The Akkadian ventive is now well understood as a marker that points to the location of the speech act participants. Nonetheless, there remain other domains of its usage which still need clarification. We endeavour to describe these domains of the ventive’s usage, relying upon a single-writer corpus of 178 Old Babylonian letters – those of Samsi-Addu, the king of Upper Mesopotamia (early eighteenth century bc), which contains c. 500 tokens of the ventive.

This paper examines the naming episode in the Quran's Adam story, in which God teaches Adam “the names, all of them”, to counter the angels' objection to the creation of the human creature on the basis that he will “spread corruption … and will shed blood”. I try to show that the traditional understanding of this narrative in Western scholarship, which connects it ultimately to the Genesis 2 episode in which Adam names all the creatures of the land and sky, fails to do justice to a close reading of the quranic text itself. Instead, I argue for an alternative reading of the passage already suggested by early Muslim exegetes, in which God's teaching Adam the “names” refers to Adam being introduced to his future offspring. This, in turn, is central to the Quran's engagement with the problem of theodicy.

The Thamudic D script is only partially deciphered. This article attempts to advance our understanding of the script by identifying all the Thamudic D glyphs and their phonemic values with varying degrees of certainty. It also discusses the major writing formulae associated with this script type and offers a few notes on the language it inscribes.

This study examines the historical evolution of a Companion report detailing the burning of an unnamed man as punishment for assuming the passive role in male–male anal intercourse (liwāṭ). The genesis of this sexual passivity report can be traced back to an earlier incident involving Abū Bakr, in which the apostate al-Fujāʾa al-Salamī (d. 11/632) was executed by being burned alive for multiple offences, including apostasy, betrayal, and the slaughter of Muslims. This study investigates the transformation of the apostasy report into one specifically addressing male sexual passivity, analysing how these two accounts converged over time. It explores both the mechanisms and motivations behind their evolution into a punitive report focused on burning a man for his passive sexual role in liwāṭ. Additionally, it considers potential reasons for the development of this report, including the possibility that the phrase “he was penetrated like a woman” was initially used as a rhetorical insult directed at the apostate al-Fujāʾa, but gradually evolved in later sources into an association with the crime for which an unnamed man was purportedly punished with burning.

This article presents the first complete biography in English of the early hadith critic al-Jūzjānī (d. 259/873?), in addition to a thorough analysis of his work Aḥwāl al-rijāl, the earliest Syngramma dedicated to the genre of al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl. Through a detailed examination of al-Jūzjānī's engagement with the opinions of earlier hadith critics, his use of the terms of hadith criticism and his own remarks, this article delineates his conception of the function of hadith, methodological framework and approach to the appraisal of hadith transmitters, arguing that al-Jūzjānī may have been the first and only hadith scholar to methodically incorporate the consideration of transmitters’ conformity to the “correct” doctrines in hadith criticism. His methodological innovation, however, departs from existing convention among ahl al-ḥadīth. As a result, although al-Jūzjānī's authority as a hadith critic was well recognized, his approach failed to appeal to succeeding contributors to hadith criticism.

This article opens with a mystery: why was Zizang 子臧 assassinated in the seventh century bce, and why was his assassination justified in the Zuozhuan by his fondness of snipe-feather caps? It is well established that feathers were a common item of clothing in early and medieval China, used to confer status, to flaunt wealth, to embellish rituals. This article argues that there may also have been accompanying beliefs surrounding their use; beliefs that feathers might bestow upon the wearer certain imagined characteristics of the birds from which they came. It uses case studies of soldiers and their relationship to brown-eared pheasants, dancers and their relationship to long-tailed pheasants, and immortals and their relationship to cranes and egrets. Finally, it returns to Zizang's snipe-feather cap, and suggests reasons for his fate.

This paper presents a review article of Creating the Qur’an by Stephen J. Shoemaker, a monograph that is highly critical of Quranic studies as practised in the Western academy today, arguing, among other things, that Islamic studies scholars need to learn from scholarship in other fields, namely history of religions and biblical studies, and that the Quran as we know it today, in both form and content, is a product of the early eighth century, and was propagated by the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik. The article discusses these claims and puts them in the context of methodological issues concerning the study of early Islam and the origins of the Quran in particular.

This paper investigates the development of the creation theme in Zoroastrian sources through the lens of the conceptual metaphor “creation is cutting”. It analyses three terms: Avestan taš- and ϑβǝrǝs-, and Middle Persian brēhēnīdan. Each term is examined in non-metaphorical, non-creational metaphorical, and creational metaphorical contexts. This analysis, coupled with a comparison of their semantic nuances and metaphorical mappings, suggests a creation myth with two phases: in the first phase, Ahura Mazda alone hews the undifferentiated forms of both the spiritual and material creation from an imaginary primary material, followed by the sculpting of the spiritual creation, resulting in adding details to the form. Subsequently, Ahura Mazda, in collaboration with the Beneficial Immortals/high-ranked divinities, imparts specific bodily and facial details to the material creation, enabling procreation. The Pahlavi sources elaborate on this theme, portraying Ahura Mazda as the sole agent in the initial hewing, while high-ranking divinities mitigate the harm inflicted by Ahriman on the created prototypes, facilitating their procreation throughout the world.

In 1206 Chinggis Khan replaced the warring factions of Mongolia with a single polity, the Great Mongol Realm (Yeke Mongqol Ulus). The ulus was ruled by a khan, who allocated pastures, households and revenues to his relatives as shares (qubi). Chinggis granted the first allocation to his brothers and senior sons in 1207 but many more redistributions took place in the coming decades. Many of these appanages grew so large that their holders challenged the khan's dominance and even broke free of his control to form their own polities (uluses). This article will explore the fluidity of the Mongol appanage system by taking the qubi of Chinggis Khan's grandson Ariq Böke (d. 1266) as a case study. The Ariq Bökids established their own secondary ulus in Inner Asia, before fragmenting and lending their support to neighbouring khans in the fourteenth century.

The Gāϑās of Zaraϑuštra provide us with the Old Avestan attestations of the adjectives mauuaṇt-, ϑβāuuaṇt- and xšmāuuaṇt-/yūšmāuuaṇt-. The adjective mauuaṇt- occurs twice in the Gāϑās, while ϑβāuuaṇt- occurs five times and xšmāuuaṇt-/yūšmāuuaṇt- occurs seven times. Over the years, little effort has been put into studying the broader context in which these words are situated or into understanding the specific use and significance of these words in the Gāϑās. The basis for their translation has mostly been exogenous, with the early Avestan scholars using the readily available meanings of the Vedic equivalents mā́vat-, tvā́vat- and yuṣmā́vat- for this purpose. In contrast, this article endeavours to understand the meaning and significance of the words mauuaṇt-, ϑβāuuaṇt- and xšmāuuaṇt-/yūšmāuuaṇt- in the context of Zoroastrian theology. It further seeks to examine the morphological basis of their meaning, to offer updated translation options for them and to situate these updated translations into the Gāϑic stanzas in which they occur.

This paper examines Bobovius’ Serai Enderum (British Library, MS Harley 3409), with a focus on its insights into seventeenth-century Ottoman music. While the manuscript primarily describes the inner workings of the sultan’s palace in Constantinople, it can serve as a source for understanding Ottoman musical culture. Although Bobovius, a former court musician (Ali Ufkī), did not extensively detail music in his account, his use of terminology and facts related to musical education and performance provide valuable information. This study explores MS Harley 3409 as both a musicological and a linguistic resource, highlighting Bobovius’ role as a “multilingual terminologist” who translated Ottoman Turkish musical terms (and concepts) into Italian for European readers. By presenting a glossary of musical terms excerpted from Serai Enderum and comparing them with contemporary dictionaries (Meniński 1680, Molino 1641) and musicological information, this research demonstrates the potential of linguistic analysis to enrich the historiography of Turkish music.

After publishing a new Qatabanic inscription that mentions the term kʿbt for the first time, this paper provides a South Arabian etymology for the pre-Islamic Meccan sanctuary of the Kaʿbah, which is derived traditionally from the Arabic word kaʿb “cube”. The paper suggests that the name of the Meccan Kaʿbah, and the Kaʿbah of Najrān, both derived from the ancient South Arabian term kʿbt, supposedly as a variant of the term kʾbt, which designates a high structure, probably with a protective function against water, a term which was later assigned to a sanctuary name for the deity dhu-Samāwī in Najrān; and not derived from Arabic kaʿb “cube”. The paper argues that the Arabic word “kaʿb” meaning “cube” was borrowed from Greek κύβος at a later time after the Meccan Kaʿbah had already established the cubic form that we know today.

This paper focuses on a group of Old Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang that are currently in the Stein and Pelliot Collections, some of which will be reordered and reunited. These texts were previously believed to concern the offering to the seven Tathāgatas or the texts about the former aspirations of the seven Buddhas. However, as my study shows, they actually pertain to liturgies for the seven Tathāgatas including Bhaiṣajyaguru. Based on earlier studies, this research seeks to establish a stronger connection between “pre-canonical” texts and canonical works in Tibetan and Chinese, and to establish a hitherto unknown link in the chain of the textual transmission of this liturgy. After revealing the structure of the liturgy, it seeks to fill the gap between the Bhaiṣajyaguru-sūtra itself and the religious practices of worshipping the seven Tathāgatas including Bhaiṣajyaguru. These are done through a two-dimensional textual analysis, i.e.: 1) identifying the connection between the Old Tibetan materials and the Tibetan canonical version; and 2) analysing the process of the liturgicalization of the sūtra.

Between 757 and 768, the second ʿAbbāsid caliph, al-Manṣūr, engaged in an unprecedented set of foreign relations which stretched across Afro-Eurasia, from Tang China to Carolingian Francia. The unique scale of this activity has previously gone unnoticed because much of the evidence comes from the caliph’s diplomatic partners. Al-Manṣūr’s dealings with these polities tend to be taken on a case-by-case basis, resulting in often-unconvincing explanations of his motives. By instead taking all of this activity together as a whole, we can see a deliberate policy of “prestige diplomacy”, in which the caliph sought to legitimize his regime to a domestic audience by bringing envoys and gifts to his court, following Sasanian models of universal kingship.

This article, the third in a series, focuses on the “living” preverbs used in the verbal system of contemporary Pashto. The verbs treated here belong to the “compound verbs with preverb” class or to the “mixed verbs with preverb” class: verbs that replace the wə́- of the simple verbs with another preverb. This class of verbs represents a closed set, and a complete list of these verbs can be investigated systematically and exhaustively. This subject is as yet unexamined and its implications for the interpretation of contemporary Pashto verbal morphology are particularly stimulating.

On the basis of textual scrutiny and intertextual comparisons, this study highlights that Vādidevasūri's attribution of a quotation to the Cārvāka/Lokāyata philosopher Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa in the Syādvādaratnākara is, in fact, part of a broader passage sourced from Arcaṭa's Hetubinduṭīkā and, consequently, its expungement from the corpus of source material attributed to the Cārvāka/Lokāyata authors is suggested.

Early researchers of Yezidis, a small religious minority of the Middle East, often noted with dismay that Yezidis did not say or know prayers. This observation is partially supported by modern-day research, as knowledge of orally transmitted religious texts and their performance is mostly limited to people recognized as religious experts. However, there exists a special sub-genre of prayers which are known and recited by “ordinary” Yezidis. Although they are referred to as “prayers” (dua), these texts do not constitute part of formal religious performances during ceremonial occasions. They could better be described as verbal charms or incantations aimed at healing sickness or warding off evil. This article gives a translation of four previously unrecorded such “prayers”, describes their role in oral tradition, and finally shows how they are now being transformed from performed (and practical) oral religion to written heritage by the younger generation.

This paper proposes new origins for tense vowels in Tangut by integrating textual analysis of Tangut texts with comparative data from both Gyalrongic and other Sino-Tibetan languages. It uncovers two previously unreported sources of vowel tensing in compounding: the collective prefix (*S-) and the compound linker (*-S-). Both morphemes left only a few traces, indicating their antiquity and productivity in earlier stages. The collective *S- could be an inherited morpheme which finds parallels in Tibetan, whereas the compound linker *-S- emerged as a stage of morphological merging in West Gyalrongic with (an) obscure origin(s). These findings not only advance our understanding of the origins of Tangut tense vowels but also offer insights into Sino-Tibetan nominal morphology.

This article1sets out to reassess the idea, repeated by many scholars, that there was a bishop from the Central Asian city of Qumul (or Hami) who was present in Baghdad around the time when one patriarch of the Church of the East – Makkika II – was buried and another – Denḥa I – was consecrated. After an initial consideration of what we know about the city of Qumul/Hami, we examine the various authors who have held to this idea and the sources, both primary and secondary, which they invoke as proof that the idea is correct. Gradually moving back to the earliest witnesses, we eventually arrive at the Maronite scholar Joseph Assemani’s Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana and the fourteenth-century primary source, Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā. A suggestion is made for how the idea originated and developed, thanks in part to the account of Marco Polo, but more definitively to Michel Le Quien’s Oriens Christianus.

The Anda manuscript and Haihun slips have revealed that there were several different stanza permutations for poems in the “Guo feng” 國風 in early China. As most repetitive stanzas are essentially nonlinear, there is no intrinsic sequence for many poems. Rather than finding a “superior” stanza order, I would like to consider how the various stanza orders might challenge traditional interpretations of references to stanza numbers in the Zuozhuan 左傳 and the hermeneutical rule of “orderly progression” in the Shijing. Just as establishing the order of stanzas took a long time, the development of this rule was gradual. The belief in there being an unalterable stanza order not only influences how rhymes are interpreted but also shapes how lines and verses are annotated. Therefore, reconsidering the theory of orderly progression is a step towards re-evaluating the tradition of Shijing interpretation.