R. C. Abraham's The principles of Tiv, though a teaching grammar which designedly avoids technical terms, contains the most careful and systematic treatment of the Tiv verbal system that has been published, and this and his other books are the only works on Tiv giving tonal details. But his classification of verbs, though based appropriately on their structure and tonal behaviour, is not entirely consistent, nor the most convenient basis for a clear and concise description of the whole verbal system. The present study is based on an analysis of the material provided in Abraham's books—particularly his excellent dictionary—checked and supplemented by several years' practical experience of the language in the field, and more recent detailed research with various informants in London.

The Arabic manuscript which forms a part of Majmū‘ No. 17, preserved in the ຒahirīya Library in Damascus, is the only fragment extant of a diary kept during the fifth/eleventh century by a contemporary historian of Baghdad, Abū ’Alī b. al-Bannā’ al-Ḥanbalī. An edition and translation of this fragment (hereafter referred to as the Diary) are given here for the first time. It covers in some detail a period of slightly more than one year, from A.H. 460 to A.H. 461 (corresponding to A.D. 1068–69), in the socio-religious history of Baghdad.

A “contextualist” reading of the Quran is becoming increasingly popular, particularly among those Muslims referred to as “progressive-ijtihadis”. One of the primary concerns of this reading is that in order to understand and interpret the ethico-legal content of the Quran and relate that content to the changing needs and circumstances of Muslims today, it is important to approach the text at different levels, giving a high degree of emphasis to the socio-historical context of the text. In the classical tafsīr this emphasis on socio-historical context was not considered important, particularly in the interpretation of the ethico-legal texts, despite the frequent use of asbāb al-nuzūl literature. In this paper, I will explore how progressive-ijtihadis are adopting a contextualist reading of ethico-legal texts of the Quran. To illustrate this, I will use one or two such texts (verses) and their interpretations by the progressive-ijtihadis and will seek to demonstrate the contours of this approach, and highlight some of the challenges this approach is facing.

The inscription recently found in the Negev (see Y. D. Nevo, ‘A new Negev Arabic inscription’, p. 18 above) mentions one Hakim b. Abī Asmā', a mawlā of ‘Abdallāh b. 'Amr b. al-‘Āṣ. No reference to a person called Ḣakīm b. Abī Asmā could be found in any other source, literary or archaeological, for the early Islamic period. His master, ‘Abdallāh b. ‘Amr b. al-‘Āṣ, is presumably the famous scholar, son of the conqueror of Palestine and Egypt, who was from the Quraysh clan of Banū Sahm. There is a considerable amount of evidence linking both father and son to Palestine

In the new activity of qānūn-making at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Egypt preceded Turkey, especially with regard to criminal law. Although Egypt was still part of the Ottoman Empire, Muḥammad ‘Alī framed new laws based on Egyptian conditions and valid in Egypt only, while the Ottoman laws of the Tanzimat did not come into force in Egypt before Sa‘īd's days. The purpose of this paper is to trace the development of Egyptian penal laws in the nineteenth century, to analyse their relation to Ottoman laws, and to relate the story of the Ottoman Sultan's attempt to introduce into Egypt ‘the Tanzimat’—meaning mainly the Ottoman penal code.

While the status of the offspring of illicit intercourse has long attracted the interest of Muslim scholars, it is a particularly significant—and problematic—issue within Imāmī Shī'ism. The problem arises from the way in which the Imāmīs view their place in the universe. A considerable body of traditions characterizes the Imāmīs as a breed apart, created of a heavenly substance and combining pure origins (nasab) with impeccable moral qualities. At the same time, there are other Imāmī traditions which portray the offspring of illicit intercourse—usually called walad zinā (=w.z.) —as combining impure origins with moral turpitude. The ineluctable conclusion to be drawn from these two sets of traditions is that ‘an Imāmī w.z.’ is a logical absurdity. Now it is a fact that Imāmī lawyers discuss at some lenght the status of the w.z. in this world, while Imāmī theologians ponder his fate in the next; an analysis of their views forms the bulk of this paper. As long as the w.z. is not an Imāmī, a discussion of his legal and salvation statuses presents no insurmountable problem; but what if he is, Imāmī tradition notwithstanding? The final section of this paper consists of an attempt to trace the answers provided to this question.

It is now a century since the publication of Reinisch’s Chamirsprache, which has remained irtually the only source of information we have on this Agaw lanhuage to date. As a result of his acquaintance with a native speaker from Soqota(Säk’wät ’a), whist working in Massawa on his study of Bilin, the northernmost agaw language, Reinisch was able to collect enough information to mproduce a reasonable descripiton of the language. He himself neer had the opporunity to work on chamir in its home environment and was forced to curtail his studies of the language when his informant was obliged to leave Massawa. After the publication of Die Chamirsprache in 1884, no new information on the language until Conti Rossini’s brief description of Khamta was published in 1904, twenty years later. The dialect he recorded is material, though scanty, contains a number of very interesting features, both phonemis and morphological: for example, he cites the only known instance of prefix conjugating erds in Agaw outside Awngi, the southernmost and most divergent mermber of the group. Unfortunately his morphological description is all too cursory and does not permit a proper analysis of this highly idiosyncratic dialect. It may well be that Conti Rossini’s Khamta should be regarded as a separate language from Reinisch’ Chamie, or the Khamtanga dialect presented here. I shall have occasion to return briefly to this question below.

It is some time since a book has been published which focuses entirely on Sasanian Zoroastrianism, and one from Professor Shaul Shaked, who has studied the religion at this period for many years, is sure of eager attention. The Sasanian epoch naturally attracts scholars approaching Zoroastrian studies from the Persian or Semitic fields; and the author points moreover to its interest for students of religions more generally, since this was a time when a number of other faiths were jostling for place within Iran, from Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity to the ill-fated but then vigorously expanding Manichaeism, and lesser ones of diverse hues. All this, and ‘an openness to Greek scientific and philosophical ideas’, made for as ‘lively and diversified a period of intellectual and religious activity as could ever be found in ancient Iran’ (p. 12).

The beginnings of history writing in Islam were cultivated in two centres—Medina, representing Islamic interests and primarily concerned with the Sīra (Life of the Prophet) and the early history of Islam, and Irāq—more specifically Kūfa and Basra—representing tribal interests and lines of historical studies. These beginnings were collective pursuits, individual activity being a part of a school and adding further to its development.

STEIN MS. Ch. 00269 is a report by haḍa (”), who call themselves ñaśa bīsa (“ humble servants”), on behalf of seven rispura (“ princes ”). It consists of 120 lines, but of that a considerable part cannot yet be translated. The report is concerned with the cities of Ṣacū and Kaṃmicū. Danger from robbers is reported and an investment of the city of Kaṃmicū, so that food and cattle are lacking.

In our very first grammar lesson at the primary school of al-Azhar we were introduced to al-mabādi’ al-‘ashara, ‘The Ten Introductory Aspects’ with which the textbook began. We learnt then that these ten aspects, as handed down by the ancient tradition, were points to be considered when embarking on each fann (branch of knowledge). ‘They said: it is incumbent upon him who sets out to expound a book to deal in the introduction with certain things before he begins with the intended subject matter’ Such was the importance of ‘The Ten ’ in traditional Islamic education that they were formulated in two lines of verse, in more than one version, to aid the memory of learners.

The speech here investigated is that of Mr. Josua Bogidrau of Suva, Fiji. Mr. Bogidrau was born in Lakemba, Lau, where the language has marked local characteristics, but at the age of thirteen he was sent to the Queen Victoria School at Suva, capital of Fiji, and has modified his speech in accordance with Bauan, the dialect with the greatest prestige. I have been able to check a number of points with a native Bauan speaker, who tells me that B.′s pronunciation is acceptable Bauan.

Idrisi's great geographical encyclopædia, Nuzhat al-muŠtāq al-āfāq, compiled in A.D. 1153 for King Roger II of Sicily, is formally arranged according to the seven Ptolemaic climates, each divided into ten “sections” numbered from west to east. In this arrangement, Ireland occupies the first section of the seventh climate, and Great Britain the second. Since Tuulio's publication of the third to fifth sections of this climate, it seems time that a comprehensive treatment should be attempted of the preceding two sections. Jaubert's pioneer French translation contains many attempts at identification of the place-names mentioned, which are not uniformly successful. Miller's Mappæ Arabicæ represents a considerable advance in this respect, but his identifications are not in every case acceptable, and even where correct they deserve some justificatory comment. In the following pages I have attempted to give all necessary comments, and to suggest some identifications which I believe to be an improvement on those hitherto proposed. I must express my grateful thanks to the Conservateur du Cabinet des Manuscrits of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and to the India Office Librarian in London, for the facilities which they have afforded me of consulting the manuscripts in those places; to Dr. W. B. Stevenson for generously allowing me to see the typescript of his article on Idrisi's map of Scotland before publication; to Professor I. Y. Krachkovskii and the Director of the Publichnaya Biblioteka for assisting me to obtain photographs of the Leningrad manuscript; and to Professor H. A. R. Gibb for some very helpful suggestions.

The purpose of this essay is to trace in outline the history of the languages used in Calcutta and its environs during a period extending roughly from 1760 to 1840. The languages were Arabic, Bengali, English, Hindustani, Persian, Portuguese, and Sanskrit. Account has been taken of the status of the languages at different times, the people who used them, the extent to which they were used, and the purposes they served. To do this it has been necessary to take a wide view of the history of the period, and make references which properly fall within the field of political, social, religious, and economic history: such as the policies of the East India Company, both in London and Calcutta, the plans and actions of the Christian missionaries, the attitudes and preferences of the main religious communities, the development of education, and the changing opportunities in the economic life of the people.

In his pioneer work on the Burushaski language, Lorimer (1935a:64) noted the existence of what has been later described as an ergative construction: the subject of a transitive verb is in the ergative case (a special case, usually marked by the suffix-e) while the subject of inttransitive verbs, as well as the object of transitive verbs, are in the absolutive case (morphologically unmarked) as appears in the examples 1(a)-(c) below:

Certain parallels between musical structure and linguistic structure have been insisted on by Professor J. R. Firth in several publications. This is an attempt to illustrate a parallel musical and linguistic analysis within a strictly limited field, and in a ‘restricted language’, and thereby to exhibit in this field a congruence of musical and linguistic structuring. It is hoped that the material employed will be of interest as being the first published, examples of songs from the Yurok community.

For some time Western sinologists have acknowledged the importance of the Buddhist monasteries as a social and economic force in medieval China. However, the historians have been understandably reluctant to embark on extensive reading in Buddhist sources, with their never-ending problems of technical language, while the Buddhologists have for the most part remained preoccupied with philosophical and doctrinal questions. Thus very little has been done to clarify the situation. In recent years a beginning has been made by a number of scholars, but anyone wishing to pursue the matter in a systematic way was forced to depend in the main upon the researches of the Japanese historians of Buddhism, who have built up an extensive secondary literature on the social and economic aspects of Buddhism in the last three decades. Even in Japanese, however, there exists no general survey of the whole problem of the monasteries in the broad context of their external relationships, and these studies have tended to be piecemeal, and over-concerned with points of detail.

‘The life and achievements of Saladin constitute one of the great moments in the history of the crusades. In literature he appears most frequently as a conquering hero, who fought his enemies victoriously and in the end beat them to a standstill. But a closer examination of his actual life reveals him not only as a conqueror, but as a man who struggled with enemies of his own side who finally joined him and fought along with him under his sole command. From this angle we see him as a man who fought for his ideals, and fought, not victoriously, but in a measure that fell short of his hopes and ambitions’.

IN representing the vowels of the Isaaq dialect of Somali2 we meet with many difficulties not only because of a large number of vowel distinctions but also on account of the operation of Vowel Harmony. I use the term Vowel Harmony in the same sense as Armstrong,3 i.e. as the harmony (or ‘matching’) of vowels belonging to the same series. Schleicher,4 Reinisch,5 and Abraham6 use this term quite differently, meaning by it certain types of assimilation of vowels without postulating two vowel series. Armstrong was the first writer in the literature on Somali to become aware of the existence and complexity of the problems under discussion.

Tracing the migration of Muslims from India to South Africa's Natal colony in the late nineteenth century, the article focuses on the missionary activities of Ghulām Muhammad “Sūfī Sāhib” (d. 1329/1911). Placing Ghulām Muhammad in a new religious marketplace of competing religions, and versions thereof, the article examines the strategies through which he successfully established his form of Islam among Natal's indentured and merchant Muslim classes and used the fabric of religion to bind together a distinctly “Muslim” community from the heterogeneous individuals and groups brought from India by commerce and the plantation economy. As a founder of shrines no less than madrasas, Ghulām Muhammad demonstrated the ways in which a customary Islam of holy men, festivities and hagiographies flourished and responded to the demands and opportunities of modernity. Building on the popular appeal of customary piety, Ghulām Muhammad consolidated his success by providing a range of social services (education, healthcare, burial) for the Indian poor of Natal, to create an effective public platform for the norms of Sharia in South Africa.