Ancient South Arabians had a tradition of worshipping stelae. A large number of stelae found in pre-Islamic tombs and temples sometimes have short inscriptions including names of the dedicants or deceased. Followed by these names, some of them include a word nfs. Words etymologically equivalent to nfs exist not only in other South-West Semitic languages but also in North-West Semitic languages. In the latter, the original meaning of npš, which is etymologically equivalent to South Arabic nfs, is “soul”, and in the middle of the first millennium B. C., npš came into use as a word which indicates “stelae” or “funeral monument”. In South Arabia, however, it is uncertain when this word began to be inscribed on stelae. By analyzing South Arabian inscriptions both containing nfs and connected with stelae this paper points out that it is not until Bedouins penetrated South Arabia that this word was adopted as indicating stelae.
As far as grammatical distinction is available, all these inscriptions are Sabaic in spite of the region. Most personal names on these inscriptions are attested in other South-West Semitic languages (Lihyanite, Safaitic, Thamudic) inscribed by Bedouins. The iconography of one of the stelae shows a man on horseback with a long lance driving a camel. Horses were not introduced into South Arabia before the first century A. D.. These facts show their close relations with Bedouins and also indicate that stelae connected with nfs came into use after the second century A. D., except in the Jawf region, where according to paleographical evidence stelae connected with nfs were used from the first century B. C. to the first century A. D. The Jawf region is in the northern part of South Arabia and was frequently invaded by Bedouins.
In the second century B. C. there was a change in Bedouin society in North Arabia, and Bedouins became very powerful and offensive. However, it was not until the second century A. D. that most of South Arabia was affected by this situation. The word nfs was used for stelae in the middle of the first millennium B. C. in North Arabia, but at that time in South Arabic nfs had nothing to do with stelae.
The word nfs seems to have been brought into South Arabia by the offensive Bedouins who adopted the npš-stela tradition of the sedentary people in North or East Arabia.

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Medieval Arabic books of culinary, hygiene and pharmacology indicate that there were at least nine different types of pasta at the time. The records also provide us with detailed information on shapes, production process, recipes, commercial production, and medical use of pastas, as well as when and where they were eaten under what circumstances, and how pasta dishes were received by people back then.
According to the definition in medieval books of hygiene and pharmacology, pastas in the medieval Islamic period were made from dough kneaded without adding yeast and then cooked in soup or boiled in hot water.
1) Itriya, rishta These noodle-type pastas were the most popular in the medieval Middle East. Itriya had been known in the Middle East since before Islam. A twelfth-century geographer al-Idrîsî says that Itriya was then manufactured in Sicily on industrial basis and was shipped to various regions along the Mediterranean coast. Rishta was served during banquets at the Mamluk court in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century Egypt, it was served as a special diet for the sick people.
2) Kuskus, fidâsh, muhammas, taltîn: These are the pastas from the Maghrib region. The first three are grain-like in shape, while taltîn is a pasta cut into small, thin square. Sha'îrîya is another kind of pasta shaped like barleycorn and was consumed only in Mashriq. Kuskus first appears in a book of culinary compiled in Mashriq in the mid-thirteenth century. A sixteenth century essay on cooking cites kuskus as one of the foods sold at al-sûq.
3) Tutumâj, shashaburk: These are the pastas from the Central Asia. In the Middle East, they make their first appearance in the books of culinary and pharmacology in the mid-thirteenth century. In China, two cooking books, both compiled in the mid-thirteenth century, carries a recipe of tutumâj, which is transliterated into Chinese as “_??__??__??__??_ or _??__??__??__??_ tu'tu'mashih.” It appears that the dish had been regarded exotic in both China and the Middle East. Tutumâj is a flat pasta with square or disc-like shape. Shashaburk is tutumâj stuffed with ground meat. They were both served with yogurt. According to a thirteenth century Arab pharmacologist al-Kursî, tutumâj is a loan word form Turkish.
Mention in Arabic records on kuskus, which is from the Maghrib, or tutumâj, which is from the Central Asia, suggests that there was a massive migration from these regions to the Middle East in the mid-thirteenth century.

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In this study definiteness is considered in view of information structures, especially giving weight to the notion of “familiarity.” We compare it with three other information structures: old- and new-information, theme and rheme, and reference. Through this comparison we find that the category of definiteness is independent from the other structures, although it correlates with them.
a) Old- and new-information is “already activated” and “unactivated” information in certain discourse but definiteness depends on a writer/speaker's assumptions.
b) Theme-rheme structure is strategy on the sentence level though definiteness is on the noun phrase level.
c) Referentiality means how a noun phrase refers (or does not refer) to an entity, though definiteness is the relation between a noun phrase and what it refers to.
Then, this paper analyses the Egyptian short play 'Arafa Kayfa Yamutu by T. al-Hakim to show how definite noun phrases are used in discourse, and we found that the following features decide the usage of definite noun phrases:
1) how much the speaker feels convinced of an issue, and
2) how much the speaker puts importance on the object.
The result tells us that the structure of definiteness and indefiniteness is not only defined through hearers' or readers' state, but also that definiteness can be employed actively or subjectively by the speaker/writer. Definiteness is one independent information structure and a device which can be used actively by writers/speakers to send their message to others.

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Wilayat-i Faqih (henceforth, WF) as a doctrine justifying the rulership of a faqih was developed almost single-handedly by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989) during his exile in Najaf. This doctrine constituted the core of his revolutionary call for the establishment of an Islamic polity by the clerics. After the victory of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the adoption of a constitution incorporating the doctrine of WF, the claim that a faqih as “wali-yi amr” has the God-given right to rule the society and that the people must give obedience to him became a matter of real-world significance. This led not only to the heightened efforts to promote the doctrine but also to further theorization and the resultant different interpretations.
The key question then became: by whose sanction is the faqih entitled to such commanding authority? On this question (which is technically called the issue of mansha'-i mashru'iyat-i WF), two opposing views were developed among the disciple-followers of Imam Khomeini. They were the intisabi (or mashru'iyat-i ilahi-yi bila-wasitah) view on the one hand, and the intikhabi (or mashru'iyat-i ilahi-mardumi) one on the other, and it was the former that has prevailed.
The purpose of this article is two-fold: first to examine the original doctrine of WF as advocated by Ayatollah Khomeini in Najaf in the early years of the 1970s; then to examine the two opposing views —-intisabi and intikhabi— on the source of the legitimacy of WF which were developed in Iran after the establishment of the Islamic Republic there. The article ends with some comparison and critical analysis of the two views.

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In the Ur III period, the network of canals and rivers was expanded through the territory from Ur and Uruk in the south to Babylon and Sippar in the north. There are many records of transportation by ship in the Ur III Umma economic texts. This brief paper shows that there were three different functionaries engaged in the management of ships and ship operations. 1) A man appearing as DUB PN in the records of transportation by ship dealt with the laborforce (gurus). 2) A man appearing as gir₃ PN was responsible for the management of cargo on board. 3) A man appearing as ma₂-lah₄ had the duty of maintaining and repairing boats.

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Das weit bekannte Ersatzkönigsritual im alten Mesopotamien steht im engen Zusammenhang mit dem Ersatzritual, das der Beschwörer (ašipu) alltäglich durchgeführt hat. Das letztere Ersatzritual ist bisher nicht gründlich untersucht worden, während das Ersatzkönigsritual von mehreren Fachforschern aufgemerkt wurde. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz lege ich zuerst einen Abriß des Ersatzrituals vor, dann stelle ich die Problematik über das Ersatzritual zusammen.
Im Kap. I werden die als “Ersatz” übersetzten akkadischen und sumerischen Wörter, puhu, (an) di/unanu, nigsagilû und níg-sag-íl analysiert. Im Kap. II werden die keilschrifttextlichen Materialien zum Ersatzritual, soweit mir bekannt ist, angeführt. Dabei fasse ich besonders ins Auge, was das große Ritual ist, in dem das Ersatzritual eingeordnet wird, und was als Ersatz vorbereitet wird. Im Kap. III werden die folgenden Verläufe des Ersatzrituals analysiert: 1) Der Kranke, für den das Ritual durchgeführt wird, wäscht sich die Hände über dem Ersatztier/-bild oder legt sich mit dem Ersatztier/-bild ins Bett. 2) Es wird vor Šamaš und/oder dem Ersatztier/-bild erklärt, daß gerade das Tier oder das Bild als Ersatz für den Kranken vorbereitet wird. 3) Das Ersatztier/-bild wird begraben oder in den Fluß hingeworfen. Im Kap. IV wird dann die Logik, die das Ersatzritual konstituiert, betrachtet. Zum Schluß im Kap. V werden die noch ungelöste Probleme über das Ersatzritual zusammengestelltf

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According to Ibn Khaldun's the Muqqadima, “A sovereign's privileged symbol is his special paraphernalia. There is flag raising, beating of the drums and the blowing of trumpets and horns.” In a broad sense, nawba is the term used to designate a military musical band, but their early instruments were only drums. In other words, “beating drums” can replace nawba.
The research in medieval Islamic studies has tended to emphasize not nawba but khutba (the address from the minbar in the mosque) and sikka (coinage). This brief article aims at analyzing chronologically the formation and the development of nawba from the Buwayhid to the Saljuqid period.
According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam (New Edition), nawba has the purpose to announce the prayer time by beating a drum in the gateways of governor's palaces and residences. Under the 'Abbasid dynasty, only the caliph had this privilege. In 945 (or 946), when the Buwayhid's sovereign Ahmad (later his title is Mu'izz al-Dawla, d. 967) entered Baghdad, the capital of the 'Abbasid Caliphate, he demanded that drums be beaten in the palaces. As a result, the privilege of nawba was granted to Mu'izz al-Dawla, in the form of the three-fold nawba, excepting madina al-salam (Baghdad). The Buwayhid's sovereigns, that is amir al-umara', bestowed the right of nawba on his subjects, and this nawba became the custom after the Adud al-Dawla (d. 982) period.
In 1055, when the Saljuqid's sovereign Tughril-Bek (d. 1063) entered Baghdad, the Caliph bestowed the drum and trumpet upon him. With changes in the times, this right was granted to subjects. They freely beat their drums in the gateways of their residences or military tents to declare control over their domains. After that, in Persian the five-fold nawba (panj nowbat) came to mean insistence upon kingship.
In this way, during the medieval Islamic period, the nawba was an important factor in considering kingship.

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Kitab al-naqd is a polemic work that Imami-Shi'i 'Abd al-Jalil Qazvini refutes the Sunni contender's accusations against Imami-Shi'i with almost word-for-word quotes from those accusations. It has been valued for the information about religious situations around Ray in the first half of the 12th century. Because of its polemical nature, however, its usability as a historical source has been questioned. The present paper intends to examine the logical framework of this text in order to get better position to evaluate it as a historical source. By “the logical framework” I mean each contender's standpoint and the structure of his way of thinking.
Each contender brings forwards his arguments emphasizing advantageous aspects for him in the complicated situations of conflicts and alliances among several sects and schools (legal and theological) of both Sunni and Shi'i sides in Ray, as it follows.
The arguments of the Sunni contender are based on the premise that the religious conflict in Ray exists only between “Sunni” and “Imami-Shi'i” . But 'Abd al-Jalil refers to another opposition between “Usuli” and “Jabli” sects to refute the above premise. “Usuli” is a subsect of Imami-Shi'i sect and “Jabri” is one of the Sunni. He insists that “Usuli” to which he belongs is prevalent and in good term with the Saljuq, while “Jabri”, which practically means Ash'ari theological school, is a minority and the Sunni author belongs to this sect. This insistence is based on the suppression of Ash'ari school by the Saljuq since 537/1142-3. 'Abd al-Jalil emphasizes that “Usuli” endorses the theological viewpoint of the Saljuq and opposes to that of Ash'ari school. Thus he stresses the legitimacy of “Usali” depending on the power of the Saljuq state.

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Husayn Karbala'i's Rawdat al-ginan wa-gannat al-ganan, a handbook of mausolea in Tabriz, contains a letter written by ‘Ala’ al-dawla Simnani (d. 736/1336), an Iranian Sufi in Ilkhanid period. I present here Japanese translation of the letter and commentary on it.
The letter, which is addressed to a mawlana of Tabriz, deals with ahl al-bayt. It seems to have been written in later Ilkhanid period and undoubtedly reflects the social confusion brought about by Ilkhan Ölgäitü's conversion to Shi'ism. Other sources also suggest Simnani's great interest in the problem. In the letter Simnani recommends veneration of ahl al-bayt independently of Shi'ism. But in those days his neutral position wasn't accepted and he was compelled to hide his favor of ahl al-bayt. This letter shows us an example of the public recognition of veneration of ahl al-bayt and has value as a source for study of the relationship between veneration of ahl al-bayt and Shi'ism.

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The Qur'an's story of Yusuf (=Joseph; Surah 12), parallel to the Joseph story in the Bible (Genesis 37-50), is said to be the best (or the most beautiful) of all stories (Ahsan al-qasas), It was elaborated in the post-Qura'nic legend, that is, Hadith, “tafsir (exegesis)”, Qisas al-Anbiya' (tales of the Prophets), etc., and became one of the favorite subject matters particularly in Persian poetry. There are many works entitled Yusuf u Zulaykha (=Potiphar's wife) in it, of which the most estimated is a fifteenth century prominent mystical poet, 'Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492)'s.
In addition to these independent works of Yusuf u Zulaykha, many Persian poets made the most of this story as edifying anecdote in their poetical works, for instance, Farid al-Din 'Attar (d. ca. 1221)'s Mantiq al-Tayr, Sa'di Shirazi (d. 1292)'s Bustan (Sa'di-nameh), and so forth.
From the folkloristic point of view, as Shalom Goldman states in The Wiles of Women/The Wiles of Men (1995), the Yusuf story consists of three motifs: “Potiphar's Wife motif”, “the motif of the Wise Man as Saviour”, and “the motif of the Young Man Triumphant”. When we examine the development of the Yusuf story in Persian literature, “Potiphar's Wife motif” is the most important of the three. Because a lot of Persian poets such as 'Attar, Jami, took up this motif in their works by preference as stated above.
In this paper is examined the development of the “Potiphar's Wife motif” as a significant part of the Yusuf story and her image in Persian literature. As to the image of Potiphar's Wife, she is usually described as a wicked woman in many narratives that deal with this motif. But for most of the Persian poets she isn't the like of it. Her passionate love for Yusuf is rewarded on account of its strength, and through the power of repentance she becomes “a blessed woman” in the end.

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