When the Aceh War finally broke out in 1873 it did not come as a surprise to most contemporaries. In colonial historiography Aceh, a ‘nest of pirates’, according to the Dutch, had obviously precipitated the war by its ‘treason’ in turning to Turkey, America and other foreign powers for support against the Dutch. The discussions with the American consul in Singapore early in 1873 on a possible Acehnese-American treaty constituted a casus belli in the eyes of the Dutch.

Italy in the late fifth century a.d. and Persia in the mid-thirteenth were lands of ancient and deeply-rooted culture. One had been at the centre of the western Roman Empire; the other had formed a significant part of the society of medieval Islam, and its traditions stretched back further still. Both lands found themselves invaded, conquered, and ruled by wandering ‘barbarians’, Ostrogoths and Mongols respectively, from beyond the then recognized frontiers of ‘civilization’.

The notion of text, along with the issues relating to how variable or fixed a text may be, has been a central issue in the study of oral literature for some time. In this article it will be argued that the notion of the poetic text as being unchangeable is central to Somali maanso poetry, and that such poems are instances of what become, through the composition process, ‘definitive texts’. Arguments in favour of this will be presented from a number of different perspectives. Maanso poetry will be contrasted with traditional hees and the characteristics of both outlined, with a view to showing how the ‘texts’ of each type of poetry differ from an extra-textual viewpoint, that is from the point of view of people's expectations regarding the different types of poetry. Intratextual characteristics will also be mentioned with a view to showing the objectivity and autonomy of maanso definitive texts. The development of modern hees from the heello and also the development of the use of writing in Somali poetry will also be considered and shown to support the idea of the maanso definitive text.

The Year 9 A.H. is known as 'ām al-wufūd, ‘the year of the delegations', on account of the many tribal delegations which came at that time to the Prophet at Medina. One of the most impressive was that of Tamīm. The accounts of its meeting with the Prophet are rich in detail, and involve both Qur'ānic verses and poems. As is often the case with our sources, there is a considerable amount of confusion between the various accounts. In this instance, however, the confusion is the result not merely of falsifications of failures of recall but also of the conception which guided the Muslim scholars in their redaction of the material. The compilers, rather than their primary sources, are responsible for the confusion which is the main subject of thispaper.

This article analyses the teaching of international law in the late Ottoman Empire. It argues that the Ottomans were interested in teaching European international law to equip Ottoman bureaucrats with the skills necessary for evaluating and regulating the complex interrelation between the Ottoman Empire and the European states, to defend the vital interests of the Empire against European legal penetration via extraterritoriality, and to understand the legal basis of the European system of which the Empire had officially been accepted as a part by the European Great Powers since the conclusion of the Treaty of Paris in 1856. The article focuses on the courses, scholars and textbooks in the field of international law in the Ottoman Empire during three periods. The preliminary period (1859–76), witnessed the emergence of the first courses, scholars and literature on international law; in the Hamidian period (1876–1908) these courses were stabilized and systematized in line with higher education reforms in the Ottoman Empire; and finally, in the post-Hamidian period, the opening of new schools of law in the countryside and the reformation of existing schools allowed the teaching and literature of international law to flourish.

There is a great deal to be said for the contention that national character expresses itself in popular sayings and proverbs. That the latter are sometimes paradoxical and tend to extremes cannot be denied. Truth is, however, often seen at her best on the tight rope.

The following selection of well-known Kurdish sayings is made with a view to illustrating the character of the Kurds. As an excuse for its imperfections reference can be made to the lack of Kurdish literature and the existence of many dialects, which make it somewhat difficult for a foreigner to acquire a working knowledge of the language as a whole.

The Kurds are a mountain race, with all the characteristics of mountaineers—love of freedom, violent passions, and a clannish feeling of pride. These primary traits dispose the Kurd to fly to arms at small provocation, and engage with zest in bitter blood feuds.

In his recent translation for the Hakluyt Society of Ma Huan's Ying-yai sheng-lan, Mr. J. V. G. Mills has published illustrations of four Chinese stellar diagrams and made some comments on them. He has, however, stated that ‘having no astronomy or higher mathematics, he is not competent to express a considered opinion on astronomical difficulties, or to check the consistency of the data of the diagrams’. He hopes ‘that an astronomer will find time to examine these interesting diagrams’.

This study is concerned with the interpretation of number and gender concord as abstracted from sentences of different types whose common feature is the inclusion of a participial form. This term is used here, rather than the more usual ‘participle’, as the forms being considered here do not exactly correspond with what are described in the traditional grammars as ‘present (or imperfect) participle’ and ‘past (or imperfect) participle’; the term is applied here to those members of a verbal paradigm which can be colligated with huaa, huii, or hue.

A large number of bronze musical instruments of the Shang and Zhou periods (thirteenth–ninth centuries B.C.E.) which display pronounced regional characteristics have been unearthed in south China. As systematic research on these was relatively late in getting under way, their importance in terms of archaeology and the history of music has not yet been nearly sufficiently recognized. Many divisions remain among scholars on issues of typology, periodization and the origins of yongzhong bells, and on the question of the relationship of these artifacts to central plains culture. In this article I intend to discuss my own views on these questions.

N. Sims-Williams's proposed identification of a Bactrian god μοζδοοανο as deriving from Ir. *miždvah, Vd. mī1E0D;dhvás could shed light on the role of this word as an epithet of Rudra and Siva in India. The identification would seem in turn to derive support from the extent to which in India the epithet has been appropriated by Vedic Rudra. It is even possible to identify a stratum of Sanskrit literature that shares the Bactrian conception of Mīḍhvān as a supreme god.

With the affluence brought by oil, the cities, towns, and villages of Saudi Arabia are being transformed as they are rebuilt; the older mosques are being replaced by new ones in concrete and built in styles unknown in Najd 30 years ago. As a result, structures built in accordance with traditional designs are being gradually obliterated by modern, alien buildings. This process has virtually wiped out the older mosques on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia and those in Najd may well vanish in the course of the next few years. This article attempts, albeit very incompletely, to catalogue some of the traditional mosques of Najd and to describe their architectural characteristics. I shall deal with these buildings within their geographical areas beginning with al-Ḥawṭca in southern central Najd and moving northwards, towards al-Qaṣīm and Sudayr.

Bintulu, an Austronesian language spoken in the district capital of that name and in several smaller communities in the basin of the Kemena river, Fourth Division, Sarawak, has two previously unrecognized implosive stop phonemes, 6 and d. Where these segments occur in lexical items known to reflect a Proto-Austronesian (PAN) reconstruction, they appear to result from an unconditioned phonemic split of PAN *b, *d, *D, or *j. A hypothesis constructed to account for a wider range of linguistic facts offers an explanation of some of these apparent irregularities. Most if not all residual discrepancies can be accommodated under an ancillary hypothesis of borrowing, independently motivated by various considerations. The case of the Bintulu implosives is of general theoretical interest, as it necessitates modifications in some recent claims regarding the diachronic sources of implosive stops.

Several years before the war a photograph of a stone inscription in Aramaic letters was published in the Persian language periodical Kabul (vol. ii, 1932, p. 413). The following note (in Persian), printed below the photograph, constitutes the whole of our information on the material, history, and provenance of the inscription:ߞ

“A historical inscribed stone: A few years ago a broken stone tablet (lauhe) with ancient Sanskrit writing was procured in the neighbourhood of Pul-i Darunta, Laghmān, and entrusted to Kabul Museum. So far its contents have not been read and understood. The original of the above (depicted) stone is in Kabul Museum.”

Laghmān, older Lamyān (from Lambayān<*Lampakāna), is the name of a district on the left (northern) bank of the Kabul river, a little above Jalalabad; it comprises the valleys of the Lower Alingār and Ališang. This district, whose name is familiar to Sanskritists as Lampāka (also Lambāka), was traditionally regarded as part of the Indian borderlands, the ultima Thule of Jambuduīpa. Cf. Mémoires de Hiouen-thsang, i, 55, “en partant de ce royaume ( = Kāpiśī), il… franchit les montagnes noires, entra dans les frontières de l'lnde du nord, et arriva au royaume de Lan-po”. Cf. also Lampāka in the Yaksa catalogue of the Mahāmāyūrī, and further H. Lüders, SbPAW., 1930, 43, 48, 51, 63. One may presume that the traditional view reflects the conditions prevailing under the Maurya dynasty.

The inscription was made known in Europe by Professor Morgenstierne, who, on finding that the alphabet was Aramaic, asked H. Birkeland to publish it.

In a volume dedicated to Sir Ralph Turner, it can scarcely be inappropriate to devote an essay to a text which bears every sign of being the first Christian adaptation of that legend of the Buddha which, migrating from the cultural environment of the Lalita-vistara and the Buddha-carita, finally evolved into the story of the Christian worthies Barlaam and Ioasaph.

Since the German Turfan expeditions of half a century ago, it has become increasingly clear that an early stage in the story's development may be sited in those areas of Central Asia where Buddhism and Manichseism, the former using Sanskrit, the latter Iranian and Old Turkish as literary media, for a time overlapped. Thus, among the Turkish Manichaean fragments recovered at Turfan are two extracts from a prototype (or two separate sources) of the Barlaam legend: firstly, the episode of the meeting of the Bodisav (Bodhisattva) prince with the decrepit old man; and secondly, an unsavoury tale, later incorporated in the Arabic version by Ibn Babuya, concerning a drunken prince who mistakes a corpse for a desirable maiden.

It is astonishing how soon the Arabs fade out of Muslim history, Arabia itself excepted. There are notable instances to the contrary like the Hamdanids and the Banū Hilāl, but they are few. During the rule of the Fatimids in Egypt the Banū Jarrah of Tai' were the most important of the bedouins in Syria; their chief Mufarrij b. Daghfal b. Jarrāh died in 404/1013 and his son Hassān succeeded him. Contemporary with Hassān was Fadl b. Rabi'a b. Hāzin b. Jarrāh, who was, perhaps, as Ibn Khaldūn suggested and Ibn Hajar affirmed, the ancestor of the Āl Fadl: This Fadl was at times an ally of the Franks and at times an ally of thesultan of Egypt. He was banished and joined Sadaqa b. Mazyad and in 500/1106 was the ally of Sadaqa against the Saljūq sultan Muhammad b. Malikshāh; later he abandoned Sadaqa.

The full title of this little work, which occupies 19 pages in 8vo, is as follows:—

Verdadeira e exacta Noticia dos progressos de Thamas Kouli Khan Scach da Persia no Imperio do Gram Mogô, Escrita na lingua Persiana em Delhy em 21 de Abril de 1739, e mandada a Roma por Mons. Voulton.

Acrecentada com outras chegadas por varias partes, com hum Mapa do Thesouro do Gram Mogôr levado a Hispahan pelo mesmo Schach. Dadas a luz na lingua Portugueza.

Besides the well-known Vālmīki-rāmâyaṇa, three other Sanskrit poems entitled “Rāmâyaṇa” are current in northern India, and are highly esteemed. They are (1) the Yōga-vāsiṣṭha-mahārāmâyaṇa, (2) the Adhyātma-rāmâyaṇa, and (3) the Adbhuta-rāmâyaṇa. Of these the first and the last claim to have been composed by no less a person than Vālmīki himself; but the Adhyātma-rāmâyaṇa forms a section of the Brahmâṇḍa-purāṇa, and does not suggest any pretension to his authorship.

A convention existed among Manichæan copyists whereby most Parthian poetry was written as prose, the verses being separated only by some device of punctuation. The method saved a considerable amount of paper. Yet there are texts set out as poetry, in separate lines with a space between verses. The two great hymn-cycles, Huwīdagmān and Angad Rōšnan, are invariably presented in this way. These exist in the fragments of thirty-odd MSS. of very varied character; it is evident, therefore, that in their case the manner of presentation did not depend on individual taste or means, but was regarded as proper to the texts themselves.

The importance and function of the Secret Committee as an essential part of the East India Company's home government have in general been misrepresented or ignored. From the beginning the Company's executive body in London consisted of the rather large number of twenty-four and, since the Company was wholly dependent upon trade, the formation of a smaller, trustworthy committee, which in emergency could safeguard the Company's voyages, especially against the threat of war or piracy, by giving secret instructions to the ships' captains, was sooner or later inevitable. Likewise, as the Company became increasingly entangled in Indian politics, it realized the necessity of issuing secret political orders from London, and since the Company's unwieldy executive body was obviously ill-fitted for this task a Secret Political Committee soon evolved. That the duty of ensuring the safety of the Company's ships and of issuing secret political orders should have been entrusted to one and the same Committee was convenient and natural. Historians have not only underestimated the significance of this Committee's activities down to its statutory establishment in 1784, but have also tended to disregard the part it thenceforth played, describing it at best as a mere ministerial instrument or as a channel, conveying to India the Ministry's instructions “which it could neither discuss nor disclose”. The truth is much less one-sided than this, and in fact long before 1784 the Secret Committee had emerged as the cabinet council of the Company, the most powerful Committee at the India House, a status which it maintained until the Company's extinction in 1858.