Iraq or ancient Mesopotamia is one of the richest treasuries of archaeology. From eighteenth century, inspiring by the Bible or religious faith many Europeans visited here and remained their account of the trip. It is, however, from 1899 of R. Koldeway's excavation of Babylon that a comprehensive and scientific archaeological survey begun to start. Since mid-twenties century there were continuously remarkable excavations held by many famous foreign archaeologists.
After independence of the kingdom of Iraq, there brought up several Iraqi archaeologists. During the World War II, these young archaeologists carried out the surveys of some sites on their own country. Tell Uquir, Deir, Aqar Quf, Hassuna are their brilliant achievements.
Survey of Tell as-Sawwan, “Mound of the Flints”, is one of the most important excavations recently held in Iraq. The site is located some ten kilometers south of Samarra on the eastern bank of the middle Tigris river. The site was first noted by Ernest Herzfeld in 1911. Operations carried out five seasons by Behnam Abu as-Soof and others under the auspices of Directerate General of Antiquity since 1964 and not finished until now.
There were five main building-levels and these were numbers I-V from the top downwards. The special feature identified on the site consists of an artificial ditch cut into the natural conglomerate underlying the mound, forming three sides of a square round the eastern side of mound B. It may be regarded of an early defensive system. The pottery is classified 1) coarse ware 2) semi-corase ware 3) fine ware 4) incised, painted, incised-painted ware. Top two levels belong to Samarran type and levels IV and V are Hassunan type. In level III the incised Hassuna ware becomes very popular, but this phase is transitional pierod from Hassuna to Samarra pottery. The most remarkable objects were ‘mother-goddess’ statuettes made of clay or creamy alabaster, using clearly as cult objects.
The significance of Tell as-Sawwan are as follows: 1) in view of Tell as-Sawwan's geographical position, there was a reasonable prospect of cultural contacts between northern and southern Iraq during the sixth millennium B. C. 2) The pottery discovered on the site corresponds fairly closely to the standard Hassuna-Samarra repetoire which is known from Hassuna itself, and the mixture in levels III and II showed that Hassunan type gradually replaced Samarran type without cultural interruption. This also indicates there was no abrupt change of population in the area during this period.
As excavation has not finished, it is impossible to describe full account of this site. But it may provide answers to several important problems of Mesopotamian prehistory after excavation finishes.

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In Islamic history, the practice of using slaves as soldiers plays an important role. The study of these slave soldiers hitherto has been done reflecting the model of the Mamluk army under the Mamluk dynasty. But there are many instances in the Abbasid period which do not stand up to the ones in the Mamluk period. We thereby need to reconsider the subject from the new point of view. Al-Mu'tasim, the eighth Abbasid Caliph, recruited a new army from various countries. This new army was composed of the following three regiments: (1)a slave army called al-Atrak, (2)al-Maghariba, including both slaves and freedmen, recruited from Egypt or other districts, and (3)an army made up of the rulers of some small districts in Ma Wara' An-Nahr and their people. Al-Atrak formed an independent unit from the other two regiments. But in spite of their being slaves, there is no evidence that they played a special role apart from the other two. Thus, we can say that al-Mu'tasim regarded al-Atrak as only one part of his new army, and he could not find any special meaning in the fact that they were slaves. To understand this character of al-Atrak, we must examine their situation after the death of al-Mu'tasim. First, we can point out their alternations of generations. Because of it, officers of the second generation became the army's leaders. Such exclusive interests, which resulted from the increasing power of influential officers, become fixed to some restricted families, and so they became ineffective as a caliphal army. The caliphs had lost the ability to control the political situation, for they had no system for buying other military slaves and no chance to form another army on their own. At the same time, under the influential officers, some special groups like ghulam, mawla, wuld, and hasham were formed as domestic groups. And they began to work as private military groups. These domestic groups also began to work as housekeeping groups, which looked after special interests of their masters, from estates and other possessions. As a result of this, these tendencies gave rise to a hierarchical gap between the influential officers and soldiers of al-Atrak who were called Dwellers of Karkh and Dwellers of Dur. These soldiers, displeased with their condition, severely criticized the exclusive landholdings and privileges of the officers, while al-Muwaffaq and his son, al-Mu'tadid, gained political power by employing of their own private military groups. Under the tendencies of increasingly large landholdings and the break up of the central army, these private military groups which were formed from domestic groups became more and more important. We must understand the establishment of a new army by al-Mu'tasim in relation to the formation of these groups, and the fact that the custom of using slaves as soldiers suddenly spread all over the Islamic world during this period must be, considered to have some relation to this formation.

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Screw concept is formed by observation of nature and by experience of lathe work in long period time. In this report, Tower of Babel, Manara in Samarra, Archimedes helical screw pump, spiral grooved column in Efesus, and etc are surveyed. Formation of screw concept is historically discussed.

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The Mandil is one of the elements which characterize the throne scene of the islamic art. The posture that the ruler himself has the Mandil in his hand appears only in the islamic throne scene.
The most common type of the representation of the Mandil in the throne scene is that the Mandil itself is folded in two pieces and the ringlike top of it is shown from the back of the hand of the ruler, and the ruler put the hand on his knee. From 10th to 17th century, through the periods, the artists of the islamic lands had kept the traditional iconographic feature of the Mandil very strictly.
The reasons that the Mandil became an important element of the islamic throne scene and was held by the ruler himself are presumably related with Tiraz. Tiraz was a sign ('alamah) of the islamic rulers. The fact that the Mandils of early periods bear the decorations like Tiraz means that the Mandil was the object which represented the sovereignty of the islamic ruler.
The form of the Mandil and the way of its holding seem to be borrowed from the way of holding the clothes in Parthian, Roman and Byzantine arts. In those arts the people held the handful cloths of the costume by the hand, forming the ring-like top upon the back of the hand.
After the Mongol conquest the traditions of Tiraz as 'alamah of the ruler had disappeared, but the Mandil has remained as a symbol of the ruler on the throne scene in the islamic art.

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As earlyas the 3rd century A.H. (9th century A.D.), less than a century since paper making has spread to the Islamic world, an occupation known as warraq (pl. warraqun) was introduced. This term derives from the Arabic term waraq (paper). Warraq deals with entire process of book making. In biographical dictionaries of the time, we can see many people identified as warraq as his nisba (occupational title). For example, in Ta'rikh Baghdad of Khatib al-Baghdadi which contains 7831 individual biographies, there were 116 warraqun recorded in this material (approximately 1.48%). This proportion is similar to the figures recorded in katib (secretary, 127 persons, approximately 1.62%). Thus we must recognize their influence. The origin and the works of warraq in the 3-4th centuries (9-10th centuries) of Baghdad was examined by famous biographical dictionaries. The works of warraq consisted transcription, book making, selling books and paper. They came from native-born of Baghdad or immigrants from Khorasan also known for its producing of paper. Warraqun were active in Baghdad which was the center of culture those days, therefore they played an important role in the popularization process of the use of paper in the Islamic world. In Egypt, warraq was virtually unknown until the mid-4th century (mid-10th century), since Egypt was a papyrus producing district. But gradually paper drove out papyrus, and at the same time kaghadi (paper maker) took the place of qiratisi (papyrus maker). The knowledge of Islamic studies was a prerequisite for the works of warraq, therefore 'ulama' engaged in these tasks. Moreover it was a method for 'ulama' to gain income. In Baghdad, there were suq (bazar) al-warraqin where many intellectuals gathered in quest of information concerning new books and learnings. But after the 5th century (11th century), with the establishment of madrasa, no longer was it necessary for 'ulama' to work as warraq, for they were supported by the madrasa. On the other hand, paper become widespread throughout the Islamic world, the work of warraq was divided into several specialized tasks, such as transcription, bookbinding, painting, bookselling, paper selling and etc. Thus the name of warraq was no longer seen in historical materials.

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Once upon a time, a primitive man was gathering the shellfishes for food. He found a conch. He pierced and turned a stick in order to take out the flesh. This is said to have been the first moment that human being encountered the screw. On another opportunity, a mankind had found that trees were coiled around by ivy or vine in a forest. It is said that the idea of screw spiral or helix was invented by this observation. Furthermore, authors consider the snake myths that distributed over the Eastern and Western world will be another origin of the idea of screws. Screw is indispensable as a present-day machine element. To the origin of the screw, nature and myths will be considered. In this paper, origin and development of the concept of screws in the ancient Greco-Roman world, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, China, and Japan are researched from the results of fieldwork and reference's investigation.

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The extensive use of chemical weapons by Iraq both against Iranian soldiers and its own Kurdish population was one of the most hideous aspects of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Based on American and Japanese newspaper reporting, this study includes a detailed chronology of dates and places of the use of the chemical weapons by Iraq in the war. This is the first of its kind in Japanese. It is hoped that the chronology will serve as source material for further study of the Iran-Iraq War. It is also the strong wish of this author that the study will contribute, however tangentially, to the abolition of chemical weapons by highlighting their inhumane nature.

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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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現在、UNESCOの世界遺産条約と無形文化遺産条約では、それぞれ遺産リストへの登録に必要とされる価値が異なっているが、その価値の解釈において両者は混同され、その結果条約の運用に混乱をもたらすようになっている。今後の両条約の円滑な履行のため、両条約の関係を明らかにして論点を整理することは重要となるが、本稿では、この価値規定とその解釈の変遷に焦点を当て、両条約の現在の履行の問題点を整理し、両条約の現在の履行の関係性について分析を行った。その結果、世界遺産条約では、資産の多様性を重視する方策を各国が政治的に利用した資産の登録を行うことで世界遺産としての価値の逓減を招き、条約の精神が無形文化遺産条約化していることが、またその一方で、無形文化遺産条約では、地域比不均衡問題の発生や価値の顕著性の付与など、その履行が世界遺産条約化してきており、両条約の精神や制度が相互に交錯している現状にあることが明らかになった。

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The purpose of this article is to describe the process of a series of lawsuits in Qajar Tehran, and to examine the legal procedure and customs of Qajar shari'a courts. Though the role of 'ulama and their relation with the state is one of the major issues in Qajar studies, studies on their activity in shari'a courts had been neglected until quite recently, since there are very few so-called "shari'a court registers" (sicillat in Ottoman context) from Qajar Iran. Also, other documentary sources are scattered, and difficult to access to them. The recent study made by Ch. Werner solved this situation. Basing on the analysis of private deeds, he indicates that what can be called the shari'a court in Qajar Iran was a kind of notary's office operated by individual 'ulama. There was no central court at all, and 'ulama accomplished their duty without any appointment to offices or ranks by the state. However, a question still remains how 'ulama played the role of judge who decided on legal cases and how was their relation with the state, which was said to have the other court of justice, "'orf court." In this article I take one legal case and analyzing the legal procedure seen in its course The case was concerned with so-called "doubled waqf". The file, which I found in the archive of Vaqf Organization in Tehran, contained two waqf deeds and fifty two other documents. They show that a village located in the west suburb of Tehran, was endowed as waqf twice by different persons for different purposes. Since waqfs must be perpetual in theory, this situation was quite exceptional and caused conflicts between two parties. Each party tried to establish its right on waqf property, and petitioned to the state and sued at court of 'ulama. The 'ulama issued hokms, and the state coped with them. The actions of the two parties and reactions of the 'ulama and the state to them are examined. The case shows that the function of shari'a court as the court of justice was very similar with that court as the notary office. It legally confirmed and documented the right of individuals by issuing hokms. Plaintiff brought the hokms to the state and petitioned to execute the hokms. There was no central court, and 'ulama issued hokms individually without any official ranks. Major element which had influence on the 'ulama's decisions is hokms issued by high ranking 'ulamas in 'Atabat. Here we can see the formation of the new religious and judicial institution: marja'-e taqlid.

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In this article, I will focus on 97 singers whose biographies are recorded in Kitāb al-Aghānī, written by Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī. The aim is to analyze the parent-child and teacher-student relationships between the singers and the way in which the singers were connected with the courts of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. In the first chapter, I will analyze the 97 singers appearing in the book according to the periods during which they lived and the social status they had, with reference to a list of the singers. Subsequently, I will attempt to identify a large faction of professional singers existing among the 97 singers. In the second chapter, I will analyze how this large group of singers was connected with the courts of the Umayyad dynasty and the Abbasid dynasty. Through this analysis, I would like to make clear the social role the singers took on and also the cultural continuity between the Umayyad court and the Abbasid court. In the third chapter, I will focus on 100 Songs, that were selected from those sung in the Abbasid court. Those songs were applied by the author, Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, as the first criteria in selecting songs for Kitāb al-Aghānī. Here, it should be noted that 100 Songs includes lyrics written by singers whose individual biographies and anecdotes are not recorded in the book. A comparison between such “anonymous” singers and the large faction of major singers whose information is recorded in the book in detail will reveal the way in which people from the ninth century through the tenth century adopted and rejected information concerning the court.

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