When Griffini published an account of the latest acquisition of a “collection of South-Arabian MSS.” by the Ambrosian Library, Milan, the distinguished orientalist, Ignaz Goldziher, to whom oriental scholarship is indebted for his able researches on the doctrines and history of the Isma'īlīs, welcomed the news, for most of the information on the subject of the Ismā'īlīs he and his forerunners were able to communicate to us was derived either from inadequate sources or from the anti-Ismā'īlī polemical literature. Similarly, Professor Louis Massignon expressed the hope that modern scholars would throw further light on the history of the Ismā'īlīs and their doctrine by study of this literature.