When Khaybar was conquered by Muhammad, the Jews of Fadak also submitted to him and concluded an agreement to hand over half the produce. Unlike the case of Khaybar, Fadak was not acquired by force of the muslims, so Muhammad owned its produce and used at his discretion. But, in the absence of reliable sources, Prophet's historical conducts remain guesses. Baladhuri and Waqidi deal with this treaty in their works, in which the Jews of Fadak gave up half of their lands. But this opinion must be held from the theory of sulh afterwards.
On the death of the Prophet, Fatima asked Abu Bakr about her share in her father's inheritance claiming that Fadak was one of the sadaqat presented by the Prophet. Subsequently, Fadak became an object of the dispute among the schools of law or between Sunnis and Shi'ites. 'Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun, who took pro-shi'ite policy, judged this problem and returned the land of Fadak to the 'Alids.
Sunni and shi'ite hadith show the different view in regard to the sadaqa, the inheritance of the Prophet. In the shi'ite view, Fatima has become inheritor of the Prophet, and the use of his sadaqa is permissible for the family of the Prophet. But the Sunnis concluded that the Prophet didn't leave inheritance, and what he left became sadaqa as the public interest of the muslims, rejecting the use of sadaqa by the family of the Prophet.

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al-Thughur al-Shimiya was western part of the Arabo-Byzantine borderland, along the Taurus and the Amanus Mountains. In the early Islamic period, when the Byzantines were obliged to withdraw from Syria to Anatolia, towns and fortresses in this region was destructed and its inhabitants evacuated with Byzantine army. Then this region remained devastated as a buffer zone between the Byzantine and the Muslim territories. The project of reconstruction of this region by the hands of the Muslims began from the second half of the Umayyad period, and the 'Abbasids succeeded it. As a result of the efforts of them, al-Thughur al-Shamlya was reestablished as the Muslim territory. Then, the Muslims planed to expand their sphere to the region behind the Taurus Mountains. But soon they give up this attempt, and the Arabo-Byzantine border once was stabilized on the line along the Taurus Mountains. After that, al-Thughur al-Shamiya became one of the most prosperous Muslim districts, not only as a outpost of the Muslim expeditions to the Byzantine territory but as a commercial and cultural center of the Muslims. This article aims to trace a history of reconstruction of this region and reexamine some characteristics of it, from a view point of the expansion of the Muslim territory and the extend of Islamization in the Middle East.
As a border area, political and military predominance of the Muslims in this region did not establish swiftly as compared with other districts in the Middle East, and Muslim rule had been threatened by Byzantine reactions to recover there. The vulnerability of this region resulted in a great excess of expenditure, which needed to be compensated by help of the central government and booty or other gains from the expeditions. In result, it can be said that Muslim community had not been stabilized in al-Thughur al-Shamiya, and Islamization of this region were superficial. Thus, when the 'Abbassid dynasty became declined and Muslim hegemony was weakened in general, this region soon was reconquered by the Byzantines and all of the Muslim settlements were abandoned.

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In the days of the Roman Empire, several Near Eastern deities were worshipped, among them being Mithras who was originally a Persian god. During the Hellenistic period, when Mithras was in Asia Minor, he met Cybele, a native mother goddess who possessed great fame.
According to F. Cumont, Mithras was identified with Attis, a god of vegetation, who assumed the role as a young lover of Cybele. Thus, it was possible for the Mithras and Cybele sects to become friendly with each other with this cordial relationship continuing throughout the period of the Roman Empire until the triumph of Christianity.
Over the years, Cumont's theory has been accepted by others including Graillot. However, all of Cumont's suppositions are mainly hypothetical and a new examination of materials shows that both sects were actually not on good terms with each other, although they were never antagonistic and opposed to each other's beliefs. Also, in a wider sense, many other Oriental deities —including Mithras and Cybele— were largely independent of each other.

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The Tehran Manuscript of the Jami' al-tavarikh (Kitabkhanah-i Majlis-i Shuray-i Milli, MS no. 2294) has so far been neglected in the scholarly world in general save in Japan where some scholars used the facsimile edition of this manuscript in their scholarly articles. This manuscript was, however, only partially utilized in them, and the true value of it remains unknown to the world.
This article intends to bring to light the unique features of this manuscript in comparison with other manuscripts such as Istanbul Manuscript (Revan Köškü 1518) and Paris Manuscript (Supplément persan 1113) and to prove that it is actually older and much more accurate manuscript of the Jami' al-tavarikh than the Istanbul Manuscript which has so far been considered to be the best and oldest manuscript of the same work.

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The aim of this paper is to examine linguistic characteristics of the inscriptions written in South Arabian alphabet and found in Ethiopia. They are first attestations of the language situation of pre-Aksumite Ethiopia.
A. J. Drewes has advanced his hypothesis concerning the language of those inscriptions. He divides them into two groups according to the linguistic differences they manifest. Group I, as he calls it, is written in more or less pure Sabaen, whereas the language of the group II has many characteristics of their own, and he thinks that they were written by native Ethiopians.
Our main purpose is try to describe linguistic features of the inscriptions in detail and find mutual relations of the features. Then we will proceed to investigate Drewes' hypothesis and demonstrate that the existence of group II can be ascertained and that the language was not used only for writing, but also for everyday use. They wrote their mother tongue which shared some characteristics with Geez.
This is to say that the native people was not under strong pressure of Sabaens, which fact is also supported by recent archaeological findings from the time when those inscriptions were drafted. Although it is certain that there was symbiosis of the Ethiopians and Sabaean immigrants, the latter was a minor group then.

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The purpose of this article is to clarify the banking and settlement of accounts on foreign trade in Tabriz in the Qajar period and thereby to find out where Iran should be placed in the world economy.
In the period when an Anglo-Greek merchant bank, Ralli Brothers, engaged in importing British cotton manufactures and exporting raw silk at Tabriz, there were closely-correlated flows of commodities among Iran (Tabriz), Russia (Odessa, the Caucasus), and Britain, Russian gold and silver coins being used in paymant for these flows of commodities.
Around the middle of 1860's, the silk exports dropped sharply owing to the muscadine disease. In addition, the country was hard hit by the great famine of 1870-71. As a result, many commercial houses, amongst others that of Ralli Brothers, were forced to withdraw from Iran. It was in this period that the references to the scarcity of money and the prohibition against the exportation of Iranian coin first attested in the series of British consulars' reports from Tabriz which this article is mainly based on. Therefore it may be inferred that the banking and settlement of accounts on foreign trade in Tabriz was at a turning point then.
Another turning point can be found around 1878. A British consul-general reported in August, 1879 that the scarcity of money had forced European merchants to import bar silver from England to Tabriz destined for the Imperial Mint at Tehran. In 1877 B. F. Pechan, an Austrian official, had arranged the Mint establishment at Tehran with modern machinary. The coinage was then reformed. In 1879 an Iranian merchant and banker, Hajj Mohammad Hasan-e Esfahani, was granted custodianship of the Mint. He soon flooded the country with copper coins.
After this second turning point, the scarcity of money still continued to be felt at Tabriz. Almost all the cash was in the hands of the sarrafs, or (petty) bankers. They frequently took an undue advantage of their position, inflicting heavy loss upon the commercial community of Tabriz.
The above-mentioned British consul-general expressed his expectation in his report for the year 1887-88 that a British overseas bank, New Oriental Bank Corporation, Ltd., scheduled to open a branch at Tabriz, would correct the commercial and financial deficiencies.

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