According to Musil, the bedouin of North Arabia know five seasons, distinguished by different types of rain or its absence. The rains within each season are also thought to be governed by particular stars. The following table sets out these five seasons with the associated rains and stars.

The siwāk or miswāk (pi. masāwīk) is often mentioned as a symbol for the emphasis given in medieval Islam to dental health. Although not mentioned in the Qur'ān—the prime source of legitimacy in Islam—the siwāk gained popularity through being attributed to the daily practice of the Prophet Muhammad whose advanced understanding of preventive dentistry is lauded as being only part of his general concern with preventive medicine. Even on his death bed the Prophet is said not to have given up the use of the siwāk, since he always ordered Muslims to “purify your mouths for they are the channels through which utterances of praise to God (subḥāna Allāh) travel”. The word siwāk derives from the Arabic root swk, which indicates rubbing for the purpose of cleaning. Hence siwāk or miswāk are the names of the wooden instrument which has been used as a “tooth-stick” (Zahnstocher), or as an early form of the toothbrush, to clean the teeth and deodorize the mouth. The siwak is a wooden stick about 8 inches long and as wide as a finger. The edge is usually chewed so that the fibres separate to become like a brush. In contemporary Islamic ethics, of which the fatāwā literature (legal responsa) is only one example, the siwāk has regained recognition and is often praised as the preferred means for dental care.

The city of Yazd is situated on the edge of the Dasht-i Kavīr in the Ardistān-Yazd basin, which stretches some 250 miles from near Kāshān to south of Bāfq. It lies at a height of 4,000 ft. West of Yazd, the Shīr Kūh massif rises to 13,370 ft. It receives considerable moisture including heavy snow but the rainfall of Yazd itself is less than 5 in. per annum. Near Yazd groundwater which originates in the Shīr Kūh mountains follows a northward slope from Mihrīz towards Ardakān. Before the sinking of semi-deep power-operated wells from about 1950 onwards, Yazd obtained its water from long qanāts originating in the mountains west of Taft and Mihrīz. The qanāts of the villages to the north-west of Yazd tap water in the highest elevations of the basins to the north-east. Some of these qanāts flow underneath Yazd, while a few originate in Yazd itself.

L'histoire de Khuttal' au Moyen-Age a éveillé l'intérêt de plus d'une génération de chercheurs, mais le caractére fragmentaire des informations fournies par les sources écrites n'a permis de se faire qu'une idée schématique de cette région, pourtant importante aussi bien sur le plan politique qu'économique.

This study has a limited object, but it touches upon a pregnant theme. Not long ago it was supposed that Indian texts which resembled Western were either so clearly older than the latter that, if contact could be posited, the latter must have learnt from the former, or the themes must be testimony to a common inheritance of the sundered portions of an Indo-European “race”. The relative dates of texts have come into question, and the prospect that Indian authors could have been inspired, at least in part, by Western authors (obvious in some contexts) is no longer alarming. That Buddhist authors could have learned from Judaeo-Christian stories is no longer surprising, or baffling.A later movement of Buddhist stories westwards is proved (as is well known) by the story of Barlaam and Ioasaph attributed to St John Damascene; and I recently stumbled across a piece of Buddhist mythology adapted to a Jewish situation. 4 Since this is the immediate cause of the present disclosure a very brief summary is needed.