The German Turfan collection includes fragments of two Early New Persian manuscripts in Syriac script, a bilingual (Syriac and New Persian) Psalter and a pharmacological handbook containing prescriptions similar to those in the Syriac Book of Medicines published by E. A. W. Budge. Both texts make use of certain non-Syriac characters, some of which were also used for writing Sogdian while others may have been created especially for writing Persian in Syriac script. The Syriac text of the Psalter fragments is that of the Peshitta; the translation is particularly valuable for the vocalization of the Persian words. In addition to many unusual and interesting words, the pharmacological fragments attest the rare Syriac numeral symbols derived from those of ancient Aramaic. The present article contains a transliteration and translation of all these texts together with a glossary and full philological discussion.

This article explores the careers of craftsmen and other commoners, who succeeded in joining the bureaucratic system and occupying high positions in the Mamluk administrative establishment, eventually acquiring great power and even political authority. At the same time Sufi shaykhs, also men of common origin and beneficiaries of Mamluk philanthropy, emerged as mighty and authoritative figures, venerated equally by the aristocracy and the populace. The newly privileged groups also figure as founders of Friday mosques following a flexible new attitude on the part of the authorities. This social fluidity, often criticized by historians of the period, was the result of the pious patronage of the Mamluk aristocracy, which brought academic education to the reach of a large part of the populace. Towards the end of the Mamluk period, the structure of religious institutions had itself been levelled: the Friday mosque with Sufi service replaced the earlier madrasas and khanqāhs. The article also discusses how the visual arts of the period mirror the social changes with new aspects of artistic patronage.

Unlike most ancient Arabic poetry, the poems attributed to Umayya b. Abī l-Ṣalt treat subjects that are also prominent in the Quran, such as creation, eschatology, and episodes from Biblical history. The authenticity of this corpus has, however, been the subject of some controversy. After a critical survey of previous scholarship, this article examines one particular passage from the Umayya corpus dealing with the destruction of the ancient tribe of Thamūd, which, it is argued, is likely to be pre-Quranic. The article then proceeds to highlight the crucial differences, both in content and in literary format, that exist between Umayya's retelling of the Thamūd narrative and its earliest Quranic version, and concludes with a number of general remarks on the Quran's religious milieu as reflected in Umayya's literary output.

The poem discussed has long been regarded as a “nonsense” poem that was extemporized as part of some kind of poetry game at Court. This article presents evidence to demonstrate that through the use of puns and double entendre the poet in fact ingeniously devised a witty scatological verse. Rather than “nonsense”, the poem is discovered to offer covertly a deeply satirical social commentary on the contemporaneous relationships between men and women, aristocrats and outcastes.

Susan Roosevelt Weld has observed that the Houma and Wenxian covenant texts, excavated texts dating to the fifth century bc, can be considered “examples of collective responsibility”. New materials from the Wenxian covenant texts provide further evidence relevant to this issue. In this article I present my analysis of a previously unseen imprecation, “Cause [you] to have no descendants” 俾毋有胄後. I suggest the excavated covenants provide the earliest references found in a legal context to collective punishment, a practice that, while archaic in origin, is generally better known from Qin and later penal codes. I also discuss the scope of the term shì 氏, as it is used in the imprecation, in the context of Mark Lewis's work defining basic social units in the Zhou period.