In the early fourteenth century, decades before the Ottomans became the sole rulers of Anatolia, the Germiyanid beylik stood as a dominant force among the principalities that had emerged in western Anatolia following the demise of the Seljuks (1307). Nonetheless, to date, the exact origins and ethno-cultural background of the Germiyanids remain unclear. This article re-evaluates previous theories and posits that the embryo of what eventually became the Germiyanids formed between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries in the lowlands between Malatya and Lake Van, and that the name “Germiyan” was of Kurdish origin. It also suggests that an intense proto-Yedizi proselytism took place in eastern Anatolia before the Germiyanids migrated to western Anatolia. Beyond its significance to the history of the Seljuks, the Ottomans, the Mongols, and Byzantium, this paper challenges the prevailing narrative that views the emergence of the beyliks as an exclusively Turkic phenomenon and sheds light on the role played by non-Turkic people, including Kurds and Arabs, in their formation.

This article analyses the little-studied thirteenth-century Arabic inscriptions of the monastery of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, Spain. Despite their creation during an intensifying Christian–Muslim conflict, they were part of a decorative programme that relied on shared religious ideas and iconography. Their incorporation reinforced daily, funerary and commemorative monastic liturgies. While the article explores the Islamic provenance of these inscriptions, it also reveals the overlooked Arabic New Testament as a source. The inscriptions’ provenance, however, was deliberately obscured first and foremost by the nature of their visual display. Examining the relationship of the Latin to the Arabic inscriptions illustrates an unusual symbiosis between the meaning of the inscriptions, the iconography and the monastery's ritual. This symbiosis was formulated through a highly selective editorial process on the part of the Christian patrons, and predicated on their knowledge of the finer points of Islamic doctrine and cultural practices.

This paper presents linguistic and philological analyses of glossed medieval Georgian transcriptions of the Middle Mongol zodiac terms in the fourteenth-century anonymous ასწლოვანი მატიანე Asc'lovani Mat'iane (Chronicle of One Hundred Years), revealing unique details on Middle Mongol as attested in medieval Georgia. This is the first instalment of the authors’ joint research on this vastly important, largely untapped contemporaneous Georgian source on medieval Mongol language, culture and history.

This article focuses on the widespread practice of appointing deputy judges, called naibs, in the Ottoman Empire from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Based on extensive archival research, it analyses how the judiciary turned into a system of allocating revenue sources. An increasing number of offices of kadı (judge) were assigned as a source of income to higher-ranking ulema, who, through intermediaries, in turn farmed out their judicial offices to naibs in return for a fixed sum of money. Importantly, the apportionment fees for taxes collected from local taxpayers constituted a significant part of naibs’ incomes. The practice of deputizing in the Ottoman judiciary thus shows a close parallel with tax farming. Because the naibs transferred their revenues to the higher-ranking ulema, farming out judicial offices became a major economic basis for maintaining the Ottoman ulema hierarchy.

The present study explores the progressive constructions in different Balochi dialects from a diachronic and an areal linguistic point of view. Previous studies on different Balochi dialects (Buddruss 1988; Baranzehi 2003; Farrell 2003; Axenov 2006; Ahangar 2007; Jahani and Korn 2009; Nourzaei et al. 2015; Korn and Nourzaei 2019; Korn 2020, 2017a and 2017b) have described progressive constructions, but discussion from a diachronic and an areal linguistic point of view is largely lacking. I will argue that the diversity of progressive constructions in Balochi dialects is a result of language contact and diffusion rather than an internal historical development that can be explained in terms of grammaticalization. In addition, there is no trace of a morphological progressive construction in written samples of Balochi. The general imperfective marker =a= (verbal clitic) covers ongoing meaning. To the extent that this marker has lost its ongoing meaning and become a general indicative marker in the present domain, the language has filled the progressive gap with new constructions which are basically a result of language and dialect contact. The new progressive constructions are mainly periphrastic constructions that represent either direct or indirect code copying from dominant languages and other Balochi dialects.

It has long been recognized that the Semitic suffix conjugation and the Berber adjectival perfective suffix conjugation have striking similarities in their morphology, which has been correctly attributed to be the result of a shared inheritance from Proto-Afro-Asiatic. Nevertheless, the function of these conjugations in the respective language families is quite distinct. This article argues that ultimately this suffix conjugation is a predicative suffix in the common ancestor of Berber and Semitic, and moreover shows that Semitic and Berber have significant overlap in the stem formations of adjectives. It is argued that these formations must likewise be reconstructed for their common ancestor.

In the Arabian Peninsula, lexically diminutive personal names, family names and place names are ubiquitous. In a dataset of 9,060 Arabian names, 1,717 (19 per cent) are diminutive. This article finds that the diminutive pattern CiCēC (cf. Classical CuCayC) has meanings and functions in Arabic names that are distinct from its meanings and functions in common nouns. In addition to expected meanings related to size, the diminutive carries partitive and attributive meanings. It may simply mark a name (as an onymic) or derive a name (as a transonymic). The diminutive may disambiguate two similar names found in close proximity (e.g. Diba ≠ Dubai). The form and function of the diminutive differ categorically according to what kind of name is diminutivized, supporting the semantic-pragmatic theory of names. A quantitative analysis of toponyms indicates that diminutive names are associated with Bedouin dialects and practices, as suggested by previous research.

A seven-line Ṭākarī inscription on the doorjamb of the Hiḍimbā Devī temple at Manali has as yet remained undeciphered. However, the last line of the inscription was misread by J.Ph. Vogel in 1903–04, and Hirananda (1907–08) simply followed the date earlier suggested by Vogel. Neither has this historic document been translated in extenso by Vogel or Hirananda, or any other scholar. This article offers a complete translation of the inscription, its historical significance, and re-establishes the date of the temple from ad 1553 to ad 1551. This was during the reign of Bahādur Singh, the ruler of Kulu, who completed the present structure of the temple, and performed a yajña at the temple of the goddess Hiḍimbā during its consecration.

The Seventh Dalai Lama's residence at Gartar Monastery, which began in 1730, greatly affected the relationship between the Kham region and the Tibetan government as well as the Qing court's control over Kham. The Dalai Lama's interactions with various indigenous leaders, local monasteries, monks and lay people increased the influence of the Geluk school in Kham, and also inspired their support for the Dalai Lama. Measures adopted by the Qing court to protect the Dalai Lama, such as stationing troops and inspecting checkpoints, also strengthened Qing control of Kham. After the Dalai Lama left for Tibet in 1735, Gartar Monastery continued to serve as a religious and cultural centre of northern Kham, with the purpose of “civilizing” and “enlightening” the neighbouring regions that were far away from the political centre. Successive abbots of Gartar Monastery – right up to 1920 – came from Drepung Monastery in Lhasa; they and the Gartar monks influenced, interfered with and controlled the local affairs of Gartar and other regions in Kham. In particular, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Gartar Monastery, together with the Tibetan commissioner in Nyarong, was able to assist in the Tibetan government's efforts to extend its sphere of influence in Kham.

This paper will present the evidence for two newly discovered words, gawzag and shagar, meaning “two-horse chariot/mail coach” and “wagon” respectively in the eastern Arabian dialect of Qaṭrāyīth (Syriac for “in Qatari”) of the seventh and eighth centuries ce. They reveal the continued local knowledge of wheeled transport in Arabia and possible use long after its supposed disappearance in the Near East between the fourth and sixth centuries according to Richard Bulliet's well-known thesis in his seminal work The Camel and the Wheel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). The fact that this vernacular maintained two specific words for two different modes of wheeled transport likely suggests a practical need for them in everyday communication among the inhabitants of the Beth Qaṭraye region (Syriac for “region of the Qataris” in north-eastern Arabia). Moreover, their use in an Arabic dialect reveals that native words were developed for wheeled vehicles in the local language spoken by the inhabitants of the area well before the adoption of markabah as a neologism to mean chariot in nineteenth-century Arabic, according to Michael Macdonald's stimulating article “Wheels in a land of camels” (Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 20/2, 2009). Thus, the various rock drawings of two-wheeled carts and chariots in northern Arabia may in fact not only have been known but also used nearby in eastern Arabia, rather than being inaccurate representations reflecting a distant awareness of the existence of chariots elsewhere such as in Mesopotamia and Egypt as had been previously thought. This is a literary, philological. and historical study that aims at presenting newly discovered vocabulary in context for further analysis by linguists and others.

In 2017, the editio princeps of a newly discovered Middle Persian text, the “Mādayān ī Wīrāzagān” or simply “Wīrāzagān”, was published by Raham Asha. This text, which is important not only from a literary and religious perspective, but also from a mythological point of view, was previously unknown to the scholarly community. The Middle Persian original of the text is found in the Codex TD 26 (49r-62v), preserved in the library of the K.R. Cama Oriental Institute, Mumbai. The manuscript was first discovered and studied by R. Asha in March 2011. The preliminary remarks on the Mādayān ī Wīrāzagān and other texts contained in the Codex TD 26 (Ms. R 494) were published in 2012 in the journal of the same institution. Here I present a translation (accompanied by the transliteration and transcription) of the original text published on pages 3–16 of Asha's book.

In examining wares discovered from the cultures of Sanxingdui and Jinsha and from the former site of the ancient kingdom of Dian in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, this article highlights a number of shared features and trends that suggest a continued artistic, technological and cultural transmission through time and space. The article aims to supplement established theories on the rich material culture of this region. It will look in particular at the development of its striking bronze metallurgy, largely deriving from the established traditions of the Yellow River valley in China’s Bronze Age. It highlights the function of a dense network of trading routes, referred to in modern scholarship as the “Southwest Silk Road”, as an important facilitator of cultural and artistic exchange and reciprocation from ancient times.

Two kinds of grain, “millet, 粟米 sùmǐ” and “husked rice, 稻 dào”, frequently appear in the Liye Qin Slips. Aside from these grains, another character seen in the Liye Qin Slips, nǎo, is thought to represent grain. It also represents the words for “brain, 腦 nǎo” in other excavated documents. Since the archaeological data show that rice cultivation was practised around the middle and lower Yangtze Valley, the homeland of Proto-Hmong Mien (formerly the state of Chu 楚地), the word for “rice plant, 稻 dào” seems to be a loanword from Proto-Hmong Mien *mbləu. The character nǎo is reconstructed as *nˤuʔ, which bears the same onset as the sound for “rice plant (or husked rice)” in North and East Hmongic languages nɯ (< *mbləu). Hence, we propose that the assimilation (*mbl- > *n-) in these languages could have occurred at the latest just before or after the Qin dynasty.

Middle Persian translations and interpretations of Avestan texts employ the word īšt in the translation of the Avestan ī̆šti- “capability, capacity, competence”. The word became a vocabulary item in the Middle Persian corpus. It seems to be a calque of its Avestan counterpart. The Avestan ī̆šti- has presented challenges in the Avesta scholarship and is translated with words from different semantic domains. This article discusses the definition of Avestan ī̆šti- and how it is reinterpreted and understood in the Middle Persian translations. It is argued here that Av. ī̆šti- refers to “capability, capacity, and competence”. However, it is understood and interpreted in the MP texts as “wealth, property”, “remuneration”, or “reward”. It is sometimes translated to a verb form from xwāstan “desire, want”.

In this article I explore hagiographical narratives about Khwāja Yaḥyā Kabīr (d. 1430), among the earliest of the Sufi masters to be identified as Afghan. The social memory of Yaḥyā Kabīr's life exemplifies the function of hagiography as a key arena for the production of historical knowledge, generating a vivid and specific imaginary of the past for devotees. My goal here is to present a reading of the hagiography, but first I will situate it within the discursive nexus of Persian historical writing, which often essentialized Afghans as innately barbarous while peripheralizing Afghan homelands (identified with the Sulaiman Mountains). Yaḥyā Kabīr's hagiography is both reflective of Indo-Afghan anxieties about social hierarchies and a device by which marginalizing traditions could be subverted through a highly textured portrayal of the past. As such, it exemplifies how saints’ lives can index not only the hierarchies of imperial life, but also the techniques by which to escape them.

This paper examines the state-of-the-art for the historical study of the Rma (Qiang) language (< Trans-Himalayan/Sino-Tibetan) and points out some methodological issues in earlier work. The paper discusses how vowel correspondences have been obfuscated by loanwords, onomatopoeic forms, and analogical levelling. It also discusses the analysis of compound forms and points out how certain compound forms have been incorrectly etymologized. It deals with broader, more fundamental issues in prior work such as top-down rather than bottom-up reconstructions, and problematic conceptualizations of what constitutes reconstructions. The article offers potential solutions to the issues discussed and points out where future work would be most profitable.

This paper reconstructs Proto-Naish initials with lateral main consonants using data from three Naish languages: Lijiangba Naxi (LJ), Malimasa (MM), and Yongning Na (YN). The methodology of using conservative languages, such as Written Tibetan, Burmese, and rGyalrong, in interpreting sound correspondences is emphasized. At least five lateral initials should be reconstructed to Proto-Naish. Initial correspondences relevant to laterals are also discussed.

This paper discusses a secondary addition of syllable-final glottal stops in Ganan (Sino-Tibetan > Sal > Jingpho-Luish). In particular, it deals with the phenomenon where words ending with i or u in Luish languages Cak and Kadu have an additional glottal stop in Ganan. This study found that words ending with i or u can be reconstructed as either *i or *iy or *u or *uw respectively, and the secondary glottal stop is added in Ganan when the reconstructed form is *iy or *uw and does not have a high tone.