Idrisi's great geographical encyclopædia, Nuzhat al-muŠtāq al-āfāq, compiled in A.D. 1153 for King Roger II of Sicily, is formally arranged according to the seven Ptolemaic climates, each divided into ten “sections” numbered from west to east. In this arrangement, Ireland occupies the first section of the seventh climate, and Great Britain the second. Since Tuulio's publication of the third to fifth sections of this climate, it seems time that a comprehensive treatment should be attempted of the preceding two sections. Jaubert's pioneer French translation contains many attempts at identification of the place-names mentioned, which are not uniformly successful. Miller's Mappæ Arabicæ represents a considerable advance in this respect, but his identifications are not in every case acceptable, and even where correct they deserve some justificatory comment. In the following pages I have attempted to give all necessary comments, and to suggest some identifications which I believe to be an improvement on those hitherto proposed. I must express my grateful thanks to the Conservateur du Cabinet des Manuscrits of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and to the India Office Librarian in London, for the facilities which they have afforded me of consulting the manuscripts in those places; to Dr. W. B. Stevenson for generously allowing me to see the typescript of his article on Idrisi's map of Scotland before publication; to Professor I. Y. Krachkovskii and the Director of the Publichnaya Biblioteka for assisting me to obtain photographs of the Leningrad manuscript; and to Professor H. A. R. Gibb for some very helpful suggestions.

The Mss. herein described were purchased, copied, or recorded during a tour V A in Hadramawt as Colonial Research Fellow. Besides visiting the main ”f Wadi lying between Kabr Hūd and Hainin, I made investigations in the Wādī f Daw‘an, Huraida in ‘Amd, and in the course of a journey from Bal-Hᾶf, on the I coast, to Habbān on the western fringe of Wāhidi territory. Time did not I allow of a systematic recording of all existing MSS., which can be seen in i hundreds, especially as this formed only part of my programme, but those described here are the more interesting MSS. inspected. A similar tour seems to have been performed by Dr. Hamidullah in the Yemen shortly before my own investigations in Hadramawt.

The many scholars, mostly saiyids, whom I met in Hadramawt gave generously of their assistance, often placing MSS. freely at my disposal; I must; mention in particular the ‘Attās family of Huraida, and Sālih b. ‘Alī al-Hāmidī of Saiwūn. On the other hand, I have been informed, I have no means of assessing how accurately, that there are occasional individuals in the country I who possess some valuable MSS. but would rather see them moulder to pieces ‘ than show them to strangers. I understand that some saiyids keep their books in the women's part of the house, as in learned saiyid society books are reckoned fair game to the casual borrower who succeeds in abstracting them while the owner is not looking.

For anyone wishing to discover new MSS.

During the first four centuries of Islamic rule Messianic hopes ran high among the peoples of the Caliphate. Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, subjected to the rule of a new and alien religion, cherished and embellished their traditions of a Messiah or Saoshyant of a God-chosen line who, in God's time, would come or return to the world, end the sufferings of the faithful and the dominion of their opponents, and establish the kingdom of God upon earth. Before very long Islam itself was affected. First in the heresies of the newly-converted, dissatisfied with the status assigned to them in what was still an Arab kingdom, grafting their old beliefs on their new faith; then in the orthodoxy of all Islam, the belief arose in a MaMhdī, a “ divinely guided one ” who, in the words of the tradition, would “ fill the earth with justice and equity as it is now filled with tyranny and oppression ”.

With the passing of empires and the flowering and disappointment of successive hopes, the tradition of the Coming grew and developed. One oppressor after another added something of himself to the portraits of the Antichrist, while the many false Messiahs, in their failure, bequeathed new details and new tokens to the Messiah yet to come. Each group had its own traditions; yet they were in no way separate and water-tight, and many ideas and beliefs passed, through converts and other channels, from one religion to another.

By no means the least impatient in their expectation of Redemption were the Jews. When the crumbling of empires under the blows of internal revolutions and external invasions seemed to portend the long awaited end, anxious Jewish eyes scanned the Time of Troubles in which they lived for signs of the coming of Messiah, and sought to identify, in the events taking place about them, the vague prophecies and traditions handed down to them of the last wars of the Messiah. It was in such times that the apocalyptic books were written.

We are informed by Ibn al-‘Imād that Shihāb al-Dīn ‘Umar b. ‘Abd Allāh al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234), the celebrated Ṣūfi and founder of the Suhrawardīya Order, “heard Traditions from a number (of scholars)”, and that he wrote “a Mashyakha in an attractive section (fijuz’inlaṭtīf)”. This Mashyakha was known to Ḥājjī Khalīfa,4 but no copy is noted by Brockelmann. Now it is always interesting to have the names of the teachers of famous men, more especially when such information rests on the authority of the celebrities themselves, and it is therefore a fortunate chance that a manuscript of Shihab al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī’s essay in autobiography has actually survived. What is more, this unique copy is in the autograph of an eminent scholar; the colophon is signed Muhammad b. Shukr al-Shāfi‘ī, and is dated 738/1337. To complete the good story, the recension mounts to the author himself, and the learned copyist has transcribed from his archetype a note of samā’ with al-Suhrawardī dated 620/1223 at Baghdad.

The author gives the names of fifteen of his teachers, together with the texts of a small number of Traditions heard by him from each; each Tradition is furnished with a full isnād; and in some instances the dates of the teacher's birth and death are provided. The list begins with Shihāb al-Dīn's uncle, Diyā’ al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Qāhir b. ‘Abd Allāh al-Suhrawardī, himself a well-known Ṣūfī scholar (d. 562/1168, see Brockelmann I 436, Suppl. I 780); significantly enough no mention is made of ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1167) who is commonly reported to have initiated al-Suhrawardī into Ṣūfism.

One of the most bewildering problems in Muslim law concerns the classification and effect of various types of invalid marriage contract. As in a large number of other such problems, moreover, the conflicting views of the leading jurists and their followers, ancient and modern, are by no means confined to disputes between the recognized Sunni schools (the Hanafis, Malikis, Shafi‘is and Hanbalis), for within the Hanafi school itself the position is no less confu-sing. Some Hanafi jurists, for instance, make a clear distinction between marriage contracts which are irregular (fāsid) and those which are void (bātil), while others use the two words interchangeably. Again, those who make the distinction differ considerably as to which types of invalid marriage contract fall within each category, as to the juristic concepts on which their decision is based, and as to the legal effects involved. The present article represents an attempt to outline the development of Hanafi thought on this matter and thereby to clear up certain common misconceptions.

Abu Hanifa himself was relentlessly logical in his approach to this subject, although his logic led him to somewhat strange conclusions. Arguing from the premise that the constituent parts of most contracts are four in number, namely two “considerations” and two contracting parties, he held that if a divine prohibition made either consideration unlawful in nature or either party incompetent to act, then one of the constituent parts of the contract was lacking and the whole vitiated in its very essence: it was therefore void (bāṬil) and of no legal effect, just as though no agreement had been reached between the parties.

The inlaid bronze basin in the Musée du Louvre known as the “ Baptistère de St. Louis ” is generally recognized as a masterpiece of Islamic metalwork. So far, published photographs and drawings have failed to do it justice. Almost the whole surface of the vessel, both outside and inside, is engraved with court-scenes, battles and hunting expeditions set out in harmoniously composed panels and medallions, framed by narrower friezes of beasts of the chase, and enriched with delicately chased silver inlay and gold leaf, in such manner as to allow the bronze to appear only in narrow contours, brought into relief by the use of a black bituminous inlay (Pl. 5).

The basin is signed in several places, and one signature, in calligraphic Mamlī, reads “ Work of the Master (al-mu'allim) Muhammad ibn al-Zain ”, but nowhere is the name of the owner of this magnificent vessel to be discovered. Nor is the owner's name given on the only other signed work of the same artist which has come down to us. Neither of these pieces bears the laudatory or benedictory inscriptions so common on Islamic metalwork.

Arab biographers rarely regarded outstanding artists, other than calligraphers, as worthy of inclusion in their biographical dictionaries. Their works yield no information about Muhammad ibn al-Zain and therefore none which might lead us to identify his patron. We must adopt a different method if we wish to discover for whom this princely vessel was originally made.

The earliest European reference to this basin appears to be an entry in Piganiol de la Force's Description de Paris, published in 1742.

The purpose of the following word-list is to serve as a glossary to “A Phonetic Study of Western Ossetic (Digoron)”, the entries being words cited as examples in that article. Since my Ossetic informant and I had no common language in which we both felt at ease, I had at the time of writing the “Phonetic Study” reluctantly decided not to assign English meanings to these examples, as I doubted my ability to do so without risk of serious inaccuracy. The majority of the Digoron words in the article were therefore identified not by meaning but by reference to romanized orthographic forms. Professor H. W. Bailey, however, after reading the proofs, expressed the opinion that the usefulness of the “Phonetic Study” for Ossetologues and others would be increased if English meanings could be given, and he most generously offered to criticize my tentative translations, which were based upon notes taken at the time of the investigation and upon Wsewolod Miller's Ossetisch-Russisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch.

1. śāra-

IN BSOAS 13. 130–1 I pointed out the Indian manaraǵa- ‘ boy ‘, attested only by the plural manare in Niya Kharoṣṭhī, as a bye-form of the Indian māṇava- (with -ka)‘ Brahman boy ’. I noted too that the Kharoṣṭhī word gave the explanation of the Agnean manark ‘ Brahman boy ’, of which the meaning made an Indian origin plausible. I pointed also to Niya kaṣara, corresponding to Central Indian kaṣāya- ‘ yellow robe ‘, whose connexion with Agnean kāṣār is now well-known.

That recognition of the Middle Indian influence in Central Asia is most important can, I think, be shown also in connexion with another word, familiar in just such Buddhist texts as were brought into Central Asia by Buddhist communities. It is decidedly necessary to search out all such intrusive Indian material before the vocabularies of Central Asian languages can be used for wider purposes, historīcal or linguistic in Indo-European comparative grammar. And such material is itself of great importance for the history of Indian culture in Central Asia. Naturally it is in cultural, specifically Buddhist, terms that the Indian element is most prominent.

The word I propose to consider here is attested in Sanskrit śāṭa-s, śāṭaka-s, -m, śāṭtī, śāṭīkā ‘ piece of cloth, garment’, snāna-śāṭaka- ‘ bathing robe ’,śiraḥśāṭaka- ‘ head-cloth ’, well known in Central Indian literature. Beside the Brahmanical literature we have in Jaina books, Ovavāiya-sutta 54 s¯ṭiya-; Antagaṭa-dasāo (translation L. D. Barnett, p. 67) sāṭaa-; and Ratnachandraji gives in his Ardḥamāgadhī Dictionary sāṭa- ‘ garment’, sāṭaga-, sāṭaa- ‘ upper garment’, sāṭī ‘ garment’, sāṭiyā ‘ upper garment worn by ladies ’, sāṭilla- ‘ silken garment’, sāṭollaya-‘ upper garment’.

§1

A Short account of the Kuvalayamālā was given in “An Unpublished Fragment of Paiśācī”, BSOAS., xii, p. 659 foil. It is dated A.D. 778 and is known from two MSS.—J dated A.D. 1083 and P undated, of which P 2 is a copy. The bulk of the work is written in Pāyaya-bhāsā, i.e. Jaina Maharastri. Other styles are used, one of which is Avabbhamsa, which Uddyotana, the author, describes as Sakkaya-Pāy'ubhaya-suddh'āsuddha-paya-samataramgaramgamta vaggiram “A spoken language rippling with even waves of Sanskrit and Prakrit words correct and incorrect”. It is therefore not the classical Apabhramśa of Hemacandra and others, which does not contain Sanskrit words apart from the tatsamas or words common to Sanskrit and Prakrit.

§2

The first and longest fragment is printed by L. B. Gandhi in GOS. 37 (G.), Intro., p. 109. The spelling is much less regular than in the Prakrit preceding and following it, and cannot be ascribed for the most part to clerical errors. The two MSS. do not differ widely. For reasons into which it is unnecessary to enter here it is clear that J and P were copied from the same MS. and neither is dependent upon the other. P 2, although an inferior MS., often usefully supplements J and in the present extract such aid is particularly welcome, as owing to the habit of readers putting a finger on the text where difficulties occur, much of the J palm-leaf has been smudged and would be almost unreadable without the help of P 2.

THERE can be few phrases more familiar to readers of Buddhist texts than the traditional opening of the sūtras:

Pali: evaṃ me sutaṃ ekaṃ samayaṃ bhagavā Sāvatthiyaṃ viharati.

Sanskrit: evam mayā śrutam ekasmin samaye bhagavān Śrdvastyaṃ viharati sma.

[Abbreviations of titles of books and works in this article are the same as those employed in The New Burmese-English Dictionary, pt. I, compiled by Stewart and Dunn. The transliteration of words taken from the Inscriptions of Burma (Old Burmese) follows the system devised by C. O. Blagden and Chas. Duroiselle (see Epigraphia Birmanica, vol. i, pt. i, pp. 6–12): that of words from other Burmese works is similar, with the addition of the tone-mark () and the symbol (^) representing the Burmese + .]

There are few such words in the Burmese language as the composite word A Mô Kwan:. It has excited the curiosity and attention of Burmese scholars, and will always conjure up interesting reminiscences in the mind of Burmese historians. The word is about 700 years old and has undergone remarkable changes of form and meaning.

(Amu Kwan, Amū Kwan)

It has been established by Professor G. H. Luce that the origin of Mô Kwan: is Amu Kwan, which occurs in a Burmese inscription of the 13th century. During the reign of Narathihapati (1254–87), the last king of the Pagan Dynasty, “Saka era 628 (A.D. 1266), in the Pisyak (Vaisakhā) year, on Thursday”, the daughter of minister Singasū dedicated lands to a monastery and “informed the great and noble king (of her act of merit). The king thereupon poured out pure water and had the record of the deed placed in the archives (Amu Kwan tan e).” Again, “Saka era 633 (A.D. 1271) in the Āsin (Asvin) year, on Friday, the 10th of the waxing moon of the month of Tan Khū (April), when the honourable Lady (Queen) Phwa Jaw went to the Ornamented Abode (Kwan Prok), she showed the list of her dedications to the great king; and the king had it placed in the archives (Amū Kwan tan e’).”

Having regard to its importance in human affairs, one might expect a reasonable degree of unanimity among mankind on the nature of the institution of marriage, and the circumstances in which it can be dissolved, but, comparing the views on these matters found in different systems of law, one cannot but recall the words of G. B. Shaw in the Preface to Androcles:—

“ We pass our lives among people who … have robust consciences, and hunger and thirst, not for righteousness but … for love and money. To these people one morality is as good as another, provided they are used to it and can put up with its restrictions without unhappiness; and in the maintenance of this morality they will fight and punish and coerce without scruple. They may not be the salt of the earth … but they are the substance of civilization.”

Initially, a people or its lawgiver has to decide whether marriage is to be regarded, as in the Canon Law and Hindu Law, as a sacrament, or, as in Mahommedan Law and Burmese Buddhist Law (to give the official name of what might more aptly be described as Burmese Common Law), as a contract.

In the former case it follows that a valid marriage is indissoluble, but when there is an impediment, or a fraud has been committed upon the sacrament, it is possible to dissolve a union on the ground that there has been no valid marriage. A Hindu marriage can be annulled, if at all, only because it has been effected by force or fraud, but, as the wife has not the liberty allowed the husband of taking subsequent spouses, she is in a less happy position than that allowed her by the Canon Law, which treats both spouses alike and will permit a declaration of nullity when there is a legal bar to the marriage, or when the petitioning spouse did not freely consent to the marriage.

In 1912 H. Maspero endeavoured to bring some order into the apparently capricious repartition of the old ju-shêng tones among the remaining four tones of Pekingese, and noted that words in plosive initials (including aspirated plosives), and in nasal or liquid initials, tend to be found in the departing tone (tone IV), and to a less extent in the upper even (tone I); while those with otḥer initials gravitate towards the old lower even (tone II).

In 1915 Karlgren considered Maspero's treatment of the problem, and while in general agreeing with his conclusions, pointed out that his law covered the facts only very approximately in regard, e.g., to words in unaspirated plosive initials. Nevertheless he quotes with approval Maspero's explanation (applied also to the twofold development of the lower rising tone in the modern Northern Chinese dialects), viz., that the initials 1-, m-, n-, n-, and vocalic initials involved a pronunciation of the syllable somewhat different from that of words having affricate, occlusive, or fricative initials; and he proceeds to suggest that the difference lay in a somewhat higher pitch in the case of the former type of word. This explanation is, however, difficult to follow; if, e.g., ACh dz‘ua, became \tso (tone IV) rather than (tone III) because the fourth tone is more compatible with the deeper pitch proper to affricate initials, it is by no means clear why ACh dz‘ak, having the same initial, should become ‘tso (tone II) rather than enter tone IV with so many other words from the lower ju-shêng.

Western scholars have, on the whole, neglected the Tzyjyh Tongjiann Kaoyih. Its existence and its importance as a land-mark in Chinese historiography have been briefly mentioned by several, but none, so far as I am aware, has seriously used it. Chinese scholars have, as one would expect, used it a good deal. Nevertheless, they have generally confined themselves to drawing on it for the elucidation of particular points. While this was undoubtedly the purpose for which it was originally intended, it can have for the modern student another very valuable function. By a careful analysis and comparison of the different entries, it is possible to get a great deal of other-wise unobtainable information about the sources of the Tongjiann and their interrelation.

To undertake such an analysis for the whole of the Tongjiann or even for the whole of the Tarng dynasty would be a task far beyond the scope of the present article. I shall, in fact, confine myself largely to the period 730–763 though I may occasionally step beyond those limits. This period is chosen because it includes the careers of An Luhshan and Shyy Syming , which I am engaged in studying. This short period, however, comprises about one-seventh of the whole Kaoyih.

Forty-eight works are quoted in this part of the Kaoyih, twenty-two of which appear to be still extant. They range in size and importance from the Jiow Tarngshu to a poem by Lii Bor . I shall first list some of the more important of these, giving in each case notes, whether derived from the Kaoyih or from some other source, on the origin and nature of the work.

In Japan, since the eleventh or twelfth century, when teachers and students of the tanka (, a short poem) recognized the importance of the teniwoha for expressing thoughts or feelings, its study became a vital part of kagaku (, the study of verse-making). One of the earliest books on the matter, the “ Teniwoha Taigaisyô ” ( ), was said to have been written by Huziwara-Sadaie (, 1162–1241), a well-known poet of the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the study of the teniwoha made further headway, the reason being that the gap between the written and spoken language which had been developing since the eleventh century had widened so much that people found it difficult to understand the tanka of earlier times. There were at this time two groups of people who studied the teniwoha for the art of verse-making; one group was concerned with the tanka, and the other with the renga (, a linked poem) which was then very popular. Although these studies of the teniwoha could be called the origin of the grammatical study of the Japanese language, they were very naive; all that the scholars did was to compile glossaries or reference book for verse-making.