The recently edited fragments of the Sīra of Wahb b. Munabbih are probably the earliest extant document of sīra-literature. R. G. Khoury painstakingly performed the laborious task of deciphering the extremely difficult text of the papyrus, and has prepared a careful edition of it. There remain, however, some misreadings which may lead to an erroneous understanding of the text. These are corrected in the present paper.

It has been generally accepted by modern scholars that al-Qāḍī al-Nu'mān was in the beginning either a Mālikī or a Ḥanafī and that he subsequently became an Imāmī and finally adopted the Ismā'īlī faith. The Imāmī savants, from al-Qāḍī Nūr Allāh Shūshtarī to Āghā Buzurg-i Tihrānī, maintain that al-Qāḍī al-Nu'mān was one of their co-religionists. Ismā'īlīs, on the other hand, regard him as one of the pillars of their da'wa. In the light of recently discovered sources and of the consequent revaluation and reinterpretation of earlier works, a re-examination of the question of al-Qāḍī al-Nu'mān's madhhab becomes necessary. The present article attempts to do precisely that, and show how and when the theory of al-Qāḍī al-Nu'mān's conversion originated.

Until the twentieth century the Bedouin of the Sinai peninsula and the Negev desert were no less dependent upon knowledge of the heavenly bodies than their nomadic ancestors of countless generations in the Arabian peninsula. The stars were as vital to a Bedouin trying to find his way in almost featureless stretches of the desert waste as they were to a sailor navigating the open sea. Moreover, the Bedouin needed stable indications of the seasons of the year so that they could regulate the annual activities necessary for agriculture and livestock raising; the only calendar they knew was the Muslim lunar calendar, the months of which rotate among the seasons of the year, at times appearing in the winter, at others in the spring, summer, or autumn. They found these indications in the positions of the stars. Finally, their preoccupation with the heavenly bodies and their nightly exposure to starry skies naturally led the inhabitants of the desert, like many other peoples, to find, in the movements of the stars, explanations for the natural disasters to which they were always so vulnerable.

The following text is taken from a MS owned by the monastery of May Anbäsa Kidanä Mәhrät, about 15 km. west of Makalle, on the new road to Hagärä, Sälam. The MS is described by its owners as Mäshafä Wägris, and contains the following items.

One of the commonplaces with regard to Ethiopian literature is the fact that it is heavily indebted to foreign sources for much of its material. The initial works of Ethiopic literature were made from Greek but as knowledge of that language faded, undoubtedly owing to the spread of Muslim hegemony which isolated Ethiopia from contact with Christianity outside Africa, translation from Greek came to an end. With the ‘restoration’ of the Solomonic dynasty in 1270, increased literary activity brought about the translation into Ge‘ez (Ethiopic) of a number of Arabic works, usually those of Christian writers.

It seldom occurs that a philologist has the opportunity of seeing the results of his labours confirmed or disproved by the discovery of new material. In the field of Oriental studies such events occur relatively less seldom but bear equal testimony to the value of philological studies. What would in many instances have remained conjectures concerning the text of the Siddhasāra, conjectures having various degrees of probability according to the arguments advanced and the material available, have now been proved correct by the discovery of three previously unknown MSS of the Siddhasāra composed by Kavigupta. It could, of course, be claimed that this discovery has rendered superfluous the philological studies hitherto made, but it is in fact precisely these studies which enable us to appreciate the value of the readings provided by the newly dis-covered MSS. Moreover, the confirmation provided by the new discovery shows that the state of knowledge achieved by philological research was in fact a definite advance in our knowledge of the text.

These two terms, which occur in the late thirteenth-century Anonymus IV treatise (De mensuris et discantu), have often been cited as evidence of Arab musical influence in Western Europe: either in connexion with developments in melodic style, since they are identified as currentes, or, perhaps more ambitiously, in support of the contention that the emergence of mensural music in Western Europe was prompted by contact with Arab musical practice, which had long possessed a complex system of rhythmic modes

Several works dealing with the cultural history of Islam in India assert that the province of Sind became a centre of Islamic learning shortly after its conquest by Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim al-Thaqafī at the beginning of the eighth century a.d.

Within a few years of their landing at Sanjan in Gujarat, in A.C. 916, the Parsis established a great sacred fire there, an Ātaš Bahrām. This was a costly and laborious undertaking, which must have taxed the resources of the small new colony to the utmost. One of the most exacting tasks was to fetch by land from Iran ash from an old Ātaš Bahrām, to be used in the preparatory rituals. Through this the Ātaš Bahrām of the Parsis acquired a physical descent, a silsila, from the sacred fires of Iran; and once they had enthroned it, with rites which took months to complete, the Parsis were content to let this be their only temple fire for hundreds of years. A second Ātaš Bahrām was not installed until 1765. Since then another six have been consecrated, making a total of eight of these great fires.

Grassmann, in his Wörterbuch zum Rig-Veda (1872), has two separate entries kīrí subst. (m) and kīrín both adj. and subst. (m). To the former he assigns the meaning ‘singer’ and to the latter ‘praising’ and ‘singer’. He lists three occurrences of the forms of kīrín, two as instr. sg. kīríṇā 5.4.10 (= TS 1.4.46.1) and 5.40.8, and one as nom. pl. kīríṇas 5.52.12. But the form kīríṇā can as well be derived from kīrí and for this form a separate stem kīrín would not be necessary. But this is not true of kīríṇas. For its derivation, a stem kīrín would be necessary. The verse where the form in question occurs runs: chandaḥstúbhaḥ kubhanyáva útsam ā kīríḥo nṛtuḥ. The line refers to the dancing of the Maruts near the útsa The author of the Padapāṭha gives the Saṃhitā word as kīríṇas, and following him scholars have interpreted the form as nom. pl. of kīrín and translated it as ‘bards’ or ‘singers’. But it is also possible to analyse the Saṃhitā text kīríṇo nṛtuḥ as kīríṇā u nṛtuḥ where kīríṇā could be instr. sg. and can come from the stem kīrí. The line would then mean that the Maruts danced, and the singer of the hymn, to whom they had manifested themselves (té me … āsan dṛśí … ‘they (i.e. the Maruts) appeared to me’ 5.52.12) danced with them too. In this interpretation we are going against only the Padapāṭha.

The Altaic nasals and liquids form a natural class which has been insufficiently treated as a coherent group. Moreover, doubt has been repeatedly cast on the notion of Altaic as a genetic unity. Arguments for genetic unity are frequently based on correspondences in phonetic shape of matching lexemes or formants. I have recently argued for correspondences in suffixation rules applying to a restricted syntactic-semantic class (the numerals). Apart from showing correspondences in the various components of the respective grammars, we may also strengthen the argument for genetic relation by showing a continuity in the nature of specific features. The present paper points to certain such continuities in the distinctive phonological features that, as I propose to show, must be assumed for the proto-language.

In my paper ‘On the Altaic numerals’ I made the point that Turkic, like Mongolian, segregated 6–9 by suffixes, and that Turkic further divided these into two morphological groups, 6–7 and 8–9. My good friend Robert Underhill has pointed out to me that I neglected an additional piece of evidence for these groupings, in the formation of the decades; that is, I overlooked the sets represented in Osmanli Turkish by altmiş, yetmiş ‘60, 70’ and seksen, doksan ‘80, 90’. The latter pair is clearly from *sekiz+on and *dokuz+on, and this shows up clearly in Old Turkish and Chuvash. I am grateful to Underhill for having pointed out this additional argument, and it leads me in turn to some further considerations which I take this opportunity to present.