Amharic, the native language of a large group of the population of central Ethiopia, also functions as a lingua franca among the neighbouring peoples, and has done so for a long time. The language is usually associated with the culture of the politically dominant part of the population, the Christian culture. But it is certain that from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, and probably even before that time, Amharic was used also for Islamic religious texts: poetry composed to spread the basic religious concepts of Islam and songs to be chanted in religious meetings. The first foreign scholar to become aware of this was Enrico Cerulli, who published some examples of Islamic songs in Amharic in 1926. Much more has since been published by Ethiopians. In the 1960s I obtained a small collection of such texts which are discussed in this article.

This paper argues that the trade in leather and other pastoralist products, which the tradition ascribes to the Meccans, could make sense on the assumption that the goods were destined for the Roman army, which is known to have required colossal quantities of leather and hides for its equipment. The hypothesis that the Meccans were servicing the Roman military is examined and found to be impossible to prove in our current state of knowledge; it is at least compatible with the evidence, however, and also highly promising in terms the light it could throw on the political aspects of the rise of Islam.

This article questions certain assumptions on the intellectual history of modern Islam and on one of the most influential modern reform movements, the Salafiyya. By looking at the Sufi origins of one of the main Salafī reformers, it relativizes the notion of an inherent anti-Sufism of this reform movement. The article examines how Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905), the famous Egyptian reformer, converted to Sufism in his youth after experiencing a spiritual and intellectual crisis. The influence of his paternal great-uncle Shaykh Darwīsh al-Khādir and of Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1837–1897) on ‘Abduh's spiritual and intellectual formation will be investigated. In his youth, Sufism provided him with an alternative form of religiosity with which he could express his dissatisfaction with the representatives of mainstream Islam in his time. ‘Abduh's mystical inclinations found its literary expression in his first major work, the Risālat al-Wāridāt (Treatise on Mystical Inspirations), whose contents will be discussed in detail.

The economic dynamics of the twelfth century finds its expression in an increased number of fiscal instruments and terminology. After an introduction to legal taxation and Saljūq fiscal policy, the philological problems of a specific due, al-fissa, illegitimate according to the sharī‘a, will be addressed along with its political function, history, levying and transfer. It was levied in Damascus for an annual and/or occasional tribute to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, even before the alliance of Damascus and Jerusalem in 532/1140. Before Nūr al-Dīn Mahmūd's conquest of Damascus the monies were transferred by bearers of hawālas. It can be suggested that tax farmers were liable for them. A decree, rasm, allowed for the collection of al-fissa. The due was levied perhaps on the basis of an assessment of urban real estate. An interpretation of the term al-fissa was suggested as Arabic borrowing from the middle Latin term fossa.