BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Ibn Taymīya's Struggle against Popular Religion, with an Annotated Translation of his Kitāb iqti     ā a     -     irā     al-mustaqīm mukhālafat a         āb al-ja     īm. By Muhammad Umar Memon
The Islamic View of Women and the Family . By Muhammad Abdul-Rauf
Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak . Edited by Elizabeth W. Fernea and Basima Qattan Bezirgan
Images and Self-Images: Male and Female in Morocco . By Daisy Hilse Dwyer
Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center . By Dale F. Eickelman
Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Precolonial Protest and Resistance, 1860–1912 . By Edmund Burke, III
Arab Nationalism: An Anthology . 2nd edn. Ed. by Sylvia G. Haim
Saladin . By Geoffrey Hindley
Islam et Jeunesse en Turquie d'aujourd'hui . By Sabine Dirks
Selections from the Poetry of Bassār. Edited with an introduction, translation, and commentary by A. F. L. Beeston.     

The Aramaic Levi—Comparing the Qumran fragments with the Genizah text

ABSTRACT

Among the extra-biblical texts from Qumran we find the so-called Aramaic Levi, which can be described as a somewhat different variant of the “Testament of Levi,” a part of the larger Greek text “The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs.”

Aramaic Levi, however, was already known from the Cairo Genizah. The following article is a linguistic comparison between the Qumran text and the version from the Cairo Genizah.

As Klaus Beyer has noticed, there are a lot of non-Hasmonean spellings and words in the Genizah text, but most of Beyer’s examples are from parts of the text that are not preserved in the Qumran fragments. Comparing the two versions, we now note that the deviations are of two kinds. As expected, the Genizah text often follows a later language than Qumran. This applies in particular to orthographic features and the use of status emphaticuswithout the definite sense. But in other places the Genizah text represents a language older than Hasmonean Aramaic, which we interpret as an adaptation to Bibli-cal Aramaic and sometimes to Hebrew.     

A Rejection of the Aramaic Origin of the Chinese Word for Monastery

Christopher Beckwith has recently devoted two publications concerning the origin of the word for “monastery” in East Asia. The proposed Aramaic origin has met with criticism from two eminent authorities, Laurent Sagart and Alexander Vovin. While the present article is not interested in the debate per se, here renamed the “Beckwith Controversy,” it is important to discuss in more detail Beckwith’s view about the Chinese word si 寺 (monastery), its origin, and its reconstruction. It is concluded that, although very imaginative in its conclusions, Beckwith’s argument is methodologically opaque and, therefore, should be definitely abandoned in favour of more plausible solutions.     

Al-Aqir near Bahlā'– an Early Bronze Age dam site with planoconvex 'copper' ingots

Some 20 years ago the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture received an important collection of planoconvex copper ingots, tools and anthropomorphic figures which came from a site at al-Aqir near Bahlā' in the al-Zāhirah Wilāya. Several years elapsed before their provenance could be reconstructed and the site could be investigated. The finds had been deposited as building offerings in a prehistoric, 300 m-long dam built to trap soil and moisture for agricultural purposes. Although the area has been intensively used since at least 3000 BC, the evidence for irrigation installations does not pre-date 2000 BC. The finds are dedicatory rather than functional in nature.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
The Mystical Teachings of al-Shādhill: Including His Life Prayers, Letters, and Followers. A Translation from the Arabic of Ibn al-Sabbagh's Durrat al-Asrar wa Tuhfat al-Abrar by Elmer H. Douglas. Edited with an Introduction and a Bibliography by Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabī.
Nizam Ad-Din Awliya: Morals of the Heart. Translated and Annotated by Bruce B.
Traditional Islam in the Modern World. By Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Islam: An Introduction. By Annemarie Schimmel.
Al-Damurdāshl's Chronicle of Egypt. 1685–1755: al-Durra al-musana fī akhbār al-kināna. Translated and annotated by Daniel Crecelius and 'bd al-Wahhāb Bakr.
The Islamic Movement of Iraqi Shi ' as. By Joyce N. Wiley.
Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini. By H. E. Chehabi.
Iran's First Revolution: Shi ' ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1906. By Mangol Bayat.
Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution. By David Menashri.
The Modern Uzbeks from the Fourteenth Century to the Present: A Cultural History. By Edward A.
Religion, Learning and Science in the ' Abbasid Period. Edited by M. J. L. Young, J. D. Latham and R. B. Serjeant.
The Ismā ' ilīs: Their history and doctrines. By Farhad Daftary.
' Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ' bbāsid Age. By Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych.
Images of Paradise in Islamic Art. Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom
Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World's Fairs. By Zeynep çelik.
Islamic Art. By Barbara Brend.
Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era. By Masam Arai.
The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925. By Robert Olson.
Islam and the Economic Challenge. By Muhammad Umer Chapra.
Palestinian Universities Under Occupation. By Anthony Thrall Sullivan.     

REVIEW

Abstract

Kh. Qumran was visited by western explorers during the nineteenth century, long before the famous discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls nearby. The observations of these visitors supplement the preliminary reports of Roland de Vaux, who excavated the site in the 1950s. Do their transliterations of the name of the site (e.g. 'Goumran') indicate that the present site-name is inaccurate? Probably not, because a sound something like English 'g' was used by Bedouin guides for Arabic qāf. However, the origin of the name 'Qumran' remains obscure. One solution would be to see it as the Aramaic (Syriac) word qumrā, meaning 'belt', an apt name for the wadi that runs beside the ruin.     

碑刻资料所见明清山西忻州地区民间信仰

明清时期,山西忻州地区民间信仰内涵十分丰富,既有对自然神、历史人物的崇拜,也有对宗教神灵、其他民间神灵的敬奉,这一现象在当地的碑刻资料中记载甚为详尽。民众对神灵的信仰集中体现了功利性、自发性以及地方性的特点,透过这些特性,可以窥探到明清时期忻州地区干旱少雨、战争频发的地理、社会环境。而民间信仰在保护自然环境、稳定社会秩序、调节民众心理方面亦生产了一定的积极影响。     

Sacrifices of Raw,Cooked and Burnt Humans

Sacrifice is a ritual practice including funerals. Rituals teach people to believe in cultural principles by creating experiences in which they can be apprehended, and therefore rituals produce social order by producing conceptual order. The supreme metaphoric symbol is the human victim. Beyond human sacrifice remains only the sacrificer's own death. The dead humans can be seen as gifts to the gods. There are at least three modes of preparation of the corpse for the gods: it can be sacrificed raw, cooked or burnt. Cremation as a heat-mediated transformation renders possible at least two ways of preparing the corpse. The cremated ones may either be cooked or burnt. The deceased are prepared in various ways to become edible meals for the deities. The humans are as a banqueting sacrifice returned to their land of origin. Social control is defined by hierarchically ordered powers determining who can be sacrificed and in what manner the sacrifice can be made. In this sacrificial practice the whole cosmological world is incorporated in the resurrection of the society, legitimated by the gods through their consumption of a holy meal.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
The Qu'ānic Sufism. By Dr. Mir Valiuddin. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1977. Second Revised Edition, vi plus 216 pp. Rs. 45
Sufi Essays. By Seyyed Hossein Nasr. New York: Schocken Books, 1977. 184 pp., Index. $3.75. pa.
Al-Qā     ī Abn Yal'ā Ibn al-Farrā', Kitāb al-Mu'amad fī u     ūl al-īn. Par Wadī'     addād. Beyrouth: DS El-Machreq éd., 1974. Coll. "Recherches" No. 8, Nouvelle série, A. Langue arabe et pensée islamologique. Intr. anglaise 28 pp.; Intr. arabe 16 pp.; 4 facsimilés de manuscrits; texte arabe pp. 19–301.
Études d'Islamologie. By Robert Brunschvig. Paris: Éditions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1976. 2 vols. Vol. I: xv plus 398 pp. 65 F. pa. Vol. II: 406 pp. 65 F. pa.
The Doctrine of Ijmā' in Islam. By Ahmad Hasan. Islamabad, Pakistan: Islamic Research Institute, n. d. vi + 274 pp. Rs. 65.00.
Social Justice in Islam. By H. Mintjes. Amsterdam: Institute for the Study of Religion, Free University, 1977. 92 pp. n. p. paper.
Middle Turkic Glosses of the Rylmds Interlinear Koran Translation. By János Eckmann. Bibliotheca Orientalis Hungarica XXI. Budapest: Akadémjiaa Kiadó, 1976. 359 pp. $25.00.
The British in India, A Study in Imperialism. By K. K. Aziz. Historical Studies (Muslim India) Series, 1. Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, 1976. xi plus 389 pp. Appendices, Notes, Bibliography, Index. Rs. 100. US $15.00.
Law Reform in the Muslim World. By Norman Anderson. University of London Legal Series, 11. London: The Athlone Press, 1976. xi plus 235 pp. $13.50.
The Ba'th Party: A History from Its Origins to 1966. By John T. Devlin. Stanford, Calif.: The Hoover Institution Publications, 1976. 372 pp. $11.95.     

The origins of the theophoric week in the Germanic languages

The Germanic terms for the days of the week that contain the names of Germanic deities are often taken to result from Romano‐Germanic interactions in the fourth century AD. Yet this need not be the case: the linguistic arguments underpinning this view are not decisive. A reassessment of these names suggests that an early medieval process of transfer in scholarly Christian contexts may be equally, if not more, plausible.     

Letters to the exiles

ABSTRACT

A slightly different separation of the text in Qoh 3,18 results in the reading ??? ??????? instead of ???? ??????, in which ??? is “apart of” based on the Aramaic, or ??? = ??? “alone” assuming a ?/? confusion. In each case an eminently reasonable text is obtained regarding man apart of God, or man without God. Qohelet seems to believe that without God man would be egocentric, just as a beast.     

补说与解释:对伏羲与女娲关系的再讨论

中国神话里的伏羲、女娲两神由分载到合记,由传说中的古帝,或氏族首领,到"粘合"为夫妇,成为阴阳二帝之神,其间经历过漫长的时间过程.这当中,两汉时期的一段演变,促成了两神传说,由虚变实,从抽象观念到具象灵祗.这一文化结果的产生,究其原因,与两汉时期特定的社会思潮有关.汉人根据先秦以来流行的阴阳五行思想、弥散于社会上下的宗教信仰,以及充满神学色彩的帝王观念,最终将其改造成化育万物,阴阳匹配的神灵.