Few Islamic teachings can boast the fame, if not the notoriety, enjoyed by the doctrine of “unity of existence”, also known as “unity of being” (waḥdat al-wujūd). This controversialphilosophical doctrine became intimately associated with the towering figure of the Arabmystic of al-Andalus, Muḥyī'l-Dīn Ibn 'Arabī (d. 638/1240). Although Ibn 'Arabī himselfdoes not seem to have applied this ambiguous term to his loosely structured meta physical speculations, it gained wide currency among his followers starting from the celebrated Anatolian thinker Ṣadr al-Dīh al-Qūnawī (d. 673/1274).

Hartwig Derenbourg in his Notes critiques sur les manuscrits arabes de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Madrid, (1904), described MS. no. DXCIII of the catalogue of these manuscripts compiled by F. Guillén Robles in the following terms:

Le seul ouvrage Chrétien en pur arabe (DXCIII), est un unicum de première importance, les Canons de l'Eglise chrétienne hispanique à la fin du VIIe siècle de notre ère, dans un exemplaire du milieu du XIe.

The Shaman or Wizard of the proto-historic Orient, his vocation, his reputation, his strange psychosis, his claim to thaumaturgic powers, and his place in the social structure of his community, are not all these written in the chronicles of the. Works of de Groot and Shirokogaroff ?

The one text that has influenced the history of Jewish – not to mention Christian – mysticism and apocalyptic literature more than any other is undoubtedly the book of Ezekiel; and the single most influential passage in it is undoubtedly the opening chapter, centring on Ezekiel's vision of the “likeness of the glory of God”.

This paper presents a new interpretation of the story of Sāvitrī as presented in the Mahābhārata. Sāvitrī is viewed as an intended putrikā, or lineal daughter, for her father, and the death of her husband and the misfortunes of her father-in-law are explained as corollaries of this circumstance; but at the last minute Sāvitrī switches her allegiance to her husband and his line, becoming a pativratā rather than a putrikā. Following a prompt in the Mahābhārata text, the paper concludes with an exploration, on the Sāvitrī model, of Draupadī's relationship to the Pāṇḍava line. The death of the Draupadeyas and the resuscitation of Parikṣit are viewed in terms of a symbolic switch from the putrikā to the pativratā mode of operation.

Through comparison of three poetic texts describing the career of Rana Raj Singh of Mewar (r. 1652–1680), this paper demonstrates how representations of Aurangzeb could vary dramatically even when they were produced for the same Rajput court. Much of the paper focuses on Rāj-vilās, a vernacular-language work with a lengthy account of conflict between Aurangzeb and the Rajput lords of Marwar and Mewar. Rāj-vilās is also noteworthy for its negative portrayal of the Mughal emperor, whom it castigates as a wicked killer of kin who was duplicitous and vengeful. Sometimes thought to be modern constructions, the criticisms of Aurangzeb found in Rāj-vilās reveal that certain ideas about Indian historical figures have continued to be deployed and repurposed over the centuries. Yet Rajput views during Aurangzeb's lifetime were not uniformly unfavourable, as the Sanskrit texts Rāja-ratnākara and Rāja-praśasti attest. Although these two works resembled Rāj-vilās in covering the reign of Rana Raj Singh and were written at roughly the same time, they cast Aurangzeb in a considerably more positive light. This difference can be attributed to the fluctuating political relationship between the Mughal empire and the Mewar kingdom in the decade between 1677 and 1687, underscoring the need to carefully identify the historical contexts within which representations of Aurangzeb were produced and circulated.

The feudal system of the Mamlūks is of great interest not only because it existed for 267 years in the leading state of the Arab world and left some permanent marks on the subsequent social and economical development of Egypt, Syria and Palestine, but also from the sociological point of view, being the result of an intermixture of three various feudal systems which corresponded to peculiar cultural worlds: the Mongol, the Islamic, and the West European. The fundamental principles were borrowed from the Mongol Empire and consequently all the lawsuits relating to the fiefs were settled not by the qāḍīs and according to the Islamic Law, but by the military judges (ḥujjāb) and according to the laws based upon the rules of Chingiz Khān. The technical terms used in the official Arabic-written documents and in the Arabic literary sources were partly borrowed from the terminology of the Islamic Law, but their sense was considerably removed from their ancient meanings—which may signify that they were now used only as more or less faithful translations of the terms employed in the Turkish dialect of the Mamlūks. The Western feudalism, brought to Syria by the Crusaders, influenced the Mamluk system chiefly through the medium of the native tribal chieftains, who after having been vassals of the kingdom of Jerusalem were gradually becoming feudatories of the Sultan of Cairo, and sometimes received the feudal charters from both powers at the same time. In the charters granted by the Latin rulers of Sidon (in 1256) and Beirut (in 1280) to two chieftains of the Buḥturide family the term “fief” is translated by the word shahāra, which means “a land given in reward for a service”, but the word mulk is also used, as well as the verbs a'ṭā and wahaba which usually refer to the unconditional transfers of the right of possession.

This year M. L. Ch. Watelin, director of excavations for the Oxford Field Museum Expedition at Kish, has found another seal of the early Indus Valley civilization at plain level, 9 metres below the surface of the soil. According to our stratifications at this site, the object should be pre-Sargonic, but it was found with a stone pommel bearing an inscription clearly not earlier than Sargon of Agade. Both objects, therefore, may have fallen from above.

The literature on medicine in medieval Muslim countries in general and in Egypt in particular is vast and detailed. Yet study and assessment of the practical aspects of medicine in the Mediterranean society of the Middle Ages requires examination of authentic, practical medical knowledge. At present this can be extracted mainly from the prescriptions found in the Cairo Genizah; these supply a different and valuable dimension. On the importance and the potential of research into the medical aspects of the Genizah documents, mainly prescriptions, Goitein wrote in 1971 that “these prescriptions have to be examined by experts in the history of medicine”.

During the past ten winter seasons the Field Museum – Oxford University Joint Expedition has been conducting archæological excavations on the site of the ancient city of Kish, which according to the texts, was “the first city founded after the Flood”.

This paper revisits the intersection of the 19th and 20th century to bring into focus hitherto unused archival and diplomatic correspondence from the attempts to define and delimit a boundary between India and China. The theoretical point of departure for the paper is to discern how perception (knowledge, beliefs, and norms) relating to the boundary evolved over time to alter the meaning and construction of the material reality i.e. the boundary itself. In doing so it establishes how what each country deems today, as its ‘traditional customary boundary’ was not an unambiguous fixed one, but was mutable across different time periods. The political importance of the selection of these boundary lines did not lie in their being ‘true’, or in the claim being ‘real’ but in their being shared by a process of political selection, and then being reified in the respective countries.

In the medieval Arab world, gemstones were used as ornaments, set in jewellery, seals, and amulets, and also were investments and status symbols. As a result of the Arab conquests and their access to new regions, the distribution and use of gemstones underwent substantial changes. Our research pieces together information regarding the production, use, trade, tradition and cultural value of gemstones from early Arabic sources; this information is compared with material found in ancient Greek and Roman sources and also European sources from the medieval period.

The most valued stones were corundum, diamond, emerald and pearl. Other stones, such as turquoise, carnelian, garnet, onyx, lazurite and malachite, were less expensive and therefore more popular and common among the middle classes. Jasper, amethyst, and crystal were still cheaper and even more commonly-owned. In this article, we have chosen to present in detail the stories of two of the most exotic, expensive, and therefore most interesting gemstones: the diamond and the corundum.

The question of the origin of music and its powers has always fascinated philosophers and scientists. Here we present a close reading of the view offered by the Persian Muslim philosopher and scientist Ibn Sīnā, also known as Avicenna (980–1037). We draw a parallel between Ibn Sīnā’s account of the senses and mental capacities and his hierarchical, quasi-evolutionary view of the perception of sound in its various communicative roles. We show how Ibn Sīnā positions music at the top of the organisation of sound while drawing a connecting line between the sensory and cognitive, the natural and conventional, and the biological and aesthetic. Although mostly drawing on ideas previously expounded by Aristotle and al-Fārābī, he goes way beyond his predecessors in positioning music within the systems of communication and highlights music's special ability to create a flux of joy and sadness, tension and relaxation, based on the ephemeral character of sound that serves as a connecting thread through all levels of its communicative roles.

One of the most popular modern Korean folktales is Choi Tale Type 500, ‘The People Who Saw a Mirror for the First Time’. This tale however is neither a uniquely Korean nor East Asian tale, but an example of a general class of folktales found throughout the world. In the Aarne-Thompson Index it is classified as tale type 1336A, ‘Man does not Recognize his own Reflection in the Water (Mirror)’. The origins of the modern Korean tale may be traced back to the early years of the transmission and establishment of Buddhism in East Asia. The initial use of this tale in a Buddhist context, as a means to illustrate the illusionary nature of all things, had by the beginning of the twentieth century in Korea changed into providing a strong critique of certain features of contemporary society.

It is unfortunate that almost all investigators of the origin and development of the Nights have been, more or less, under the spell of that quite modern recension which Zotenberg first identified and called “la redaction égyptienne” (hereafter ZER). In the numerous Egyptian prints derived from the I Būlāq edition (Būlāq, a.h. 1252=a.d. 1835), in the Calcutta edition of the same recension (II Calcutta, a.d. 1839–42), in at least two Beyrout editions (Salhani and Adabīya Press), this recension has attained to the dignity of a Vulgate, and of it most people, even most Arabists, think when they refer to the Arabian Nights. This almost subconscious assumption was the great obscuring element in Lane's mind and with De Goeje in his Britannica article on the Nights. From this point of view it is especially unfortunate that Zotenberg did not publish any further researches; he was evidently on his way to complete freedom of attitude.

In this article I propose to examine the position held by the executive officers ofthe Mogul Empire in the light of some new documentary evidence, and from a standpoint different from that occupied by earlier writers on the subject. It is well known that there was no differentiation between civil and military employment: all officers, from the princes of the blood down to what would now be called sergeants and corporals, formed a single State Service, in which each individual had a definite rank or position (manṣab); and ordinarily each of them had to maintain out of his emoluments acontingent of cavalry available for the Emperor's work. Some officers might receive their emoluments in cash, but as a rule payment was made by an assignment of the land-revenue of a specified area (jāgīr), which the recipient made his own arrangements to collect. The questions at issue relate mainly to the remuneration ofofficers and the size and constitution of their contingents.

While preparing a descriptive register of the manuscript fragments recovered by Sir Aurel Stein from the sand-buried ruins of Khadalik in the course of his second tour of exploration in Eastern Turkestan, I have recently discovered a portion of the Sanskrit version of the Sutta Nipāta. It is contained in fragments of five consecutive folios. According to Fausböll, in the reasoned statement in the Introduction to his Translation of the Sutta Nipāta (in SBE., vol. x), certain portions of that work, including the Aṭṭhavagga, are “very old”, containing as they do “some remnants of Primitive Buddhism” (loc. cit., p. xi). It is just the Aṭṭhavagga which happens to be preserved in the fragments, and it is this fact which imparts a particular interest to the discovery.

Arjuna is in many ways the central character of the Mahābhārata, the great Sanskrit epic. By order of birth he is the third among the Pāṇḍavas, the five sons of Pānḍu, who represent the forces of cosmic order. When, after humiliation and exile, the Pānḍ;avas finally triumph, primogeniture prevails, and it is the eldest brother, Yudhisfhira, who takes the throne; but in other respects, Arjuna is usually a more salient figure than his dutiful eldest brother. Thus it is to Arjuna that Krishna addresses his teaching in the Bhagavad Gitā (part of Book 6 of the Epic). Moreover although Pānḍu is pater to the five brothers, each has his own divine genitor, and the genitor of Arjuna is Indra, king of the gods in the classical pantheon. A paper about Arjuna is a paper about a major figure in Hindu tradition.

In 1893, the Government of India revised the handbook for the officials who conducted its relations with the Indian States. The new edition included a chapter on titles and ceremonial because of “the great importance of these matters in Indian Political business”. Modern scholars agree that what we now call “honours” and “civic ritual” are worthy of study; and Stern's monograph on Jaipur State, and Dirks's on Pudukkottai, are only two of the many recent works that have noted the central role that titles and ceremonial played in the relationship between the British Paramount Power and the princes and chiefs of India.

It is well known that the time of Zoroaster and the date of his birth or that of the announcement of his mission have not so far been indisputably established. In spite of very numerous writings published during more than two centuries, in which the question has been studied by many scholars, no unanimous conclusion has been reached. The opinions of famous scholars in the last eighty years have differed so widely that the date suggested has ranged between the eleventh or tenth centuries and the last part of the sixth century B.C. We are still hardly near to agreement on the matter.