Philosophy, as an intellectual discipline emerging from Hellenism, had an ambiguous and disputed role in the theology and apologetics of Islam and continues to be contentious. In this article, I examine the arguments over the legitimacy of philosophy between the philosophical school of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. c. 1635), dominant in the present Shiʿi seminary in Iran, and its detractors in the maktab-i tafkīk who insist that knowledge of reality and the faith only derives from the teachings of the Shiʿi Imams and cannot be contaminated with Aristotelianism. After an introduction to this fideist school of separating religious and ‘foreign’ sciences, three questions are analysed. What is philosophy? How do we know God? How can we demonstrate the Qurʾanic doctrine of the resurrection of bodies? What emerges is a more radical challenge to uṣūlī rationalism than that posed previously from the Akhbāriyya and their insistence upon a ḥadīth-based jurisprudence.

Kalīlah wa Dimnah, a compendium of individual tales and short stories, is a very well-known Middle Eastern literary work. Although it can not match the popularity of the ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, it is nevertheless sufficiently well known to have attracted scholarly interest for decades. As a result, a considerable volume of scholarly writing has been produced regarding its origin and importance.

This article focuses on the origin of one story in the work, the trial of Dimnah. Since the Indian original is missing, accepted wisdom attributes the writing of this story to its first Arabic translator, Ibn al-Muqaffac. Although I do not challenge this view, I argue that there could be an Urtext in Middle Persian which was later rewritten by the famous translator. In what follows, this article provides evidence for this hypothesis from what at first glance might be considered a surprising perspective – Sasanian legal history.

One may conclude from the lull in publications on the Gāthic Ahuna Vairiia that a satisfactory understanding of the stanza is at hand. This is, however, not the case. The last substantial treatment of the stanza is from Humbach (1991 II) in his 1991 two-volume edition of the Old Avestan texts. Somewhat less extensive is the discussion we find in Kellens’ and Pirart's monumental three-volume edition and study of the Old Avestan texts (1991). In 1975, Insler published a detailed article on the Ahuna Vairiia. The late 1950s saw the appearance of four studies of the stanza by distinguished Avesta scholars: Benveniste, Humbach, Duchesne-Guillemin and Hinz. As for the number of translations there are, it virtually equals the number of scholars in the field. The source of the difficulties is the syntax of the stanza. The disagreements are due for the most part to the scholar's analysis of syntactic units. Thus the variety of translations may be reduced to a few basic types.

The recent unearthing of this thirteenth century collection of notes pertaining to the political history of the early Ilkhanate has thrown some light on events and attitudes of that time. Though the manuscript was actually penned by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī of the Rasadkhana in Maragha, it is not certain that he was the author of the work. Rather than comprising one continuous narrative of events, the manuscript is a collection of notes and observations, occasionally detailed but other times very sketchy. However stamped with the seal of the Raba’ al-Rashidi there is evidence that this text was used selectively as a source for Rashīd al-Din's Jama’-ye Tavarikh. What is particularly interesting is that some of the events that are quoted in Rashid al-Dīn's chronicles are only partially reported and it is obvious that for whatever reasons parts of “Shīrāzī's” accounts are omitted in the re-telling.

This article first briefly examines the textual structure of the Sakka Saṃyutta of the Pāli Saṃyutta-nikāya in conjunction with two other versions preserved in Chinese translation in Taishō vol. 2, nos 99 and 100. Then it compares the main teachings contained in the three versions. These three versions of this collection on the subject of Śakra, ruler of the gods, represent three different early Buddhist schools within the Sthavira branch. This comparative study of these three different versions focuses on some shared images of Śakra and on disagreements of some teachings presented in the three versions. It reveals similarities and significant differences in structure and doctrinal content, thus advancing the historical/critical study of early Buddhist doctrine in this area.

This article establishes that the first museum in China was not the Zhendan Museum in Shanghai, founded by the French Jesuit Pierre Marie Heude (1836–1902) in 1868, but the “British Museum in China”, founded in 1829 by three supercargoes of the English East India Company, in Macao, a Portuguese enclave in the Pearl River Delta since c.1577. My research, based on Portuguese, British and American sources, allows us to better understand the context in which the founders of the museum interacted and lived in Macao, how their research and field-work was important for academic British institutions such as the British Museum in London and how the British Museum of Macao was founded and became the first (western-styled) museum in China.

If the measure of the man is reflected in the circle of his friends then Sandy Morton is impressively out-size. The turn-out for his memorial service was large and varied and the prevailing mood was warm and pleasingly nostalgic. Sandy would very definitely have enjoyed it. The choice of St George's Church, Bloomsbury was appropriate and fitting as was the relaxed reception later in the British Museum's Islamic Gallery. Sandy's presence could be felt appreciatively basking in the gentle tide of warm reminiscences as friends, family, and colleagues mixed easily and exchanged anecdotes and memories. The mood was light and relaxed and it contrasted with the more respectfully sombre memorial service which had combined hymns, Persian verse and eulogies from his brothers, William and James and colleagues Narguess Farzad and Charles Melville. In St George's the atmosphere was reflective and emotions were heightened. Even Charles Melville's courtly and measured address cracked and stumbled as a particularly poignant memory broke through his famously unflappable façade. Emotional but not oppressively so, the service reminded us of our loss but also informed us of our gains and the many ways Sandy had entered and enriched our lives.

John Michael Gullick (who died at his home in Woodford Green, Essex, on 8 April 2012, aged 96) had careers in the colonial service, business and the law, and was the last in a remarkable line of Malayan scholar-administrators.