In an article published some 12 years ago, the present writer proposed a location in Iran for the lost Parthian capital named by the Greeks Hecatompylos. This site, called in later days Shahr-i Qūmis, had been located with the help of references given by Apollodorus of Artemita (apud Strabo XI, 9, 1). These describe the Caspian Gates as located 500 stades from the city of Rhagae (modern Ray), and Hecatompylos as a further 1,260 stades beyond the Gates. Since the sites of the first two locations are known, the actual distance of 82 km.

One of the larger, and probably the least well-known collections of oriental manuscripts, printed books and other two-dimensional material in the United Kingdom (and possibly in Europe) is to be found in the library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. The collection includes over 10,000 manuscripts, some 900 written on palm leaves, and others on paper, metal, leather and ivory. There are about 3,000 books printed in oriental scripts, prints, drawings, paintings, and items of photographic material. Over 30 languages are represented in the collection.

Interpretations of various anatomical and pathological terms have been given previously, and further examples from cuneiform texts are to be discussed in this article.

The archeological discoveries made on the territory of Bactria – one of the largest states formed in antiquity, which united in a single historical and cultural region the lands of the modern Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, together with Afghanistan – can be divided into three stages.

The first episode to create a world sensation opened with the chance find in 1877 of the Oxus Treasure, which contained 200 Achaemenid gold and silver objects of high artistic quality, and some 1,500 coins. Then in 1963 came the discovery of the Graeco-Bactrian town of Ay Khanum in northern Afghanistan. Though this excavation is not yet complete, the French archeological mission has succeeded in defining the structural principles, the planning solutions, the relics of written culture, and the Greek way of life of the ancient city. That is to say, the essential of what is accessible to archeology and historical research. Some parallels to the Ay Khanum discoveries were yielded by excavations at Saksanokhur in south Tajikistan, where a palace-temple complex was uncovered. Finally came the third stage: the operations of the Soviet-Afghan expedition of 1979 that brough to light in the north of Afghanistan, near Shibarghan, at Tilla Tepe “the Golden Mound”, masterpieces of ancient jewellery of the 1st century B.C. to the 1st A.D., comprising 20,000 golden ornaments.

The year A.D. 1230 is one of the most decisive dates in the religious and political history of Eastern India. King Anaṅgabhīma of the Imperial Gaṅgas ritually dedicated his kingdom to the god Puruṣottamma-Jagannātha of Puri and acknowledged the divinity of Puri both as the sole state deity of Orissa and as his divine overlord. Henceforward Anaṅgabhīma and his successors claimed to rule under divine order (ādeśa) and as son (putra) and vassal (rāuta) of the Lord of Puri. It was most probably during the same year that Anaṅgabhīma introduced the deity Balabhadra into the present Jagannātha trinity of Puri. Thus the year 1230 marks both the establishment of the ideology of the Gajapati kingship of Orissa, and the final formation of the Jagannatha cult of Puri.

In January 1835, the General Committee of Public Instruction, the semiofficial body responsible for administering the Government of India's education funds, reported deep internal division over matters of principle. One group within the Committee, the orientalists, wanted to continue the existing policy of supporting traditional Indian learning, with the prospect of gradually engrafting European subject-matter upon it. Their opponents, the Anglicists, urged the substitution of Western for Eastern studies (with some safeguards for the latter) and the use of English as the principal language of instruction. Because the dispute was hampering all but the most routine activity, the Committee requested the government to settle the question.

The purpose of this note is to make known a remarkable, and hitherto unrecorded, drachma of Arab-Sasanian form, issued in the year 72/691–2 by the Governor of Sīstān 'Abd al-'Azīz b. 'Abdallāh b. 'Āmīr.

The momentous coinage reform of the Umayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik, begun in 77/696–7, was directed at removing all symbolism associated with the former Byzantine and Sasanian rule, and its replacement with a purely inscriptional coin-type, giving in Arabic the Muslim confession of faith, and various Qur'anic verses. These innovations were accompanied by the replacement of Greek in the western Muslim chanceries by the Arabic script and language. Similarly in the eastern provinces, Pahlavi was replaced by Arabic under the viceroyalty in Iraq of al-Ḥajjāj, appointed in 75/694–5. So far as the eastern coinages were concerned the change meant the disappearance of the Sasanian royal portrait from the obverse of the silver coinage; and of the fire altar ' symbol of Zoroastrianism ' from the reverse. The coin illustrated here (Pl. I, a, b - Foroughi Colin.) was struck several years before the commencement of the reform at Damascus, and anticipates it, so far as its reverse type is concerned, though still employing the Pahlavi script of the older tradition. As usual in dealing with a Pahlavi text, we give first facsimile, then transliteration, transcription and translation.

The organization of the nobility of the Indian Mughal Empire in numerical grades (manṣabs) is now generally recognized as one of the basic elements of its administrative and military structure. Equally general, perhaps, has been a recognition of the manṣab system's many complexities. However, by combining the information in Abu 'l-Faẓl's Ā'īn-i Akbarī with a number of 17th-century texts and documents, it has been possible to construct a tolerable picture of the working of the manṣab system during the 17th century. In many respects, the basic features were first delineated by Moreland and Abdul Aziz; but their views have been greatly refined, and often substantially revised, by M. Athar Ali and Irfan Habib. It is now accepted as beyond argument that by Akbar's death (1605), manṣab was explained in two numerical representations: the first, zāt, determined the holder's personal pay (ṭalab-i khāṣa) and status in the hierarchy; the second (sawār) indicated the number of horsemen to be maintained by the holder and set the amount sanctioned to cover their pay (ṭalab-i tābīnān). In each case, the rank-number was converted into monetary claims and military obligation by means of the schedules (dastūr al-'amals) in force at the time. The system undoubtedly gave to the Mughal nobility and military machine a high degree of uniformity and regularity in its functioning, which is likely to have contributed greatly to the stability and strength of the Empire.

Islam is often seen as playing only a minor role in pre-colonial Malay political life. J. M. Gullick, for instance, in his seminal work Indigenous political systems of Western Malaya concludes that Islam “was not to any significant extent a ‘state religion’”. The “chaplains of the more devout Sultans and chiefs”, he explains, “never attained any collective importance in the political system owing to the lack of organization”; there were “no Kathis (Muslim judges and registrars) until the era of British protection”; and no evidence exists that “Islamic legal doctrine” was “effective law”?

The significance of Chêng Ho's voyages (1405–1433) has usually been considered purely from the political point of view. In that connection he is noted as the Muslim eunuch who lived from A.D. 1371–1433, and commanded a force in support of the Yung-lo Emperor's seizure of the Ming throne. Thereafter, from 1405, he commanded half a dozen enormous fleets, which sailed to Southeast Asia, India, the Gulf, and eventually East Africa. In the legend of the overseas Chinese, he was ultimately deified as the Prince of the Three Gems.

The emphasis of the present paper is however economic. It attempts to analyse the way in which the pepper brought from overseas was distributed; and to evaluate the influence of the seven voyages of Cheng Ho on the opening of trade relations between China and Afro-Asian countries, and the increased circulation of foreign goods in the Chinese market at that time.