The existence at Shīmbār in the Zagros Mountains of ancient sculptures and inscriptions was first reported by A. H. (later Sir Henry) Layard, in his classic study, ‘A description of the province of Khuzistan’. The research of succeeding years has made surprisingly few additions to this account of the archaeological sites of the province, which though nowadays less well known than some of Layard's other archaeological work, is none the less remarkably careful and complete. In a travel narrative published many years later, his Early adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia, Layard gives another short account of his journey to Shīmbār, which helps to fill in the details of his visit. Shīmbār is an enclosed valley with high mountain walls, situated about 35 miles north-east of the oilfields centre of Masjid-i Sulaimān, in the province of Khuzistan. The name is said by the Bakhtiāri to be the equivalent in their Luri dialect of the Persian Shῑrῑn Bahār ‘Sweet Spring’. The valley is celebrated amongst the tribes as a resting-place on their spring migration to the upland pastures. Its regular inhabitants are mostly members of the Mauri clan.

The maqāma genre has had a place in Arabic literature for nearly a thousand years. With the maqāmāt of Badī' al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (357–98/969–1007), it appears as a fully developed, independent literary form, although precursors of it have been traced back beyond al-Hamadhānī to the argot and cant of thieves and beggars as displayed, for instance, in the Kitāb al-bukhalā’ of al-Jāḥiẓ and the qaṣīda al-sāsāniyya of Abū Dulaf Mis'ar b. Muhalhil, and possibly back to the model of a lost Kitdb al-arba'īn of the philologist and lexicographer Ibn Duraid. The history of the maqāma in its classical form closes only with the productions in the last century of such writers as the Baghdādī scholar Shihāb al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Alūsī (1217–70/1802–54) and the Lebanese Christian Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī (1800–71). It is true that in the early decades of our own century, such Egyptian writers as Muḥammad Ibrāhīm al-Muwailḥī and the poet Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm used a very free adaptation of the maqāma form for the entirely novel purpose of social criticism; but with the disappearance to-day of the florid and artificial style of Arabic writing, it is unlikely that anyone will ever resuscitate the classical maqāma and we may safely conclude that it has died out.

The field-work for the present article was begun in Kuwait in December 1958 and continued for a longer period in the spring of the following year. Besides making measurements on a fairly large būm, the Muhallab, lying in Kuwait harbour, we had many interviews with sailors and shipbuilders, all of the older generation of Kuwaitis.

The Anglo-Saddozai government in Afghanistan was overthrown by a series of risings in 1841–2. The first of these risings was that of the eastern Ghilzai tribes, who broke the line of communīcatīons between Kabul and Jalālābād at the end of September and the beginning of October 1841. On 1 November disturbances began in Kabul and these were followed by risings in the Kohistān, in the area of Ghaznī, and, sometime later, at Qandahar. In January 1842 the Kabul garrison withdrew, under treaty, but was entirely destroyed. In March 1842 the garrison at Ghazni surrendered and was destroyed. The garrisons at Jalālābād and Qandahar held out and were reinforced from Peshawar and Quetta respectively. In August and September they advanced and reoccupied Kabul, but soon afterwards the British withdrew altogether from Afghanistan. Between January and August 1842 there was a struggle for power among the various groups in eastern Afghanistan, which ended in the victory of Muḥammad Akbar, son of Dost Muḥammad. Although Akbar and his supporters were forced to fly at the time of the reconquest they were soon able to return, resume power, and prepare for the restoration of Dost Muhammad in May 1843.

In the sixth Article of Impeachment brought against him by the House of Commons, Warren Hastings was accused of disobeying the Regulating Act of 1773 and the orders of the Court of Directors of the East India Company by accepting presents from various Indians. These presents included a sum of three lakhs of sicca rupees, or £37,500, described as a loan from Maharaja Nabakrishna, or ‘Nobkissen’ as he was usually known to his European contemporaries. Both the prosecution and the defence agreed that Hastings had originally borrowed the three lakhs, subsequently keeping them and using them to repay money which he claimed was owed to him by the East India Company. The prosecution maintained that Hastings had ‘fraudulently’ extracted the loan and that he had ‘corruptly and illegally’ retained it as a present, inventing the pretext that the Company owed him money. Hastings replied that Nobkissen had converted the loan into a present of his own free will, and that he had accepted it on the Company's behalf and had used it to repay money genuinely spent on its service in the past. His version convinced a majority of those members of the House of Lords who took part in the verdict at the end of the trial, and he was acquitted by 20 votes to 5 on that particular section of the Presents Article. The episode did not, however, end with the Impeachment. Nobkissen filed a Bill against Hastings in the Court of Chancery for the return of his money, and, although he was unsuccessful, much new evidence was disclosed which would have had an important bearing on the Impeachment. The purpose of this article is to review Hastings's relations with Nobkissen in the light of this new material. It may still be possible to accept the peers' verdict that Hastings had acted neither ‘fraudulently’ nor ‘illegally and corruptly’, but before this verdict can be accepted, very much more will have to be taken into account than was discussed at the Impeachment.

This document is in the possession of Mr. J. K. Gubbins of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and a photocopy has recently been acquired by the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. It is unique in the history of Urdu prose, being the earliest known farewell address written in Urdu. The language is simple and idiomatic and the style is free from affectation and turgidity—defects from which documents of this type are not free even to-day. Though some commonplace adjectives have been used, it on the whole satisfactorily brings out the main contributions of John Panton Gubbins to the social and cultural life of the Delhi of the mid-nineteenth century.

The Su-pao case which was tried in the Shanghai Settlement in the summer of 1903, was one of the many clashes between the Ch'ing government and the illegal opposition during the last decade of the old régime. But because it took place in the Settlement, it was an exceptionally illuminating incident. The central government was attempting to curb the revolt against the old system which was beginning to flare up in the south, but in using its arbitrary methods against the offenders in the international zone it came up against the foreign apparatus of power. The weaknesses of both central government and the nationalist movement in its earliest stages were shown up pitilessly in face of the imperialist powers. These weaknesses were characteristic of the general crisis of the late Ch'ing period and of the problems which were to be carried on into the Republic.