Professor E. ULLENDORFF is entitled to the grateful appreciation of all students of Ethiopic letters for having published anew the Falasha story of the ‘Death of Moses’. The first edition published by the late Dr. Jacques Faitlovitch in 1906 has, indeed, become very rare. Moreover, his editio princeps was based on a single manuscript, while Ullendorff's recension is the result of a painstaking comparison of Faitlovitch's text with a manuscript extant inthe National Library of Addis Ababa. Some variants of this manuscript were already knownfrom the notes appended to Professor Wolf Leslau's translation of the ‘Death of Moses’ in his Falasha anthology, New Haven, 1951. Now we have them all before us in the apparatus criticus of Ullendorff's edition. The collation of the Addis Ababa manuscript has yielded an improved text. Itso happens, however, that this is not yet the last stage in the research on this interesting opuscle.

IN the second half of the nineteenth century, the general upsurge of nationalism in Europe exerted an influence on the Jewish population as well. This influence was particularly strong in Eastern Europe, where there occurred a formidable Jewish nationalistic renaissance, some features of which were: the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language; the widespread use of Jewish folk-lore in the works of Jewish writers, painters, and musicians; and the rebuilding and resettling of Palestine by small groups of Jewish pioneers. The new settlers in Palestine soon adapted Hebrew (which had indeed remained very much alive through the centuries as a literary tongue) to the requirements of daily existence, and it became the language of instruction in most of their schools. At present, practically the entire Israeli population (about two million) speaks Hebrew.

In the last centuries before the current era and in the early centuries after its beginning the major intellectual and literary activity in the realms (first) of the Jewish and (later) of the Christian communities was wholly centred in the field of interpretation. The OT, as the mainspring and foundation of all religious thought and teaching in those days and in those spheres, was the subject of this interpretation activity. In both the Jewish and the Christian world the Bible was considered to be not only holy and authoritative, but also, and this is in our context more important, the only and exclusive source of divine religious doctrine and of good ethical behaviour. Also historical events, political or religious, were seen, even foreseen, and evaluated from the aspect of this holy source of divine wisdom and planning.

In his interesting and provocative book Hindu and Muslim mysticism (Athlone Press, 1960), Professor R. C. Zaehner has discussed at length the part which lie believes Abū Yazīd al-Bistāmī played in introducing Vedāntin ideas into Muslim mysticism. In this paper it is proposed to re-examine some of the crucial texts upon which this theory has been based.

T he Mandaean, or Nasoraean religion is a system with no definite theology. It is, and apparently was from the first, an elaborate system of symbolical rites, meticulously preserved and performed by an hereditary priesthood. These priests, to judge by scrolls reserved for priests only, appear to have concealed gnosticconceptions in symbolical myths, personifying abstract conceptions and so veiling, even in priestly texts, high and metaphysical truths which only the especially endued could perceive if fitted to understand.

THE scholarly article entitled ‘Muslim institutions of learning in eleventhcentury Baghdad’ by Dr. George Makdisi deserves careful study. It is much more than a mosaic of notices of institutions and men of learning; it has a thesis running through its course, which seeks to elucidate the character of the madrasah in general and that founded by Niẓām al-Mulk in Baghdad in particular.

I N 1508 the Mediterranean port of Bādis, located on the coast of the Rīf on approximately the same meridian as Malaga, shared with Salé and Azemmour on the Atlantic the distinction of being the only Moroccan ports not occupied by either the Spanish or Portuguese. Subject to the Wattasids at Fās, at about the beginning of the sixteenth century Bādis had been granted by the reigning Wattāsidto a cousin, who for some years ruled almost independently there. Because of its geographical situation the port was of considerable interest to the Republic of Venice, two of whose merchant fleets had occasion to call there in the course of their voyages along the coasts of the Mediterranean.

Venetian interest in Bādis is illustrated by two Arabic documents: a treaty and its covering letter addressed by the Amīr of Bādis to the Doge of Venice, written in the year 1508 and concerning the establishment of commercial relations. The originals of these two documents are preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV) where also, in the Libri Commemoriali, transcripts of their contemporary Italian translations are to be found. These translations are reproduced here together with the Arabic texts.

1. Analysis of al-Jabartț's account Al-Jabartī's chronicle, ‘Ajā’ib al-āthār fi'l-tarājim wa'l-akhbār formally begins with the year 1100/1688–9 (p. 24 of the first volume of the BŪlāq edition). He precedes his annals, however, with an introduction, of which the last part (p. 20, line 23–p. 24, line 4) is concerned with Ottoman Egypt from the time of the conquest by Sellm I to the beginning of the twelfth Hijrī century.

Hadramawt, properly speaking, is the name of the Wadi, a province separated from its coast by an empty stony plateau. Each of these provinces is a distinct entity

In the fourth chapter of book  of the Metaphysica Aristotle deals with the principle of contradiction. This law is formulated as follows: ‘it is impossible for anything at the same time to be and not to be’. Let us imagine, says Aristotle, that somebody wished to oppose this view. Our opponent cannot hold a view which contradicts the law of contradiction without assuming the validity of this law itself: for otherwise he is not even denying what we are saying. The only alternative for him, then, will be to say nothing. But this is absurd: of which one line may be quoted here:

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the general upsurge of nationalism in Europe exerted an influence on the Jewish population as well. This influence was particularly strong in Eastern Europe, where there occurred a formidable Jewish nationalistic renaissance, some features of which were: the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language; the widespread use of Jewish folk-lore in the works of Jewish writers, painters, and musicians; and the rebuilding and resettling of Palestine by small groups of Jewish pioneers. The new settlers in Palestine soon adapted Hebrew (which had indeed remained very much alive through the centuries as a literary tongue) to the requirements of daily existence, and it became the language of instruction in most of their schools. At present, practically the entire Israeli population (about two million) speaks Hebrew.

In Ḥaḍramawt, it seems, there have been constantly reiterated attempts at creating effective sumptuary laws limiting expenditure at marriages and other social activities, especially in respect of the extravagant demands of women for dress and other forms of ostentation where their rivalry leads their male relatives into expenditure beyond their means. The sentiments of the Hadrami man are admirably expressed in a qasīdah by the shaikh Aḥmad Barakā of which one line may be quoted here:

In a recent article on ‘Words for “printing block” and the origin of printing’, Mr. R. Shafer rejected B. Laufer's derivation of Tibetan par from Chinese baan ‘printing block’, which the latter had proposed in his article ‘Loan-words in Tibetan’, though, in fairness to Laufer, it must be added that he qualified his etymology by the adverb ‘presumably’. While I fully agree with Mr. Shafer's rejection of Laufer's suggestion, I feel bound to say that he reached his conclusion from premises which are open to serious objections and indeed lend little support to the hypothesis on the origin of printing which he advances as a corollary.

IN the second half of the nineteenth century, the general upsurge of nationalism in Europe exerted an influence on the Jewish population as well. This influence was particularly strong in Eastern Europe, where there occurred a formidable Jewish nationalistic renaissance, some features of which were: the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language; the widespread use of Jewish folk-lore in the works of Jewish writers, painters, and musicians; and the rebuilding and resettling of Palestine by small groups of Jewish pioneers. The new settlers in Palestine soon adapted Hebrew (which had indeed remained very much alive through the centuries as a literary tongue) to the requirements of daily existence, and it became the language of instruction in most of their schools. At present, practically the entire Israeli population (about two million) speaks Hebrew.

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.

Ever since the publication of the text, scholars have disagreed on the date of the composition of the Śukraniti. Oppertx placed it very early, in the period of the Smrtis and the early epic literature. V. S. Agrawala and Syamlal Pandya regard it as a work of the Gupta period. But generally the text is utilized as a source for the early medieval period, especially the eleventh or the twelfth century. Rajendra Lai Mitra held that the work could not be older than the sixteenth century. Sanskritists, following the lead of Keith and Kane, dismiss the text as of quite a late date and hence not applicable to the Hindu period.

J. Gonda's study The meaning of Vedic bhīṣati (Wageningen, 1939), republished in Four studies in the language of the Veda ('s-Gravenhage, 1959), has failed to convince scholars, and seemingly the author himself, that a basic meaning ‘strengthen’ is tenable.

The examination and cataloguing of Mongol manuscripts and prints in European libraries in recent years has brought to light a considerable number of books whose subject matter is the occurrence and treatment of sickness by magical means, and the magical ceremonies to be performed after a person's death in order to counteract the prolongation of the evil influences which were responsible for the occurrence.

On 11 March 1925 the dying Dr. Sun Yat-sen signed his will which was witnessed by T. V. Soong, Sun Fo, Chang Chi, Shao Yüan-ch'ung, Tai En-sai, Wu Ching-hêng, Ho Hsiang-ning, Tai Chi-t'ao, and Tsou Lu. Wang Ching-wei, who, according to the text of the will, had taken it down from Dr. Sun's dictation, signed his name immediately after Dr. Sun.

In a previous paper I discussed the typology of two collections of neolithic artifacts from the North Karnataka of India and discovered a close correspondence between them.