The purpose of this paper is to analyze the constitutional plan of Namik Kemal (1840-1888), one of the most active members of the Young Ottomans who sought constitutional government. Kemal presented his ideas in an article entitled Usul-i Mesveret (the system of consultation, i.e. constitutional representative government), in the newspaper Hurriyyet (Freedom, 1868-1870). Previous research on the Young Ottoman movement have focused on its political and social thought. Here, however, author focuses on the relationship between the constitutional plan of the Young Ottomans and the reform policies of the Ottoman government, taking into accout the Islamic tendencies of the Young Ottomans within the social context of the Empire. The establishment of Sura-yi Devlet (the Council of State) in 1868 was one of the most important moments for the Young Ottoman movement. According to the Sultan's inauguration speech regarding the Council of State, written in Ottoman Turkish, which has seldom been decoded in the research to date, the Council was established based on the principle of the separation of powers, to secure the rights and freedom of all the people in the Ottoman Empire and to maintain the integrity of the state. Namik Kemal criticized this idea, and asserted the execution of reforms based on the principle of Seri'at (Islamic law) and the introduction of representative government. He further asserted the superiority of Islamic law over the constitution and justified the introduction of Western political systems. He also presented his perspectives on constitutional representative government in the Ottoman Empire based on the Constitution of France under the Second Empire. One of the focal points in Kemal's plan was representatives in the national assembly. Although he accepted the suffrage of nonMuslim people in view of maintaining the integrity of the state, he stressed that Muslims should have the initiative in the national assembly. He thought vatan (the fatherland) of all Ottomans was the Ottoman Empire as an Islamic state. The author coneludes that Namik Kemal proposed the constitutional assembly as a forum of representatives elected by the Ottoman nation under the condition that the initiative in the assembly would be in the hands of Muslims, who formed the majority in the Empire.

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Egypt saw a great expansion in the popularity of the local custom of brother-sister marriage during the first two centuries of the AD era, especially among metropolites, a privileged class in the Roman province. Why did this custom unfamiliar to the Romans flourish under Roman rule? How did the practice of sibling marriage function in Romano-Egyptian society? These are the questions this article addresses. Previous scholarship has attributed the reason for such popularity to the introduction of a rigid status system, under which provincial elites needed to prove their ancestry in order to acquire privileged status. Sibling marriage allegedly made the proof easier. However, another perspective is worth considering; that is, the economic function of brother-sister marriage. While scholars have admitted that sibling marriage contributed towards preventing the fragmentation of family property, this function has not been sufficiently explored in the historical context of the transition from Ptolemaic to Roman society. The question to be asked is how the significance of family property changed. Changes in the local administrative system and their effect on the economic situation of the provincials, especially their land holding system, stand out as particularly suggestive. Rome's rule over her empire depended not on a highly centralised bureaucracy down to the lowest level of local administration (like that of Ptolemaic Egypt), but on indirect control through cities, and especially their wealthy elites. When Egypt was made a Roman province, therefore, the Romans set out to create there a wealthy elite class by legitimating and expanding the private ownership of land. While these landowners had fiscal privileges and relatively large properties, they were expected to expend their wealth on local administration. They needed to be keenly concerned about the management of their property, in order to leave their offspring enough to perform the public services which accompanied their status. In terms of the motivation for brother-sister marriage, what needs most emphasis is women's acquisition of land as the result of its privatisation. Although some provincial families tried to limit women's acquisition of land through inheritance or dowry, it seems that, nevertheless, landholding by women considerably increased. Brother-sister marriage was an effective method to prevent fragmentation of family property in this situation of a significant increase of property coming into the possession of women. The Roman policy of governing the province indirectly was therefore responsible for the expansion of the local custom of brother-sister marriage. This article shows the complexity of the impact of Roman rule on a society and how the history of a local, non-Roman, custom also became part of the process of "Romanisation."

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This article discusses the policy towards the aristocracy adopted by the fourth shogun of the Muromachi Bakufu, Ashikaga Yoshimochi. The research done in the past regarding Yoshimochi tends to emphasize differences, even a clean break, with his father Yoshimitsu. Recently, however, there has been a shift or sorts towards continuation and similarity between the two shoguns. In the present article, the author argues that both similarities and differences could have existed between the two at the same time, and from that point of view attempts to identify what the son chose to inherit from his father and what he did not. Before his renunciation of the world (shukke 出家), Yoshimitsu always followed a personal regimen modeled after the precedents set by the Fujiwara imperial regents. On the other hand, he also took on duties never assumed by the Fujiwaras, such as director (Naiben 内弁) of the enthronement ceremony and a performer at imperial outings. Before entering the Buddhist priesthood, he put his headship of the Ashikaga family on a par with the heads of the five regent families, and when he did renounce the world, he put himself on a par with the similarly tonsured retired emperor. A member of the regency before his renunciation, a quasi-retired emperor after. Yoshimochi, on the other hand, did follow in his father's footsteps in representing the regency on various occasions, however, unlike his father he did not get involved in directing the enthronement ceremony nor performing before the emperor. In other words, he used the precedents set by his father only in establishing himself as an equal to the Fujiwara regents.

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