Ever since the establishment of the Fatimid empire in the early part of the 10th century of the Christian era the origin of its rulers has been the subject of incessant discussion and polemics. This was, for the people of the time, no idle academic question, but one of immediate political importance. The defenders of the declining Abbasid state went to great lengths to discredit the rulers of the dynamic rival caliphate in the West, denouncing them not only as rebels and heretics, but also as impudent swindlers falsely claiming to belong to the house of the Prophet, while they were in reality the offspring of one Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ. The Fatimid rulers, for their part, maintained all along that they did indeed belong to the family of Muḥammad, and traced their lineage, at least from the middle of the 10th century onwards, to Ismā‘īl, the second son and, it was claimed, only legitimate successor of the famous Shi‘ite leader Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq, the great-grandson of ‘All and of Fāṭimah, the Prophet's daughter. The Ismaili descent of these rulers became a matter of faith for their partisans, who survive to the present day, in various branches, proudly identifying themselves precisely as “Ismailis”. Historians, whether in the Muslim world or, later, in the West, have taken sides in this ancient dispute, which flares up again from time to time, often with astonishing ferocity.

Heraldry — that is the systematic use of hereditary charges based upon the shield — had not come into being by 1095, the year of the Council of Clermont, but by 1300 the new science of Armory, as it is more correctly called, was in use throughout most of Christendom. The authors of the Chansons de Geste and historians such as Ambroise certainly mention heraldic devices on the banners and shields of both Western knights and Saracen amīrs, but their confused statements, although extremely illuminating as to Western views of Muslims, do not add a great deal to our study of contemporary heraldic practice. Their lowly position in the Crusading armies did not offer them many chances for really accurate observation. However, Jean, Sire de Joinville, who is dictating in about 1305/6 his account of events he had not only witnessed but in which he had played an important part in his youth, had been very close to the King and lived during the very period when Heraldry in the West became formalized on strictly controlled principles. He is a reliable historical observer, and it may well be that by examining specific statements he makes about both Western, and more importantly Muslim, heraldic practice we can further our knowledge of developments in the two systems.

Anyone glancing casually at this book, weighing as it does nearly 3 kg., with a very attractive dust-jacket, 48 pages of illustrations in colour, and a vast number in black-and-white, besides various maps, might be forgiven for assuming that it was yet another of the many coffee-table productions purporting to display the arts and architecture of Islam. In fact the text is of great interest to scholars in many branches of oriental research and it is one of the most important books about Arabia ever to have been published. Until recently most contributions to our knowledge of the country were made either by untravelled scholars in the West, or by travellers who, even if they spoke the language well, could not, or did not, read the chronicles and other writings, legal, descriptive and poetical, which contain relevant information. Indeed, many of the works to which we can now refer have been published, or even become known, only in the last few decades. The older travellers could not command the literary evidence in the way that Serjeant does. Hugh Scott, for example, wrote an excellent book about the Yemen. He was a meticulous observer with varied accomplishments and wide interests, but he spoke only a few words of Arabic and could not read it at all.

The controversy between White and Black Jews at Cochin still aroused bitter passion and partisanship a generation ago; now it belongs to history. Today fewer than fifty Jews and Jewesses remain in Kerala, scattered between Cochin itself and Mattancherry, Ernakulam and Parur. The rest of this historic and influential community have emigrated from India, most of them to Israel. It may, then, be not inopportune to offer a fresh analysis of this celebrated affair. In its principal features it was, I hope to establish, peculiar to India. Nowhere else could hereditary distinctions between the two sections of a single Jewish community have been rigidly maintained for centuries, including tabus on intermarriage and on free association on religious and social occasions. Now the old antipathies between White and Black have abated, as their protagonists are divorced from India. The sources and progress of the dispute may be analysed withour rancour.

The monument at Pl I, until recently called the “Allahabad-Kosam” pillar and attributed to Aśoka, is now known to have been erected before Aśoka came to the throne in 272 B.C. We also know with certainty that its original emblem had been – not a lion, as previously supposed – but the bull of pre-Buddhist, brahmanical religion. Moreover, there is no longer any reason to suppose that it had not always held a position overlooking the confluence of the two sacred rivers, the Gaṇgā and the Yamunā, otherwise known as “the holiest site in India”.