The main purpose of this two-part essay is to reconsider the interpretation Western scholarship has generally placed on the Akhbārī/Uṣūlī confrontation in Twelver Shī‘ism. To this end, Part 1 (BSOAS, LV, 1, 1991, 22–51) presented an edition and translation of the relevant section of ‘Abdallāh al-Samāhijī's twelfth/eighteenth-century treatise, ‘Munyat al-Mumārisīn’. The importance of this text to the present discussion is twofold. First, Western scholars have considered this treatise to be a summary of the main points of Akhbārī/Uṣūlī disagreement, the Akhbārī element generally being understood as having been given its earliest discrete form only a century earlier by Muḥammad Amīn al-Astarābādī; and secondly, discussion of al-Samāhijī's treatise has relied primarily on an abridged version of the text written nearly two centuries later.

The identification and assessment of his source materials are among the historian's most basic tasks. The purpose of the present discussion is to describe three versions of the Javanese chronicle called Babad tanah Djawi and to provide excerpts describing the familiar story of the fall of Madjapahit in order to show how the same story differs in these three versions. The texts will be compared with regard to date and origin, and their historical value will be considered. This is not an attempt to pronounce on the course of events surrounding the fall of Madjapahit, although scholars interested in that subject may find these texts to be of value. This is rather an attempt to identify and to compare these basic sources. In this consideration, the episode of Madjapahit's fall will be used as an example.

The ‘makeshift’ or ‘pidgin’ language here discussed has been usuallycalled in English ‘the Yokohama dialect’ or ‘Yokohama Japanese’. In Japanese the corresponding ‘Yokohama-hotoba’ is sometimes heard, but it is hardly a recognized name, and examples of the language are apt to be dismissed as foreigners′ mistakes.

Arabs have always had a particular taste for brief, concise and witty idioms and proverbs. Whereas an idiom is a ‘transition point’, a necessary introduction to the forthcoming discussion, a proverb is, instead, the climax of that event, the most important domain for the display and evaluation of verbal art. The view is occasionally expressed that proverbs are in fact a dead trait in the modern world. This view is due, at least in part, to the mistaken assumption that only illiterates use proverbs. It is doubtful whether increased literacy and education have seriously affected the quality and quantity of proverbial speech, at least in Arabic culture. Arabs' gatherings, formal and informal, are marked by highly formalized relationships. A formalized relationship gives rise to highly predictable and normalized language such as idioms and proverbs.

In, and since, the nineteenth century a more than passing interest inPashto verse, both literary and popular, has been shown in Europe, as thefollowing titles (not to mention a number of chrestomathies) testify:

The collapse of the authority of the Saddozai rulers of Afghanistan in the early years of the nineteenth century left their empire divided into a number of separate states. By 1838 the only states still under Afghan rule were those of Herat, Qandahar, and Kabul. At that time fear that Russia had gained a preponderant influence in Persia which would be extended to Afghanistan caused the British authorities in India and England to decide to remove Dost Muḥammad Khān, the ruler of Kabul, and his brothers, who ruled in Qandahar, and to restore Shāh Shujā' al-Mulk, the deposed Saddozai monarch, to the government of those territories.

Emperor Menelik's reign (1889–1913) opens a new era in the kind of sources that the historian has at his disposal for the analysis of modern Ethiopian history. During his reign printing presses were set up in the country and spurred a gradual growth in the more widespread use of Amharic, not just as the spoken but also the written language of the imperial court. This is not to say that the Gә'әz literary tradition in Ethiopia disappeared altogether, for some chronicles in Gә'әz continued to be written after 1935, often very similar in form and content to those which have survived for the Gondarine and earlier periods of Ethiopian history. However, Menelik's reign, and the official chronicle of it by Gäbrä Sәllase, mark a significant departure, not least because the chronicle was written in Amharic and not in Gә'әz. There are a few earlier published literary works in Amharic, the songs of the kings of the fourteenth century being the most significant, but it should be emphasized that the Gә'әz tradition continued parallel to the Amharic in the form of tarikä nägäst, i.e the history of kings. Some of these are now preserved at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa, like the Gondarine tarikä nägäst which belonged to Nәgus Wäldä Giyorgis, the valuable biography of the grandson of Emperor Tewodros (1855–68), Mäšäša, and a published biography of Ras Makonnen.

This article seeks to gain a better understanding of a famous ode by the ‘Abbāsid court poet al-Buhturī (d. 897) by comparing it with two other works which exhibit a similar thematic development. One is an extract from The Aeneid by Virgil (d. 19 BC), the other a poem by Wilfred Owen (d. 1918). The three texts emanate from imperial identities (Roman, Arab and British) in a state of crisis, which in turn paves the way for cathartic encounters with an alien other that each involves an act of recognition. The comparison uncovers certain similarities in the psychological impact of this encounter and thereby throws a new light on the carefully crafted structure of al-Buhturī's ode. The experience described by the three texts emerges as an expression of man's universal quest for his lost self, and its recovery—however momentarily—in the very heart of his supposed foe.

In 1946 the School of Oriental and African Studies is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Sir William Jones: in 1948 University College, London, will celebrate that of Jeremy Bentham. In this there is something more than an accidental approximation of dates. All subsequent scientific English thinking about law is traceable to these two men. The English School of Analytical Jurisprudence; the great tide of law reform which swept through nineteenth-century England; the codification (the word is his own coinage) of law not only in England and India but in many different parts of the world: these things admittedly sprang from the genius of Jeremy Bentham. Sir William Jones's influence was smaller in volume, though almost as widely diffused. He had neither the apostolic fervour of reform nor the overflowing vitality which carried Bentham on with undiminished vigour to eighty-four years: he died before reaching his forty-seventh birthday. But his influence was, none the less, considerable. The first of our Orientalists who was also a lawyer, Colebrooke, Sutherland, Wynch, and other Sanskritists, the Macnaghtens and the Baillies followed in his footsteps. In particular Colebrooke, greatest of them all, and Ian Baillie came directly under his influence. But it is equally true, though less generally recognized, that he is the forerunner of the other great English school of legal philosophy, the historical and comparative school, and that the work of Sir Henry Maine and his successors might have lacked some of its most distinctive elements if Jones's translation had not rendered the Institutes of Manu available to Maine when he was writing Ancient Law. Indeed, Maine's whole career might have been different; for just as his known interest in Oriental legal systems led to Jones's appointment as a judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, so it was the interest in Indian ideas evinced in Ancient Law which led to Maine's appointment as law member of the Governor-General's Council, and so to all his later work on similar topics.

The role of language and linguistic-philological studies in the nationalist movements of the nineteenth century received much attention. The aim of this article is to focus on the language factor in Zionism and the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language in the Yishuv between 1904 and 1914. Founded in 1904, the Hebrew Language Council was expected to enhance the process of revival and, from the very beginning, an unmistakably nationalist attitude to its subject matter marked the Council's agenda. However, the authority of the Council to make binding decisions on linguistic matters was contested by a number of other Zionist institutions, a development which ruined the prestige and effectiveness of the Council. The controversy resulted less from a turf war or quarrels over scarce resources than a deeper question of which institution represented the “true” Hebraic spirit. The World Zionist Organization's decision to de-align from cultural matters, including the revival of Hebrew, worsened the conditions under which the Council operated. From a comparative perspective, thus, the Hebrew case provides an unusual case of linguistic nationalism, which should be of interest to students of both nationalism and sociolinguistics.

Almost ninety years have passed since the establishment of the Lebanese state, but it still lacks a consensual and unifying historical narrative. The Druzes of Lebanon, who claim to be the real founders of the historical Lebanese entity, reject the Lebanese historiography elaborated by Christian historians as ideologically motivated, sectarian and fabricated. Furthermore, they claim that their contribution to Lebanon's history has been systematically minimized. The Druze leader, Kamāl Junblāṭ, was the first to raise public awareness of the importance of rewriting Lebanon's history, and the process of doing so has gained momentum among Druze intellectuals since the 1980s. This article discusses the efforts of the Druze intelligentsia to cultivate a historical narrative that presents an alternative to what they call the “Maronite narrative”; it focuses predominantly on the Emirate's history during the Middle Ages and the reciprocal relations between the Druze political experience within modern Lebanon and the intellectual formulation of their narrative.

One obstacle which confronts any historian interested in reconstructing the history of the Bētä Esra'ēl (Fälasha) of Ethiopia is the comparative scarcity of reliable historical sources. References to the Bētä Esra'ēl in Ge'ez chronicles and gädlat are all too rare, while those in Hebrew generally lack historical value. The scattered mentions of the Fälasha in other languages prior to the nineteenth century are few and limited in scope. In light of this situation, any new source, no matter how brief, is deserving of attention and study.

The story of the exegesis of Q. 2: 106 cannot be told briefly, on account of the quite appaling degree of muddle which has bedevilled the Muslim discusions of this verse. The greatest imaginable confusion regins as the definition of the term naskh and as to its supposed meaning(s). For that reason, it may be convenient first to set out the following formulae which represent the classical theories of naksh. There are, in fact, two such theories.

Taking as a yardstick the number of copies made (and commentaries provoked), there can be little doubt that the most influential of all Arabic treatises on music has been the kitāb al-Adwār (referred to henceforth as KA) by Safi al-Dīn 'Abd al-Mu'min b. Yūsuf b. Fākhir al-Urmawī (d. 693/1294). Nevertheless, despite its obvious historical significance, this seminal work still awaits a satisfactory critical edition, one of the most important tasks of which should be to investigate the complex relationship between the form(s) in which it is now known and the markedly different version found in an Istanbul MS, Süleymaniye Fatih 3662 (referred to henceforth as F). Pending the more thorough analysis that should attend publication, an attempt is made in the present article to provide a general introduction to this hitherto neglected text.

The establishment of the theatre in Egypt, like many other Western innovations, was aided by the initiative of the KhediveIsmail. The Suez Canal was completed in the year 1869; to celebrate its opening the Khedive decided to form the Ezbekia Gardens and to build the Opera House which still exists beside them. This building, in. whose fabric wood occupies a dangerously large part, was erected in a great hurry and inaugurated in November, 1869. The opera Aida which Verdi was composing for the occasion in return for a fee of 150, 000 francs, on a libretto originally arranged by Mariette Pasha, was not completed in time for the opening, and a performance of Rigoletto was given instead.

The Dizi (as they call themselves) have hitherto been generally known as the Maji, a term derived from the name of their largest chiefdom, in which there also lies the most important Amhara town of this region. They are one of the least studied groups of south-western Ethiopia.

Islamic tradition records many precedents for expulsion of Jews and other non-Muslims. The authors of the two most important collections of ḥadīths, al-Bukhārī and Muslim, have chapters entitled ‘On exiling the Jews from Arabia’ or ‘On exiling the Jews from the Ḥijāz’. Similar chapters exist in other collections of traditions. These statements testify to Muḥammad's expulsion of ‘the Jews of Medina—all of them’, or report his will to expel the Jews—or in variants, the Jews and Christians or the Polytheists—from the Arabian Peninsula. Clearly, the traditions are interpreted with the widest possible reference regarding who is to be exiled: no non-Muslim is allowed to remain. But the geographical extent of the area from which non-Muslims are to be exiled is interpreted in narrow fashion: ‘What is meant by ‘the Arabian Peninsula” in this tradition is the Ḥijāz, not the entire Arabian Peninsula.’ This is so despite ample potential for broad interpretation in the language of the texts. In a tradition which supports a projected exile of the Jews of Medina, Muhammad tells the Jews, ‘Know that the land is the Lord's and his Apostle's.’ The word arḍ ‘land’ in the ḥadīth is understood to refer specifically to the plots of land the Jews had owned, now considered lo be held by them in tenancy. This could easily have been taken out of context by some interpreters and applied to all lands. A tradition used to support the prohibition of dhimmī residence in Ḥijāz reads, in some versions, ‘two religions (sometimes using the term qiblas—directions faced in prayer) may not exist in one land,’ in others, ‘two qiblas may not exist in Arabia’. In practice, this tradition was applied only to Ḥijāz and was not extended to all of Arabia or any other ‘land’. Chapter headings are often our only indication of how traditions were understood by those who collected them; Mālik's chapter heading has this tradition refer only to the expulsion of Jews from Medina.

The majority of the Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts from the northern part of the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang (China) were found in an area where the local languages Tocharian A and B were spoken. In this article, the interplay of Sanskrit, the religious language, and Tocharian, the popular language, is investigated based on the example of the relationship between the Sanskrit Udānavarga and the Tocharian B Udānastotra. To this end, a reconstruction of the text of the introduction to the Udānastotra is attempted, which forms the transition from the Udānavarga to the Udānastotra proper. It is argued that this Tocharian B text was found in otherwise Sanskrit manuscripts, which suggests that speakers of Tocharian preferred certain doctrinal texts in Sanskrit.