Yaḥyā b. 'adī played an important role in the history of Aristotelian studies in Islam. By his extensive activity as translator, as textual critic, and as interpreter, he gave a new impetus to the study of Aristotle. He can clearly be recognized as the head of a distinct school of philosophers, and his influence remained discernible for several generations, especially in the school's tradition of Aristotelian interpretation.

Aid donors, civil society groups and the Cambodian government have tended to focus their policy initiatives concerned with communities and their forests on Cambodia's indigenous minorities. Few attempts have been made to document the relationship between ethnic Khmers and forests. However, with almost three quarters of Cambodia covered with forests until quite recently, and a large proportion of the Khmer population living in proximity to forests, it is not surprising that Cambodia's dominant ethnic group has had a close and meaningful relationship with forests. In this article, we examine the traditional systems of forest management of Khmer social groups and how these systems are changing. We argue that traditional Khmer systems of forest management are still relevant in the context of the rapid changes that have occurred in rural Cambodia over the past two decades. These systems shape how Khmer groups make sense of the natural world and claim rights of tenure over forest areas. They continue to play a vital role in preserving Cambodia's natural forests in the face of deforestation driven by plantation schemes and logging operations.

The Mongol conquests produced the last in a series of realignments of the Turkic peoples, creating, more or less, the configurations in which we find them today. The earliest of these realignments was associated with the rise and fall of the Hsiung-nu polity (second century BC to mid-second century AD). This was the first of the attempts at a pannomadic state. Mao-tun, the “Great Shanyü whom heaven has set up”, the founder of the Hsiung-nu union, boasted in a letter to the Han Court that because of his efforts “all the people who live by drawing the bow are now united into one family.”2 Činggis Qan expressed similar thoughts regarding the “people having skirts of felt” i.e. living in feltcovered tents.3 Although it cannot be demonstrated that all the Eurasian nomads were, indeed, incorporated into the Hsiung-nu polity, substantial numbers of the Turkic nomads undoubtedly were. In its formative, “heroic” years of conquest and in the course of its collapse, a number of Turkic (and other) pastoral, nomadic peoples were brought into motion along China's northern frontiers and adjoining regions. Others were pushed westward, some making their way to what is today Kazakhstan and into the Caspian-Pontic steppelands. This marked the first large-scale movement westward of Turkic peoples from Inner Asia to Central Asia and thence to the Western Eurasian steppelands. The final stages of these migrations ultimately brought some of the nomads to Danubian Europe and the Hungarian Plain.

Calcutta Botanic Garden occupies a prime riverside site three miles downstream from the centre of Calcutta. It is most famous as the home of the world's largest tree, a vast spreading banyan. Its grand avenues, named after its founders and the fathers of Indian botany, convey something of its former glory. In the nineteenth century it was the greatest of all the colonial botanic gardens and an important scientific institution; two of its superintendents were knighted and one went on to become Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the very centre of the imperial botanical network. The Garden is of considerable importance as it was one of the earliest institutions in India based on western science. This survey will look at the reasons for its foundation, and how it successfully established itself in its first twenty years.

The Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya sūtra is a religious document of the first importance. It carried Hiuen-tsiang through the Gobi desert, was reproduced, in writing, on stones, in recitation throughout Asia from Kabul to Nara, and formed one of the main inspirations of the Zen school, occupying in Buddhist mysticism about the same place the “Mystical Theology” of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita occupied in Christian. Unlike other very short Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras, the Hṛdaya is of great philosophical interest. The Svalpākṣara, and other abbreviations, were designed to bring the benefits of Prajñāpāramitā within the reach of those unable either to study or understand it. The Hṛdaya alone can be said to have gone really to the heart of the doctrine. The historical analysis of its sources can contribute to the understanding of this sūtra, by restoring its component parts to their context in the larger Prajñāpāramitā sūtras.

The earliest steps that led to the exchange of ideas, skills, and material goods between the cultures of the East and the West will probably never be more than a matter of surmise; but the literary and archaeological sources of information that start as a slender trickle at the beginning of the Christian era soon develop into a mighty stream and disclose a tale of human endeavour and ingenuity which few historians can fail to find fascinating and stimulating. During the last half-century or so dedicated scholars such as Pelliot have devoted their major research efforts to the meticulous consideration of the minutiae involved in the subject; and, more recently, Joseph Needham has contrived both to continue the work of such predecessors and to draw some of the major conclusions that are the fruits of basic research conducted in several disciplines. Probably the full story of these exchanges can never be told; for the evidence is sadly deficient; balanced inferences that rely on information gathered from both East and West are rarely possible; and, maddeningly enough, the political restrictions of the 20th century now prevent the application of the modern techniques of archaeology, geography, and anthropology in areas where they are most likely to be successful.

The existence of poets in Arabia before the rise of Islam is certified by the Qur'an, which contains one Surah named after them, and occasionally alludes to them elsewhere. Among the descriptions of the Prophet given by his opponents there was “ a Jinn-ridden poet” (xxxvii, 35), to which he replies that he has brought the truth. In another passage (lii, 29) the suggestions that he was a kāhin, a jinn-ridden man, and a poet are offered as alternatives. Since those who described him as a poet said they would wait to see what would happen to him (lii, 30) it might be inferred that poets were in the habit of foretelling the future. Elsewhere he asserts that his language is not that of a poet, but rather of an honourable messenger (lxix, 41), and that God had not taught him poetry, which would have been of no use to him (xxxvi, 69); his utterances were “ statement and clear lesson ”, whence we should infer that poetry was obscure. These hints about the poets are summarized in the Surah that bears their name (xxvi, 224, foll.), where we are told that they are followed by the misguided, rave in every valley, and say what they do not do. The sequel might seem to except certain pious bards from this condemnation, but the style of the Qur'an renders it uncertain whether this exception really applies to bards.

There has appeared a new trend in recent scholarship on the early modern Islamic world that analyzes the role of gender and sexuality in society and culture. Ruby Lal and Rosalind O'Hanlon have investigated women and gender roles in the sixteenth-century Mughal harem and the broader imperial court respectively. Mehmed Kalpaklı, Walter Andrews, and Khaled El-Rouayheb have studied the nature or the implications of sexual relationship among men in Istanbul as well as the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi have read Safavid and Qajar literature and visual arts through the lens of gender and power politics. Together these scholars have successfully highlighted the relevance of this methodology particularly in its application to the narrative sources that comprise the bulk of our documentations for the period (except for the Ottoman case of course), and it is to subject to such an approach a brief, but crucial, period in early Mughal history and historiography that the present article now proceeds.

The following narrative is derived from a MS. of the History of Mayyāfāriqin by Ibn al-Azraq al-Fāriqi, B.M. Or. 5,803, of which I have already given some account; see J.R.A.S., 1902, p. 785.

The story of Imam Husain's martyrdom at Karbala has been told with variant emphases and interpretations in different historical contexts. This article examines one of the most famous modern tellings of this narrative: that of ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, arguably South Asia's most influential Shi‘i mujtahid of the twentieth century. It argues that, from the 1930s–1940s, ‘Ali Naqi pioneered a novel perspective on Imam Husain, establishing him as a model for human comportment and a figure to be actively emulated, both by Shi‘as and by humanity at large. As well as having implications for transformation within Shi‘ism, this reorientation of Husain's significance pre-empted its politicisation: ‘Ali Naqi's message informed the incorporation of Shi‘i symbology within the 1942 Quit India agitation, and in some senses exhibited parallels with the later revolutionary rendering of the Karbala message in 1960s–1970s Iran. It is the range of the religious and political implications to be drawn from Ali Naqi's interpretation that have ensured both the durability, and ongoing controversy, of his Husainology.

In the late thirteenth century the openness and religious toleration of the Mongol Empire created unique conditions which encouraged European missionaries to venture into Asia. The Franciscans and Dominicans who answered the call to evangelize in territories under Tartar dominion enjoyed such success by the early fourteenth century that the papacy created archbishoprics and suffragan sees in Central Asia and China, and entertained dreams of new Christian communities aligned with the Roman Church. This paper focuses on a special set of circumstances which briefly encouraged those expectations. Western missionaries to the Mongols found influential Christian women, the mothers and consorts of rulers, at the courts of several khans. Because these Mongol queens played powerful political roles, their prayers and example might encourage the conversion of their people and those subject to them. Faithful wives of pagan rulers, in times long gone, had played a dynamic part in the conversion of husbands or sons, and of their realms, thus contributing to the spread of Christianity in Europe. Once again, at the close of the thirteenth century, hopes were voiced that pious women might perform a similar task in Asia.

The abstract concept of “the Silk Road” linking east and west shapes many popular narrative histories, encouraging readers to think dreamily of dazzling silks carried as luxury trade items on the backs of camels over sun-scorched sand dunes, and conveniently skirting more complex issues such as political, military, religious and cultural barriers. The actual mechanics of how any trading and other financial or economic transactions took place are seldom addressed, and references to money are few and far between.

At the beginning of the eighth century A.D. a new town was built in Palestine, called al- Ramla (Ramlah of today). It was founded by the then provincial governor, Sulaymān b. ‘Abd al-Malik (d. 717) in order to serve as the capital of Jund Filasṭīn, the southern province of Palestine. The building of a new town, and especially of a capital city, constituted a significant departure in the Palestine environment, for two main reasons. First, it was the first city to be founded after a period of 350 years, i.e., for most of the Byzantine epoch. Second, though the Muslims ruled the country for 1100 years, al-Ramla remained the sole example of a new town in the whole of Palestine.

India during the period of the Mughal dynasty (sixteenth-eighteenth centuries) is exceptionally well illuminated by a large body of historical literature, mainly in Persian. This literature followed the traditions of classical Persian historiography, the models of which like Yazdi's Zafarnama (a history of Timur) and Mir Khwand's Rauzatu's Safa (a history of the world), both written in the fifteenth century, were widely read in India. By its very volume, if nothing else, Mughal historiography has, however, to be studied and assessed separately. It may be recalled that when C. A. Storey made his great survey of Persian historical literature, works written on Indian history accounted for a major part of it providing 475 items, by authors (nos. 612–1087), as against 299 (nos. –611) concerned with Persia, and Central Asia and countries other than India. And among the works written in India those written in Mughal times again account for the overwhelming part.

With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe the west has been confronted with the existence of several, little-understood Muslim ethnic groups in this region whose contested histories can be traced back to the Ottoman period and beyond. Previously overlooked Muslim ethnies, such as the Bulgarian Turks, Bosniaks, Pomaks, Kosovars, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars, have begun to receive considerable attention from both western scholars and the general public. Much of the interest revolves around the question of the identity of these Muslim communities and the history of their formation as distinct ethnic groups. The history of the formation of these groups has in many cases been contested terrain as Bulgarian authorities, for example, attempted in the 1980s to prove that the Bulgarian Turks were actually “Turkified Bulgarians”, as the Greek government sought to demonstrate that the Pomaks (Slavic Muslims) were actually Islamicized Greeks, and as Bosniaks were labelled “Turks” by their Serbian nationalist foes in spite of their Slavic background.

In my article on “The Persian Manuscripts of the late Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler, K.C.I.E.”, published in the JRAS. of October, 1917, pp. 657–94, brief mention was made (on p. 672) of a book entitled Silsilatu'n-Nasdb-i-Ṣafawiyya, on the genealogy and history of the Ṣafawís. I can find no notice of another copy, and as the work is of considerable interest and importance, I think that a somewhat fuller account of its scope and contents may be acceptable to students of Persian history.

1. In India, perhaps as much as in any linguistic area, we are faced with an extensive mixture of dialects from the earliest times. The conditions have seldom been such as make for the evolution of a number of sharply differentiated languages. Constant invasions, the movements of great armies, the attraction of vast crowds of pilgrims from distant parts to centres of religious worship, the far wanderings of innumerable ascetics, the influence on illiterate peoples of travelling bards, the absence in the great plains of the north at least of pronounced natural boundaries, the continual interplay of kingdom with kingdom, a district being now in this political area now in that—these conditions have all made for widespread borrowings in language, the extension of common linguistic changes over large areas and the formation of common mixed languages, of which modern Hindōstānī, spoken and understood in varying degree over the whole of northern and central India, is an excellent example.

The publication of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles's The History of Java in 1817 marked a new sophistication in the recording of British experiences of the island. Providing a depth of analysis and breadth of subject matter, Raffles's publication was not the fairly simplistic diaristic account of adventure and opinion that had characterised many earlier British publications on Southeast Asia, but a highly detailed, minutely observed and handsomely illustrated study.

There are many stories connected with the decipherment of ancient writings and the recovery of forgotten languages, but these stories need not be retold here. Furthermore, they usually deal only with the discovery of the key, that brief moment of insight when some datum is arrived at, which when inserted causes the rest of the puzzle to fall into place. But what we are interested in here is the tremendous amount of work, routine but necessary, which precedes that moment and makes the decipherment possible, and the even more tremendous amount of work which follows that moment and results in the recovery of the language.