Although the discovering of a complete Palestinian Targum in the Codex Vatican Neofiti 1 (N) erroneously marked in the spine as ‘ Targum Onkelos ’ was not of archaeological but merely archival nature, it was an event of major importance in Aramaic studies. Its announcement by the discoverer, Alejandro Diez Macho, a former student of P. E. Kahle, in Estudios Biblicos, 16, 1956, 446 ff., and Sefarad, 17, 1957, 119 ff., and especially the impressive voluminous publication by the same scholar, Neophyti 1 Targum Palestinense MS de la Biblioteca Vaticana (Madrid-Barcelona, I, Genesis, 1968; II, Exodo, 1970; III, Levitico 1971; IV, Numeros, 1974; v, Deuteronomio, 1978), provided with detailed scholarly introductions to each volume as well as translations of the edited text into Spanish (by the editor), French (by R. Le Déaut) and English (by M. McNamara and M. Maher), aroused great and justified enthusiasm among scholars. Meanwhile, a facsimile edition in 140 copies was published by Makor in Jerusalem (1970), which helped to clear up certain problems in Macho's edition (esp. the omission of the Hebrew lemmata at the beginning of each verse and errors obliterated by the copyists) deplored by David M. Golomb in his recently published thesis, A grammar of Targum Neofiti (p. 1 f.).

The first comprehensive survey of Geniza documents about the trade on the route to India was published by me in Speculum, A Journal of the American Medieval Academy, 29, 181–97, in April 1954. At that time I was able to give a report about 130 Geniza papers related in one way or another to the India trade. Soon after the article was published, a distinguished institution offered me the opportunity to publish the material in full. I accepted with enthusiasm and set feverishly to work. But slowly it dawned upon me that one should not try to solve problems by sagacity at a time when new sources that could provide factual answers to those problems might lurk around the corner

Of maimonides' (1135–1204) prinicpal philosophical work Dalā al-Hāirīn (More Nevuxim) four autograph fragments are known, each from a different Geniza collection:

The first discovery was made at the beginning of the century by H. Hirschfeld, Who identified two unjoined leaves in the Geniza collection of the University Library, Cambridge, and Published them, with photographs, in JQR, xv, 1902–3, 677–81 under the title: ‘The Arabic portion of the Cairo Geniza at Cambridgem IV. Two autograph fragments of Maimonides’ Dalālat al Ḥārin, These leaves cover Book I, chs. 64–65 and Book II, Chs.32–33

The simplest, irreducible part of the verb is the root, which carries the lexical information, and to which are suffixed markers of person, tense, mood, etc. Most verb roots end in a consonant, the commonest shapes being CVC- and CVCC-, but also VC- and VCC-: qal- ‘see’, wäš- ‘hear’, arq- ‘know’, abz- ‘finish’, mars'- ‘choose’, ward- ‘play’, aq- ‘be’, is'- ‘curse’, and so on. Dissyllabic roots are extremely rare in the material and almost all appear to be loans from Ethiopian Semitic: wływär- ‘throw’, färaq- ‘be wide’, mikwir- ‘try’, addin- ‘hunt’, tinfis- ‘breathe’; dissyllabic Agaw roots are is'aq- ‘send’, iqa- (also shortened to qa-)‘wash’. In addition there is a comparatively small number of roots with the shape CV-: xwa/t- ‘eat’, fi- ‘go out’, gwi- ‘get up, rise’, bi- ‘lack’, yi- ‘say’, and so on.

It is about three-quarters of a century since the maryannu (maryanni) of Mitanni and its dependencies, appearing in Hittite and Egyptian records of the second millennium B.C., were first discussed in connexion with the IndoIranians. In 1910 H. Winckler interpreted the word as a title belonging to Aryan infiltrators from the north, who had come to form an aristocracy among the Hurrians; and he recorded the suggestion by F. C. Andreas connecting it with Vedic márya ‘ young man, man, hero ’. Subsequently W. F. Albright presented a carefully documented case for considering the maryannu to be primarily ‘chariot-warriors’, arguing that from about 1700 to 1200 B.C. ‘chariots played the same role in warfare that cavalry did later, and the chariot-warriors occupied the same social position that was held by the⃛ feudal knights of the Middle Ages’. He further pointed out, with regard to Vedic márya, that a semantic development from ‘young man’ to ‘warrior’ is widely attested. Thereafter R. T. O'Callaghan adduced yet more evidence from Egyptian and cuneiform sources to confirm that ‘from the mid-fifteenth century to the midtwelfth century B.C., and from the Mitanni kingdom down through Palestine beyond Ascalon, the term maryannu is to be understood primarily as a noble who is a chariot-warrior’. The area was one where Indo-Aryan names occur at about the same period; and in the fourteenth-century Kikkuli treatise from Boghaz-köy, on the training of chariot-horses, Indo-Aryan technical terms appear. There were solid grounds therefore for thinking that Indo-Aryans, bringing with them horses from the Asian steppes, had played a leading part in developing chariotry in the Near East at that time, and that it was this which enabled a group of them to become locally dominant there.

On 6 December 1966, with Muhammad al-'Ubaydī, son of the naqīb of Shākir, as Leader of my escort, I went to Sūdah in Arhab, a Black lava Mountain, the place belonging to 'Iyāl al-Sihaym. We had passed by Jabal al-Riyām and Sirwā. The tomb of Sālih was on the north side, a domed building This tomb had, or used to have, 'ushūr, tithes paid to it. In the houses which were on the south side there was only one man, the rest ofthe villagers being women. The men were away at the war or perhaps employed in San‘ā’. Water was short here and I believe (though this is not in my notes) brought from quite some distance. Sūdah had the Look of a hungry place. Yet in the area there was much driwing on the rocks, some quite recent, including a Hebrew graffito which too had the appearance of being recently made, and it seems that Jews used at one time to Live here.

The subject of this communication is a letter in Thai (Siamese), dated the equivalent of 1777, to Francis Light who occupied the island of Penang as agent of the East India Company in 1786 and became its first Superintendent. Light had been a trader on the coast since about 1771 where he was particularly concerned with Kedah and with the island of Thalang (Salang)usually known to Europeans as Junk Ceylon. His sphere of activity extended westward to the ports of the Coromandel coast and to Bengal and eastward as for as Bangkok. At the date in question thecapital of Siam was at Thonburi on the west bank of the Chao Phya river before its transfer to its present site on the east bank in 1782. The whole area had long been konwn as Bankok or Bankok to foreign traders