this article examines whether it is possible to trace eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalist thought to earlier ‘medieval’ examples. the discussion is centred on the issue of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, which featured prominently in revivalist thought. taking the example of scholars in thirteenth-century damascus, it firstly compares the respective readings of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, by focusing on one individual, abu¯ sha¯ma (d. 1267). it secondly asks whether a scholar like abu¯ sha¯ma, who had adopted a reading similar to later revivalists, also took a critical and oppositional stand against large sections of his contemporary society, i.e. a revivalist posture. it is this article's main contention that the example of abu¯ sha¯ma shows the need to study in more detail possible revivalist traditions prior to the ‘grand’ movements. the combination of the history of ideas and social history might allow a deeper understanding of how and in what contexts calls for reform and opposition to the current state of affairs were expressed.

scripture has ritual uses aimed at giving religion meaning in daily life. in zoroastrianism, the niya¯yišns, ‘invocations of praise’, and the yašts, ‘devotional poems’ have played fundamental roles in connecting doctrine and theology to praxis and conviction whereby faith and rites have been transmitted and augmented across many generations. this article discusses some of the contents and traditions of each niya¯yišn and yašt plus the functions those religious texts have fulfilled and continue to serve for zoroastrians from ancient through modern times.

steering between opposing explanations of religion as either sui generis or sociological construction, this paper argues for an alternative way of conceptualizing the phenomenon called ‘sikh theology’. normally attributed to the interior religious experience of the founder of sikhism, ‘sikh theology’, it will be argued, can more usefully be envisaged as the product of a discursive regime, a regime of colonial translation, which effectively demarcated the conceptual framework of modern sikhism. this regime of translation contains an ideology about religion that made translators such as ernest trumpp imagine the work of translation as providing a remedy for a scripture perceived as lacking conceptual coherence, or in the case of trumpp's non-sikh protagonist m.a. macauliffe, as based on a ‘dialogical interaction’ with sikh native informants. the paper's main focus is to show how key theological concepts passed from trumpp to macauliffe, and were inadvertently imbibed by writers of the exegetical commentaries on scripture such as bha¯i¯ vi¯r singh, even as they were contesting trumpp's odium theologicum.

many scholars accept that the magistrate under the qing (1644–1911) dealt with land and debt disputes with great discretion. through the investigation of first-hand court records of magistrates' reasons for accepting or rejecting land and debt petitions, this article demonstrates for the first time that the assumption and myth that the magistrate either returned petitions to mediators for settlement or dealt with them in a solomonic fashion does not hold water. the magistrate rejected or accepted petitions on the merits of individual cases in accordance with qing law. it shows that litigation on private matters in the qing was rationally administered even at this stage.

tigrinya (t[schwa]gr[schwa]ňňa) is, next to amharic, the most widely spoken semitic language in ethiopia, mainly in the tigre province and in eritrea. in most respects it is closer to the orthodox semitic typology than amharic. in terms of the number of semitic language speakers in general it follows arabic and amharic and surpasses hebrew by those who speak that language indigenously.