time to time in the Qur'ān in an unusual and not beautiful way (nicht schöner Weise)’ (p. 13). This is a personal value judgement. Arab writers, in contrast see the matter differently. Ibn al-Athīr, for instance, after studying this stylistic feature, as we shall see below, classed it among the ‘remarkable things and exquisite subtleties we have found in the Glorious Qur'ān.’ It will be seen that the examples Nöldeke cites immediately following the statement quoted above do not occur haphazardly in the Qur'ān but follow a pattern. Examination of where exactly the shift occurs and why, will show how effective the technique is in these examples and why Muslim literary critics and exegetes greatly admire iltifāt and its related features. Nöldeke further remarks (p. 14) that in a few places the second and third person plural are exchanged abruptly: 30:38, 49:7, 10:23. Here again it will be seen that the changes are made according to an effective pattern and that the frequency of occurrences of this type is much greater than is indicated by Nöldeke.

The category of participle (P) usually includes at least two distinct paradigms. The terms for these vary, as it is not easy to determine the often language-specific nature of the opposition encoded in them. Temporal- ‘aspectual’ terminology is widely applied, giving present or ‘imperfect’ or progressive Ps as opposed to past, preterite, or ‘perfect’ Ps. An alternative popular opposition in many a linguistic tradition is of active vs. passive Ps. To avoid commitment to any of these nomenclatures, I use neutral formal terms: PI and P2.

In order to establish the place of P in the verbal system of a given language, the relevant verbal-syntactic categories of that particular system must first be isolated. For this, I define the following components of indicative verbal systems in non-aspectual languages.

Johnstone (1968, 1975, 1980, 1981) has pointed out that two of the Modern South Arabian group of Semitic languages, Jibbali (Śḥeri) and Socotri, systematically lose the person-marking prefix t- (whether it mark the second person or the feminine third person) in certain types of verbs. An example of this phenomenon from Jibbali may be seen in the passive paradigm of the basic stem, which is given below alongside the active-voice paradigm of a ‘stative’- type basic verb, the conjugation of which (aside from the person-markers under discussion) closely matches that of the passive form. In the active voice, the tappears in the positions in which we expect it on the basis of the cognate prefixes in the other Semitic languages, while in the passive voice the t- is absent.

The period from the late sixteenth century has been characterized in Ottoman historiography as one of fundamental change in the composition of the army. One of the features of this change was the gradual replacement of the tīmār-based cavalry force, to whom were awarded benefices in return for military service, by provincial levies able to use muskets (tüfenk), often hired only for the duration of a single campaign. Although the extent to which such changes were directly prompted by the supposedly superior technology which the Ottomans encountered when fighting the Habsburgs on their western borders remains open to further research, that there was a radical transformation which relied on the greatly increased use of firearms is beyond doubt.

In an earlier article (‘Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī: from Benares to Braj’, BSOAS, LV, 1, 1992) an attempt was made to establish an authoritative biography of Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī, the author of a number of devotional poems and commentaries in Sanskrit. It was shown there that the sannyāsin Prabodhānanda's life can be divided into three parts: the first, about which we know little, in which he was a Śankaraite monk living in Benares; a second, in which he came under the influence of Caitanya and his devotees, and a third, in which he associated closely with Hita Harivaṃśa, the founder of the Rādhāval-labhī sect in Braj.

The account given of the Bamboo Annals pre-Conquest chronology in Part 1 of this paper bears comparison with the internally consistent chronological sequence found in Yi Zhou shu, whose coherence has not been fully appreciated by those attempting to reconstruct the chronology. As we saw in the discussion of King Wu's reign in Part 1, Yi Zhou shu ‘Da kuang’ and ‘Wen zheng’ chapters are correct in dating the appointment of King Wu' s siblings as viceroys in the former Shang domain, which event we know took place in the Conquest year, to the 13th year of the Mandate, a finding that is fundamentally incompatible with Chou Fa-kao's, David Nivison' s, and Edward Shaughnessy' s account. The same two chapters in combination with ‘Zuo luo’ are also correct in implying that King Wu died in the 14th year. Furthermore, ‘Wen zhuan’ chapter of Yi Zhou shu correctly dates King Wen' s demise to the ‘9th year of the Mandate’ in those very words.

The Chadic (Afroasiatic) language Hausa, spoken mainly in Nigeria and the Republic of Niger, has a series of ‘glottalic’ obstruents. This includes both ejectives ([k’], [s’] or [ts’]; orthographic κ, ts) and two other consonants which have often been described as ‘implosives’ and are represented by the IPA symbols for implosives in Hausa orthography (б, d). In addition, there is a ‘laryngealized’ palatal glide (orthographic ‘y). The description of orthographic б, d as implosive has been called into question, however. Ladefoged, in his well-known work on the phonetics of West African languages (Ladefoged (1964: 16)), suggested that, while these sounds may on occasion show the ingressive air flow characteristic of implosives, their most consistent characteristic is a distinctive mode of vocal fold vibration (phonation type) known as creaky voice or laryngealization; thus, Hausa б and d should be labelled ‘laryngealized stops’ rather than ‘implosives’. One implication of this change in descriptive label is that, at least from a phonetic point of view, б and d should be grouped with ‘y.

Stefan Maul has presented Assyriology with a model study of an important genre of liturgical texts, the so-called eršahunga-prayers designed to still the heart of an angry god. The texts appear in autograph copies and transliterations, with lucid translations, useful philological notes, and a comprehensive glossary. The present reviewer has not checked the copies, since M.-C. Ludwig has collated the British Museum tablets for her own review of this volume.

Maul's introduction to the eršahunga-prayers offers a brief survey of the genre, although the discussion is somewhat too specialized for the general reader unfamiliar with Assyriology. There is a need for a review of both Sumerian and Akkadian prayer which addresses the relationship between prayer and incantation, since both genres can appear together in certain types of apotropaic rituals. The problem of appeasing an angry god, for instance, was a theme common to both liturgy and incantations. The eršahunga, ‘lament to still the heart’, is paralleled by incantations known as dingir-šà-dib-ba gur-ru-da ‘(incantations) to appease the angry god’, composed as a confessional of unwitting sins. It is not clear when one would recite an eršahunga-prayer or a dingir-šà-dib-ba incantation, since both types of texts attempt to appease a god who is angered by some unspecified or unknown transgression. The eršahunga is typically composed in the Emesal dialect of Sumerian associated primarily (but not exclusively) with prayer and cultic texts, while exorcistic incantations are composed in the main Sumerian dialect (Emegir) of literary texts; both of these genres appear in the first millennium with Akkadian translations. It is possible that the distinction between prayer and incantation simply represents professional divisions between the kalû (lamentation priest) and the āšipu (exorcist), but it is not easy to define the conditions in which the various types of prayers and incantations were employed.

In an article concerning the prehistory of Kelantan G. Benjamin provided an etymology for the toponym ‘Lebir’ as deriving from the Old Mon [OM] word for ‘sea, river’, OM Iḅir, Iḅīr, modern Mon LM ḅś, SM /бi/. He went on to say that there is evidence to assume early Malay–Mon contacts; in fact, it was only by the twelfth century A.D. that a language-shift at the expense of Mon occurred in an area of what is today southern Thailand and northern Malaysia. By implication this might also mean that there were contacts between groups speaking Aslian languages and Mon.

In support of his hypothesis Benjamin referred to epigraphic evidence, in particular to Mon inscriptions from southern Thailand as the earliest written in any vernacular. In fact, there are only two inscriptions, previously claimed to be written in Mon, Nś. 2, discovered in 1971, from Nakhorn Sri Thammarat [Ligor] and Nś. 3 from the same area. The Thai Government's Fine Arts Department [FAD] dates Nś. 2 to the later half of the thirteenth century A.D., at a time when Benjamin assumes the language-shift Mon > Malay/Thai in the peninsula to have already taken place. But the difficulty is not only how to reconcile the comparatively late date—based on palaeographical grounds—with Benjamin's chronological framework; the inscription is largely illegible and classed by the FAD in its most recent publication as written in ‘Old Mon and Old Burmese’. The other inscription which the FAD has interpreted as Old Mon is Nś. 3/RIS XXVII, dated by Cœdès to the sixth century. But Cœdès himself was unable to determine the language of this one line inscription, and it cannot be ascribed to Old Mon.