It is well known that the Khārijites rejected genealogical qualifications for the caliphal office. As they saw it, the most meritorious Muslim should be elected whatever his ethnic origins might be; personal merit overruled considerations of descent. Modern Islamicists regularly imply that they also held personal merit to overrule considerations of status libertatis: the Khārijites allegedly held the most meritorious Muslim to be eligible for the caliphal office ‘even if he were a black/Ethiopian slave’. But this has long been known to rest on a mistake. The mistake goes back to Goldziher who based himself on a Prophetic tradition exhorting the believers to obey the amīr ‘even if he be an Ethiopian slave (‘abd ḥabashī); but as Goitein and Lewis have pointed out, the tradition in question has nothing to do with Khārijite views on the caliphate. So why does the claim persist? The answer is that al-Shahrastānī also credits the Khārijites with the tenet that the imām may be a black slave (‘abd awḥar), or at any rate a slave (Cureton's text has ‘abd aw ḥurr).

Although until recently no study had been undertaken to investigate the poetry included in Ibn Isḥāq's Sīra with a view to establishing on internal evidence the authenticity of such of it as may be genuine and revealing the spurious character of the forgeries, doubts as to the authenticity of this poetry in general or of certain poems in particular have been expressed by various writers, critics or other persons, since the time of Ibn Ishaq himself. Internal evidence attesting to the spurious character of the different poems varies widely from the immediately obvious, such as ascribing to a Himyarite king lines in simple plain Arabic or ascribing to a polytheist a poem allegedly attacking the Prophet and the Muslims which yet speaks of him in reverential terms and of his companions with respect, to the more subtle. The purpose of this article, however, is to survey and comment on some of the opinions which directly or indirectly stigmatize the poetry of the Sira in whole or in part as spurious.

During some years study of the birds of Tanganyika, I have, as opportunity served, collected the names used by the local people. Most information has come from Wadigo (round Tanga), Wabondei (inland from Tanga), Wasambaa (inland again), Wazigua (south of Korogwe), Wakami (North Uluguru), and Wambwera (Mafia Island), tribes whose languages evidently have much in common.Discounting tribal variants (for example, mpanja for pasa) and leaving for future consideration a large number of names that await verification, there are about 450 different roots and descriptive names that I have felt to be sufficiently well-established to include in a list for publication (1). Allowing for the fact that differentiation of species cannot be so particular by the ordinary countryman as by the ornithologist, I have names for some species, as many as seven, for a large percentage of the birds found in a strip of country about fifty miles wide and extending from near the Kenya border south to the Rufiji Delta. A few names extend right through our area; at the other extreme, however, some species change their names within the boundaries of a tribe, three or four times, for example, in the space of eighty miles; and hence there is no doubt that a great many more names remain to be collected.

Ry. 506 is an inscription of some importance for an otherwise obscure period of Arabian history. G. Ryckmans, in his editio princeps of the inscription,3 and J. Ryckmans in his comments thereon,4 have made very valuable contributions to the understanding of this far from easy text. A few notes may, I think, be nevertheless added.

At the outset, one point to be remembered in dealing with this text is that Abraha, its author, is frequently referred to in the plural, as we see from sṭrw in line 2 here (with Abraha as the subject), as well as throughout C. 541. Consequently, plural verbs and the plural pronoun -hmw can refer to Abraha himself.

Line 1. It is interesting to confront the form of titulature here used with that found in C. 541/4–8. The comparison allows us to make some deductions about the name or epithet zybmn (so spelt here, against zbymn in C. 541):—

Compared with the heyday under the Fāṭimids, the position of the non-Muslims, or dhimmīs, in the late Mamlūk period was bleak. Victims of the general demographic and economic decline, objects of considerable hostility on the part of Muslim theologians, and targets of frequent persecution, the Jews and Christians of Egypt found life more difficult and more oppressive in the fifteenth than in the eleventh or twelfth century. For the Jews, hard times were reflected both in tensions with the surrounding Muslim society and in the depressed condition of community life.

The literary genres of nawrīyāt and rauḍīyāt, the description respectively of flowers and gardens, figure amongst those most cultivated by Hispano-Arab poets, and it would be superfluous to identify all the poets who found in a garden the most congenial source of their inspiration. One case must suffice: that of Ibn Khafāja, styled al-jannān ‘the gardener’ on account of the predilection he showed for this genre. Just as the full understanding of Graeco Raman poetry is impossible unless the reader know what such plants as laurel, ivy, and myrtle signifed to the ancients, the study of Arab gardening is important in superlative degree for the correct interpretation of Arabic poetry. But this is not the only point of contact between gardening and literature: for, by strange coincidence, the normalk critical procedure used in analysing a work of literature, namely to consider it under its dual aspect of form and content, is equally aplicable to garden design and we purpose here first to discover the plan or form of the Hispano-Arab garden and then examine its content or flora.

It is well known that a large number of the accounts in the Kuo yü have matching counterparts in the Tso chuan. By my count there are at least 73 Kuo yü accounts with Tso chuan parallels; this out of a total of 241 separate Kuo yü accounts altogether. This means that by percentage of accounts (vs. percentage of text) 30% of the Kuo yü bears some textual relation to the Tso chuan, a proportion surely large enough to justify looking into the question of what that relation is. The degree to which each of these 73 Kuo yü accounts matches its Tso chuan parallel varies considerably. At one extreme there are cases where only a very few lines, names, or words signal the fact of an underlying textual relation. At the other extreme virtually the whole Kuo yü passage may appear with only slight variations in the Tso chuan. Most of the 73 fall somewhere in between these two extremes.

Kalam Kohistani is a Dardic language spoken in the upper parts of the Swat and Panjkora valleys (Swat Kohistan and Dir Kohistan), in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. In the literature, the language is known by different names, the most familiar of which are Garwi and Bashkarik. The name Garwi occurs in the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI, 8/2: 507ff.), while Bashkarik is used by Morgenstierne (1940), which is the standard reference on the language to date.

The maqāma genre has had a place in Arabic literature for nearly a thousand years. With the maqāmāt of Badī' al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (357–98/969–1007), it appears as a fully developed, independent literary form, although precursors of it have been traced back beyond al-Hamadhānī to the argot and cant of thieves and beggars as displayed, for instance, in the Kitāb al-bukhalā’ of al-Jāḥiẓ and the qaṣīda al-sāsāniyya of Abū Dulaf Mis'ar b. Muhalhil, and possibly back to the model of a lost Kitdb al-arba'īn of the philologist and lexicographer Ibn Duraid. The history of the maqāma in its classical form closes only with the productions in the last century of such writers as the Baghdādī scholar Shihāb al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Alūsī (1217–70/1802–54) and the Lebanese Christian Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī (1800–71). It is true that in the early decades of our own century, such Egyptian writers as Muḥammad Ibrāhīm al-Muwailḥī and the poet Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm used a very free adaptation of the maqāma form for the entirely novel purpose of social criticism; but with the disappearance to-day of the florid and artificial style of Arabic writing, it is unlikely that anyone will ever resuscitate the classical maqāma and we may safely conclude that it has died out.

Zimbabwean Ndebele and Zulu might be likened, in a very broad sense, to American English and British English, in their relationship. Mzilikazi and his few followers left Zululand in 1822, and in the 1840s founded a new nation, over 1,000 km. to the north. There are certain differences in pronunciation and tone. Divergence is likely to have been bilateral: while Ndebele shows clear signs of non-Zulu influence in certain respects, Zulu on the other hand is probably not quite the same today as it was in 1822

The first part of this paper discussed a large collection of documents from Upper Egypt illustrative of society and economy in the time of Muʿāwiya. Here, further papyri, of pagarchs of Arsinoe, present supplementary information about grain production, taxation, great estates, the postal service and the role of the church in the local economy. Information about Fusṭāṭ and Alexandria depends on literary sources and archaeology. Fusṭāṭ, which started as a camp, became more organized and controlled under Muʿāwiya's governors when the main shipyard was moved there. Alexandria, despite romantic descriptions, was at least partly ruined. Like Fusṭāṭ, it was the seat of a major garrison. Taken together, the evidence from Egypt shows much administrative continuity from Byzantine times, but with important new taxes and requisitions and a tighter central control. It suggests that Muʿāwiya ran a sophisticated and effective state.

Since the publication in 1871 of an extensive English translation of Ḍivā al-dīn Baranl's in Vol. in of Elliot and Dowson's History of India as told by its own historians, the modern study of the reigns of the sultans of Delhi from Balban to the sixth year of has been mainly, though not exclusively, founded upon this , whether in translation or in the Bibliotheca Indica text edited by Sayyid Aḥmad in 1862.

Since the publication of Professor J. Takakusu's ‘Life of Vasubandhu by Paramārtha’ in the year 1904, several scholars have made attempts to determine the date and works of Vasubandhu. The problem is beset with several difficulties. Tradition gives three dates (A.N. 900, 1000, and 1100) based on different reckonings of the Nirvana era. Vasubandhu, himself a Sautrāntika, is the author of the celebrated Vaibhāsika work, viz., the Abhidharma-kox015B;a (and its Bhāṣya), and is at the same time credited with the authorship of several major works of the Vijñānavāda school. The problem is rendered more complex by the mention in Yaśoṁitra's Sphuṭārthā Abhidharma- kośa-vyākhyā of an elder (Vṛdāhacārya) Vasubandhu, leading to a recent theory of two Vasubandhus advocated by Professor E. Frauwallner.

This article examines how and why non-Muslim dhimmīs were employed in a variety of important posts during the ʿAbbāsid period, notably as viziers (wuzarā') and secretaries (kuttāb). One of the aims is to show that Jews and Christians were employed in the state administration to the extent that some of them were able to achieve the second highest office after the caliph: the vizier. It is argued that, despite certain legal restrictions outlined by Muslim jurists, dhimmī employment in the government had long been an established policy. The first section discusses the juristic debate on whether non-Muslims could be appointed to public office. The second examines examples of non-Muslim viziers and the nature of their political power. The final section offers possible explanations as to why non-Muslims were needed to help the caliphs administer this governmental office. The article concludes with a brief reflection on the significance of this study for the discussion of the nature of state–religion relations in early Islam.

The name of ‘Swan Maiden story’ is given to tales of three kinds, of which only one is of direct concern in this inquiry.

I. There are stories of bird-maidens who may appear as a single element, sometimes as birds, sometimes as maidens, according to the laws of their being.

II. There is a story woven from several motifs in which a man forces a bird-maiden to become his wife by stealing her feather-robe while she is bathing, thus preventing her from flying off. The pair have children, and one day the bird-woman recovers her feather-robe and flies away with them. As a sequel, the man may pursue her to the other place to which she has returned.

III. The winning of a bird-maiden by stealing her feather-robe may appear as but one element of a long and intricate story.

Many Arabic geographical texts from the medieval period portray the oecumene as comprising seven latitudinal climes. In general the middle clime, in which the majority of Muslim territories were located, was viewed as possessing the best environmental conditions, which progressively deteriorated the further one travelled north or south of this central territory. This theory of the climes was combined with ideas of humoral pathology in order to argue that those living in the central zones of the oecumene received numerous physiological and psychological benefits. Conversely, those like the Africans and the Turks, living at the peripheries of the oecumene, had neither rationality nor proportionate physiognomies because their humours were distorted by the harsh environmental conditions of these regions. This article, however, seeks to nuance the outline given above. While secondary studies have generally been happy to adopt uncritically this superficial understanding of the medieval Islamic worldview, which is gained from skimming the introductions to a few geographical works, few have questioned what (and where) is meant by the centre of the world, where did human habitation supposedly end, and was the medieval understanding of the seven climes uniform. These are some of the questions posed by the present investigation. I then go on to assess how far the notions derived from the theory of the climes were implemented in ethnological accounts of the inhabitants of the far north and south. In doing so I shall conclude that the standard conception of the medieval Islamic worldview masks numerous disagreements and debates in the writings of medieval scholars.

In al-Wāqidī's Kitdb al-maghāzī and in that part of Ibn Ishāq's Sīra which deals with Muhammad's life in Medina and is contained in Ibn Hishrm's version of al-Bakkā'Ī's recension, there are similar and sometimes identical passages. Since Ibn Ishāq is the earlier of the two authorities, it has been assumed on a plausibly a priori basis that al-Wāqidī modelled himself on his predecessor in the arrangement of his material, and drew from him much of the basic warp of his narrative to which he then added his own weft.

Since 1896, when I-ching's famous book on Buddhism in India and South East Asia was made available in an English translation by J. Takakusu, Western Sanskritists have looked with special interest at chapter xxxiv, on the Sanskrit grammarians. The general reaction has been one of disappointment; and for many years most Indologists would have agreed with many of A. Barth's criticisms: ‘Il demeure done bien acquis que, parmi des renseignements du plus grand prix, comme les dates de la Kāçikā Vṛitti et du grammairien Bhartṛihari, I-tsing nous a servi quelques bourdes énormes; par exemple, quand il fait du Mahābhāshya un commentaire sur la Kāçikā Vṛitti; quand il distingue entre le Vākyapadīya de Bhartṛihari et son commentaire sur le Mahābhāshya’; and more besides. Ironically, it is now known that the date given for Bhartṛhari is wrong, and that the latter did write both the Vākyapadīya and a commentary on the Mahābhāṣya. Nevertheless, other errors continue to be quoted.

The sanctuary of Shaykh ʿAdī, the only monumental complex of the Yezidis, lies at Lalish, 35 kilometres north of Mosul, in Iraqi Kurdistan. It is dedicated to its founder, Shaykh ʿAdī (d. 1162). Although it has been suggested that it was converted from a Christian monastery, Arabic sources and architectural analysis indicate that it may originally have been the zāwiya where Shaykh ʿAdī and his disciples retired to meditate. After his death, the sanctuary grew up around his tomb and became a centre of pilgrimage. It is a large complex containing buildings of different sizes and functions. It was not conceived as a centrally planned structure and its different parts were added progressively as and when circumstances dictated. The dominant architectural style is derived from that which characterizes the twelfth–thirteenth-century Shiite buildings of Mosul, and was continued by the Yezidis until the present day.