The two letters with which this article is concerned were written in the name of Sultan Abu Hayat of Ternate. when he was about 7 years old, and are of peculiar interest as being, perhaps, the oldest Malay letters extant. The first, which is catalogued under the reference Gavetas 15–16–38 in the Lisbon archives known as Torre do Tombo, appears to have been written between 27th April and 8th November, 1521. The second, preserved in the same archive under the reference Gavetas 15-15-7, was probably written early in the following year. These conclusions are based on what is known from other sources about the history of the Moluccas in this period, combined with the internal evidence of the letters themselves. Unfortunately their style betrays the fact that they were not writtenby a Malay, but by some scribe (or, as seems more likely, two scribes)probably indigenous to Ternate and certainly very imperfectly acquainted with the Malay language.

The role of some form of breathing meditation in most of the world's great mystical traditions has long been known, but few have seen much evidence for this in early Taoism. By ‘early Taoism’ I mean the formative stages of the tradition, from its mysterious origins to the completion of the Huai-nan-Tzu (139 B.C.). Perhaps scholars have seen so little evidence of meditative practice in early Taoism because they have tended to focus almost exclusively on its famous foundational works, Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu and have, furthermore, tended to treat them as works of abstract philosophy. In my research I have been particularly interested in the experiential basis of the philosophy found in the Lao-Tzu and the Chuang-Tzu and in a variety of other related texts that have hitherto been generally overlooked as sources for early Taoism. In order to clarify the context for the present investigation of meditative stages, I would like to present briefly the most relevant hypotheses from this research:

It was in the year 1856, with the publication of Stanislas Julien's partial translation of the then fairly recently published T'ao-lu of 1815, that Europe and America first became aware of the possible existence of an ‘imperial kiln’ or group of kilns at Ching-te Chen Nor was this all, for according to Julien's translation such an ‘imperial kiln’ was established in the year 1369, the second year of the Hung-wu period. In view of Julien's standing in his own time, it is not unnatural that the facts as recorded by him with regard to this important event should have remained virtually unchallenged for the better part of a century. Jacquemart, in his monumental Histoire de la cÉramiqite, from which so many terms for wares and techniques have survived to become common currency, is heavily dependent upon his predecessor in the field.

Most Sanskrit texts dealing with Indian music refer to 7 svaras (notes) and 22 śrutis (intervals ? microtones ?) which are said to be the basis of Indian music. Many modern writers in Western as well as the vernacular languages consider that śrutis refer to the microtonal variations in particular notes from one rāga to another. In order to convey the general opinion on the subject of intonation, we quote from Alain Daniélou, a prominent writer on North Indian music:

‘It is impossible to sing the complete scale of the shrutis accurately in succession (as some singers pretend to do), but they can all be sung with perfect accuracy when they are embodied in expressive scales’.

In investigating the nature of original Buddhism a consideration of its position as one among a number of contemporary historical systems, and of the way in which it may have arisen in opposition to the others, may be more illuminating than attempts to trace back the original doctrine through the history of the schools of Buddhism itself. The most important among these systems appear to have been those of the Ājīvakas, the Nirgranthas or Jainas, and the Lokayatas. Many other systems existed, and are occasionally discussed in the extant literature, but the majority failed to attract a substantial following and to persist as organized schools. We may mention the doctrines attributed to the Buddha's teachers, and perhaps the Iśvaravāda, if this was not simply a part of the older Brahmanical tradition (Iśvara = Prajapāti or Brahmā). The cults of Baladeva and Vāsudeva, which with the Kṛṣṇa and other legends were later integrated into Vaisnavism, and which probably were non-Brahmanical in origin, seem from Jaina references to have existed already in eastern India. A heterodox proto- may date back to the period of the origin of Buddhism.

It is obvious to anyone who reads Lao Tzǔ that opposites play a prominentpart in it. There is hardly a page on which one cannot find some contrasted terms like ‘ long ’ and short', ‘ weak’ and ‘ strong ’. What may not be soobvious is the complexity of the different theories concerning these opposites.It is thepurpose of this paper to study, in some detail, these theories.

One of the several branches of Islamic law in which practice diverged most sharply from theory was the law of commerce. The divergence is especially striking in two respects: regular imposition of taxes regarded by the shariī‘a as illegal, and reliance upon written documents as legal proof of transactions for which juridical theory demanded only oral evidence of witnesses. A third problematical aspect of commercial law was the juridical status of the non-Muslim merchant in Dār al-Islām. Matters pertaining thereto were loosely subsumed by the jurists under the term amān, associated specifically with the law of war, and defined by recourse to as much precedent as could be gleaned from the Qur'ān and from the example of the Prophet and of the earliest Muslim communities. The consequences of this procedure have posed several historical problems upon which it is hoped the present paper will throw some light.

The many thousands of inscriptions conventionally classified under the headings of Dedanite, Lihyanite, Safaitic, and Thamudic, all share the characteristic of a definite article in the form h- or hn-. Pre-Islamic texts displaying the distinctively Arabic article al are a mere handful; among them, easily the most important is the funerary text of Umru' al-Qays at Nemara (RES 483). This very minuscule corpus has recently been enlarged by two inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (anciently Qaryat Dhāt Kāhil; near modern Sulayyil, on the trade route linking Nagrān with the eastern Arabian coast), publicized by Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Ansary in spring 1977 at the first International Symposium on Studies in the History of Arabia at Riyadh. These texts are particularly welcome in that they are written in fine monumental South Arabian script, and thus do not pose the acute problems of reading occasioned by the exceedingly ambiguous scripts of Nemara and the other northern texts.

I suppose that most textbooks of European history or of world history—which in European textbooks is much the same thing—contain a chapter called ‘The Age of the Discoveries’, or something of the kind, which deals with the period from the fifteenth century onwards when Western Europe set about discovering the rest of the world. My subject to-day is another and earlier discovery, in which the West European was not the explorer going forth to discover the barbarian, but the barbarian discovered by the explorer—the Muslim explorer. My purpose is to outline, very briefly, the sources, nature, and stages of growth of Muslim knowledge concerning Western Europe, first in the obscure centuries before the Crusades, then during that great offensive of Western Christendom against Islam, of which the expeditions to Palestine were the easternmost expression.

The Xinjiang People's Publishing House recently produced a series of booklets on the historical characters of Xinjiang. Included among the accounts of the region's heroes and heroines are the stories of some five hakim-begs, the local chief administrators during the Qing. They have all won inclusion in this series for demonstrations of loyalty to their Manchu conquerors and assistance rendered in the suppression of revolt against the Chinese empire. Heavily edited as these accounts may be, historical evidence of the hakims' co-operation with their conquerors is irrefutable.

Al-Malik al-Mansūr Husām al-Dīn Lāchin al-Manṣsūrī was one of the succession of sultans whose brief reigns occupy the two decades from the death of al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn in 689/1290 to the third accession of his son, al-Nāsir Muhammad, 709/1310. Lāchīn himself reigned little more than two years; his sultanate ended as it had begun in conspiracy and it was distinguished by no outstanding successes. Nevertheless it has some features of significance for the history of the Mamlūk sultanate.

It is surprising that the Manichaean religion did not become altogether submerged in the slime of witchcraft and sorcery. There were countless demons to be warded off and nearly as many divine and semi-divine beings that could be invoked. Mani, it is true, had regarded his " gods " as hardly more than exponents of particular functions of the Godhead, and had been conscious of the inadequacy of the anthropomorphic terms he had ill-advisedly employed:the resplendent hosts, he said in his Treasure of Life, will be called young women and virgins, fathers and mothers, sons, brothers and sisters, because such is the custom in the books of the prophets. In the country of joy there is neither male nor female... they do not differ from each other in weakness and force, in length and shortness, in figure and looks; they are like similar lamps which are lighted by the same lamp and nourished by the same material (Beruni, India, transl., i, 39).

This article deals with Palestinian Christians and Jews who availed themselves of the Muslim pious endowment institution (waqf, pi. awqāf) during the late Ottoman period. In Judaism and Christianity we find pious endowment institutions: the Jewish ‘Hekdesh’ and the Christian ‘Piae Causae’. In both religions there exists an ancient tradition of endowments for purposes which are quite similar to those of the waqf. In spite of this, Christians and Jews in Muslim territories availed themselves of the waqf from the Middle Ages until the end of the Ottoman state. This is an example of the use by minorities of the majority's legal system.

Arabic manuscript no. 4525 in the Istanbul University Library consists of what appears to be the first part of a history of Safed. The manuscript bears no indication either of the title of the work or of the name of its author. The text begins on the second page; the first contains only a brief quotation on Safed from the Mu‘jam al-buldān of Yāqūt.

An essential part of the prosodic approach is the abstraction of those features that may be regarded as syntagmatic. One feature of this kind is ‘vowel harmony’; prosodic analysis is well equipped to deal with this in terms of x2018;frontness’ and ‘backness’, or ‘openness’ and ‘closeness’, these being treated as characteristic of the entire word or of a considerable part of it.

In the phonological analysis of Tigre a prosodic feature of this kind may be abstracted, the relevant phonetic observation being that there are sequences of open front vowels, and that within those sequences there are no half open central vowels. It is this feature that is referred to in the title as ‘openness’.

During all periods of Islamic history, subjects with a grievance were free to address petitions to the ruler, one of whose traditional functions was to remedy injustice personally (al-naẓar fi'l-maẓālim). From Egypt we have a series of extant petitions from the Middle Ages. The practice of the Fāṭimids has been described in the detailed commentary accompanying my edition of three petitions from the time of that dynasty; the information which can be derived from the documents is there completed by accounts in literary sources. Here I publish all those petitions from the Ayyūbid period which are known to me. In another study I hope to perform the task carried out for the Fāṭimid period for the Mamlūk period also, comparing the detailed statements of the historians with the extant documents. For the Ayyūbid period there are no detailed descriptions of the procedure followed in submitting petitions, and the little which is known will be set out in the course of our discussion.

Among the many unpublished works of the Shehu ‘Uthmān dan Fodio three have come to my notice which are of interest in that they illustrate the development of a tradition of reform which, having remote origins in the Almoravid movement of the eleventh century A.D. achieved literary expression in the Muslim empire of Songhay, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and which was continued in the Habe kingdoms almost three centuries later. They also illustrate the continuity of social custom in the Sudan over this period. The works are:

To the extent there is an African academic approach, it is comparative (showing that the African world has similarities with the biblical). There are some “post-colonial” and similar readings, but this academic study is in the main done by Western-trained academics and directed at Western readers. There has been relatively little study of the way the Bible is actually used in churches, especially at the very grassroots. In mainline churches, the Bible is generally taken (as in the West) as a book of revelation which the preacher must expound and apply. In the new fast-growing Pentecostal sector the Bible is conceived quite differently, and understood as a record of covenants, promises, pledges and commitments between God and his chosen. It is not just a record of covenants and commitments to others in the past. It is not primarily a historical document at all. It is a contemporary document; it tells of God's covenant with and commitment to me, and to me now. These promises in scripture are effected in believers' lives through proclamation. The major biblical motifs in this emerging Christianity are thus those stressing victory, success, hope, achievement. The texts that are dominant are therefore prophetic texts, and narratives of those who can be made to illustrate success.

The remarkable group of five rock-cut temples at Māmallapuram or Māvalivaram, to the south of Madras, has often been described. Popular imagination has associated these wonderful shrines with the Pāṇḍvas; thus it has happened that the one which is smallest in size has become known as the rath of Draupadi. Evidently this temple was in reality dedicated to some form of the goddess Durga, whose effigy, standing on the severed head of the Buffalodemon, is found carved upon the outer wall, whereas her vehicle in the form of a well-conceived but unfinished lion-statue may be seen at no great distance.

The relations within the suffixed forms of the Turkish word havt hitherto been treated as a series of unconnected statements as a result of the phonological and grammatical levels of analysis being made in phonemic terms. ‘Vowel Harmony’, which implies a separating out of the vowels from the rest of the word structure, ‘Consonant Alternance’, and ‘variant’ forms with the implication of consonants ‘changing’ from one form to another, all these are statements not related to the structure of the word, and bring in their train some irregularities in the grammatical statement where none need arise.