The reconstruction of the library of Eastern medieval Jewish scholars and medical practitioners according to the Cairo Genizah is a long-term project. In the course of the work a Judaeo-Arabic fragment of a unique tabular medical book by Ibn Biklārish (T-S Ar.44.218) was identified by the authors of this article.

The fragment is unique in several respects, particularly (a) very few medieval Arabic tabular medical works are known, (b) only few works by Andalusian Jewish authors of the late 11th or early 12th century have been found in the Genizah so far, (c) only one Judaeo-Arabic fragment of Ibn Biklārish's Kitāb al-Mustaʿīnī is known to date.

The main importance of our find is that it is the first time that a rare Spanish medical book has appeared in the Cairo Genizah collection. Dozens of the Genizah's fragments have been identified as medical books, but none by a Spanish Jewish author, written in Judaeo-Arabic, and tabulated!

In post-revolution Iran, the sacred notion of martyrdom has been transformed into a routine act of government – a moral sign of order and state sovereignty. Moving beyond the debates of the secularisation of the sacred and the making sacred of the secular, this article argues that the moment of sacralisation is realised through co-production within a social setting when the object of sacralisation is recognised as such by others. In contemporary Iran, however, the moment of sacralising bodies by the state is also the moment of its own subversion as the political-theological field of martyrdom is contested and challenged from within. This article traces the genealogy of martyrdom in contemporary Iran in order to explore its institutionalised forms and governmental practices. During the revolution, the Shi'a tradition of martyrdom and its dramatic performances of ritual mourning and self-sacrifice became central to the mass mobilisation against the monarchy. Once the revolutionary government came into existence, this sacred tradition was regulated to create ‘martyrs’ as a fixed category, in order to consolidate the legacy of the revolution. In this political theatre, the dead body is a site of transformation and performance upon which the original narrative of martyrdom takes place even as it displaces it and gives new meanings to the act.

Patronage by the royal court of religious institutions and foundations is one of the hallmarks of the development of India under the rule of the Gupta and Vākāṭaka kings (4th–5th centuries). This patronage was extended also to religious movements other than the king's own persuasion. The evolving culture of religious tolerance and enthusiasm is apparent in the temple monuments of the time. In this article we focus on four archeological sites where these developments become best visible: Udayagiri, Māṇḍhaḷ, Rāmagiri (Ramtek), and Mansar. The close relationship of the Gupta and Vākāṭaka realms is investigated in its local settings. Renewed attention is given to the ‘Mandhal Inscription, Year 5’ of the Vākāṭaka king Rudrasena II and the deity on whose authority the charter was issued: Muṇḍasvāmin. It is argued that the name Muṇḍa refers to no one else than the Gupta queen of Rudrasena II, Prabhāvatī Guptā. During the last decade, excavations in Mansar (5 km west of Ramtek) have brought to light the state sanctuary of the youngest son of Prabhāvatī, Pravarasena II. The findings there are placed within the tradition that can be traced back, through Rāmagiri and Māṇḍhaḷ, to the religious foundations in Udayagiri.

One of the features of the Gupta-Vākāṭaka age is the growth of Śaivism. In this article some of the epigraphical evidence for this process is assembled and discussed. While the direct evidence for the adoption of Śiva worship among the Guptas is limited to ministers of the Gupta court, it is clear that the Vākāṭaka kings were predominantly Māheśvaras. New fragmentary wall inscriptions uncovered from Mansar, the site of Pravarasena II's palace, hint at a possible connection with the teachings of the Śvetāśvatara-Upaniṣad. Two post-Gupta inscriptions from the area around Mandasor are discussed in the light of a tendency towards religious hierarchisation, an attitude which came to be increasingly characteristic of early medieval Śaivism. In the second part attention is drawn to the variety of Pāśupata and Māheśvara worship in the Gupta-Vākāṭaka age, as well as to the trifold organisation of the Pāśupata movement. The article ends with a note on the interaction with non-Śaiva traditions, in particular Buddhism, and its possible impact upon the formation of the Pāśupata movement.

The Rev. Dr A.A. Führer lived to the age of seventy-seven. Herein is examined his first forty years. Trained as an Oriental Linguist, Führer eventually found employment as a field archaeologist. Three years after his appointment, the Archaeological Survey of India entered the worst crisis of its existence. Führer reacted in ways incompatible with scholarly integrity. It remains to be seen whether he committed further transgressions and or forgeries during his final thirty-seven years.

In this paper a unified account of the syntax of temporal phrases with the locative morpheme hou 後 followed by a NPtemp, a measure NP, is presented. Identical to bare noun phrase temporal adverbials, hou-phrases predominantly occur in sentence-initial/topic position and establish the temporal frame for the situation the predicate refers to; by default they refer to a point of time. According to the analysis presented, hou explicitly serves to relate one situation to a previous situation in the narrative; the NPtemp measures the interval, the period of time, elapsed since the previous situation took place, and accordingly the NPtemp is analysed as an appositional measure phrase. This analysis of the NPtemp yields an analysis of hou 後 as an adverbially employed noun which syntactically retains its nominal characteristics and thus permits the addition of an apposition. Additionally, the nominal analysis of hou is the only one which accounts for all syntactic variants of the hou-phrase in Han period Chinese.

This article uses archival material, including personal correspondence, to chart General Sir Ian Hamilton's changing attitudes towards Japanese nationals, Japanese military leaders and Japanese military personnel, during and after the Russo Japanese War.