‘Particle’ and ‘Noun’ are not a priori categories of universal applicability. Ad hoc definition of their ‘meaning’ is given under A. Detailed description of structural relations observable between them follows at B.

In this article I examini two problems regarding women's participation in shared saint veneration and festivals in the eastern Mediterranean and Iberia. First, I ascertain what women's practices were, whether women participated in or assigned meanings to rituals that were separate from those of men, and finally, whether these shared practices were enough to break down religious barriers between women so that we may speak of ‘women's piety’ or ‘women's religious culture’ as a category that extends beyond the confines of individual religious affiliations. Secondly, I explore the meanings that certain male writers assigned in these practices and their emphasis on the fact that it was women, according to them, who engaged in the rituals. I show that, in contrast to Christian or Jewish authors, many Muslim legalists focused on women as the primary participants in certain types of piety as a polemical strategy to denigrate religious practices of which they disapproved.

The text of this tract is based on two MSS., which I call 0 (old) and M (modern). The first, written in a “Tarassul” hand of the ninth (fifteenth) century, is defective at both ends and lacks one folio between fols. 1 and 2; the second, in a modern hand, was copied from a copy made by Muḥammad Ḥusain-i Garakānī (Shams al-‘Ulamā), who claims to have transcribed it, with corrections, “from a MS. of mixed contents written in a tal‘q hand in the ninth century A.H.” This reference probabliy belongs to 0, for, after I had acquired M, I bought the origina11 fragment of five leaves among the books which had belonged to tide late Shams al-‘Ulamā. The page before fol. 1 and the one after fol. 5 of the fragment must have remained in the original collection, but what happened to the missing folio I cannot say. Instead of the titles and divisions written in the original in red ink, a more adequate system of paragraphs has been introduced into the text.

The aim of this paper is to elucidate some of the phrases and slogans which occur in the Muslim traditions about the Fitna, the first ‘civil war’ in Islam, which, according to tradition, begins with the murder of the caliph ‘Uthmān in 36/656 and ends with the recognition of Mu'āwiya as caliph in 41/661. These phrases and slogans are discussed in the light of ideas and terminology found in Judaism, and it is suggested that a better understanding of them can be gained by the comparison with Judaism than by the attempts to interpret them in more traditionally Muslim terms. It is argued that both the lā ḥukma slogan and the ḥudūd references indicate a dispute within the early Muslim community about the authority to be accorded to Scripture, and that the terminology used is so reminiscent of that used in Judaism that it is likely that the dispute was the same as that which we know was the mam one between Jewish sects in the early Islamic period—the relative status of Scripture and Oral Law. This would be an issue which has not previously been mentioned in discussions of the issues involved in the Fitna and, if the suggestions made here prove to be acceptable, it would provide more material for discussion of the sectarian circles which contributed to the development of Islam.

Vast quantities of ceramic shards of the Ayyubid-Mamluk period have been recovered from excavations of major urban sites such as Fusṭāṭ and Ḥamā, as well as from numerous smaller settlements in the Levant. Knowledge of the range of glazed and decorated wares has been supplemented by the publication of complete vessels in museum collections. As a result of archaeological and art historical research some production sites have been identified and broad chronological divisions established within the ceramic repertoire. Less well understood, however, is the social and economic environment within which pottery was produced and utilized. In addition, analysis of the objects themselves reveals little about the value ascribed to ceramics in relation to the other craft media of the period. This paper will attempt to provide further insights into the manufacture, trade and consumption of pottery in the Levant in the Ayyubid-Mamluk period (including some comments concerning the Crusader states in Palestine) by using contemporary Arabic and Western written sources.

A Precious fragment amongst the treasures in the possession of the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin contains a Sogdian “List of nations” (nāfnāmak), the edition of which I am preparing. Two names, however, call for a special study: (1) denoting a people in the Oxus-region, obviously the inhabitants of Toxāristān, and (2) ‘rkcyk, mentioned immediately after Kāšγar, Khotan, and Kučā.

The products derived from the balsam tree (probably a cultivar of Commiphora opobalsamum [L.] Engl.) were employed extensively in medicine during the medieval period. This article presents a preliminary survey of the Arabic and European texts which discuss the varied medical uses of balsam. The analysis of the medical applications of balsam is organized into broad categories according to groups of illnesses and treatments. Although other sources of medicinal oleo-resin were available in the medieval period, the balsam gathered from the trees in the walled plantation at Matariyya in Egypt enjoyed a pre-eminent status. It is argued that the great regard shown to balsam in medieval medicine must be seen in the wider context of the history and legends associated with Matariyya and the earlier plantations in Palestine.

Isma'īl's defeat by the Ottomans at Chāldirān—his first defeat—destroyed the legend of his invincibility. This legend was based on his pretensions to a quasi-divine status, and, after Chāldirān, the qizilbāsh, although they continued to pay lip-service to this idea, showed clearly by their actions that they no longer accorded any special reverence to the person of their ruler. They had lost their faith in Isma'īl's supernatural powers, and this impaired their fundamental relationship with him. Although in theory Isma'īl was still the murshid-i kāmil, and the qizilbāsh were his murīas, the qizilbāsh were no longer prepared to follow him with the fanatical devotion and indifference to personal danger which had been noted by a Venetian merchant in 1518, only two years before Chāldirān. Once the religious bond between Isma'īl and the qizilbāsh had been broken, and their relationship reduced in practice (though not in theory) to a secular plane, it was but a short step to disobedience to his commands and an open flouting of his authority, especially as this authority was further reduced by his virtual withdrawal from the conduct of state affairs and by the fact that after Chāldirān he ceased personally to lead his troops into battle. The oppressive rule of Amīr Khan Turkmān in Khurāsān during 922–8/1516–22, and his arrogant disregard of Isma'īl's express commands, constituted a challenge to Isma'īl's authority which he seemed reluctant or unable to meet.

The article reconstructs a debate between Hanafi jurists who operated throughout Ottoman Greater Syria (and beyond) from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries concerning the evidentiary status of the Ottoman imperial registers (defters). At the centre of the jurists’ debate is the permissibility of using imperial registers as independent, uncorroborated evidence. It was a debate about who had the right to regulate and determine what constituted an authentic evidential document: while some jurists argued that it was almost exclusively the privilege of the jurists, others were willing to concede this authority, at least in part, to the Ottoman dynasty and its bureaucracy. Furthermore, the article contends that the debate about the evidentiary validity of the defters captures the complex relationship between Ottoman dynastic law and the Hanafi fiqh discourse. Finally, the debate sheds light on the legal “defterization” of other types of documents and texts, such as a chronicle (taʾrīkh) and court records (sijill).

In 1883 Hervey de Saint-Denys translated a passage from Ma Tuan-lin's Wên-hsien t'ung-k'ao, which mentions missions to China from Sêng-kaoWu-ling, Chia-chaand Chiu-mi. Ma Tuan-lin states that these countries were conquered by Chên-la (Cambodia) after the yung-hui reign period (650–6).

The history of the Zaydiyya and the growth of Zaydī thought, law, and doctrine have become increasingly well known as a result of studies by R. Strothmann, E. Griffini, C. van Arendonk, W. Madelung, and others. As Madelung has convincingly shown in his book on al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm, Zaydī doctrine, which initially differed appreciably from that of the Mu'tazila on many issues, eventually adopted all of the principal tenets of Mu'tazilism. At the same time, the various Zaydī branches retained the essential Shī'ī belief in an Imām descended from ‘Alī and Fāṭima. Yet the Zaydī doctrine of the imāmate differs from the doctrine of Imāmī (or Twelver) Shī'ism in some important respects: the Zaydī Imām is not infallible, sinless, and omniscient, and, according to the Batrī Zaydīs, he need not even always be the most excellent person of his generation. Most Zaydīs maintained instead that the Imām had to prove his leadership by fighting for the faith (jihād). The Imāmī claim that all the Imāms had been personally designated by God and His Prophet was restricted by the Zaydīs to ‘Alī, al-Ḥasan, and al-Ḥusayn.

The period of the crusades of Theobald of Navarre and Richard of Cornwall is a critical one in the history of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. As a result of truces made by the crusaders with neighbouring Muslim princes the kingdom came to embrace, albeit briefly, an area more extensive than it had covered at any time since the losses inflicted by Saladin following his victory at Hattīn in 1187. And yet this triumph was but the prelude to an engagement at La Forbie (al-Harbiyya) in October 1244, which was as grave a catastrophe as Hattīn and from which the kingdom never recovered. Here the Frankish army was decimated by the Egyptians and their Khwarizmian allies, a new and brutal element in the politics of southern Syria; and most of the newly regained territory was lost within the next three years. In this paper I propose to examine the events of the years 1239–44 with a view to re-evaluating the military and diplomatic achievements of the crusades and to placing the disaster at La Forbie more securely in context.

Pre-twentieth century Sikh tradition says that Bhāī Gurdās, the scribe of Guru Arjanās text of the Adi Granth, was troubled by a major doubt as he wrote the words the Guru dictated to him: faced with poems attributed to figures like Kabīr and Nāmdev (collectively known as bhagats in the tradition), Gurdās began to wonder whether Guru Arjan was not composing the poems himself and ascribing them to the bhagats. Realizing what was troubling Bhāī Gurdās, the Guru instructed the scribe to rise early the next morning and wait outside the tent where the dictation of the Granth took place every day. When he did, Gurdās was surprised to see the Guru conversing with a number of the ībhagats in ‘spiritual form’. The bhagats, it turned out, came to the tent every morning to ensure that their compositions were included in Guru Arjan's Granth. Gurdās was suitably impressed by the display and acknowledged without further question the authenticity of their compositions.

In light of the recent discovery of Warring States period bamboo slips, now in the collection of Tsinghua University, inscribed with texts described as shu, “documents” or “similar to shu”, this article explores the question of “what were shu?” It suggests that shu can be understood as a literary form apart from the history of the Confucian classic, the Shang shu 尚書 (Ancient Documents) or Shu jing 書經 (Book of Documents) and the Yi Zhou shu 逸周書. Formal characteristics include: shu were – or pretended to be – contemporaneous records; and shu include formal speeches by model kings and ministers from ancient times. Many shu include the expression wang ruo yue 王若曰, which is also found in bronze inscriptions, where it indicates that a royal speech was read aloud by an official. Thus, the literary form originated with the practice of composing speeches in writing before they were read out in formal ceremonies, with a bamboo slip copy presented to the officials addressed. Later shu were fictional compositions, written in the style of these ancient documents.

Most people are born with the natural ability to see and distinguish the colours of objects and things in everyday life, but to explain in words what colour is, is a more complicated matter. Scientists have generally accepted that, physically, colour is the visual aspect of electromagnetic radiant energy having a spectral composition ranging in wavelength from about 380 to about 720 nanometres. From the psychological point of view, it is a sensation produced on the eye and in the brain by rays of light when resolved by selective reflection. The problems raised by the study of colour use are thus interdisciplinary.

The letters of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologos, studied and exploited by Byzantinists since they were published for the first time by E. Legrand in 1893, are now available in a new edition by G. Dennis, in which they are translated, accompanied by the appropriate comments and, in most cases, accurately dated. These letters constitute a most valuable contemporary source for the years 1382–1417 because they help to fill one part of the much deplored ‘gap’ in Byzantine historiography. Moreover, they include evidence which sheds light on some details of early Ottoman history, as will appear from the following analysis of Manuel's material dealing with the conflict between the sultan Bāyezīd I and the ruler of Sivas, ḲāḲi Burhān al-Dīn Aḥmad in 1391.

This article argues that the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti constituted the kernel of a ritual text recited during the Yasna ceremony. Zaraθušhtra's Gathas were arranged around it, and so were the holy prayers and later additions in Younger Avestan. The arrangement of the extant Older Avesta is probably the original one, and may go back to the composer himself. Its compositional principle is that of parallelism and ring composition, a pattern which can be found both in individual Gathic hymns, two of which (Y 28 and 43) are analysed, and in the structure of the entire Yasna.

It is not too much to describe the Ṣaffārids of S‚stān as an archetypal military dynasty. In the later years of the third/ninth century, their empire covered the greater part of the non-Arab eastern Islamic world. In the west, Ya'qūb. al-Laith's army was only halted at Dair al-'Āqūl, 50 miles from Baghdad; in the north, Ya'qūb and his brother 'Arm campaigned in the Caspian coastlands against the local 'Alids, and 'Amr made serious attempts to extend his power into Khwārazm and Transoxania; in the east, the two brothers pushed forward the frontiers of the Dār al-Islām into the pagan borderlands of what are now eastern Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier region of West Pakistan; and in the south, Ṣaffārid authority was acknowledged even across the persion Gulf in ‘Umān. This impressive achievement was the work of two soldiers of genius, Ya'qūub and 'Amr, and lasted for little more than a quarter of a century. It began to crumble when in 287/900 the Sāmānid Amīr Ismā'īl b. Aḥmad defeated arid captured ‘Amr b. al-Laith, and 11 years later, the core of the empire, Sīstān itself, was in Sāmānid hands. Yet such was the effect in Sīstān of the Ṣaffārid brothers’ achievement, and the stimulus to local pride and feeling which resulted from it, that the Ṣaffārids returned to power there in a very short time. For several more centuries they endured and survived successive waves of invaders of Sīstān—the Ghaznavids, the Seljūqs, the Mongols—and persisted down to the establishment of the Ṣafavid state in Persia.

This article aims to contribute to an understanding of the evaluation of musical artistry in Africa, through Mali as a case study. The discussion focuses on the informal discourses of the occupational group of Mande artisan-musicians known as jeli (pl. jeliw, jalilu), concerning the ideal of musical greatness, signified by the polysemic term ngaraya; while there is consensus about the ideal, there is much debate about who qualifies. Drawing on extensive interviews and fieldwork with leading jeliw over the past twenty years, it pays special attention to the views of and about Malian women singers, who since the 1980s have – somewhat controversially, as explored here – been the “stars” on the home scene. The article shows how local discourses challenge the widely accepted view that only men are the true masters (ngaraw). Many women jeli singers (jelimusow) have a special claim to ngaraya, and some also seek to position themselves within the canon, as they increasingly move into centre-stage of Malian popular culture. The importance of learning directly from senior master jeliw remains a core issue in the evaluation of ngaraya for both men and women, encapsulated in the phrase “the true ngaraw are all at home”.

The first manifestation of the regional cultures of India as we know them today was, in most cases, the literature produced by the medieval bhakti (devotional) movements. Composed in the regional languages, the bhakti literature provides evidence of early forms of these languages. Further, by its very existence, it marks the genesis of pride in the languages, of acceptance of them as appropriate vehicles for literary expression. Often addressed to local or regional deities (who are sometimes identified as local manifestations of gods worshipped throughout India), this literature clearly served to articulate and focus regional devotion to such deities. In addition, it is also possible that the bhakti literature provides evidence of the process by which people began to think of the regions as regions (i.e., their genesis as cognitive regions), began to identify themselves as belonging to the regions, and began to take pride, not just in the languages or deities of the regions, but in the regions themselves. This is the process which led ultimately, in very recent times, to the formation of the states of modern India.