There is a good deal that is tantalizing and rather sad about the life and work of G. H. Luce who has a claim to be considered the most distinguished British scholar to explore Burma's past, with only Sir Arthur Phayre as his peer. Both were pioneers. Both explored Burma's history with deep sympathy and insight. Phayre left as his monument a complete history from the earliest times to the British occupation. In certain respects, for example in his scheme of periodization, this remains the model for his successors. Luce produced a corpus of specialized studies which greatly extended knowledge of the sources of Burma's early medieval history and the details of its infrastructure - far beyond the range of Phayre's researches. Yet he did not nurture his work to full fruition.

The two letters which form the subject of this short paper have come into my possession as part of the Amharic documents left by the noted Orientalist Eugen Mittwoch (1876–1942) and generously passed on to me by his widow (since deceased) and his daughters (who now occupy senior academic posts at University College, London, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, respectively).

The history of early settlement of the East African coast is currently interpreted in widely differing ways. One view takes as its premise the idea that the coast was first colonized from Asia. This hypothesis, which has its roots in the work of XlXth century historians suggests that there was substantial settlement by non-Africans who established trading and religious communities. These colonies formed the basis of what has come to be known as the Swahili Culture. At first defensible peninsulas and offshore islands were chosen as safe refuges from the African tribes of the interior. Eventually contact was established between these new communities and the African coastal peoples, to the benefit of both parties. Raw materials were obtained from the hinterland of these trading outposts, which were traded and taken across the Western Indian Ocean on the seasonal monsoons. The foreign merchants married local African women and an Afro-Arab culture developed, building stone towns, mosques, and tombs, that still remain today along the coastline from Somalia to Mozambique.

The study of decorated glassware from the early Islamic period hinges very largely on the classification and dating of fragments, since few complete vessels have survived. Perhaps for this reason the subject, though full of interest for the glass historian, has received rather scant attention in the literature. The purpose of this article is to suggest that surviving examples of painted lustre glass from this period enable us to identify several ways in which manuscript models were used by glass craftsmen in the sphere of early Islam.

“If all you have to tell us is that one barbarian succeeded another barbarian on the banks of the Oxus or Jaxartes, what benefit have you conferred on the public?” Voltaire's question is an awkward one for anyone investigating the transmission and distribution of power in the XVth century Circassian Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria. Even so the question of factionalism and its role in succession crises and other crises in the history of the Islamic lands has to be tackled, for surely the prevalence of factions in the Near East and our lack of understanding of them does add a certain patina of dullness to much of Islamic history. Faction succeeds to faction as “Amurath to Amurath”, and though Macaulay could find the history of England and its latter part, the struggle of Whig and Tory, to be “emphatically the history of progress”, few people have felt similarly confident about the struggle of Ẓāhirī and Manṣūrī factions in medieval Egypt. It is hard to understand past events without imposing a pattern, and at the political level the gyrations of Egyptian factions do not lend themselves easily to the imposition of pattern.

A visit in October–November 1985 to northern Pakistan provided me with the chance of observing and recording certain types of village grave. Since enquiries revealed that some types are no longer being constructed, and some of the most interesting graves are falling into decay, it seems appropriate to publish these fragmentary observations in the hope that awareness may be stimulated, and that other and more leisured travellers may be able to make more detailed observations while the material is still available.