An Oriental Congress at Moscow seemed to provide a very suitable occasion on which to call the attention of Western scholars to some recent important discoveries by Soviet archæologists, and at the same time to suggest to Soviet scholars a new interpretation of some of their finds.

This is a preliminary account of Abu'l-Qāsim al-Bustī's refutation of Ismā'īlism with what information is available about the author as a background.

A few lines are devoted to this author and his only work, the Javāhiru'l-akhbār, in 'Othmānli Mü'ellifleri (i, p. 145) where his full name appears as Qāsim b. Shaikh İlyās b. İdrīs el-Antākī. He is stated to have been one of the descendants of ‘Abdu’l-Qādir Gīlānī, to have settled at İnegöl and to have died in 941/1534–5. Bursah Meḥxmed Ṭāhir saw at İnegöl the metrical composition (manẓūme) written in 901/1496–7 by Qāsim Efendi entitled Javāhiru'l-akhbār. This, he says, is divided into thirty-two bāb and is an ethical and Ṣūfī work. The note on Qāsim concludes with some mention of the Shaikhs who succeeded him but the dervish order to which they belonged is not stated.

One of the major advantages of the study of synonyms is that it provides a link between descriptive and historical linguistics. In Professor Ullmann's words: “Synonymic structure implies the formation of associative groups between senses on the ‘langue’ level. The firmness and constancy of such associations can best be gauged from the diachronistic developments which they may initiate.” Among the first words to be studied from this point of view were the Middle English adverbs which meant “swiftly” and later “immediately”. Words of this meaning are of interest also in Middle Indo-Aryan where they form a closely-knit group. This is proved by their formal as well as their semantic development.