Of the poems of boasting ascribed to Hassan b. Thabit, 16 are found on investigation to be by later Ansarls and reflect the inferior status to which the Ansar in general were reduced after the battle of al-Harra and the sack of Madina in the year A.H. 63, as well as, occasionally, the tribal rivalries which prevailed during the Umayyad period.

In the course of their expansion into Central Asia the Muslims came into contact with Turks, either settled and Iranized or else nomadic and marauding in their mode of life. As early as the time of the Caliph ‘Uthmān, when the conquest of Khurāsān was barely complete, there were, according to the historical sources, a number of incursions by Turkish nomads into that province in the neighbourhood of Marw and even as far as Nīshāpūr. Under the Umayyads, however, the Muslims came into direct contact with both the Western and the Northern Turkish states. In the period 86–96/705–15, under Qutaiba b. Muslim, the famous Umayyad governor, the Muslims won their first important victory over the Western Turks. Under Naṣr b. Sayyār, in the year 121/738–9, the Muslims broke the power of the Western Turks by defeating the dominant group amongst them, that of the TürgeshKhāqāns. The empire of the Northern Turks was destined to come to an end shortly afterwards in the year 744.

On several occasions in his writings Ibn Sīnā discusses the problem of destiny (al-qadar), by which he means primarily the problem of reconciling the divine determination of human acts and characters with the rewards and punishments of the after-life, in such a way as to safeguard God's justice to man. This aspect of the problem of theodicy had arisen long before his time out of statements of the Qur'ān and Traditions, and had been settled in their own fashions by Mu'tazilite and predestinarian theologians. Ibn Slna as a philosopher could hardly avoid offering a solution, if only to satisfy the doubts of his Muslim public; but he goes beyond a perfunctory answer, and seems to show a genuine interest in finding an intellectually convincing solution consistent with his own philosophy.

Brockelmann mentions once a certain Shams al-Dịn Abụ Thạbit Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Malik al-Dailamị as author of a treatise entitled Mir'ạt al-arwạh wa-sụrat al-aujạh, 'Erläuterung einer Figur, welche die Einteilung der Welt nach den Vorstellungen der Sîfîs von der hîchsten Region 'îlam al haira wal ‘ilm al maǵhûl bis zur tiefsten mahall aš šaitîn taht al ard darstellt’.1 The unique copy of this curious work is preserved in Gotha; and W. Pertsch when cataloguing it, having seen the entry in Hạjjị Khalịfa in which it is stated that this al-Dailamị composed al-Jam ‘bain al-tauhid wa’l-ta'zim during the year 899 (1493),2 very reasonably gave that date as his floruit. In this Brockelmann duly followed Pertsch.

The story of Yạhyā b. Zayd (in full, Yahyā b. Zayd b. 'Alī b. al-Husayn b. 'Alī b. Abī Ṭalīb) forms a well-known episode in the history of the closing years of the Umayyad Caliphate. The insurrection of Yaḥyā was in many respects a forerunner of the final rising under the 'Abbāsid emissary Abū Muslim, by which Umayyad government in Khurāsān was overthrown. The fullest early description of this episode is that given by the historian al-Ṭabarī in his account of the events of the year 125/742-3. After the rebellion and death of his father Zayd at Kūfa in 122/739–40, the young Yaḥyā had fled from Iraq with a few companions to Khurāsān. At Balkh he lived concealed under the protection of a man named al-ḥuraysh b. 'Amr. Eventually 'Uqayl b. Ma'qil, the prefect of the town for the Umayyad government, received instructions to track down the fugitive.

No Ottoman institution has aroused more bitter criticism than the devshirme the ‘tribute of blood’, especially—and naturally—among those Christian peoples whose forebears were subjected to it; and at the same time none touches on so many fundamental problems. Dr. Basilike Papoulia, bringing together the Western and oriental sources and submitting them to a close and careful analysis, has now presented the first full discussion of its origin and its character. The scope of her study appears already in the definition with which she begins and ends it, that the devshirme devshirme was ‘the forcible removal, in the form of a tribute, of children of the Christian subjects from their ethnic, religious, and cultural environment and their transplantation into the Turkish-Islamic environment with the aim of employing them in the service of the Palace, the army, and the state, whereby they were on the one hand to serve the Sulṭān as slaves and freedmen and on the other to form the ruling class of the State’.

1.1.1. It has been said that ‘the interrelation of language and other aspects of culture is so close that no part of the culture of a particular group canproperly be studied without reference to the linguistic symbols in use’.1 One manifestation of cultural change in the language is seen in ‘linguisticborrowing’, which, both as a general linguistic and cultural phenomenon, andas a process related to particular languages, has attracted the attention of a great number of scholars, including many linguists.2

Between October 1963 and August 1964 the writer was engaged in linguistic field-work in the Cairns Rain Forest of North Queensland, while employed as Research Officer by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Intensive studies were made of the Dyirbal, Giramay, and Mamu languages, and linguistic descriptions of these languages are at present being prepared for publication. In 1942 Tindale had mentioned a language that he called ‘Barbaram’, spoken on top of the Dividing Range about 70 miles inland from Cairns. Entirely on the basis of the 11 words Tindale quoted, it seems, Mbabaram acquired a reputation of mystery, and has been singled out as one of the two Australian languages which seem least able to be fitted into the linguistic pattern of the continent. Recent work by Hale on 30 Cape York languages seemed to emphasize the possible uniqueness of Mbabaram.

The following schedule of an inheritance was discovered by me in 1962 when, by courtesy of the Kano Native Authority, I was carrying out a survey of manuscripts contained in the Library of the Shahuci Judicial School, Kano. In the course of my searches I unearthed from the back of a cupboard a bundle of miscellaneous papers. On examination these proved to consist largely of single folios of Arabic, Fula, and Hausa MSS displaced from their contexts. Scattered among them, however, were a number of sheets which appeared to be taxation returns; lists of booty; household accounts of the palace; fragments of prayers, wirds, Qur'anic charms and the like. Among them was this incomplete schedule of an estate.

In a recent paper on tone-marking systems employed during the last hundred years in African language studies, Professor Tucker has referred incidentally to parallel developments in Chinese language studies. The present note, offered as a footnote to Professor Tucker's paper, documents recognition, early in the nineteenth century, that Chinese and a number of African languages have in common the feature of semantic tone.