One of the more interesting phenomena in Islamic religious history is the development of the schools of law. This phenomenon has seldom failed to arouse ourinterest, though it has consistently eluded our understanding. The difficulty in grasping the significance of the schools of law is evidenced by vacillation in translating the termmadhhab. This term was first translated as ‘sect,’ then as ‘rite’ or ‘school.’ But a Sunni madhhab could not be a sect, since the term ‘sect’ is applied to a dissenting religious body, one that is heretical in the eyes of other members within the same communion. That is not the case with the Sunni madhhabs, all of which are regarded equally as orthodox. Nor is the term ‘rite’ an adequate one, since it applies to a division of the Christian church as determined by liturgy; and, unlike a transfer from one rite to another in Christianity, a transfer requiring certain formalities, the transfer in Islam is made from one madhhab to another without any formalities whatsoever. The term ‘school,’ for lack of a better term, is the most acceptable; it is the one that offers the least difficulty.

Since the reign of the Qājārs in Iran (1779–1925) and aslate as the early sixties of the present century, Iranian ‘ulamā’ proved, repeatedly, their ability and appeal to spearhead political opposition against the national government. Seeking the sources ofthe ‘ulamā’'s effective political power, several students ofmodern Iranian history and politics have attempted to determine the doctrinal status accorded to the ‘ulamā’ in Twelver Shi‘i Islam, the religion of Iran since the sixteenth century.Even though substantial research has been devoted in the West to Sunni juridical thought, the field of Twelver Shi'i jurisprudence has remained all but unknown. In the absence of systematic studies of Twelver Shi'i juridical sources, Twelver Shi'i theology and political theory, Western scholars have thus drawn on opinions expressed, sometimes orally, by contemporary Iranian learned men, mostly ‘ulamā’, to define the status of the ‘ulamā’. Lacking the advantage of scholarly collation provided by a firsthand acquaintance with the primary sources, they have accepted notions as Twelver Shi'i tenets that bestow on the ‘ulamā’ certain statutory privileges. Under scrutiny, though, these prove to be in contradiction with the spirit as well as the letter of Twelver Shi'i legal and theological doctrines.

The attempt to estimate per capita income for Egypt from 1886/1887 to 1937, presented in this paper, is part of an effort to evaluate British colonial economic policyduring the period of the British occupation of Egypt. For such an evaluation national income estimates covering the whole period would be very helpful. National income estimates worth the name, however, go back only to 1935–1939, and for years earlier than the 1950s they are of very poor quality. Compared with so many other lessdeveloped countries, Egypt has relatively rich statistics extending backward to the decades before World War I; but they do not really suffice for building up a national income series from either the production or the expenditure side, and from the income side there is hardly any information. In this situation, which both development economists and economic historians know only too well, the problem is how to make maximal use of existing production and expenditure indicators in order to come out with some idea of what per capita income developments may have looked like. Apart from gauging per capita income in Egypt during half a century before World War II, the paper serves more generally to illustrate a methodology that may find application for other countries.

The aim of this essay is to explore the possibility, remote as it is or might be, of dramatists employing their trade and using their skill to transmit political messages. In Arabic culture, there is enough ground to suspect that such an endeavor is possible, forthe culture is known to have used the medium of drama to support religiopolitical ideas. I am referring to the well-known fact that the Shī'a sect of Islam, perhaps as early as the time of Yazīd (late A.D. seventh century) has been mourning the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbalā in dramalike fashion. We may well pause to contemplate the ultimate sociopolitical reason for the performance of this ancient Arabo-Islamic passion play.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of a group of‘rebels’ (in Iran they are called looties) who made significant contributions to the Iranian Constitutional Movement in 1908–1909. A discussion of the norms and values of this group and the way they fit the social situationand events of that period in Iran, serves to explain their involvement in the Constitutional Movement.

Although the activities of the first press established in the Ottoman Empire for theprinting of Turkish books, that of İbrahim Müteferrika which operated between 1927 and 1974, have been well documented, less is known about the circumstances under which printing in Turkish was revived later in the centurey. Two letters preserved among the papers of the British botanist and patron of science, Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), however, throw interesting light on an abortive attempt to restart Turkish printing in the Ottoman capital under British auspices in 1779.

On the morning of Tuesday, 29 May 1453, the warriors of Mehmet II poured through the shattered walls of Constantinople. Later in the day their commanding general, Zaǵanos Pasha, accepted the keys of Galata, the walled town standingon a promontory on the shore opposite the Golden Horn, signaling the end of Genoese domination.

Owen Lattimore, the premier chronicler of China's inner-Asian frontier, designated by the term ‘frontier feudalism’ a particularly significant and recurrent process in the social history of that area. By it he meant the pattern in which nomadic Turko-Mongol chiefs either sold their allegiance as ‘wardens of the march’ and border guardians to Chinese emperors in return for titles and land investitures, or else conquered territory along imperial frontiers in their own names. Ineither case, the chiefs' authority over his followers then changed from a kin-oriented tribal base to a patron–client-oriented feudal base, as his followers became peasantized and lost their ability to move away from the chief – anability that underlay what Lattimore viewed as the much more fluid tribal–nomadic social order and polity. To Lattimore frontier feudalism was an important vehicle in the establishment of social and political stratification along ethnically differentiated lines (as tribesmen settled down as rulers of a subordinate peasantry).It also created articulation between state and tribal polities and served as a major factor in the sedentarization of nomads (Lattimore 1962a, b). In this connection one recalls the proverb recited to Genghis Khan's son and successor, Ogotai, by an adviser: ‘The empire was created on horseback, but it cannot be governed on horseback’ (Grousset 1970: 257).

One of the more important developments in Iraq since the 1958 overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy was the nationalization of the Iraqi Petroleum Company on 1 June 1972. The nationalization of the IPC was the culmination of a long-standing power struggle between the IPC and the Iraqi government. This analysis is concerned with that power struggle and the consequent nationalization of the IPC.

During the mandatory period following World War I Britain's attempts to implement the provisions of the Balfour Declaration and establish a ‘National Home’ for the Jews in Palestine encountered stubborn resistance from the local Arab population. As dissatisfaction mounted in the late 1930s, militant nationalists were able to mobilize popular support for the Arab cause and foster the growth of an opposition movement directed against the British. The most visible and significantleader of this movement was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini.